mplained of. He had been a vigorous Minister, full of large
schemes and high ambitions. He had been conscious of much that was wrong.
He had checked the eagerness of the bench of Bishops to interfere with
opinion, had suppressed many of the most disorderly smaller monasteries,
and had founded colleges out of their revenues. But he had left his own
life unreformed, as an example of avarice and pride. As Legate he had
absorbed the control of the entire ecclesiastical organisation. He had
trampled on the Peers. On himself he had piled benefice upon benefice. He
held three great bishoprics, and, in addition to them, the wealthiest of
the abbeys. York or Durham he had never entered; Winchester he may have
visited in intervals of business; and he resided occasionally at the Manor
of the More, which belonged to St. Albans: but this was all his personal
connection with offices to which duties were attached which he would have
admitted to be sacred, if, perhaps, with a smile. As Legate and Lord
Chancellor he disposed of the whole patronage of the realm. Every priest
or abbot who needed a license had to pay Wolsey for it. His officials were
busy in every diocese. Every will that was to be proved, every marriage
within the forbidden degrees, had to pass under their eyes, and from their
courts streams richer than Pactolus flowed into Wolsey's coffers. Foreign
princes, as we have seen, were eager to pile pensions upon him. His wealth
was known to be enormous. How enormous was now to be revealed. Even his
own son--for a son he had--was charged upon the commonwealth. The worst
iniquity of the times was the appointing children to the cure of souls.
Wolsey's boy was educated at Paris, and held benefices worth 1,500 crowns
a year, or 3,000 pounds of modern English money. A political mistake had
now destroyed his credit. His enemies were encouraged to speak, and the
storm burst upon him.

A list of detailed complaints against him survives which is curious alike
from its contents, the time at which it was drawn up, and the person by
whom it was composed--the old Lord Darcy of Templehurst, the leader
afterwards in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Darcy was an earnest Catholic. He
had fought in his youth under Ferdinand at the conquest of Granada. He was
a dear friend of Ferdinand's daughter, and an earnest supporter, against
Wolsey, of the Imperial alliance. His paper is long and the charges are
thrown together without order. The date is the 1st of J