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vapours now and again veiling the meridian sun, and soothing zephyrs whispering i' th' ear of earth, and you have no need either of palace or pictures for the enjoyment of a delightful day-love of nature, and a disposition to observe and study her, will serve you instead of art and architecture. Nature builds up for you here aisles and transepts, courts and halls, of her own mighty pillars-far excelling in sublimity the memorials of the magnificent Wolsey. Nature displays her Cartoons for your inspection-brilliant landscapes, before which the drawing of Raphael, the composition of Poussin, the colouring of Claude, must sink into insignificant mediocrity; and if, as in the time-honoured halls you are about to visit, you admire the power and munificence that gave them form and substance, you may do more here. With holier awe and worthier reverence, in this great temple, you may worship the Omniscient and Omnipresent Maker and giver of all.

Reader, if you are of our way of thinking, you will often set out with the firm determination to while away the livelong summer's-day in the picturerooms of Hampton, and yet find yourself at dewy eve no farther advanced than the towering chesnut-trees of the avenues, and the venerable thorns of Bushy Park!

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"Truly, good Master Author," you will say, "this is very well to stay and enjoy yourself wherever you list! but we desired your company farther, and

cannot afford to part with you here: conduct us forthwith to the palace, good Master Author, we entreat you."

Enough, I obey. Allow me to remark, however, that there is historic lore to please the most learned clerk hereabouts: ay, long ere those pinnacled towers, Wolsey's work-or that more formal and massive block of building, the record of a bastard taste-the work of Wren, were seen upon these plains, we have records of the mutations, from hand to hand, of this royal resting-place.

We can follow the manor of Hampton as far back as to the Survey of Domesday, when we find it the property of Earl Algar, of whom Walter Fitzothes held the manor. About the middle of the thirteenth century this manor was given by Joan, relict of Sir Thomas Gray, to the Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem. Under the prior of this fraternity it was, that Wolsey became lessee in the early part of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, surrendering it finally to him in 1526. When the order of Knights Hospitallers was suppressed, the fee of this manor became vested in the crown, to which it has ever since continued annexed. Some idea of the vast extent of the manor may be formed, when the reader is made aware that it comprised within it the manors of Walton-upon-Thames, Walton Legh, Byflete, Weybridge, West and East Moulsey, Sandon, Weston, Innworth, Esher, Oatlands, together with the manors within the limits of Hampton Court Chase, and also the manors of Hampton, Hanworth, Feltham, and Teddington, and even Hounslow Heath.

This magnificent estate, originally bequeathed for charitable purposes, but now to serve the uses of priestly ambition, having come into the possession of Wolsey, that prelate determined to adorn with a mansion every way worthy the manor; and here-before we begin to describe the rise and progress of that structure of which a part now remains, as it were, his monument-it were fitting that we devote some consideration to the still more stupendous rise and progress of his fortunes and his power.

"Thomas Wolsey, afterwards Archbishop of York, Chancellor of England, Cardinal Priest of Cicily, and Legate à latere, was born at Ipswich, in Suffolk, in the year of our Lord 1471, and, as that learned antiquary, Mr. Fullman, relates, in the month of March. He was descended, according to some of our best historians, from poor but honest parents, and of good reputation, inhabitants of that place; the common tradition is, that he was

the son of a butcher.

But I can discover no more authentic grounds for such a tradition than for the other report—that his parents were in mean and indigent circumstances.

"He very early discovered a docile and apt disposition for learning, which encouraged his parents to send him to school, and to give him such an education, if we may judge of their design in it by the event, as might prepare him for the University. We know nothing particularly as to the manner of his instruction or behaviour at school; the place where he was taught we may probably conclude to have been Ipswich, but the name and character of his master are altogether unknown. Yet it may be presumed, from the quick and extraordinary proficiency which so very young a scholar made under him, that he was well qualified for the charge he had undertaken, but no less pleased to observe, that a youth of such pregnant parts, or rather, considering his tender age, of so surprising a capacity, was committed to his care. For he was so early sent to the University of Oxford, that he took his bachelor's degree in arts there when he was fourteen years old, at an age when few members now of the most forward capacity, and with all the present, and, commonly speaking, much superior advantages of education, are known to be admitted; so that he soon got a name of peculiar distinction in that famous seat of learning, and was commonly termed the Boy Bachelor. Soon after he had taken his degree of batchelor in arts, and made an extraordinary progress in logic and philosophy, he was elected Fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford, and had not long been master of arts, before the care of the school adjoining to that college was committed to him; where he was charged with the education of three young gentlemen of noble birth, sons to the Marquess of Dorset, who, at Christmas, sent for them, with Mr. Wolsey, to celebrate that festival at his seat in the country, where observing the great improvement which his sons had made under their master, and being pleased with his manner and conversation, he presented him, as reward of his service in that capacity, to the rectory of Lymington, in Somersetshire, which happened to be vacant at that time, and was in his lordship's patronage."

Thus far Fiddes, in his excellent Life of the cardinal, which we regret our space will not permit us to follow more at large, but from which we will condense such further particulars as may be necessary for our present purpose.

His residence in this neighbourhood was attended with a piece of ill fortune, unusually falling to the lot of one of Wolsey's cloth. He was put in

the stocks upon a charge, as some say, of drunkenness, by Sir Amias Pawlet: an affront which he remembered, and resented somewhat too unmercifully, in after life, by confining Sir Amias within the bounds of the Temple for five or six years. The knight sought to mitigate the wrath of his great enemy, and to prepare the way for the recovery of his liberty, by adorning the gate-house next the street with the arms, the hat, and other badges of distinction proper to him as a cardinal.

This gate was taken down and rebuilt by Sir C. Wren, but without the former ornaments.

Notwithstanding this indignity, Wolsey did not then resign his living, but retained it until the successful progress of his fortune promoted him to the deanery of Lincoln, 1549. In the interim he was received into the establishment of Dean, Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom he remained until the death of that prelate when, having lost his early patron, the Marquis of Dorset, our future cardinal busied himself in the employment of his personal address and insinuation until he found favour in the eyes of Sir John Nafant, treasurer of Calais; for, with that shrewdness and knowledge of mankind that characterized Wolsey throughout life, he would seem early to have discovered that although moderate success may be the probable consequence of naked talent, yet magnificent results are the offspring only of talent brought out of obscurity by the sunshine of happy opportunity, or assisted towards greatness by the overshadowing wings of royal or noble protection.

It did not suit the ambition of Wolsey therefore to remain long without a patron: when he was deprived of one, straightway he hied him to court, and got another.

Through the interest of Sir John Nafant, Wolsey was appointed one of the king's chaplains, and thus having once got an establishment there, and wanting neither application nor abilities for the greatest employments, easily opened a way to that height of power and greatness to which he afterwards climbed.

He now became courtier by profession, and if we may believe his biographers, appeared less solicitous to discharge his sacred duty in the chapel, than to attend persons of rank and power, of whom he might make use in the closet.

By two of these personages, Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and Lovel,

Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was employed in one of those critical and delicate negociations, which, successfully conducted, open the way to the aspirants after court favour more quickly than any amount or value of services rendered to mankind at large, which by mankind rarely rewarded, are usually left by princes to that self-acting principle by which virtue, we are told, rewards itself.

The business in question was a royal treaty of marriage depending between King Henry VII. and the only daughter of the Emperor Maximilian; this requiring great nicety, the matter was the subject of frequent conversation between the King and Wolsey, who at length, having received his credentials, set out upon his journey.

His reward for his energy, talent, and despatch in this business, was the Deanery of Lincoln.

As usual with men who drag themselves up the steep and slippery pathway of royal favour, Wolsey was not less advanced by being used by those above him, than by using them: it would appear that he lent himself to others for their purposes, and borrowed others in return for his own.

Thus in the early part of the reign of King Henry VIII., the Bishop of Winchester, who had recommended him at first, now began to cast his eye upon him as a person that might be serviceable to him in his present situation. This prelate observing that the Earl of Surrey had totally eclipsed him in favour, resolved to introduce Wolsey into the young prince's familiarity, in hopes that he might rival Surrey in his insinuating arts, and yet be contented to act in the cabinet a part subordinate to Fox himself who had promoted him.

From this juncture we are to consider Wolsey as a statesman. In a very little time he gained such an ascendant in Henry's good graces, that he supplanted both Surrey in his favour, and Fox in his trust and confidence; the usual fate of men employing tools more talented than themselves.

His participation, by no means creditable to his sacred character, in the dissipations of the youthful Henry, afforded him numerous opportunities, not unprofited by, to introduce business and state affairs, to insinuate those political maxims, and that line of conduct he wished his monarch to adoptamong which we may presume that the importance of reposing all confidence and trust in the adviser, to the exclusion of others, although not perhaps plainly expressed, was by no means forgotten. Henry entered into all the

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