gh they
yielded at first, soon threatened to rise. "Who is your captain?" the Duke
of Norfolk asked the crowd. "His name is Poverty," was the answer, "for he
and his cousin Necessity have brought us to this doing." There was in fact
a general strike of the employers. Clothmakers discharged their workers,
farmers put away their servants. "They say the King asketh so much that
they be not able to do as they have done before this time." Such a peasant
insurrection as was raging in Germany was only prevented by the
unconditional withdrawal of the royal demand.

[Sidenote: End of the Austrian Alliance]

The check was too rough a one not to rouse both Wolsey and the king. Henry
was wroth at the need of giving way before rebels, and yet more wroth at
the blow which the strife had dealt to the popularity on which he set so
great a store. Wolsey was more keenly hurt by the overthrow of his hopes
for a decisive campaign. Without money it was impossible to take advantage
of the prostration of France or bring the Emperor to any serious effort
for its subjection and partition. But Charles had no purpose in any case
of playing the English game, or of carrying out the pledges by which he
had lured England into war. He concluded an armistice with his prisoner,
and used Wolsey's French negotiations in the previous year as a ground for
evading fulfilment of his stipulations. The alliance was in fact at an
end; and the schemes of winning anew "our inheritance of France" had ended
in utter failure. So sharp a blow could hardly fail to shake Wolsey's
power. The popular clamour against him on the score of the Benevolences
found echoes at court; and it was only by a dexterous gift to Henry of his
newly-built palace at Hampton Court that Wolsey again won his old
influence over the king. Buried indeed as both Henry and his minister were
in schemes of distant ambition, the sudden and general resistance of
England woke them to an uneasy consciousness that their dream of
uncontrolled authority was yet to find hindrances in the temper of the
people they ruled. And at this moment a new and irresistible power began
to quicken the national love of freedom and law. It was the influence of
religion which was destined to ruin the fabric of the Monarchy; and the
year which saw the defeat of the Crown in its exaction of Benevolences saw
the translation of the English Bible.

[Sidenote: Luther]

While Charles and Francis were struggling for the lords