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give up the Chancellorship to his more popular rival Cardinal
Wolsey. The Legatine authority of the latter brought him more than
once into collision with the Archbishop in ecclesiastical causes,
of which traces will be found in the following Letters.1
He died two years after his more eminent and successful rival,
August 23, 1532, leaving the Duke of Norfolk one of his
executors.
Our readers will search in vain among the letters for
any confirmation of the ridiculous anecdote retailed by Polydore
Vergil, tracing to an undue familiarity on the part of Warham, and
the application of the term "brother" in one of his
letters to the Cardinal, a violent outbreak of Wolsey's animosity.
On the contrary, these letters are as grimly civil as any letters
can be. One of them, and one only (No. 22), affords some
indication of that crabbedness which has concentrated in popular
estimation round Warham's name and fame. His correspondence with
Erasmus shows him in somewhat more lively colours. He could unbend
his gaunt dignity with this prince of Latin humorists in puns and
jokes suited to the walls of Lambeth. In one of his letters to the
Archbishop, Erasmus complains that there was in his time a set
of "fellows of such vinegar aspect," who could not
tolerate laughter in a respectable quarter; or suffer anything but
gravity beneath lawn-sleeves and ermine. "Why (says Erasmus
to him on one occasion 2 ) should it be considered
derogatory for men in high positions in the State if they refresh
their minds with a joke, when fatigued with the cares of office?
Jupiter himself, the ' father of gods and men,' laughs in Hesiod."
A sentiment so illiberal is fit only for the mouths of
unenlightened monks or ascetical friars. And although from the
correspondence which is here published we should not be apt to
accuse Warham of the sin of punning, or being extra-officially
funny, we are tempted to
1 See No.
8. 2 XII. 57.
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