Few men of eminence and ability can ever have had a worse press than Thomas Wolsey, butcher's son and prince of the Church: Thomas, by the sufferance of God of the title of St Cecily beyond Tiber of the Holy Church of Rome priest-cardinal, legate a latere, archbishop of York, primate of England and chancellor of the same. In his own day lie was hated for his wealth, ostentation and arrogance. After his fall and death, the dislike of those who regarded him as the embodiment of papal domination was only exceeded by the fury of those who held him responsible for the first steps on the road to the Anglican schism. In the seventeenth century, Lord Herbert of Cherbury condemned him with those measured antitheses, resolving impartiality into hidden bias or lukewarm displeasure, of which he was master; and Laud's opponents, having exhausted more immediate terms of abuse, thought themselves unable to make their point plainer than by comparing Charles I's archbishop to Henry VIII's cardinal. True, some churchmen of the eighteenth century found Wolsey's Laodicean religion and massive pomp most agreeably to their taste; while in the nineteenth a good historian discovered in Wolsey a patriot pursuing the only sound policy for his country, a policy apparently inspired by the principles of Prince Bismarck. But at the present, opinion has relapsed again: a standard textbook qualified its description of his record as ‘one of failure’ only by supposing that he created a ‘tremendous authority’, to be used more intelligently by Henry VIII.