take leave to follow his example, and think that it was at Hampton Court that the shepherds' pageant assembled.
Be this so or not, certainly Wolsey had not had his house built ten years before Henry coveted it. "Why was it built so fine?" later legend made the King jealously ask; and Wolsey answered that it was to show how noble a house a servant could give his lord. An apocryphal tale, doubtless, though the fact is true enough that before 1526 some foreigners were writing that the great Cardinal had made this great gift, though one was rude enough to say that it was but giving a present at the cost of the recipient—"I'll give you a pig of your own pigstye at your own great cost."
No man dared answer Henry VIII. as the Due de Montmorency is said by Lord Herbert of Cherbury to have answered Henri Quatre, when he cast covetous eyes on the magnificent mansion of Chantilly. "He offered to exchange any of his houses, with much more lands than his estate thereabouts was worth; to which the Duke of Montmorency made this wary answer: 'Sieur, la maison est à vous, mats que je suis le concierge;' which in English sounds thus, 'Sir, the house is yours, but give me leave to keep it for you.'"[1] Yet the French tale describes what actually happened in England, for Wolsey still went on living at the Palace till his fall.
- ↑ Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury," ed. Sidney L. Lee, p. 103.
