ng. At length he had fallen himself, and his disgrace
was celebrated in London with enthusiastic rejoicing as the inauguration of
the new era. On the eighteenth of October, 1529, Wolsey delivered up the
seals. He was ordered to retire to Esher; and, "at the taking of his
barge," Cavendish saw no less than a thousand boats full of men and women
of the city of London, "waffeting up and down in Thames," to see him sent,
as they expected, to the Tower.[214] A fortnight later the same crowd was
perhaps again assembled on a wiser occasion, and with truer reason for
exultation, to see the king coming up in his barge from Greenwich to open
parliament.

"According to the summons," says Hall, "the King of England began his high
court of parliament the third day of November, on which day he came by
water to his palace of Bridewell, and there he and his nobles put on their
robes of Parliament, and so came to the Black Friars Church, where a mass
of the Holy Ghost was solemnly sung by the king's chaplain; and after the
mass, the king, with all his Lords and Commons which were summoned to
appear on that day, came into the Parliament. The king sate on his throne
or seat royal, and Sir Thomas More, his chancellor, standing on the right
hand of the king, made an eloquent oration, setting forth the causes why at
that time the king so had summoned them."[215]

"Like as a good shepherd," More said, "which not only keepeth and attendeth
well his sheep, but also foreseeth and provideth for all things which
either may be hurtful or noysome to his flock; so the king, which is the
shepherd, ruler, and governor of his realm, vigilantly foreseeing things to
come, considers how that divers laws, before this time made, are now, by
long continuance of time and mutation of things, become very insufficient
and imperfect; and also, by the frail condition of man, divers new
enormities are sprung amongst the people, for the which no law is yet made
to reform the same. For this cause the king at this time has summoned his
high court of parliament; and I liken the king to a shepherd or herdsman,
because if a prince be compared to his riches, he is but a rich man; if a
prince be compared to his honour, he is but an honourable man; but compare
him to the multitude of his people, and the number of his flock, then he is
a ruler, a governor of might and puissance; so that his people maketh him a
prince, as of the multitude of sheep cometh the name of a shepherd.