The view of the whole business resulting from a consideration of all the facts so far as they can be certainly ascertained is entirely consistent with the rest of the Cardinal’s career. Ambition made him desire power; like other men of great intellect and strong will, he knew himself fitted to hold it; like many other statesmen, and with a good deal more reason than some, he imagined himself the only safe guide for the State; and he knew that if he once fell there would be for him no recovery. About 1526, when for a dozen years he had been the greatest figure in the eyes of the Western world, he found himself presented with a dilemma. He must execute the king’s will in a particular matter--or fall.
The king’s will would at least serve the State well in one respect if it issued in providing a male heir to the throne. Also, if the marriage were really contrary to the moral law and outside the dispensing power, it would be in the interest of public morals that the fact should be declared. So far, no one could possibly be blamed for maintaining the king’s case. That was the line subsequently taken by Cranmer. But for Wolsey the situation was much more difficult than for Cranmer, because for Wolsey it was a _sine qua non_ that the Pope’s official authority should be maintained. He could not, therefore, adopt any course which ignored that authority even so far as by not requiring its open sanction: much less could he, like Cranmer, defy it. Whether, for the sake of preserving that authority the more rigidly, he intended to ignore the one moral defence for the desired measure and content himself with pleading a legal quibble, is a question that can be argued; but it is quite clear that he was prepared to do so in the last resort. In short, if the only way to avoid his own downfall was by sacrificing an innocent victim, the innocence of the victim should not save her. He would have preferred, no doubt, that the sacrifice should not be made, but, under the circumstances, he did not hesitate. His moral plane was too conventionally low for the alternative course. More or Fisher would have acted otherwise. But the successful statesman who is ready to commit political suicide rather than actively participate in an unrighteous deed which he cannot prevent, is not often to be met with. And Wolsey had the further excuse that he hoped to save the Church, as he conceived it, from the disastrous results which he foresaw if the matter fell into other hands.