THE BUTCHER'S BOY OF IPSWICH.

A TALE

FOR THE BIGGER BOYS OF ENGLAND.

PART I.

DARE say everybody knows what butchers' boys are in our days,-how jolly, how independent, how saucy, and at the same time how civil they are; how they ride, and without hats too, and what a wonderful power they possess in getting speed out of the sorriest screws. They are great favourites with the public, for they are clean and goodtempered, and sit a horse so well. Every one is fond of butchers' boys, and it is not to be wondered at.

In my younger days, in passing down that part of London called Whitechapel, and on that side called Butcher Row, I was often struck by observing what I had never before noticed in the boys of other trades. In most other businesses the masters eschew literature with a most fierce and determinate hatred, and the reading of a book by a youngster is nothing less than heresy or flat rebellion; but among butchers the case is different. They are allowed, and indeed encouraged,

to read; and I have seen the butcher boys of Butcher Row

WOLSEY DEFORE THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN. (PRAWN BY JOHN GILBERT.)

lying lengthwise on the clean scrubbed stalls among the tenter-hooks, or meat-hooks rather, with their elbows on their benches, and their heads or chins resting on their hands, like so many Jaqueses, poring over a book, and no doubt drawing from it amusement or instruction, or may be philosophy and often as I have seen these unctuous urchins have I thought of this same butcher's boy of Ipswich, whom I have now brought forth "to point a moral and adorn a tale."

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There is much in the early life of this butcher's boy which entitles him to take his place among the noble boys of our country. There must have been something in him, or he would never have risen to the proud height from which he fell. His father was one of the meaner sort,"-there can be no question about that, and that he was a butcher is a tradition worthy of all possible respect: some would endeavour to make out that his father was a kind of grazier; but from the testimony of the times immediately after him, there can be no doubt that Thomas Wolsey, afterwards cardinal, was veritably the son of a "butcher;" and there are even at the present day more than one Wolsey of Ipswich who belong to this useful and honourable fraternity.

Wolsey was born in the month of March 1471, and from his earliest years displayed the noblest qualities of mind. He was of a ruddy and cheerful aspect, full of activity, and fond of the athletic games of youth. He loved enterprise, and was fearless of danger; and it is on traditionary record in Suffolk, of his father having entrusted some beasts to the care of a dishonest drover, who sold them at Bury instead of taking them to Cambridge, when young Wolsey, then only ten years of age, mounted a horse, and having scented the fugitive, followed him across the country to St. Alban's. On coming

up to the offender in a bye-road, Wolsey seized his horse's bridle, and commanded him to stop; but the drover made use of his cudgel on the head and shoulders of the boy, who repaid it with interest, and so discomfited him that after a severe struggle he gave himself up to his captor.

Wolsey's pursuit of knowledge was equal to the alacrity he displayed in pursuit of the drover: he read and digested books; and it was not to the reading or the learning of of them, but to the digesting of them, that made him of so much promise in the eyes of his father that he determined upon giving him a classical education, and he was sent to Oxford when he was not quite fifteen years of age. Here his application was so intense, and his talents so vigorous, that before he was sixteen he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts, which procured him at the University the name of the Boy Bachelor. Few so young, with all the advantages of rank and affluence, attained in that age acadedemical honours. His progress in philosophy, mathematics, and languages was so great, that it procured for him a fellowship in Magdalen College: he was also appointed master of the school there, and entrusted with the education of the sons of the Marquis of Dorset.

During one of the Christmas holidays he was invited by the marquis to pass his vacation with his pupils; and it was at this time that a circumstance occurred which had an important effect on his future fortune. The sons of the marquis had amused themselves with skating and other sports on an extensive mere. Wolsey had warned them that the ice was hardly of sufficient thickness to bear their weight, but the young noblemen would persist. While skating rapidly over the ice, they pursued their sports with comparative safety; but it so happened that the lads came suddenly in

contact, and their united gravity bearing on one spot the ice broke, and they sank to the bottom of the mere. Wolsey, with quickest daring, plunged to their rescue, thinking nothing of the loss of his own life in his noble effort of preserving theirs, in which he was successful, after several narrow escapes, and landed the venturesome youths upon terra firma. The marquis, as might be supposed, was so grateful to Wolsey for this act of heroism that he rewarded him with the rectory of Lymington, in Somersetshire.

Wolsey afterwards became one of the domestic chaplains to Archbishop Dean. At the death of that prelate he went to Calais, where Sir John Nanfau, then Treasurer, appointed him as his deputy. In this situation he conducted himself with such probity and honour that Sir John procured him to be nominated one of the chaplains of the king.

Wolsey, when he obtained this appointment, possessed many of those personal endowments which are so useful in advancing lads of talent. He spoke and acted with a generous assurance; he was truthful and sincere, and of such a cheerful and magnanimous disposition that he won the hearts of all with whom he came in contact. The abbot of the rich monastery of St. Edmunds appointed him to the rectory of Redgrove, in the diocese of Norwich; and now it was that the star of his destiny seemed to be really in the ascendant. Fox, bishop of Winchester, who at that time held the Privy Seal, and Sir Thomas Lovel, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, also distinguished him by their friendship. They thought his uncommon capacity, strict integrity, and activity might be useful in state affairs; and, accordingly, when the treaty of marriage was pending between the king, Henry VII., and Margaret, the dowager of Savoy, they proposed him, the butcher boy of Ipswich, as a fit person to be sent to her