In the autumn of that year, however, we possess a record which leaves little doubt that Cromwell had at least become known to the Cardinal. An appeal had been made to the Papal Court at Rome against the sentence of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, in a suit between the vicar of Cheshunt and the Prioress of the nunnery there. Wolsey, as Papal Legate, soon afterwards received a copy of the citation and inhibition ‘with other information by the letters of Thomas Cromwell,’ making clear the rights and wrongs of the case, and the best method of handling it[37]. No other mention of Cromwell in connexion with the Cardinal occurs until 1523, when he drafted a petition to Wolsey in Chancery for a certain John Palsgrave[38]. But these two records are enough to prove that he was known to the Cardinal in the capacity of a solicitor and clerk from a period at least as early as 1520. The gap between that date and 1512 is more difficult to fill. The supposition that Cromwell was in Wolsey’s service as early as 1513 is perhaps the easiest method of disposing of these years, but it certainly cannot be regarded as more than a theory, unless some new document is found which corroborates it. Most of the letters addressed to Cromwell during this period from 1520 to 1524 concern themselves with legal business, and request his aid as a practised lawyer in some suit for the collection of debts or the decision of a title to lands[39]. In August, 1522, he acted as an ‘indifferent person’ in a dispute between Richard Chauffer, alderman of Calais, and Lord Mountjoy. In December, 1523, he served on the inquest of wardmote in the ward of Bread Street. But it is also evident from his correspondence that he had by no means lost interest in his business as a cloth merchant and wool-dyer[40]. It may have been in this capacity that he first became known to the family of the Marquis of Dorset. The ‘old lady Marques’ writes to him in August, 1522, as her ‘sonne marquys s_er_v_au_nt,’ and desires him to send in haste ‘the trussynn bed of cloth of tyssewe and the fether bed wyth the fustyons, and amateras longyng to the same wyth the cownterpoynt ... tentes pauylyons & hales[41].’ There is also record that Cromwell was a great lender of money at high rates of interest. His friendship and reputation with foreign merchants brought him an enormous amount of business, and his property increased to a great extent. The training he received during and after his journey on the Continent was probably the best that he could have had to fit him for the difficult life-work that was given him to perform. The spirit of the Italy of Machiavelli and Caesar Borgia stamped itself deeply upon his youthful character. It gave him his ideas, his theories. The hard school of adversity (at first almost a struggle for existence), through which he passed during his early years, afforded him the intimate knowledge of men and things, the wonderful