He apprehended no evil; he had nothing to fear,
and much to hope from the times.
His sudden and unexpected fall, so astonishing and so irreparably
complete, is one of the strangest events of that still imperfectly
comprehended time. There had been, and were still to be, plenty of
instances of the downfall of power, as ruinous and even more tragic,
though scarcely any one more pathetic in its surprise and its shame. But
it is hard to find one of which so little warning was given, and the
causes of which are at once in part so clear, and in part so obscure and
unintelligible. Such disasters had to be reckoned upon as possible
chances by any one who ventured into public life. Montaigne advises that
the discipline of pain should be part of every boy's education, for the
reason that every one in his day might be called upon to undergo the
torture. And so every public man, in the England of the Tudors and
Stuarts, entered on his career with the perfectly familiar expectation
of possibly closing it--it might be in an honourable and ceremonious
fashion, in the Tower and on the scaffold--just as he had to look
forward to the possibility of closing it by small-pox or the plague.
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