Henry VIII by Helen Simpson

The divorce, inevitably, brought about Wolsey's ruin; he had been thrust into a situation which offered, at best, only a choice of evils, when Henry, looking to the continuance of his dynasty, forswore the diplomacy of fifteen years, and cut England off from the rest of Europe. Wolsey, whose chief usefulness to his master and nation was thus denied, could no longer stand against the pressure brought to bear upon him; the King's will was, in effect, the will of a majority. It is one of the secrets of Henry's constant hold upon English loyalty and affection that he was an interpreter of the people. His dismissal of Wolsey came at a time when public opinion was swaying against him, and it did much to set him right in the eyes of men who deplored his behaviour to the rightful Queen.

The English people recognized that the Cardinal must go; hut, with their eternal genius for arriving at the right conclusion by the wrong road, they attributed the fall to his machinations in Anne's favour. The Spanish chronicler, whose pages repeat the gossip of streets and taverns, has a story which must have found wide belief. 'As he (Wolsey) rose from base beginnings he rejoiced to have wise people in his train, and one of them, an astrologer, said to him one day, My Lord, you will be destroyed by a woman. At the time he had so much power the sainted Queen Katherine was living, and she, sad that so low a man should have so great control, showed but little love to him, and rather tried that the King should look to his own business. The Cardinal, knowing this and remembering what the astrologer had said, invented a diabolical thing'--(sowed doubts in the King's mind concerning his marriage)--'thus fulfilling the prophecy that he should be destroyed by a woman. The ill-fated man thought it would be the blessed Queen Katherine, but instead it was the cursed Anne Boleyn.'