scovered him to
have sent in, "desiring as much authority as ever he had." Norfolk no
doubt watched him, and may have learnt enough to suspect what he was
doing. The whispers and the messages through the intriguing physician had
not gone unobserved. The King persisted in his generous confidence, and
could not be persuaded that his old friend could be really
treacherous,[119] but he consented to send him down to his diocese. Wolsey
went, still affecting his old magnificence, with a train of six hundred
knights and gentlemen; but he never reached his cathedral city. Chapuys
heard, to his alarm, that the physician was arrested and was in the Tower.
He congratulated himself that, were all revealed which had passed between
him and Wolsey, nothing could be discovered which would compromise his own
safety. But it was true that Wolsey's physician had betrayed his master,
revealing secrets which he had bound himself never to tell. He had
confessed, so Chapuys learnt, that the Cardinal had advised the Pope to
excommunicate the King, if he did not send away the "Lady" from the court,
hoping thus "to raise the country and obtain the management."[120] Too
evidently the Cardinal had been intriguing, and not honourably, merely for
his own purposes. He might have persuaded himself that the divorce would
be injurious to the country; but after the part which he had played it was
not for him to advise the Pope to strike at his master, whom he had
himself tempted to go so deep with it. The King was convinced at last.
Orders were sent down to arrest him and bring him back to London. He knew
that all was now over with him, and that he would not be again forgiven.
He refused to take food, and died on his way at Leicester Abbey on St.
Andrew's Day. He was buried, it was observed, in the same church where the
body lay of Richard III. One report said that he had starved himself;
another that he had taken poison. Chapuys says "that he died like a good
Christian, protesting that he had done nothing against the King." His
designs had failed, whatever they might have been, and he ended his great
career struggling ineffectually to conjure back into the vase the spirit
which he had himself let loose.

CHAPTER IX.

Danger of challenging the Papal dispensing power--The Royal family of
Spain--Address of the English Peers to the Pope--Compromise proposed by
the Duke of Norfolk--The English Agents at Rome--Arrival of a new Nuncio
in England--His int