Search e-Museum only
Waynflete's Tower
To one at least of the Cardinal's "family" these hard-ships were little welcome, and upon the day of All Hallows Richard Cavendish encountered his colleague, Thomas Cromwell, in a window-bay, weeping and saying the Hours of Our Lady, which he dryly terms a "very straynge syght." Tears, indeed, less. for his lord's plight than for his own miscalculation in hitching his wagon to a falling star, and some hours later Cromwell rode forth, accompanied by a single servant, resolved in the famous phrase to which the future was to lend so ironic an inflection, "to make or marre."
Nor was this the end of that day's happenings for at close on midnight, when they were all in bed and the stars blotted out by a welter of rain, the high vault of the gatehouse echoed once again to hoof-beats and there came a mighty hammering on the outer doors. This time it was Sir John Russell and a troop of horsemen, all soaked to the skin, who had ridden hard, and secretly, from the King at Greenwich. To the hastily-aroused Cardinal he delivered "a great ring of gold with a turkass (turquoise) for a token" and assured him that Henry declared "he lovyth you as well as ever he dide." But the only result of this dramatic errand was that Wolsey recovered some of his linen and plate.
And so that long winter dragged away, while the wind whistled across the frozen meadows and howled round the turrets, or the fogs drifted low over the Thames valley, submerging alike the palace where a broken minister waited vainly for recall and that other more splendid pile which he had built only a few miles away at Hampton, where his enemies strove to work on the King's weather-cock mind. How often must Wolsey's eyes have scanned the spot where the road dips down over the brow of the hill, watching for his agents who rode daily from Court with news of Royal favour or disfavour.
Finally, in Christmas week, Wolsey's health gave way and his life was despaired of, Henry, relenting, sent Master Buttes, with four colleagues, and that physician, shrewdly realising that the trouble was as much psychological as physical, advised that some little gift be sent to gladden the sick man. Accordingly another ring was despatched, this time bearing a ruby engraved with the King's portrait, and even Queen Anne was prevailed upon to contribute a golded tablet from her girdle. Yet no sooner had Wolsey recovered than Henry further humiliated him by ordering that a noble gallery which the Cardinal had added to Esher in happier days be dismantled and removed to Whitehall. At length, in February 1530, on the plea, not unusual in those days of primitive sanitation, that "with continuall use thereof, the howse waxed onsavery," Wolsey was suffered to remove to Richmond, whence he was to set out northward to his death.
