1 was then pending between Margaret, the Dowager Queen of Savoy, and Henry VII. It was necessary to send some one to her father Maximilian the Emperor. Wolsey was entrusted with this mission, and made such haste as to return before the king thought he had commenced his journey, and reported the business of his mission with so much clearness and propriety, that he received universal praise; and when the Deanery of Lincoln became vacant, it was presented to him by the king. When Henry VIII. ascended the throne, the royal favour was still extended to Wolsey. In the war with France he served in the humble but useful office of commissary; and when Tournay yielded to the English arms, was made its bishop. In the forty-fifth year of his age, Wolsey was advanced to the dignity of Cardinal, and about the same time the Great Seal was entrusted to him for life, with the dignity of Chancellor of the realm. Wolsey assumed all the state, as he in fact possessed all the power, of a king; his revenue was equal to that of his royal master, whose will was completely subordinated to his own. With a pomp and splendour seldom equalled before or since by any subject, he presented himself to the public gaze. The sons of the nobility attended him as pages; his chambers were hung with cloth of gold, and tapestries still more precious; he even presumed to coin money in his own name, and to talk of himself and the king as on a perfect equality. But he was hated by many; so much success was certain to bring with it much of bitter enmity. Once again English soldiers were ranged in hostile array upon the shores of France. There were wars and rumours of wars. The new Pope Clement VII. had sent Henry a consecrated rose placed in a golden vase filled with gold dust; but consecrated roses and gilded vases could not fill the treasury nor pay the troops. Efforts were made to raise money by forced loans. Rebellion was the consequence. Captain Poverty and his cousin Necessity had brought the people to that pass. Henry threw the blame on the Cardinal; said the people Perplexed on every hand, Henry looked about him for relief. The succession to the throne was said to be doubtful; Catherine of Arragon had borne him a daughter, the Princess Mary, but he had no son. This thought was ever uppermost in his mind, and when the idea of a separation from his wife was suggested he readily adopted the suggestion. Bright-eyed Anne Boleyn, a maid of honour at the court, had engaged the king's affections. The marriage with Catherine was said to be illegal-had she not been his brother's wife? Wolsey hated Catherine, and favoured the king's views of divorce. He carried the matter to the Papal Court; he, with Cardinal Campeggio, were appointed as commissioners to try the case. The court was held at Bridewell, but the decision was fatal to Wolsey's interests; it referred the matter to Rome. The king's displeasure was great; his new love loved not Rome; she was a Protestant; why not abandon Rome, defy Papal authority, become himself the head of the English Church? Now it was that the Cardinal stood in his way-the broad scarlet hat, worn with all the airs of a crown-should he be humbled before that? There were not wanting those who poured into his ear stories of the arrogance and presumption of Wolsey-intimating that King Thomas the First reigned, instead of King Henry the Eighth. Henry was resolved to bring down the man whom he had courted, flattered, magnified; he stripped him of all his revenues, took from him all his offices, impeached him of high treason, broke his heart! Late one autumn evening a weary cavalcade stopped at the door of Leicester Abbey. Father," said a broken-hearted, sunken man, "I am come to lay my bones among you.' Before the morning sun went down, that old man, Wolsey, was dead. 66 Wolsey, judged by our modern standard, was far from being what a statesman should be; judged by the stan dard of his time, he was infinitely superior to those by whom he was surrounded. Wolsey was Henry's better angel; left to himself, Henry became that odious monster that he ever afterwards remained. But Wolsey "Was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; He was most princely. Ever witness for him, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtues. Than man could give him, he died fearing God!" We turn our attention, in the next place, to certain famous statesmen of France-Sully, Richelieu, Mazarin. An austere man was this Sully, but he was a mandeeply thoughtful and sagacious, stern to those whom others flattered most, and courteous and kind to those whom others spurned; a man with something of the divine nature in him, filling the hungry with good things, sending the rich empty away. This Sully was born at the castle of Rosny, in 1559, and he was educated as a Huguenot. At an early age he was placed about the person of the King of Navarre, to whom he ever continued to be firmly attached. While in Paris with the Prince, he narrowly escaped being one of the victims of that frightful massacre of Protestants which took place on St. Bartholomew's eve; he was brave of heart-all great and good men are a deep-seated courage, that would have dared to look unflinchingly upon the Gorgon's head; but it was as a statesman, a financier, a diplomatist, that he was most remarkable. His industry was unwearied. Every morning he rose at four o'clock, and after dedicating some time to business, gave audience to all who solicited admission to him, without distinction of persons. In 1586 he concluded a treaty with the Swiss for a supply of twenty thousand troops for the king's service; in 1597 he was placed at the head of the department of finance; two years afterwards he was declared superintendent. In addition to his other offices, he was appointed Grand Surveyor of France, Grand Master of the Artillery, Governor of the Bastille, and Superintendent of Fortifications throughout the kingdom. Before his time the revenues of the state had been reduced to an apparently hopeless condition, but by his care they were restored to order, regularity, and affluence. With a revenue of thirty-five millions, he paid off, in ten years, a debt of two hundred millions, besides laying up thirty-five millions. He was the friend of the people the saviour of his country—often maligned, frequently opposed, but steadily pursuing the course which he knew to be the best for France. But his horizon was not bounded by the landmarks of fresh territory. It was his object to secure the tranquillity and general independence of all the states of Christendom. In order to do this effectually, Austria must be humbled; the map of Europe could not be re-drawn with Austria ascendant in Germany and Spain. The warlike Henry was fully prepared to carry out the suggestions of his minister. England, Holland, the republic of Venice, promised to aid in the great design. Proud Austria was to be stripped of its lion-skin and lion's share of spoil-humiliated-driven to narrower limits; and then was to be inaugurated a political millennium-an European constitution of federal states, bound to perpetual peace and permanent good-will. Everything was wisely concerted to insure the execution of this gigantic project. The religious interests of the Protestant states naturally impelled them to give it every support; the Pope would be knighted by the title of Supreme Chief of the Italian Republic; the Duke of Savoy would see his states aggrandized and erected into a kingdom, with the addition of the fertile plains of Lombardy; Holland, freed from the Spanish yoke, would consolidate its independence; all, in fact, would be emancipated from the fear with which the cupidity of Austria inspired them. But before Austria could be induced to "put a calf-skin on its recreant limbs,” a universal war was necessary. Ere that war was entered on, its purity of motive was clouded by the passionate rage of King Henry IV., who had formed an attachment for a princess whom he could not obtain, and whose name was unfortunately mixed up with the crusade which he meditated. This was Henry's fault, not Sully's. Nevertheless, the war was undertaken. But Henry fell by the hand of an assassin before he placed himself at the head of his army. In the Rue de la Ferronnière, a narrow street in Paris, his coach was stopped by two heavily-laden tumbrils, as he was on his way to Spain with Sully. At that moment a man mounted the step, and leaning full into the carriage, stabbed the king first in the stomach and then in the heart. With the death of the king, the scheme of Sully perished. The millennium was not yet to be. Louis the Thirteenth was only nine years old, and woe unto the land while the king is a child. Marie de Medicis was regent, and refused the advices of Sully, who retired from Court disgusted and disgraced. He never figured prominently afterwards, though he lived for many years, employing his leisure in the composition of those memoirs which formed so graphic a picture of the Court of King Henry IV. He died in 1641. When Henry the Fourth was dead, and Sully retired from office, and Louis XIII. was governed by Marie de Medicis, who in her time was governed by Galigai, her female attendant, and Concini the husband of this woman, so that they and not Louis may be said to have reigned in France, there rose up a new minister-a diplomatist of no common order-in the person of Cardinal Richelieu. Richelieu was born in Paris in 1585, and was descended from a noble family of Poitiers; his father was François du Plessis, captain of the guards to Henry IV. He was intended for a soldier, one who should seek the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth; but the cannon with which he had to do were spelt without the double conso |