As Wolsey was travelling towards Esher, he was overtaken by a messenger from the King, who brought him that comfortable assurance, whereupon the Cardinal dismounted from his mule, knelt down, and blessed the ground on which he had received so gracious a message; and to show his gratitude to his King, he made him a present of—what do you think?—his fool. Had Wolsey in his disgrace shown any manliness or dignity of character, we might think that this present to the King was ’kinder sarcastic,’ intimating that a fool was about the only individual fit to be Henry’s companion, and whom he could appreciate. But from Wolsey’s conduct during the closing years of his life, we cannot give him credit for so much wit and moral courage as the attempt to give the King such a hint would have implied, and we must therefore assume that the gift was a _bonâ fide_ one; and as in those days it was considered the proper thing for great people to associate with fools, and take delight in their forced and artificial jokes, too poor for a halfpenny comic paper of the present day, there was nothing extraordinary in the gift, and no doubt the King thought it highly complimentary to himself. But however favourably the King might at certain moments feel disposed towards Wolsey, and though, from his influence in the country as head of the Church, it was necessary to go to work cautiously, his ruin was determined on. Parliament, which, after an interval of seven years, was allowed to reassemble in 1529, impeached him by a charge of forty-four articles, relating chiefly to the exercise of his legatine power contrary to law, and the scandalous irregularities of his life. The impeachment passed the House of Lords; but when it came to the House of Commons it was effectually defeated by the energy and address of Thomas Cromwell, who had been his servant, so that no treason could be fixed upon him. He remained in his retirement at Esher until about Easter, 1530, when he was ordered to repair to his diocese of York, where, in November of the same year, he was arrested by the Earl of Northumberland for high treason, and committed to the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower, who had orders to bring him to London. This so affected his mind that he fell sick at Sheffield, in the Earl of Shrewsbury’s house, whence, by short stages, he went as far as Leicester, where he is said to have taken poison, which no one knowing his really pusillanimous character will believe; however, he died on November 29, 1530, and was buried in the Abbey of Leicester. The words attributed to him as his last utterances, that if he had served God as he had served his King, he would not be thus forsaken, were false in substance and contemptible in form. He never served the King but when it served his own purposes, and a mean-spirited coward only would have attributed his fall to such a cause. He fell most ignominiously, without even an attempt of