The houses of Cardinal Wolsey appear to have exceeded the palaces of the sovereign in magnificence; and potent as he was in all the pride of pomp, the "great cardinal" found rabid envy pursuing him so close at his heels, that he relinquished one palace after the other, and gave up as gifts to the monarch what, in all his overgrown greatness, he trembled to retain for himself. The state satire of that day was often pointed at this very circumstance, as appears in Skelton's "Why come ye not to Court?" and Roy's "Rede me, and be not wrothe."[115] Skelton's railing rhymes leave their bitter teeth in his purple pride; and the style of both these satirists, if we use our own orthography, shows how little the language of the common people has varied during three centuries. Set up a wretch on high In a throne triumphantly; Make him a great state And he will play check-mate With royal majesty---- The King's Court Should have the excellence, But Hampton Court Hath the pre-eminence; And Yorke Place[116] With my Lord's grace, To whose magnificence Is all the confluence, Suits, and supplications; Embassies of all nations. Roy, in contemplating the palace, is maliciously reminded of the butcher's lad, and only gives plain sense in plain words. Hath the Cardinal any gay mansion? Great palaces without comparison, Most glorious of outward sight, And within decked point-device,[117] More like unto a paradise Than an earthly habitation. He cometh then of some noble stock? His father could match a bullock, A butcher by his occupation. Whatever we may now think of the structure, and the low apartments of Wolsey's PALACE, it is described not only in his own times, but much later, as of unparalleled magnificence; and indeed Cavendish's narrative of the Cardinal's entertainment of the French ambassadors gives an idea of the ministerial prelate's imperial establishment very puzzling to the comprehension of a modern inspector. Six hundred persons, I think, were banqueted and slept in an abode which appears to us so mean, but which Stowe calls "so stately a palace." To avoid the odium of living in this splendid edifice, Wolsey presented it to the king, who, in recompense, suffered the Cardinal occasionally to inhabit this wonder of England, in the character of keeper of the king's palace;[118] so that Wolsey only dared to live in his own palace by a subterfuge! This perhaps was a tribute which ministerial haughtiness paid to popular feeling, or to the jealousy of a royal master. I have elsewhere shown the extraordinary elegance and prodigality of expenditure of Buckingham's residences; they were such as to have extorted the wonder even of Bassompierre, and unquestionably excited the indignation of those who lived in a poor court, while our gay and thoughtless minister alone could indulge in the wanton profusion.