to Henry's capture of the Duke of Longueville at Therouenne, she vaingloriously compared her victory with his.[23] "It was no great thing for one armed man to take another, but she was sending three captured by a woman; if he (Henry) sent her a captive Duke she would send him a prisoner king." For a wife and _locum tenens_ to write thus in such circumstances to a supremely vain man like Henry, whose martial ambition was still unassuaged, was to invite his jealousy and dislike. His people saw, as he with all his boastfulness cannot fail to have done, that Flodden was the real English victory, not Therouenne, and that Katharine and Surrey, not Henry, were the heroes. Such knowledge was gall and wormwood to the King; and especially when the smoke of battle had blown away, and he saw how he had been "sold" by his wife's relations, who kept the fruit of victory whilst he was put off with the shell. From that time Katharine's influence over her husband weakened, though with occasional intermission, and he looked for guidance to a subtler mind than hers. With Henry to France had gone Thomas Wolsey, one of the clergy of the royal chapel, recently appointed almoner by the patronage of Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Henry's leading councillor in foreign affairs. The English nobles, strong as they still were territorially, could not be trusted with the guidance of affairs by a comparatively new dynasty depending upon parliament and the towns for its power; and an official class, raised at the will of the sovereign, had been created by Henry VII., to be used as ministers and administrators. Such a class, dependent entirely upon the crown, were certain to be distasteful to the noble families, and the rivalry between these two governing elements provided the germ of party divisions which subsequently hardened into the English constitutional tradition: the officials usually being favourable to the strengthening of the royal prerogative, and the nobles desiring to maintain the check which the armed power of feudalism had formerly exercised. For reasons which will be obvious, the choice of both Henry VII. and his son of their diplomatists and ministers fell to a great extent upon clergymen; and Wolsey's brilliant talents and facile adaptiveness during his close attendance upon Henry in France captivated his master, who needed for a minister and guide one that could never become a rival either in the field or the ladies' chamber, where the King most desired distinction.