The Henson Journals

[125]

Thursday, June 6th, 1929.

I spent most of the morning in writing to the Bishop of Southampton in answer to an inquiry which he had addressed to me.

I walked round the Park with Brooke. The weather became sultry & thunderous, so that my fatigue was out of all proportion to my exertion, & my wits failed all together!

Pollard's Wolsey is a notable piece of work, and compels a change for the worse in one's estimate of the famous Cardinal, and a change for the better in one's estimate of the English Reformation.

"Wolsey had, indeed, superseded the medieval constitution of the church in England and revived and intensified English dislike of papal centralisation by the ruthless vigour with which he used his legative powers to interfere with most of the courts Christian, religious houses, & benefices in the realm. What might be in store for them, English bishops desired no more legates a latere. As between Wolsey & Henry viii, they preferred the king."

p. 215

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