self never to tell. He had confessed, so Chapuys learnt, that the Cardinal had advised the Pope to excommunicate the King, if he did not send away the "Lady" from the court, hoping thus "to raise the country and obtain the management."[1] Too evidently the Cardinal had been intriguing, and not honourably, merely for his own purposes. He might have persuaded himself that the divorce would be injurious to the country; but after the part which he had played it was not for him to advise the Pope to strike at his master, whom he had himself tempted to go so deep with it. The King was convinced at last. Orders were sent down to arrest him and bring him back to London. He knew that all was now over with him, and that he would not be again forgiven. He refused to take food, and died on his way at Leicester Abbey on St. Andrew's Day. He was buried, it was observed, in the same church where the body lay of Richard III. One report said that he had starved himself; another that he had taken poison. Chapuys says "that he died like a good Christian, protesting that he had done nothing against the King." His designs had failed, whatever they might have been, and he ended his great career struggling ineffectually to conjure back into the vase the spirit which he had himself let loose.
- ↑ Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 27, 1530.—Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. part 1, p. 3035.
