"Wolsey turned out to be the most disappointing man who ever held great power in England and used it for so long with skill and high intelligence... His foreign policy, often brilliant and never negligible, had resulted in the isolation of England, the enmity of both Spain and France, and the king's failure to get his divorce; it had been based on a false estimate of English power and directed consistently to ends in which England had little interest. The administration, badly in need of reform, was on the contrary more confused than before; the reserves of treasure were gone, prosperity was declining, trade neglected. The Church, his special charge, Wolsey left in an unprecedented state of weakness... Only in the law he had done things that bore fruit, and much though he liked the work of a judge he would surely have been dissatisfied with a verdict that allowed him but this piece of success. And yet it is hard to see what else one can say. Embodying in himself the link with Rome and the height of the medieval polity, he pulled them down in his fall; his death marks the close of the older order with as much definition as any man's fate ever marks the fate of nations."