His absorbing aim was to magnify England and the King of England in the
eyes of Europe: nor was personal ambition lacking, but it was subordinate.
That he desired the popedom is clear, and that Henry desired it for him;
but he was above the temptation of allowing that desire to dominate his
national aims, and had he achieved it, he would have regarded the alliance
of the Ecclesiastical Power with England as the real prize secured. His
personal weight in the Counsels of Europe would hardly have been increased;
and he cared more for Power than for the appearance of it, though he had a
possibly exaggerated perception of the practical value of magnificence in
securing both national and personal prestige. In part at least this was the
cause of that habitual display which, while impressing, also roused the
anger of the nobles, who regarded him as an upstart, and of the satirists
of ecclesiastical ostentation and luxury. Secure in the confidence of the
King, he never attempted to conciliate either popular sentiment or the
rivals whom he deposed.

But at all times, if he magnified his own office, it was as the King's
right hand. If the King's will, even in opposition to his own, necessitated
unpopular measures, he carried those measures out, and took the odium for
them on his own head, preserving his master's popularity at the price of
his own. He ruled the country on autocratic principles, and the increase of
his power was the increase also of the King's. And the King rewarded him
after his kind.

But for the all-absorbing interest of diplomacy, his vast abilities as an
administrator and organiser might have achieved great things. He would at
least have pruned ecclesiastical abuses; and would have forced upon the
clergy as an ecclesiastic those reforms which they were always on the verge
of introducing when they found themselves anticipated by the drastic action