of his whole policy. He laboured to satisfy the King; yet at times he mistook the King's intention, and had the mortification occasionally to see the King himself deliberately upset all that he had been endeavouring to establish, or even to incur the King's heavy displeasure. He maintained his position by pure obsequiousness, and there was no kind of cruelty or tyranny of which he declined to be the agent. Seldom have vast and multifarious interests been so completely under the control of a statesman so unscrupulous. He was continually open to bribes and was guilty of many acts of simony. No doubt there was something engaging in his personality to men who like himself could take the world as it came. His early wanderings had given him a knowledge of men which, combined with a first-rate capacity for business, had paved his way to fortune. They had also given him cultivated tastes and an acquaintance with Italian literature which few Englishmen possessed in his day. It was from a study of the great work of Machiavelli, at a time when it was still in manuscript, that he derived those political principles which guided him through his whole career.
For more than a year the King was highly satisfied with his fifth wife. In other matters he was not yet at ease. He had now no such convenient tool as Cromwell, and, distrusting most of his remaining ministers, stood in fear of a new insurrection. In April, 1541, a conspiracy was detected in Yorkshire to kill Holgate, Bishop of Llandaff, whom he had appointed President pf the North, and take possession of Pomfret Castle. Though called a rebellion by chroniclers, the design was suppressed before it came to a head, and the conspirators were executed, some in London and some at York. It was clear that the north of England was in a dangerous state, and Henry thought it advisable to go thither in person with a force of 4000 or 5000 horse. First, however, he determined to clear the Tower of inconvenient prisoners. The aged Countess of Salisbury, who had been attainted in Parliament without a trial two years before, was beheaded in the Tower on May 28. Lord Leonard Grey was tried on June 25, and executed on the 28th for conduct considered treasonable when he was Lieutenant of Ireland.
The King left London for the north on June 30; but his progress was impeded by storms and floods, so that he only reached Lincoln on August 9. On entering Yorkshire he was met by the country gentlemen; and those of them who had taken part in the rebellion of 1536-7, including Edward Lee, Archbishop of York, made their submission to him kneeling, with large gifts of money and thanks for his pardon. The like submission and gifts had been made to him in Lincolnshire. He delayed his arrival at York till the middle of September, expecting (as he afterwards gave out) a visit there from James V. But as the Scottish King made no sign of coming, he left on the 27th on his return southward. By the beginning of November he
