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CHAP. X.

WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL.

Regal Character of Whitehall. - York Place. - Personal and moral Character of Wolsey.- Comparison of him with his Master, Henry.His Pomp and Popularity. - Humorous Account of his Flatterers by Sir Thomas More. - Importance of his Hat. - Cavendish's Account of his Household State, his goings forth in Public, and his Entertainments of the King.

T

HE whole district containing all that collection of streets and houses, which extends from Scotland Yard to Parliament Street, and from the river side, with its wharfs, to St. James's Park, and which is still known by

the general appellation of Whitehall, was formerly occupied by a sumptuous palace and its appurtenances, the only relics of which, perhaps the noblest specimen, is the beautiful edifice built by Inigo Jones, and retaining its old name of the Banqueting House.

As this palace was the abode of a series of English sovereigns, beginning with Henry the Eighth, who took it from Wolsey, and terminating with James the Second, on whose downfall it was destroyed by fire, we are now in the very thick of the air of royalty; and so being, we mean to lead a princely life with the reader for a couple of chapters, whether he take the word "princely" in a good or ill sense, as first in magnificence and authority, or in wilfulness and profusion. Cavendish, Holinshed, and the poets, will enable us to live with Wolsey, with Henry, and with Elizabeth; Wilson and the poets,

with James the First; Clarendon, Pepys, and others with Charles the First, Cromwell, Charles the Second, and his brother. We shall eat and drink, and swell into most unapostolical pomp, with the great Cardinal; shall huff and fume with Henry, and marry pretty Anne Bullen in a closet (Lingard says in a 66 garret"); send her to have her head cut off as if nothing had happened; be an everlasting young old gentlewoman with Queen Elizabeth, enamouring people's eyes at seventy; drink and splutter, and be a great baby, with King James; have a taste, and be henpecked, and not very sincere, yet melancholy and much to be pitied, with poor Charles the First; be uneasy, secret, and energetic, and like a crowned Methodist preacher, or an old dreary piece of English oak (choose which you will) with Oliver Cromwell; saunter, squander, and be gay, and periwigged, and laughing, and ungrateful, and liked, and despised, and have twenty mistresses, and look as grim and swarthy, and with a face as full of lines, as if we were full of melancholy and black bile, with Charles the Second; and, finally, have all his melancholy, and none of his wit and mirth, with his poor, dreary, bigoted brother James.

"Now, this is worshipful society."

Whether it be happy or not, or enviable by the least peasant who can pay his way, and sleep heartily, will be left to the judgment of the reader.

The site of Whitehall was originally occupied by a mansion built by Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, and Chief Justice of England in the reign of Henry the Third, one of the ancestors of the present Marquess of Clanricarde. De Burgh bequeathed it to the Brotherhood of the Black Friars, near "Oldborne," in whose church he was buried; the Brotherhood sold it to Walter Gray,

Archbishop of York, who left it to his successors in that see as the archiepiscopal residence, which procured it the name of York Place; and under that name, two centuries and a half afterwards, it became celebrated for the pomp and festal splendour of the "full-blown" priest, Wolsey, the magnificent butcher's son. Wolsey, on highly probable evidence, is thought to have so improved and enlarged the mansion of his predecessors, as to have in a manner rebuilt it, and given it its first royalty of aspect: but, as we shall see by and by, it was not called Whitehall, nor occupied anything like the space it did afterwards, till its seizure by the Cardinal's master.

We have always thought the epithet of "full-blown," as applied to Wolsey, the happiest poetical hit ever made by Dr. Johnson:

"In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand,

Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand."

His ostentation, his clerical robes, his very corpulence, and his subsequent fading, all conspire to render the image felicitous. Wolsey is the very flower of priestly prosperity-fat, full-blown, gorgeous, called into life by sunshine; the very odours he was fond of carrying in his hand, become a part of his efflorescence; one imagines his cheek florid, and his huge, silken vestments expanding about him, like bloated petals. Anon, the blast blows from the horrid royal mouth: the round flower hangs its head; it lays its dead neck on the earth; and in its room, is a loathed weed.

Wolsey, however, did not grow to be what he was with the indolence of a flower. He began his career with as much personal as mental activity, rendered himself necessary to the indolence of a young and luxurious Sovereign, -in fact, became his Sovereign's will in another shape, relieving the royal person of all trouble, and at the same

The

time securing all his wishes, from a treaty down to a mistress; and hence, as he himself intimated, the whole secret of his prosperity. He had industry, address, eloquence, the power of pleasing, the art (till success spoilt him) of avoiding whatever was unpleasant. He could set his master at ease with himself, in the smallest points of discourse, as well as on greater occasions. Henry felt no misgiving in his presence. He beheld in his lordly and luxurious agent a second self, with a superior intellect, artfully subjected to his own, so as to imply intellectual as well as royal superiority; and he loved the priestly splendour of Wolsey, because, in setting the church so high, and at the same time carrying himself so loyally, the churchman only the more elevated the Prince. moment the great servant appeared as if he could do without the greater master, by a fortune superior to failure in his projects, Henry's favour began to give way; and when the princely churchman, partly in the heedlessness arising from long habits of security, and partly in the natural resentment of a superior mind, expressed a doubt whether his Sovereign was acting with perfect justice towards him, his doom was sealed. Kings never forgive a wound to their self-love. They have been set so high above fellowship by their fellow-creatures, that they feel, and in some measure they have a right to feel, the least intimation of equality, much more of superiority, as an offence, especially when it is aggravated by a secret sense of the justice of the pretension; and all Wolsey's subsequent self-abasements could not do away with that stinging recollection, pleased as Henry was to widen the distance between them, and recover his own attitude of self-possession by airs of princely pity. Wolsey was a sort of Henry, himself-wilful, worldly, and fat, but with more talents and good-nature; for he appears to have been a man of rare colloquial abilities, and, where he was

not opposed in large matters, of a considerate kindliness. He was an attached as well as affable master; and his consciousness of greater merit in himself would never have suffered him to send a couple of poor light-hearted girls to the scaffold, for bringing the royal marriage-bed into some shadow of a doubt of its sacredness.

He would

have sent them to a nunnery, and had a new marriage, without a tragedy in it, like a proper Christian Sultan! Had Henry been in Wolsey's place, he would have proposed to set up the Inquisition; and King Thomas would have reproved him, and told him that such severities did not become two such fat and jolly believers as they.

The people appear to have liked Wolsey much. They enjoyed his pomp as a spectacle, and pitied his fall. They did not grudge his pomp to one who was so generous. Besides, they had a secret complacency in the humbleness of his origin, seeing that he rose from it by real merit. Those that quarrelled with him for his pride, were proud nobles and grudging fellow divines. It is pretty clear that Shakspeare, who was such a "good fellow" himself, had a regard for Wolsey as another. He takes opportunities of echoing his praises, and dresses his fall in robes of pathos and eloquence. As to a true feeling of religion, it is out of the question in considering Wolsey's history and times. It was not expected of him. It was not the fashion or the morality of the day. It was sufficient that the Church made its way in the world, and secretly elevated the interests of literature and scholarship along with it. A king in those times was regarded as a visible God upon earth, not thoroughly well behaved, but much to be believed in; and if the Church could compete with the State, it was hoped that more perfect times would somehow or other ensue. A good deal of license was allowed it on behalf of the interests of better things-a singular arrangement, and, as the event turned