of Rome than the dubious threats and prayers of France.  The Bishop of Bayonne, resident French ambassador in London, whose remarkable letters transport us back into the very midst of that unquiet and stormy scene, tells us plainly that the French alliance was hated by the country, that the nobility were all for the emperor, and that among the commons the loudest discontent was openly expressed against Wolsey from the danger of the interruption of the trade with Flanders.  Flemish ships had been detained in London, and English ships in retaliation had been arrested in the Zealand ports; corn was unusually dear, and the expected supplies from Spain and Germany were cut off;[148] while the derangement of the woollen trade, from the reluctance of the merchants to venture purchases, was causing distress all over the country, and Wolsey had been driven to the most arbitrary measures to prevent open disturbance.[149] He had set his hopes upon the chance of a single cast which he would not believe could fail him, but on each fresh delay he was compelled to feel his declining credit, and the Bishop of Bayonne wrote, on the 20th of August, 1528, that the cardinal was in bad spirits, and had told him in confidence, that “if he could only see the divorce arranged, the king remarried, the succession settled, and the laws and the manners and customs of the country reformed, he would retire from the world and would serve God the remainder of his days."[150] To these few trifles he would be contented to confine himself—­only to these; he was past sixty, he was weary of the world, and his health was breaking, and he would limit his hopes to the execution of a work for which centuries imperfectly sufficed.  It seemed as if he measured his stature by the lengthening shadow, as his sun made haste to its setting.  Symptoms of misgiving may be observed in the many anxious letters which he wrote while Campeggio was so long upon his road; and the Bishop of Bayonne, whose less interested eyes could see more deeply into the game, warned him throughout that the pope was playing him false.[151] Only in a revulsion from violent despondency could such a man as Wolsey have allowed himself, on the mere arrival of the legate, and after a few soft words from him, to write in the following strain to Sir Gregory Cassalis:—­

“You cannot believe the exultation with which at length I find myself successful in the object for which these many years, with all my industry, I have laboured.  At length I have found means to bind my most excellent sovereign and this glorious realm to the holy Roman see in faith and obedience for ever.  Henceforth will this people become the most sure pillar of support to bear up the sacred fabric of the church.  Henceforth, in recompense for that enduring felicity which he has secured to it, our most Holy Lord has all England at his devotion.  In brief time will this noble land make its grateful acknowledgments to his clemency at once for the preservation of the most just, most wise, most excellent of princes, and for the secure establishment of the realm and the protection of the royal succession."[152]