were cut off;[1] while the derangement of the woollen trade, from the reluctance of the merchants to venture purchases, was causing distress all over the country, and Wolsey had been driven to the most arbitrary measures to prevent open disturbance.[2] He had set his hopes upon the chance of a single cast which he would not believe could fail him, but on each fresh delay he was compelled to feel his declining credit, and the Bishop of Bayonne wrote, on the soth of August, 1528, that the Cardinal was in bad spirits, and had told him in confidence, that 'if he could only see the divorce arranged, the King remarried, the succession settled, and the laws and the manners and customs of the country reformed, he would retire from the world and would serve God the remainder of his days.'[3] To these few trifles he
- ↑ Hall, p. 744.
- ↑ When the clothiers of Essex, Kent, Wiltshire, Suffolk, and other shires which are cloth-making, brought cloths to London to be sold, as they were wont, few merchants or none bought any cloth at all. When the clothiers lacked sale, then they put from them their spinners, carders, tuckers, and such others that lived by clothworking, which caused the people greatly to murmur, and specially in Suffolk, for if the Duke of Norfolk had not wisely appeased them, no doubt but they had fallen to some rioting. When the King's council was advertised of the inconvenience, the Cardinal sent for a great number of the merchants of London, and to them said, 'Sirs, the King is informed that you use not yourselves like merchants, but like graziers and artificers; for where the clothiers do daily bring cloths to the market for your ease, to their great cost, and then be ready to sell them, you of your wilfulness will not buy them, as you have been accustomed to do. What manner of men be you?' said the Cardinal. 'I tell you that the King straitly commandeth you to buy their cloths as beforetime you have been accustomed to do, upon pain of his high displeasure.'—Hall, p. 746.
- ↑ Legrand, vol. iii. p. 157. By manners and customs he was referring clearly to his intended reformation of the Church. See the letter of Fox, Bishop of Winchester
