has been accused of personal ambition; but the foolish expectations of his admirers in Europe have been perhaps mistaken for his own.[1] His worst crime was his vanity; his worst misfortune was his talent—a talent for discovering specious reasons for choosing the wrong side. The deliberate frenzy of his conduct shows the working of a mind not wholly master of itself; or, if we leave him the responsibility of his crimes, he may be allowed the imperfect pity which attaches to failure. The results of his labours to destroy the Reformation had, so far, been to bring his best friends and Lord Montague to the scaffold. His mother, entangled in his guilt, lay open to the same fate. His younger brother was a perjured traitor and a fratricide. In bitter misery he now shrank into the monastery of Carpentras, where he wrote to Contarini, that, if he might be allowed, he would hide his face for ever in mourning and prayer. Often, he said, he had heard the King of England speak of his mother as the most saintly woman in Christendom. First priests, then nobles, and now, as it seemed, women were to follow. Had the faith of Christ, from the beginning, ever known so deadly an enemy?
- ↑ One of these, for instance, writes to him: 'Vale amplissime Pole quem si in meis auguriis aliquid veri est adhuc Regem Angliæ videbimus.' His answer may acquit him of vulgar selfishness: 'I know not where you found your augury. If you can divine the future, divine only what I am to suffer for my country, or for the Church of God, which is in my country.εἲς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος, ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης.For me, the heavier the load of my affliction, for God and the Church, the higher do I mount upon the ladder of felicity.—Epist. Reg. Pol., vol. iii. pp. 37–39.
