The world is not run from where he thinks

How can he explain to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from counting houses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 378

This I don't think is historically accurate. The banking houses of the early modern era a) went bust a lot and b) got themselves noble titles as quickly as they could. But it's foretelling where the world is going, even if it hasn't quite got there yet.  

You would not like to be in Harry Percy’s country

‘My lady,’ he turns to Anne, ‘you would not like to be in Harry Percy’s country. For you know he would do as those northern lords do, and keep you in a freezing turret up a winding stair, and only let you come down for your dinner. And just as you are seated, and they are bringing in a pudding made of oatmeal mixed with the blood of cattle they have got in a raid, my lord comes thundering in, swinging a sack – oh, sweetheart, you say, a present for me? and he says, aye, madam, if it please you, and opens the sack and into your lap rolls the severed head of a Scot.’

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 345

I shall get his father down from the borders, and if the prodigal defies him, he will be tossed out of his heirdom on his prodigal snout

The cardinal smashes his fist on the table. ‘I’ll tell you how. I shall get his father down from the borders, and if the prodigal defies him, he will be tossed out of his heirdom on his prodigal snout. The earl has other sons, and better. And if you don’t want the Butler marriage called off, and your lady daughter shrivelling unmarriageable down in Sussex and costing you bed and board for the rest of her life, you will forget any talk of pledges, and witnesses – who are they, these witnesses? I know those kind of witnesses who never show their faces when I send for them. So never let me hear it. Pledges. Witnesses. Contracts. God in Heaven!’ 

Boleyn is still smiling. He is a poised, slender man; it takes the effort of every finely tuned muscle in his body to keep the smile on his face.

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 69