s own realm; _but that if his
Grace should come at any time to the Court of Rome, he would do the same
with such a main and army royal as should be formidable to the pope and all
Italy_."[169]

Wolsey, however, failed in his protest; the advocation was passed,
Campeggio left England, and he was lost. A crisis had arrived, and a
revolution of policy was inevitable. From the accession of Henry VII., the
country had been governed by a succession of ecclesiastical ministers, who
being priests as well as statesmen, were essentially conservative; and
whose efforts in a position of constantly increasing difficulty had been
directed towards resisting the changing tendencies of the age, and either
evading a reformation of the church while they admitted its necessity, or
retaining the conduct of it in their own hands, while they were giving
evidence of their inability to accomplish the work. It was now over; the
ablest representative of this party, in a last desperate effort to retain
power, had decisively failed. Writs were issued for a parliament when the
legate's departure was determined, and the consequences were inevitable.
Wolsey had known too well the unpopularity of his foreign policy, to
venture on calling a parliament himself. He relied on success as an
ultimate justification; and inasmuch as success had not followed, he was
obliged to bear the necessary fate of a minister who, in a free country,
had thwarted the popular will and whom fortune deserted in the struggle.
The barriers which his single hand had upheld suddenly gave way, the
torrent had free course, and he himself was the first to be swept away. In
modern language, we should describe what took place as a change of
ministry, the government being transferred to an opposition, who had been
irritated by long depression under the hands of men whom they despised, and
who were borne into power by an irresistible force in a moment of
excitement and danger. The king, who had been persuaded against his better
judgment to accept Wolsey's schemes, admitted the rising spirit without
reluctance, contented to moderate its action, but no longer obstructing or
permitting it to be obstructed. Like all great English statesmen, he was
constitutionally conservative, but he had the tact to perceive the
conditions under which, in critical times, conservatism is possible; and
although he continued to endure for himself the trifling of the papacy, he
would not, for the sake of the pop