"I intend," he wrote with his peculiar medley of humour and pathos, "to make merry with my parishioners this Christmas, for all the sorrow, lest perchance I may never return to them again." But he was saved throughout by the steady protection of the Court.

Wolsey upheld him against the threats of the Bishop of Ely; Henry made him his own chaplain; and the king's interposition at this critical moment forced Latimer's judges to content themselves with a few vague words of submission.
[Sidenote: Anne Boleyn] What really sheltered the reforming movement was Wolsey's indifference to all but political matters.

In spite of the foundation of Cardinal College in which he was now engaged, and of the suppression of some lesser monasteries for its endowment, the men of the New Learning looked on him as really devoid of any interest in the revival of letters or in their hopes of a general enlightenment.

He took hardly more heed of the new Lutheranism.

His mind had no religious turn, and the quarrel of faiths was with him simply one factor in the political game which he was carrying on and which at this moment became more complex and absorbing than ever.