"If the advocation be passed," he wrote to Cassalis,[168] "or shall now at any time hereafter pass, with citation of the king in person, or by proctor, to the court of Rome, or with any clause of interdiction or excommunication, _vel cum invocatione brachii saecularis_, whereby the king should be precluded from taking his advantage otherwise, the dignity and prerogative royal of the king's crown, whereunto all the nobles and subjects of this realm will adhere and stick unto the death, may not tolerate nor suffer that the same be obeyed. And to say the truth, in so doing the pope should not only show himself the king's enemy, but also as much as in him is, provoke all other princes and people to be the semblable. Nor shall it ever be seen that the king's cause shall be ventilated or decided in any place out of his own realm; _but that if his Grace should come at any time to the Court of Rome, he would do the same with such a main and army royal as should be formidable to the pope and all Italy_."[169] Wolsey, however, failed in his protest; the advocation was passed, Campeggio left England, and he was lost. A crisis had arrived, and a revolution of policy was inevitable. From the accession of Henry VII., the country had been governed by a succession of ecclesiastical ministers, who being priests as well as statesmen, were essentially conservative; and whose efforts in a position of constantly increasing difficulty had been directed towards resisting the changing tendencies of the age, and either evading a reformation of the church while they admitted its necessity, or retaining the conduct of it in their own hands, while they were giving evidence of their inability to accomplish the work. It was now over; the ablest representative of this party, in a last desperate effort to retain power, had decisively failed. Writs were issued for a parliament when the legate's departure was determined, and the consequences were inevitable. Wolsey had known too well the unpopularity of his foreign policy, to venture on calling a parliament himself. He relied on success as an ultimate justification; and inasmuch as success had not followed, he was obliged to bear the necessary fate of a minister who, in a free country, had thwarted the popular will and whom fortune deserted in the struggle. The barriers which his single hand had upheld suddenly gave way, the torrent had free course, and he himself was the first to be swept away. In modern language, we should describe what took place as a change of ministry, the government being transferred to an opposition, who had been irritated by long depression under the hands of men whom they despised, and who were borne into power by an irresistible force in a moment of excitement and danger. The king, who had been persuaded against his better judgment to accept Wolsey's schemes, admitted the rising spirit without reluctance, contented to moderate its action, but no longer obstructing or permitting it to be obstructed.