Wolsey, however, failed in his protest; the advocation was passed, Campeggio left England, and he was lost.  A crisis had arrived, and a revolution of policy was inevitable.  From the accession of Henry VII., the country had been governed by a succession of ecclesiastical ministers, who being priests as well as statesmen, were essentially conservative; and whose efforts in a position of constantly increasing difficulty had been directed towards resisting the changing tendencies of the age, and either evading a reformation of the church while they admitted its necessity, or retaining the conduct of it in their own hands, while they were giving evidence of their inability to accomplish the work.  It was now over; the ablest representative of this party, in a last desperate effort to retain power, had decisively failed.  Writs were issued for a parliament when the legate’s departure was determined, and the consequences were inevitable.  Wolsey had known too well the unpopularity of his foreign policy, to venture on calling a parliament himself.  He relied on success as an ultimate justification; and inasmuch as success had not followed, he was obliged to bear the necessary fate of a minister who, in a free country, had thwarted the popular will and whom fortune deserted in the struggle.  The barriers which his single hand had upheld suddenly gave way, the torrent had free course, and he himself was the first to be swept away.  In modern language, we should describe what took place as a change of ministry, the government being transferred to an opposition, who had been irritated by long depression under the hands of men whom they despised, and who were borne into power by an irresistible force in a moment of excitement and danger.  The king, who had been persuaded against his better judgment to accept Wolsey’s schemes, admitted the rising spirit without reluctance, contented to moderate its action, but no longer obstructing or permitting it to be obstructed.  Like all great English statesmen, he was constitutionally conservative, but he had the tact to perceive the conditions under which, in critical times, conservatism is possible; and although he continued to endure for himself the trifling of the papacy, he would not, for the sake of the pope’s interest, delay further the investigation of the complaints of the people against the church; while in the future prosecution of his own cause, he resolved to take no steps except with the consent of the legislature, and in a question of national moment, to consult only the nation’s wishes.

The new ministry held a middle place between the moving party in the commons and the expelled ecclesiastics, the principal members of it being the chief representatives of the old aristocracy, who had been Wolsey’s fiercest opponents, but who were disinclined by constitution and sympathy from sweeping measures.  An attempt was made, indeed, to conciliate the more old-fashioned of the churchmen, by an offer of the seals to Warham,