[Footnote 318: _L. and P._, iii., 709, 2307 (where it is given as nine thousand "crowns of the sun"); _Sp. Cal._, ii., 273, 600. In 1527 Charles instructed his ambassador to offer Wolsey in addition to his pension of nine thousand ducats with arrears a further pension of six thousand ducats and a marquisate in Milan worth another twelve or fifteen thousand ducats a year (_L. and P._, iv., 3464).] Two years after the agreement with Charles, Ruthal, Bishop of Durham, died, and Wolsey exchanged Bath and Wells for the richer see formerly held by his political ally and friend. But Winchester was richer (p. 117) even than Durham; so when Fox followed Ruthal to the grave, in 1528, Wolsey exchanged the northern for the southern see, and begged that Durham might go to his natural son, a youth of eighteen.[319] All these were held _in commendam_ with the Archbishopric of York, but they did not satisfy Wolsey; and, in 1521, he obtained the grant of St. Albans, the greatest abbey in England. His palaces outshone in splendour those of Henry himself, and few monarchs have been able to display such wealth of plate as loaded the Cardinal's table. Wolsey is supposed to have conceived vast schemes of ecclesiastical reform, which time and opportunity failed him to effect.[320] If he had ever seriously set about the work, the first thing to be reformed would have been his own ecclesiastical practice. He personified in himself most of the clerical abuses of his age. Not merely an "unpreaching prelate," he rarely said mass; his _commendams_ and absenteeism were alike violations of canon law. Three of the bishoprics he held he never visited at all; York, which he had obtained fifteen years before, he did not visit till the year of his death, and then through no wish of his own. He was equally negligent of the vow of chastity; he cohabited with the daughter of "one Lark," a relative of the Lark who is mentioned in the correspondence of the time as "omnipotent" with the Cardinal, and as resident in his household.[321] By her (p. 118) he left two children, a son,[322] for whom he obtained a deanery, four archdeaconries, five prebends, and a chancellorship, and sought the Bishopric of Durham, and a daughter who became a nun. The accusation brought against him by the Duke of Buckingham and others, of procuring objects for Henry's sensual appetite, is a scandal, to which no credence would have been attached but for Wolsey's own moral laxity, and the fact that the governor of Charles V. performed a similar office.[323] [Footnote 319: _L. and P._, iv., 4824.]