Health is the greatest of all possessions, and it is a maxim with me that a hale cobbler is a better man than a sick king.

The speaker ranks bodily well-being above rank, wealth, or political power, arguing that health is the primary condition for enjoying any other “possession.” By contrasting a “hale cobbler” with a “sick king,” the line overturns social hierarchy: a humble artisan in good health is “better” (i.e., more fortunate, more fully able to live) than a monarch incapacitated by illness. The aphorism also implies a moral critique of status-based measures of human worth, suggesting that practical, lived experience—energy, mobility, freedom from pain—outweighs ceremonial authority. It is a compact statement of a common early-modern ethical theme: the fragility of worldly grandeur when the body fails.