In everything that Wolsey did he played for the highest stakes, and risked all upon the hope of ultimate success. He trusted to justify himself in the long-run, and was heedless of the opposition which he called forth. Resting solely upon the royal favour, he did not try to conciliate, nor did he pause to explain. Men could not understand his ends, but they profoundly disliked his means. The suppression of small monasteries, which might be useless but served to provide for younger sons or dependants of country families, was very unpopular, as coming from a cardinal who enjoyed the revenues of many ecclesiastical offices whose duties he did not discharge. The setting up of a legatine court was hateful to the national sentiment of Englishmen, who saw in it only another engine of ecclesiastical oppression. The pomp and magnificence wherewith Wolsey asserted a greatness which he mainly valued as a means of doing his country service, was resented as the vulgar arrogance of an upstart. Wolsey's ideas were too great to pay any heed to the prejudices of Englishmen which, after all, have determined the success of all English ministers, and which no English statesman has ever been powerful enough to disregard. CHAPTER IX THE KING'S DIVORCE 1527-1529 If Wolsey hoped that the peace with France, which he had so successfully concluded in the beginning of 1527, would enable him to reassert England's influence on the Continent, and would give him an opportunity for the work of domestic reform, he was sorely disappointed. A new matter arose, not entirely unexpected, but which widened into unexpected issues, and consumed Wolsey's energies till it led to his fall. The project of the king's divorce was suddenly mooted; and this personal matter, before it was ripe for settlement, gradually drew into its sphere all the questions concerning England's foreign and domestic policy which Wolsey's statesmanship had been trying to solve by wise and well-considered means. Wolsey had been gathering into his hands the threads of a complicated policy, each one of which required dexterous handling, in accordance with a great design. He found himself suddenly called upon to act precipitately for the accomplishment of a small matter, which brought all the difficulties of his position prominently forward, and gave him no time for that skilful diplomacy in which he excelled. Moreover, when the project was started neither Henry nor Wolsey could have foreseen the complications which would arise; still less could Wolsey have known the obstinacy which the faintest opposition to the royal will would develop in the king, or the extent to which he could persuade himself that the satisfaction of the royal pleasure was the sole purpose of the existence of the power of the State. At first Henry had sympathised with Wolsey's far-reaching schemes. Latterly he had at all events been willing to allow Wolsey to have his own way on the whole.