CHAPTER XXXI.

THE PUNISHMENT.

Wolsey returned to Oxford resolved to think no more of Ipswich, the Orwell, Freston Tower, Ellen, or the scenes of his youth. There was a singular reaction of life in him about this time, for which some of his warmest friends could not account. The learned, laborious, enterprising scholar, became the indefatigable architect, devoting the energies of his great mind to the ornamenting the loftiest stories of his magnificent tower.

The funds of his college, assisted by contributions from noblemen and gentlemen connected with Oxford, and from all whom he could inspire with something of his own spirit were devoted to that building. Both Wolsey's and Latimer's Tower are still standing; one still preserved in all its grandeur as a noble feature of Oxford; the other, lonely and deserted, still looks over the lovely river Orwell, and is the wonder of all who sail down to Harwich.

Wolsey's Tower, splendid as it was, was not without deep mortification to the great man. Men who understood not his design abused it, and reports of his extravagance were set afloat. When mentioned to the bursar, they only excited his contempt; for Wolsey well knew that he honored his college by not robbing her of funds left for the encouragement of learned men, and whilst he expended so much in raising a monument to his own magnificence, he did not misapply one single angel to that work which was legally and justly devoted to other purposes. The fact was, that as the Tower was near its completion, and was seen to be so fair an ornament to the University, he received from other colleges pecuniary assistance, and never burthened his own with the expense.

His mind was greatly diverted by the interest he took in the accomplishment of this undertaking; and if any one was impoverished by it, it was Wolsey himself, who expended his utmost farthing in its completion.

Yet, however diverted, he was not insensible to the carpings of some, and the inadequacy of his private finances. So that when the work was done, the scaffolding taken down, and it stood exposed in all its elegance, like every other great performance of man's hand and mind, it gave not its author the satisfaction he anticipated, but occasioned him much annoyance.

Few men live to see their own works admired, and it is well perhaps they do not, for if their only pleasure in them is the thought of man's admiration, and not the employment of their time and talents from a high sense of duty, which alone gives pleasure, they would be elevated and depressed by critical declamations to an unreasonable extent.

Soon after Wolsey had built his Tower, he left the University to go and reside upon the living of Lymington, which the Marquis of Dorset had bestowed upon him for the care and attention he had paid to the education of his sons. His fame had been by this time pretty well disseminated among all the nobility and gentry who valued literature. The Boy Bachelor had become the great Oxford man; and Magdalen Tower had given him a name for taste and elegance which, in those days of internal disruption between the Houses of York and Lancaster, had been almost forgotten.

When Wolsey left Oxford he seemed to break off from the accustomed restraint of scholastic discipline, which he had acquired during his situation as tutor and schoolmaster. Men were surprised to find the staid and learned priest the free and joyous companion in the country, the life and soul of the great houses throughout the counties of Somerset, Dorset, and Hants.

The Marquis of Dorset had introduced him to the resident gentry around him, and he met at his hospital board Sir John Nafant, who became particularly attached to him. He delighted to hear him discourse, and encouraged him in all his sallies of wit. From Sir John he received repeated invitations to partake of hospitality; and, though their years were dissimilar, their tastes for literature and knowledge were alike.

Wolsey made a great impression upon this worthy knight, who not only conversed with him upon affairs of state, as then existing in England, but corresponded with him on foreign affairs, and was equally astonished at his comprehensive estimate of the resources of the kingdoms of Europe.

Sir John did not forget to make a very handsome tribute offering to Wolsey, in acknowledgment of those talents which he displayed.

To none had Wolsey revealed the early disappointment he had met with, which he neither then nor afterward--though fields of ambition and vain-glory lay in his way--could totally forget.

Neither cloistered walls nor lofty battlements, neither profound learning, nor great estates, can change a man who has once imbibed licentiousness of spirit, and suffered it to usurp the place of love in the human heart. A man who does wrong, and persists in it without shame, let the wrong be the transgression of any moral commandment of God, will find a very poor excuse for his conduct, however much he may be devoted to learning, and to art or science.

No robes, however white, which a man can put on, will cover the licentiousness of a corrupt heart. No crown--not even the triple one which adorns the head of the Pope--can free a man from the troubles of conscience. Better for him to cease to do evil, and learn to do well, than to bestow all his estates upon the priesthood, who may mutter masses for his soul, which can never be released from sin but by the obedience of faith.

Sir Amias Pawlet, a knight whom Wolsey met one day at the table of the Marquis of Dorset, was a man of very different character to Sir John Nafant. He saw with a jealous eye the ambition of this young priest, who seemed to delight in holding him up to the company as an ignorant county magistrate. Wolsey was certainly not gifted just at this time with that amiability of mind and temper which could brook the overbearing arrogance of a man who seemed to think himself superior to all others in the country.

At the table of his patron, Wolsey scarcely refrained from exposing his ignorance. He narrated a very simple and pithy story about a pullet who assumed all the dignity of the dunghill, and looked down with contempt on all other fowls. He exposed the want of judgment and flippant manner of the pullet with such force and pointed wit, that Sir Amias, who perceived it to be levelled at him, was greatly disconcerted, and threatened Wolsey, for being a public slanderer, with the penalty of the law.

It is certain that Wolsey's proud spirit was not humbled, but that he, with a little more pretension to learning, was not less tyrannical. Sir Amias Pawlet cared nothing for him. He was a man of principle--a plain, straightforward man--grave, austere, and proud. He was not deficient in spirit, and a love of truth and propriety, though he was neither equal to Wolsey, Sir John Nafant, or the Marquis of Dorset, in letters or knowledge of the world. He was one of those strong-minded men, attached to the good laws of the land he lived in, and jealous too for the dignity of the church to which he belonged. He was not, at the time treated of, a convert to the then growing liberation of the souls of men from the corruptions of that superstition which encompassed all Christendom, but he was sensibly alive to the necessity of propriety in the character of the priesthood, and a man who was too earnest and sincere in his profession of religion to admit of any licentiousness.

It was not likely that such a man, coming in contact with the learned and expansive genius of the young Wolsey, should shine before him. He did not, for he bent not to the idol of popular greatness, when he saw in him a regard only for things expedient, and a certain freedom of speech and behaviour, even in the company of the gentry of those counties, which ill became the Oxford divine, the tutor of the Marquis of Dorset's sons, and the great scholar of Magdalen.

'I like not your country squire, most noble peer,' said Wolsey to the Marquis: 'he is ignorant and positive, sturdy and absolute, and would do better for a jailer than for a magistrate of this county.'

'I like not your visitor, my lord,' said Sir Amias to the Marquis. 'He is much too clever and intriguing for my liking. He, no doubt, would be a very convenient father confessor; but I should as soon think of looking for absolution to your lordship's bloodhound as to him.'

Now the Marquis was fully convinced that the priest of Lymington and the knight of the shire were distasteful to each other; but as he respected both, he kept his own counsel, and did not interfere with their respective animosities.

It was no small sin in those days to speak anything disrespectful of the priesthood. Rome had such authority over the nobility, had invented so many intrigues of priest-craft, and had obtained such an ascendancy over the families of the great, that she employed qualified spies in every house to subject the inmates to penances, and works of her own imposition, even for the slightest offences, with which she could have nothing to do, and which could never take away one single fault.

Sir Amias, however, was not to be imposed upon by any requirements on the part of the priesthood to which they did not themselves submit: and in his own family he was strict and conscientious, and expected his priest to be the same.

It was about this time that one of his own servants returned from the neighboring fair in a state of intoxication. The man was brought before his master, who at that very time was conversing with the confessor of his own family.

'How now, knave? this is not the first time thou hast been in bad company; thou didst promise to avoid such men if I forgave thee. Thou shall be put into the stocks, that all the country may know thee for a drunkard as thou art.'

The half-witted man, who was sufficiently sober to comprehend what was said to him, and was sufficiently filled with sack not to be afraid of his master, looked very knowingly at him and the confessor.

'I's been in good company, master, very good; and if the stocks are lifted up for my legs, I hope you'll give me some o' the good company I ha' been in, to keep me in countenance there. There's many more like me, master; and there's one there as good as yoursel--or your reverence,' bowing to the priest. 'You're very even-handed, master, and my good company I've been in might qualify even a better man than me to be a little merry. I's only like my betters.'

The knight looked at the priest; and the priest looked at the man, and both were puzzled at his words--but they did not speak at the moment.

'Why you looks doubtful, both on you. Go and see; I's not so drunk as not to know an owl when I sees one, though it might be the dusk of the evening when he flies. Go you with master: you'll see!'

'Where are we to go, and what are we to see?'

'Go to the Masque and Mummers--and if you don't see one you dare not put in the stocks, then don't put your own servant in; but if you dare to see him, and dare to take him, and dare to trap him too--why then trap me with him, and we'll be very good company for each other. So, master, I'm your man; and when you find a poor fellow imitating his betters, let his betters find the same law is made for him as for one o' the worst like me.'

Sir Amias rose. He was not a man to flinch in the execution of the law intrusted to him as a magistrate; and to his honor be it recorded, he was not an unjust man, who would screen the rich at the expense of the poor. Had it been the Marquis of Dorset himself, he would have treated him exactly as he would a drunken vagabond, who had not a shilling to help himself.

'There is too much truth in this fellow's audacity,' he replied, 'to let this matter pass away unnoticed. It will be thrown in my teeth by every servant I have, after this, if I dismiss this villain and see not the company he has been in. Come, I will claim your companionship. Let us go undisguised and openly, that he, and all men may see what we do in the face of the law and our country.'

Sir Amias desired his servants to take the knave to the village stocks. 'There wait,' said he, 'my company; and if I find a companion in the state of intoxication he is in, let him be the King's son, my loyalty to his father shall make the law take its course, even with this fool.'

So spoke Sir Amias, and his resolution was equal to his words. The knight and the priest set forth, and went as directed to the Masque and Mummers. He had no definite idea as to the issue of his proceeding; but like a brave soldier, strong in the fulfilment of his duty, he marched up to the scene of riot, taking with him such constables as he thought fit for the occasion.

A man of less determination might have been deterred from going to the scene. A man with less sense of honor would not have done as he did; and a man, who feared God and honored the King less, would have been afraid to put the law in execution upon a man who presumed to be of an order above all law, and yet chose to transgress.

Amidst a set of mummers, masks, and profligates, smugglers, and debauchees, who should be holding forth, with spirits inflated with sack, but Wolsey, the priest of Lymington. Sir Amias did not parley with him in the least; though, in a moment, the fiery priest turned upon him all the gibes of the company, and in his drunken revel, held him up to ridicule before them.

It has been said, the knight was uncourteous; but though he knew that man would accuse him of spite, he cared not for any one in the discharge of his duty. The law is never stronger than when it deals equal justice to all. Sir Amias felt that he could not punish his own servant for a fault which the leader of the parish was himself guilty of, without making him an example of the same punishment.

He at once put the law into execution, and with such determined resolution, that the very company who, the moment before, were disposed to laugh at the knight, were the first to join in roars of ridicule at the priest of Lymington in the village stocks. He was, indeed, laid by the heels by the gallant Sir Amias, a spectacle of justice such as did no injury even to the man who endured it, but served him right, not only because he ought to have known better, but because he did know better, and was the worst of the two.

The two drunkards were a contrast, even in their cups. The servant boasted of his company; and the priest railed against the law, the knight, the stocks, and the people, and threatened them all with the anathemas of Rome. Neither he nor his companion were released till they were sober. One lost his situation as the servant of Sir Amias, and the other found himself so uncomfortable in the company either of nobles or commoners, after this affront to his dignity, that he resigned his living into the hands of his patron; and accepted the office of secretary to Sir John Nafant, who was then governor of Calais.