ry of Italy
from the French, threatened ruin to the cause of Francis. In real power
however the two combatants were still fairly matched. If she stood alone,
France was rich and compact, while her opponents were scattered,
distracted by warring aims, and all equally poor. The wealth which had
given Henry his weight in the counsels of Europe at the opening of his
reign had been exhausted by his earlier wars, and Wolsey's economy had
done nothing more than tide the crown through the past years of peace. But
now that Henry had promised to raise forty thousand men for the coming
campaign the ordinary resources of the treasury were utterly insufficient.
With the instinct of despotism Wolsey shrank from reviving the tradition
of the Parliament. Though Henry had thrice called the Houses together to
supply the expenses of his earlier struggle with France his minister had
governed through seven years of peace without once assembling them. War
made a Parliament inevitable, but for a while Wolsey strove to delay its
summons by a wide extension of the practice which Edward the Fourth had
invented of raising money by gifts called "Benevolences," or by forced
loans nominally to be repaid by a coming Parliament. Large sums were
assessed upon every county. Twenty thousand pounds were exacted from
London, and its wealthier citizens were summoned before the Cardinal and
required to give an account of the value of their estates. Commissioners
were sent into each shire for the purposes of assessment, and precepts
were issued on their information, requiring in some cases supplies of
soldiers, in others a tenth of a man's income, for the king's service. So
poor however was the return that the Earl of Surrey, who was sent as
general to Calais, could muster only a force of seventeen thousand men;
and while Charles succeeded in driving the French from Milan, the English
campaign dwindled into a mere raid upon Picardy, from which the army fell
back, broken with want and disease.

[Sidenote: Wolsey and the Parliament]

The Cardinal was driven to call the Estates together in April 1523; and
the conduct of the Commons showed how little the new policy of the
Monarchy had as yet done to change the temper of the nation or to break
its loyalty to the tradition of constitutional freedom. Wolsey needed the
sum of eight hundred thousand pounds, and proposed to raise it by a
property tax of twenty per cent. Such a demand was unprecedented, but the
Cardi