college at Ipswich was dissolved. Wolsey was rash enough to attempt to open
secret communications with Francis I., in the hope that his influence might
be exercised to restore to favour the man who had done so much for him. But
Norfolk, in power, had to cultivate Francis; and Francis, finding him a
much simpler diplomatic antagonist, had no wish to reinstate the
Cardinal. The attempted correspondence became known, and in November,
without warning, Wolsey was arrested for high treason. Sick and worn, he
started on his last journey towards London; but was stricken with mortal
illness, and could travel no further than Leicester Abbey where the end
came.

[Sidenote: Wolsey's achievement]

So died the great Cardinal who for nearly twenty years had mainly swayed
the destinies of England. Henry VII. had slowly recovered a place among the
nations for a country brought low by long years of reckless civil strife.
His son's minister again raised her to be the arbiter of Europe, holding
the scales between the two mighty princes who virtually ruled Christendom:
not by deeds of arms like Edward III. or Henry V., for no English soldier
of real distinction arose in his time; but by a diplomatic genius almost
without parallel among English statesmen. In this field, the superiority of
his abilities to those of his contemporaries made his position with his
master absolutely secure, so long as foreign relations were the primary
consideration; for though the ends the minister himself had in view were
always the same, he was ready to exert his powers to the full, even at the
expense of those objects, in carrying out any policy on which Henry himself
might determine; and as a general rule the King's wishes did not run
counter to his own.

[Sidenote: Appraisement of Wolsey]