When he meets us in Henry's service he had already passed middle life; and during his earlier years it is hardly possible to do more than disentangle a few fragmentary facts from the mass of fable which gathered round them.

His youth was one of roving adventure.

Whether he was the son of a poor blacksmith at Putney or no, he could hardly have been more than a boy when he was engaged in the service of the Marchioness of Dorset, and he must still have been young when he took part as a common soldier in the wars of Italy, a "ruffian," as he owned afterwards to Cranmer, in the most unscrupulous school the world contained.

But it was a school in which he learned lessons even more dangerous than those of the camp.

He not only mastered the Italian language but drank in the manners and tone of the Italy around him, the Italy of the Borgias and the Medici.