The suppression of the Priory in 1524 was not, however, a Protestant act; for Wolsey obtained a bull from Pope Clement VII., authorising him, with the royal consent, to suppress the Priory of St. Frideswide, and to transfer the canons to other houses of the Augustinian order, so that their dwelling and revenues might be assigned to the proposed college of secular clerks. Wolsey had magnificent ideas about education,--"indeed," says Fuller, "nothing mean could enter into this man's mind"; he was bent on founding institutions which should surpass even those of William of Wykeham and William Waynflete; and he saw that monasticism had fallen into disrepute, with no prospect of restoration to public favour. He adopted, therefore, the hitherto exceptional method of suppressing certain priories, in order that he might endow with their revenues his new foundation of Cardinal College, as it was first styled. Henry VIII. readily assented to the scheme, and his minister was thus enabled to dissolve the oldest religious establishment within the walls of Oxford, and to dispose of its income of "almost £300 a year." Dr. John Barton, the last Prior of St. Frideswide's, was elected to be Abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Oseney, just as (a little later) Bishop King, the last Abbot of Oseney, was made first Bishop of Oxford. There was much popular opposition to Wolsey's act in suppressing St. Frideswide's, and (by a second Papal Bull) certain other monasteries. Hall, a chronicler unfriendly to Wolsey, averred that "the poor wretches" ejected from the monasteries received scarcely any compensation. Complaints such as these drew from Wolsey this earnest and redundant contradiction:-- "Almighty God I take to my record, I have not meant, intended, or gone about, ne also have willed mine officers, to do anything concerning the said suppressions, but under such form and manner as is and hath largely been to the full satisfaction, recompense, and joyous contentation of any person which hath had, or could pretend to have, right or interest in the same, in such wise that many of them, giving thanks and laud to God for the good chance succeeded unto them, would for nothing, if they might, return or be restored and put again in their former state, as your Highness shall abundantly and largely perceive at my next repairing unto the same. "Verily, sir, I would be loth to be noted that I should intend such a virtuous foundation for the increase of your Highness' merit, profit of your subjects, the advancement of good learning, and for the weale of my poor soul, to be established or acquired _ex rapinis_."