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]

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. The first ejaculation of Wolsey, on meeting these holy persons,
plainly shows that he was fully aware of his approaching end: "Father
Abbot," said he, "I am come hither to lay my bones among you;"[3] and it
was with great difficulty that they could get him up the stairs, which
it was fated he was never again to descend alive. A short time previous
to his death, he thus addressed the Constable of the Tower, who was
appointed to convey him to the metropolis:--"Well, well, Master
Kingstone, I see the matter how it is framed; but if I had serued God as
diligentlie as I haue done the king, he would not haue giuen me ouer in
my gray haires;[4] but this is the iust reward that I must receiue for
the diligent paines and study yt I haue had to doe him seruice, not
regarding my seruice to God, but onely to satisfie his pleasure; I praie