Now, old Wolsey fell when he failed to secure Bluff Hal's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and place him between the sheets with the hot-limbed, long-legged Anne Boleyn. I never told Benjamin this (indeed very few people knew it) but the Lord Cardinal did not die by natural causes – he was murdered by a subtle, deadly poison. However, that's another story for the future. In 1516, by subtle fetches, Wolsey had crept into the ear of the King. A brilliant scholar, Wolsey had gone to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became fellow and bursar until his hand was found dipping in the money bags. Anyway, with his crafty mind he soon became chaplain to long-faced Henry VII, buying a house in St Bride's parish in Fleet Street. When Henry VII went mad and died, our new young King, the golden boy, Bluff Hal, saw the craftiness in Wolsey and raised him high. He bought a house near London Stone in the Walbrook, becoming Almoner, Chancellor and Archbishop until all power rested in his great fat hands. Some people said Wolsey was the King's bawd, others his pimp, alleging he kept young ladies in a tower built in a pleasaunce near Sheen for the King's entertainment. Others claimed Wolsey practised the Black Arts and communed with Satan who appeared to him in the form of a monstrous cat. A great man, Wolsey! He built Hampton Court, his servants went round in liveries of scarlet and gold with the escutcheon T. C on their back and front – 'Thomas Cardinalis'. And, all the time, the Lord Cardinal never forgot his favourite kinsman, young Benjamin.

My Lord Cardinal did not give Benjamin actual honours but rather money, as well as opening the occasional door to preferment and advancement. At least that was the Cardinal's plan though it came to involve treason, conspiracy, murder and executions… but that was for the future. If I had known the end of the business at the beginning, I would have run like the fleetest hare. There, I speak as lucidly and clearly as any honest man!