in his own day, Thomas Wolsey was not a well-liked man. Nor

have all his biographers been kind to him. Yet his talents were

vast and his impress on history enormous. The son of a small-town Eng-

lish butcher, he rose to become a Cardinal of his Church, Lord Chan-

cellor of his nation and mentor to his monarch. While his career was at

its zenith, he helped preside over the destruction of the feudal order

in England, and his fall marked England s separation from Rome.

By any standards, such a human being and such a career are re-

markable. But they were even more remarkable in their time than in

ours. For Wolsey was the very model of the self-made man and of the

efficient, driving administrator--a type rare 400 years ago, but intimate-

ly familiar to the 2oth Century. It is primarily in this light that Charles

W. Ferguson has told his story, with a wealth of careful and fascinating

detail that vividly illuminates the years that formed the link between

medieval England and the Elizabethan Age.

Naked to Mine Enemies, which appeared in i958 to the lavish

praise of historians, was Ferguson s fourth book in a writing career that

includes titles on such varied subjects as etymology, travel and American

social mores. After publishing a novel and a religious work in the late

i92os, Ferguson had put his background as an ordained Methodist

minister to use as religious editor for a magazine and later as a book pub-

lisher. In x934 he gravitated into general editing for the Reader s Digest,

where he has worked ever since.