A train of prelates and nobles followed him wherever he moved; his household was composed of five hundred persons of noble birth, and its chief posts were held by knights and barons of the realm. He spent his vast wealth with princely ostentation. Two of his houses--Hampton Court and York House, the later Whitehall--were splendid enough to serve at his fall as royal palaces. His school at Ipswich was eclipsed by the glories of his foundation at Oxford, whose name of Cardinal College has been lost in its later title of Christ-church. Nor was this magnificence a mere show of power. The whole direction of home and foreign affairs rested with Wolsey alone; as chancellor he stood at the head of public justice; his elevation to the office of legate rendered him supreme in the Church. Enormous as was the mass of work which he undertook, it was thoroughly done; his administration of the royal treasury was economical; the number of his dispatches is hardly less remarkable than the care bestowed upon each; even More, an avowed enemy, confesses that as chancellor he surpassed all men’s expectations. The court of chancery, indeed, became so crowded through the character of expedition and justice which it gained under his rule that subordinate courts had to be created for its relief. It was this concentration of all secular and ecclesiastical power in a single hand which accustomed England to the personal government which began with Henry VIII; and it was, above all, Wolsey’s long tenure of the whole Papal authority within the realm, and the consequent suspension of appeals to Rome, that led men to acquiesce at a later time in Henry’s claim of religious supremacy; for, proud as was Wolsey’s bearing and high as were his natural powers, he stood before England as the mere creature of the king. Greatness, wealth, authority he held, and owned he held, simply at the royal will. In raising his low-born favorite to the head of Church and state, Henry was gathering all religious as well as all civil authority into his personal grasp. The nation which trembled before Wolsey learned to tremble before the king who could destroy Wolsey by a breath. FRANCISCO PIZARRO. BY WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.