e. He had a genius for
diplomacy. He was an artist and enthusiast in politics. They were not a
pursuit to him, but a passion. Not perhaps unjustly has he been called the
greatest statesman England ever produced.

England, at the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign, was weakened after the
struggles of the Civil Wars, and wished to find peace at home at the cost
of obscurity abroad. But it was this England which Wolsey's policy raised
"from a third-rate state of little account into the highest circle of
European politics." Wolsey did not show his genius to the best advantage
in local politics, but in diplomacy. He could only be inspired by the
gigantic things of statecraft. When he was set by Henry to deal with the
sordid matter of the divorce, he felt restricted and cramped. He was
better as a patriot than as a royal servant. It was this feeling of being
sullied and unnerved in the uncongenial skirmishings of the divorce that
jarred on his sensitive nature and made his ambitious hand lose its
cunning. A first-rate man cannot do second-rate things well.

Henry and Wolsey were two giants littered in one day. Wolsey had realised
his possibilities of power before Henry. But when Henry once learned how
easy it was for him to get his own way, Wolsey learned how dependent he
necessarily was on the King's good will. And then, "the nation which had
trembled before Wolsey, learned to tremble before the King who could
destroy Wolsey with a breath."

Had Wolsey been able to fulfil his own ideals, had he been the head of a
Republic and not the servant of a King, his public record would no doubt
have been on a higher ethical plane. That he himself realised this is
shown by his pathetic words to Sir William Kingston, which have been but
slightly paraphrased by Shakespeare: "Well, well, Master Kingston, I see
how the matter against me is framed, but if I had served my God as
diligently as I have done the King, He would not have given me over in my
grey hairs." In this frankness we recognise once again a flicker of
greatness--one might almost say a touch of divine humour.

The lives of great men compose themselves dramatically; Wolsey's end was
indeed a fit theme for the dramatist.

_His Fall_

In his later years, Wolsey began to totter on his throne. The King had
become more and more masterful. It was impossible for two such stormy men
to act permanently in concord. In 1528, Wolsey said that as soon as he had
accomplished his ambit