Various
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction / Volume 12, No. 347, December 20, 1828
EUROPEAN CITIES.NAPLES
à latere by the Pope, having previously received a Cardinal's cap.Leicester Abbey was rendered famous as being the last residence of the unhappy Wolsey; "within its walls," says Gilpin, "was once exhibited a scene more humiliating to human ambition, and more instructive to human grandeur than almost any which history hath produced. Here the fallen pride of Wolsey retreated from the insults of the world, all his visions of ambition were now gone; his pomp and pageantry and crowded levees! On this spot he told the listening monks, the sole attendants of his dying hour, as they stood around his pallet, that he was come to lay his bones among them, and gave a pathetic testimony to the truth and joys of religion, which preaches beyond a thousand lectures."2
On his road to London, whither he had been summoned, from his castle of Cawood, by Henry, to take his trial for high treason, he was seized with a disorder, which so much increased as to oblige his resting at Leicester, where he was met at the Abbey gate by the Abbot and his whole convent. The first ejaculation of Wolsey, on meeting these holy persons, plainly shows that he was fully aware of his approaching end: "Father Abbot," said he, "I am come hither to lay my bones among you;"3 and it was with great difficulty that they could get him up the stairs, which it was fated he was never again to descend alive. A short time previous to his death, he thus addressed the Constable of the Tower, who was appointed to convey him to the metropolis:"Well, well, Master Kingstone, I see the matter how it is framed; but if I had serued God as diligentlie as I haue done the king, he would not haue giuen me ouer in my gray haires;4 but this is the iust reward that I must receiue for the diligent paines and study yt I haue had to doe him seruice, not regarding my seruice to God, but onely to satisfie his pleasure; I praie you haue me most humblie commended vnto his royal maiestie, and beseech him in my behalfe to call to his princelie remembrance, all matters proceeding between him and mee, from the beginning of the worlde, and the progress of the same, and most especialle in his weightie matter, and then shall his grace's conscience know whether I haue oflended him or no."5