Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/86

 dinal Adrian, sometime his schoolmaster, to the cardinals of Rome in the time of their election for his virtue and worthiness that thereupon he was chosen pope; who from Spain, where he was then resident, coming on foot to Rome before his entry into the city did put off his hose and shoes, and barefooted and barelegged passed through the streets towards his palace with such humbleness that all the people had him in great reverence; Cardinal Wolsey, I say, waxed so wood therewith, that he studied to invent all ways of revengement of his grief against the emperor: which as it was the beginning of a lamentable tragedy, so some part thereof, at not impertinent to my present purpose, I reckoned requisite here to put in remembrance.

This cardinal therefore, not ignorant of the king's inconstant and mutable disposition, soon inclined to withdraw his devotion from his own most noble, virtuous and lawful wife Queen Katharine, aunt to the emperor, upon every light occasion; and upon other, to her in nobility, wisdom, virtue, favour and beauty, far incomparable, to fix his affection: meaning to make this his so light disposition an instrument to bring about his ungodly intent, devised to allure the king (then already contrary to his mind nothing less looking for, than falling in love with the Lady Anne