" 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 _a 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]
On his road to London, whither he had been summoned, from his castle of
_Cawood_, by Henry, to take his trial for high treason, he was seized
with a disorder, which so much increased as to oblige his resting at
Leicester, where he was met at the Abbey gate by the Abbot and his whole
convent.
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