She would then be in a far better position to make her voice heard in the settlement, and would probably have been able to extract from it all the benefits she could with reason or justice demand.

So obvious was the advantage of this policy that for some time acute French statesmen refused to credit Wolsey with any other.

They said, reported an English envoy to (p.

152) the Cardinal, "that your grace would make your profit with them and the Emperor both, and proceed between them so that they might continue in war, and that the one destroy the other, and the King's highness may remain and be their arbiter and superior".[423] If it is urged that Henry was bent on the war, and that Wolsey must satisfy the King or forfeit his power, even the latter would have been the better alternative.

His fall would have been less complete and more honourable than it actually was.