Then, addressing himself once more to the people, he desired them to pray for the Cardinal, that 'he might observe these things, and in accomplishing the same receive his reward in the kingdom of heaven.'
This sermon ended, Wolsey, kneeling at the altar, had the formal service read over him by Warham, and the cardinal's hat placed upon his head. The 'Te Deum' was then sung, and, surrounded by dukes and earls, Wolsey left the Abbey and passed in gorgeous procession to his own decorated halls, there to entertain the King and Queen, in all pomp and splendour, bent upon pursuing his projects of self-exaltation, regardless of Colet's honest words so faithfully spoken, and little dreaming that they would ever find fulfilment in his own fall.[553]
Five weeks only after this event, on December 22, Warham resigned the great seal into the King's hands, and the Cardinal Archbishop of York assumed the additional title of Lord Chancellor of England.[554] On the same day, Parliament, which had met again on November 12 to grant a further subsidy, was dissolved, and Wolsey commenced to rule the kingdom, according to his own will and pleasure, for eight years, without a Parliament, and with but little regard to the opinions of other members of the King's council.
It was whilst More's keen eye was anxiously watching the clouds gathering upon the political horizon, and during the leisure snatched from the business of his embassy, that he conceived the idea of embodying his notions on social and political questions in a description of the imaginary commonwealth of the Island of 'Utopia'--'Nusquama'--or 'Nowhere.'[555]
It does not often happen that two friends, engaged in fellow-work, publish in the same year two books, both of which take an independent and a permanent place in the literature of Europe. But this may be said of the 'Novum Instrumentum' of Erasmus and the 'Utopia' of More.
Still more remarkable is it that two such works, written by two such men, should, in measure, be traceable to the influence and express the views of a more obscure but greater man than they. Yet, in truth, much of the merit of both these works belongs indirectly to Colet.
As the 'Novum Instrumentum,' upon careful examination, proves to be the expression, on the part of Erasmus, not merely of his own isolated views, but of the views held in common by the little band of Oxford Reformers, on the great subject of which it treats; so the 'Utopia' will be found to be in great measure the expression, on More's part, of the views of the same little band of friends on social and political questions. On most of these questions Erasmus and More, in the main, thought alike: and they owed much of their common convictions indirectly to the influence of Colet.
