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
- ↑ 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 edition of 1827, which, it seems to me, is not so accurate as that of Dr. Wordsworth, based on the Lambeth MSS., 179 and 250.
