Plug & play---Security cameras

Can't explore our A.D at all? Go ahead and tap right here to fix.

Plug & play---Security cameras

his stead, had also suggested that he should be King of France. Down to the battle of Pavia Henry pursued this idea. What Henry V. had done with the slender resources of his time seemed not impossible now, with the aid of the most powerful of the french vhials, and of those alliances which displayed Wolsey's imperial art. To relinquish so hopefulan enterprise without a shadow ofpolitical or military success, whilst the hearts of his people were hardened against him, and his confederate defied him at the division of the spoil, was an impotent and ignominious end of Henry's aspiringschemes. The author of all this humiliation was Wolsey. It was his policy that had beenbrought to ruin by the subtler art of the Imperial ChancellorGattinara. His enemies at home had their opportunity, and they were the wholenation. Detested by the nobles for his influence over Henry, by the clergy for his use of the powers delegated by Rome, and, in spite of his profuse beneficence, by the people of England, as the oppressor of the nobility, he had hardly a friend except the King, whose pride he had brought so low. yet wolsey withstood the shock, and his hi remained unshaken. henry adopted his inglorious policy, bowed his own imperious will before the resistance of London citizens and Kentish monks, and, at the moment when the crown of France seemed near his grasp, abandoned without a struggle the cherished hope of rivalling the Plantagenets. Wolsey was able to bring these things about because of an important change that had come over the domestic life of the King. [9] Catharine of Aragon was little past forty; but the infirmities of age had befallen her prematurely, and her husband, though he betrayed it by no outward sign, had become estranged from her since the end of the year 1524.1 As long as she was fair and hadhope of children, and as long as theaustrian alliance subsisted, her position was unhiailed. but when her eldest children died, people had already begun to predict that her marriage would not hold good;2 and now that she had lost the expectations and the attractiveness of youth, a crisis came in which England ceased to depend on the friendship of her family, and was protected against their enmity by a close union with France and Rome. The motives that impelled Wolsey to take advantage of the change were plausible. For a quarter of a century the strength of the Tudors had been the safety with which the succession was provided for; but when it became certain that Catharine would have no son to inherit the crown, the old insecurity revived, and men called to mind the havoc of the civil war, and the murders in the Royal House, which in the seven preceding reigns had seven timesdetermined the succession. To preserve the Tudor dynasty, the first of the English nobleshad suffered death; but nothing was yet secure. If a Queen could reign in England, Henry VII., who had no hereditary claim except through his mother, who survived him, was not the rightful king. Until the birth of Elizabeth no law enabled a woman to wear the crown; no example justified it; and Catharine's marriage contract, which provided that her sons should succeed, made no such provision for her daughters. It was uncertain whether Mary would be allowed to reign unchallenged by the Scots or by adherents of the House of York. The White Rose had perished, in the main line, amid the rout of [10] Pavia; yet Catharine tortured herself with misgivings as to her daughter's claim. The Earl of Warwick, a helpless and unoffending prisoner, had been put to death, that her wedding might be .