Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

WOLSEY'S LIFE 35
which Wolsey built; in its earliest stage, while it
was still in building, when it was inhabited by the
great man who designed it, and when it was handed
over to his imperious sovereign. It is hardly too
much to say that more of the business of state was
transacted there than in any other place during Henry's
reign. There is not a great man of the age, English
statesman or foreign ambassador, who was not constantly
there; Chapuys and Cranmer were as familiar
with its courts and passages as were More and
Cromwell.
Of Wolsey's life at Hampton Court there are
many accounts from friends and enemies alike. All
agree that it was ostentatious and magnificent. He
desired to impress on foreigners the greatness of
England through the visible example of the opulence
of the chief minister. Honest George Cavendish
says: — " All ambassadors of foreign potentates were
always despatched by his wisdom, to whom they had
continual access for their despatch. His house was
always resorted to like a king's house, with noblemen
and gentlemen, with coming and going in and out,
feasting and banquetting these ambassadors divers
times, and all other right nobly." 1 But the best
picture of Hampton Court as it was in Wolsey's day
is that which the same worthy gentleman gives when
1 Printed in Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography," vol. i.
p. 357. The edition printed by the late Professor Henry Morley
(Morley's Universal Library) was a reprint of Singer's one-volume
editionof 1827, which, it seems to me, is not so accurate as that of
Dr. Wordsworth,basedon the LambethMSS., 179 and 250.