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1529] at length fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of iniquity was shivered into ruins. Wolsey had dreamed that it might still stand, self-reformed as he hoped to see it; but in his dread lest any hands but those of friends should touch the work, he had 'prolonged its sickly days,' waiting for the convenient season which was not to be; he had put off the meeting of Parliament, knowing that if Parliament were once assembled, he would be unable to resist the pressure which would be brought to bear upon him; and in the impatient minds of the people he had identified himself with the evils which he alone for the few last years had hindered from falling. At length he had fallen himself, and his disgrace was celebrated in London with enthusiastic rejoicing as the inauguration of the new era. On the eighteenth of October, 1529, Wolsey delivered up the seals. He was ordered to retire to Esher; and, 'at the taking of his barge,' Cavendish saw no less than a thousand boats full of men and women of the city of London, 'waffeting up and down in Thames,' to see him sent, as they expected, to the Tower. A fortnight later the same crowd was perhaps again assembled on a wiser occasion, and with truer reason for exultation, to see the King coming up in his barge from Greenwich to open Parliament.

'According to the summons,' says Hall, the King of England began his high Court of Parliament