spensing with such exaggerated ceremonies."
Had Wolsey's insolence been tempered by his sense of humour, his fall
might have been on a softer place, as his Fool is believed to have
remarked.

_His Policy_

In his policy of the reform of the Church, Wolsey dealt as a giant with
his gigantic task. To quote a passage from Taunton: "Ignorance, he knew,
was the root of most of the mischief of the day; so by education he
endeavoured to give men the means to know better. Falsehood can only be
expelled by Truth.... Had the other prelates of the age realized the true
cause of the religious disputes, and how much they themselves were
responsible for the present Ignorance, the sacred name of religion would
not have had so bloody a record in this country."

Wolsey's idea was, in fact, to bring the clergy in touch with the thought
and conditions of the time. It is wonderful to reflect that this one brain
should have controlled the secular and ecclesiastical destinies of
Christendom.

To reform the Church would seem to have been an almost superhuman
undertaking, but to a man of Wolsey's greatness obstacles are only
incentives to energy. He was "eager to cleanse the Church from the
accumulated evil effects of centuries of human passions." A great man is
stronger than a system, while he lives; but the system often outlives the
man. Wolsey lived in a time whose very atmosphere was charged with
intrigue. Had he not yielded to a Government by slaughter, he would not
have existed.

The Cardinal realised that ignorance was one of the chief causes of the
difficulties in the Church. So with great zeal he devoted himself to the
founding of two colleges, one in Ipswich, the other in Oxford. His scheme
was never entirely carried out, for on Wolsey's fall his works were not
completed. The College at Ipswich fell into abeyance, but his college at
Oxford was spared and refounded. Originally called Cardinal College, it
was renamed Christ Church, so that not even in name was it allowed to be a
memorial of Wolsey's greatness.

_His Genius_

For a long time Wolsey was regarded merely as the type of the ambitious
and arrogant ecclesiastic whom the Reformation had made an impossibility
in the future. It was not till the mass of documents relating to the reign
of Henry VIII. was published that it was possible to estimate the
greatness of the Cardinal's schemes. He took a wider view of the problems
of his time than any statesman had done befor