Henry VIII by Helen Simpson

'The authority of this cardinal set the clergy in such a pride that they disdained all men, wherefore when he was fallen they followed after as you shall hear.' But Hall for once overestimates the Cardinal's influence, or rather misinterprets it. Among the clergy were to be found some of Wolsey's most pitiless enemies; he had taxed his own order, a disloyalty they never forgave; he had disbanded certain small and ill-managed monasteries in a manner which, though perfectly justified, was harsh; finally, he had taken no steps to stop the spread of heresy. His splendour, too, went against him; in the hard times upon which England had now fallen his great foundations for scholars seemed a mockery of the people's poverty. 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but he dies lacking it wholly.' His rituals, his embassies, his buildings, all witnessed against him in the eyes of priests and laymen alike.

The pride of the clergy had always been a grievance. Hear Langland, himself a monk, orying out upon Church abuses in the fourteenth century: 'And now is Religion a rider, a roamer about, A leader of love-days and a land-buyer, A pricker on palfrey from manor to manor, A heap of hounds behind him as he a lord were. Of the poor have they no pity; and that is their charity.'