Few periods of English history are more pregnant with events, or more interesting to the antiquary, and general reader, than that which comprised the fortunes of Wolsey. The eventful life of the Cardinal, checkered as it was by the vicissitudes of fortune, his sudden elevation, and finally his more sudden fall and death, display an appalling picture of "the instability of human affairs." This prelate and statesman, who even aspired to the Papal throne itself, "was an honest poore man's sonne in the towne of Ipswiche,"[1] who having received a good education, and being endowed with great capacity, soon rose to fill the highest offices of the church and state; in 1515 he was created Lord High Chancellor, and in three years afterwards was appointed legate _à latere_ by the Pope, having previously received a Cardinal's cap. Leicester Abbey was rendered famous as being the last residence of the unhappy Wolsey; "within its walls," says Gilpin, "was once exhibited a scene more humiliating to human ambition, and more instructive to human grandeur than almost any which history hath produced. Here the fallen pride of Wolsey retreated from the insults of the world, all his visions of ambition were now gone; his pomp and pageantry and crowded levees! On this spot he told the listening monks, the sole attendants of his dying hour, as they stood around his pallet, that he was come to lay his bones among them, and gave a pathetic testimony to the truth and joys of religion, which preaches beyond a thousand lectures."[2]