As he was thus ailing there arrived Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, with a guard of twenty-four soldiers; he had received a commission from the king to bring Wolsey as a prisoner to the Tower. It would seem from this that Agostino's confessions had been skilfully raised to fan the royal wrath, and Henry gave this sign that he was prepared to treat his former minister as a traitor. The Earl of Shrewsbury did his best to treat the coming of Kingston as a trivial incident, and sent Cavendish to break the news gently to his master. Cavendish gave the message as he was bidden. "Forsooth my lord of Shrewsbury, perceiving by your often communication that ye were always desirous to come before the king's Majesty, and now as your assured friend, hath travailed so with his letters unto the king, that the king hath sent for you by Master Kingston and twenty-four of the guard to conduct you to his Highness." Wolsey was not deceived. "Master Kingston," he repeated, and smote his thigh. When Cavendish made a further attempt to cheer him he cut him short by saying, "I perceive more than you can imagine or can know. Experience hath taught me." When Kingston was introduced and knelt before him, Wolsey said, "I pray you stand up, and leave your kneeling unto a very wretch replete with misery, not worthy to be esteemed, but for a vile object utterly cast away, without desert; and therefore, good Master Kingston, stand up, or I will myself kneel down by you." After some talk Wolsey thanked Kingston for his kind words. "Assure yourself that if I were as able and as lusty as I have been but of late, I would not fail to ride with you in post. But all these comfortable words which ye have spoken be but for a purpose to bring me to a fool's paradise; I know what is provided for me." With a mind thus agitated the sufferings of the body increased. When Wolsey took his journey next day all regarded him as a dying man. The soldiers of the guard, "as soon as they espied their old master in such a lamentable estate, lamented him with weeping eyes. Whom my lord took by the hands, and divers times by the way as he rode he would talk with them, sometime with one and sometime with another." That night he reached Hardwick Hall, in Notts, a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the next day rode to Nottingham. On the way from thence to Leicester he was so feeble that he could scarcely sit upon his mule. It was dark on Saturday night when he reached Leicester Abbey, where the abbot greeted him by torchlight. "Father Abbot," he said, "I am come hither to leave my bones among you." Kingston had to carry him upstairs to his bed, which he never quitted again.