This study of Wolsey makes no pretense to detail. Its object is to establish character and motive in him and his contemporaries. To the particulars of his life no one can pretend to add much since the recent work of Professor Pollard. Our literature as a whole approves the relocation called The Reformation. The nation has long and rightly ascribed to the Reformation the qualities on which it prides itself. On this account the general bias has lain towards the better interpretation of motive in those who promoted the great change and the worse in those who impeded it. The just truth lying between the two distortions is often so novel as to sound paradoxical. It should be presented; and the author hopes the reader will agree that where he set down what may seem unusual, he has given his reasons for each conclusion.