by Gwyn, Peter
What emerges from this spate of correspondence is that, despite the fact that Fox no longer saw himself as Wolsey’s senior in royal government, he bore no resentment. It is also clear that he saw Wolsey as occupying a central position in that government. Does that mean that by May 1513 Wolsey had reached the top, and that, for instance, one can definitely begin to talk about Wolsey’s foreign policy? Many distinguished historians have thought so, and some indeed would put it even earlier, associating the English decision to join the Holy League in the autumn of 1511 with Wolsey’s increasing ascendancy, despite the fact that such a view rather conflicts with the idea of Wolsey as a subordinate in Fox’s ‘peace faction’.63 In this account a note of caution will be sounded. It is not that Wolsey’s importance by this time is denied, because everything points to it; but what it also points to is that, with the increased activity in foreign affairs brought about by war with France, Fox too resumed a more active role. Despite his age and infirmity, he accompanied Henry and Wolsey on the expedition to France, even suffering, if not quite a war wound, at least a nasty kick from a horse, so that ‘for some days he could neither sit nor stand’.64 This did not, however, prevent him from playing a major part in decision-making, so that when, at a vital stage in the siege of Tournai, a delegation from the city met Henry and Maximilian, it was Fox, not Wolsey, who summarized the earlier negotiations.65 When a little later Maximilian’s behaviour caused offence to the English, it was with Fox as well as Wolsey that Margaret of Austria met to try and put things to rights.66 And in the following year Fox’s involvement was to continue.
The year 1514 saw one of those diplomatic volte-faces that were to characterize what is usually referred to as ‘Wolsey’s foreign policy’. Having appeared at the beginning of the year to be determined to carry on the war with France, if anything on an even larger scale, the English unceremoniously ditched their allies and unilaterally made peace with the French. And to celebrate the new alliance, a marriage was arranged between the recently widowed, and physically much the worse for wear, Louis XII, and Henry’s youngest and by all accounts rather attractive sister, Mary. It was a bold manoeuvre intended to consolidate the position of European importance that the successful campaign of the previous year had helped to secure. England was now able to influence French policy and, in alliance with France, to dominate the rest of Europe – or at least that was the intention. When Wolsey’s handling of foreign affairs comes to be looked at in detail it will be seen that this simple idea, of using the French as a lever to exert maximum influence on the other powers of Europe, lay at its heart. Thus, it is not surprising that historians, from Edward Hall onwards, have credited the peace with France to Wolsey, and seen it as further confirmation that the control of England’s foreign policy was now completely in his hands.67 Moreover, in August 1515 Henry wrote to the pope that no one had ‘laboured and sweated’ for this peace as much as Wolsey had,68 while in July of the following year Wolsey himself claimed that he had been its author.69 Almost certainly, both were exaggerating Wolsey’s role in the interests of diplomacy, something that Wolsey was very prone to do; and the reason for thinking this is a letter that Fox wrote to Wolsey on 17 April 1514.
The letter is unfortunately much mutilated, but what emerges is that both men were still working very closely together on some important negotiations, so much so that Fox advised that, other than the king, no one should know of them in case ‘some folks … would say that we were over much busier than is needed, and if none effect come thereof, they might give cause of mockery’.70 To the proponents of ‘faction’, by ‘some folks’ Fox will have meant the Howards; but he need not have done. All he was really saying was that the negotiations were at a critical stage, and therefore the fewer people who knew about them the better. It is just the kind of remark that anybody involved in tricky negotiations is inclined to make, but it does not have to follow that he sees the whole world as his enemy – or even just the Howards. Fox was being cautious, and very sensibly so.
But can the negotiations referred to in the letter be associated with a possible French alliance? It is difficult to see what else Fox could have had in mind, and there are anyway some details that point to such a conclusion. The ‘Mr Poynings’ he referred to was almost certainly Sir Edward Poynings, lieutenant of the recently captured Tournai, who is known to have been used as a go-between with the French.71 The second half of the letter had to do with excuses being proffered by the Habsburgs, Maximilian and Margaret of Austria, for delaying the long contracted marriage between the Archduke Charles and Mary, and it is this that provided England with some justification, however spurious, for marrying Mary to Louis. And that both Fox and Wolsey were already involved in negotiations with the French is indicated by a letter they wrote, probably in February, to their agent with the pope, Silvestro Gigli, declaring their intention to act as the pope’s instrument in bringing about universal peace.72 In his reply, Gigli reported back the pope’s praises for their dexterity in persuading Henry to make peace with France.73 It is not obvious that Henry needed much persuading, but these letters do seem to suggest that insofar as Wolsey was the author of the French alliance, he has at least to share the authorship with Fox. Furthermore, in their letter to Gigli the two men had declared they were of one mind not only on this particular issue, but on everything.74 All the evidence so far points to the truth of this. Is there any reason to suppose that by the time of Fox’s resignation two years later, some serious disagreement or dislike had emerged?
When, in early 1519, Wolsey summoned a legatine council to discuss reform of the Church, he received a letter in which Fox compared his joy on receiving the news to Simeon’s joy on seeing, after so many years of waiting, the infant Messiah.75 It was heady stuff indeed, and there was more to come, including a good deal of praise for Wolsey’s ‘great skill in business’. Of course, when Fox wrote the letter he had been out of office for three years, and perhaps he had got over the hurt of being forced out – or was this, perhaps, his bid to get back into office? In fact, there is not the slightest hint of either of these things, and his praise of Wolsey is quite consistent with everything that is known about Fox’s attitude to him before his resignation. Furthermore, it confirms the central point of what amounted to his resignation letter in 1516: that, after so many years of deep involvement in high politics, he was anxious to devote his old age to the service of God;76 and like Simeon, he was by this time an old man, probably in his late sixties.77 He had been deaf for a number of years, and was to become blind.78 Finally, there is no doubt at all that despite his very busy career in royal service, he had a very genuine interest in religious matters, both pastoral and intellectual. He was an increasingly active diocesan bishop, and at the time of his resignation was engaged in the founding of a college at Oxford, to be called Corpus Christi, a chief purpose of which was to promote that new interest in biblical studies awakened by such as Colet and Erasmus.
And what of Fox’s resignation letter? Written on 23 April 1516, it was in fact a response to an urgent appeal from Wolsey to come to court, where his services were in great demand.79 This alone makes the notion that Wolsey was trying to get rid of him a trifle odd, as does the fact that in explaining why he had not answered the appeal, he made the point that he had already obtained the king’s licence to be occupied in his diocese. He then made a personal appeal to Wolsey to show some sympathy for his point of view:
But, my lord, to serve worldly with the damnation of my soul and many other souls whereof I have the cure, I am sure you will not desire … I assure you, my lord, my absence from you is neither to hunt nor hawk, nor to take none other worldly pleasure, nor for ease of my body, nor yet for quietness of mind: which is troubled night and day with other men’s enormities and vices more than I dare write. Whereof I remember you showed me you had some knowledge, when you were bishop of Lincoln: and of them 1 assure you there is plenty here with much more. But I have provided the medicine which I trust shall do good service.80
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br /> If Fox was really pushed out, then this whole paragraph has to be some kind of deception, if only a self-deception to hide the cruel reality that he was no longer needed. But it does not read like that, nor does such a view make much sense in the context of what else is known of his relationship with Wolsey. Moreover, almost exactly one year later history repeated itself. Henry and Wolsey were once again anxious for Fox’s advice, and this despite the fact that he was no longer in office. And once again Fox had to remind Wolsey that he had ‘left the keeping of his privy seal’ by licence of the king,81 which can only mean that far from his resignation being sought by anyone, he had actually had to seek it out. Wolsey’s reply has not survived, but on 10 May Fox was able to write that it was to his
greatest comfort that you have benignly accepted the excuses that I made to your good lordship for my not coming to you at that time, and that it will please your good lordship to declare and show my said excuses to the king’s grace as his highness shall be contented. My lord, your good lordship hath done more for me in this behalf than I can write or think …82
Even if one is not prepared to accept the tone of the letter as genuine, the fact that Fox had had to seek the king’s permission to withdraw from court hardly fits a conspiratorial view of his resignation. It does, however, leave open the possibility that the reason why Fox had chosen to withdraw was because of increasing disillusion with the way Wolsey was running things, but especially foreign policy. In accepting such a view, one would have also to accept that Fox was a consummate liar, but then it is possible that thirty years in politics would have been a good training for this!
The notion that Fox, and indeed others, especially the earl of Shrewsbury, were unhappy with Wolsey’s ‘takeover’ of royal government takes us both chronologically and thematically too far from the chief concerns of this chapter for it to be discussed in detail here. As regards Fox’s attitude to England’s foreign policy, the conclusion will be that what has been taken as evidence for his dissatisfaction with Wolsey’s handling of it, in fact reflects only the misinterpretation and wishful thinking of the Venetian ambassador, Giustinian.83 What Fox really thought will, of course, never be known, but Giustinian’s reports describe a man using all his diplomatic experience, and incidentally still very much in the know, despite his earlier resignation, to ward off a very importunate ambassador eager for any crumbs of comfort. At the very least, the case for an unhappy Fox is not proven – and to see him as such goes very much against the grain of everything else that is known about his relationship with Wolsey, and more generally about the politics of the early years of Henry’s reign.
What has emerged is something much less dramatic than the usual picture of a fight to the death between Fox and Surrey, in which both eventually lost out to the thrusting and ruthless younger man. As regards Fox, the probability is that, a comparatively old man when Henry VIII succeeded to the throne, he was already looking towards retirement. First, however, he saw it as his duty to see the young king in – and perhaps to save him from time to time from the injudicious advice of a Howard. Increasingly, however, he left the weight of day-to-day business to his younger colleague, Thomas Wolsey, whom he saw as his natural successor. However, the outbreak of a major war with France in 1513 temporarily changed all this. Reluctantly but loyally, Fox came out of retirement, accompanied the king and Wolsey to France, and played a very active role in the difficult diplomacy of 1514. But as soon as he felt that things had returned to something like normal, he sought the king’s permission to retire. One consequence of his withdrawal was, indeed, to leave Wolsey in a more dominant position, but the evidence all points to Wolsey neither seeking nor even welcoming his retirement. This is not to make Wolsey into a saint, and indeed the cynic may say that the reason why he got on with Fox was precisely because the ageing bishop represented no threat – though to accept such a view would be to ignore the warmth that permeates much of their correspondence.84 And if this view of the relationship between Fox and Wolsey is correct, then the story – heavily dependent upon Vergil’s account – of Wolsey’s rise to power is rescued from the caricature and exaggeration that it has been too often embellished with. The time has now come to create a new version, and one that must have at its heart the relationship between Wolsey and his King.
The magic that makes a relationship is by definition hard to pin down, and that which bound Henry to Wolsey is no exception. What, however, every contemporary commentator, whether friend or foe, agreed about was what Giustinian referred to as Wolsey’s ‘vast ability’, also describing him as being ‘learned, extremely eloquent … and indefatigable’.85 For Cavendish, it was Wolsey’s ‘very wit and what wisdom was packed into his head’ that had first brought him to the notice of Richard Fox,86 while it was his miraculous embassy to Maximilian probably in 1508 – Richmond to Dordrecht and back in three and half days, and thought ‘to be almost beyond the capacity of man’ – that won him the admiration of Henry VII,87 and his ‘wisdom and other witty qualities’ that caught the second Tudor’s eye.88 Even if, as seems likely, Wolsey did not perform his embassy to Maximilian quite as speedily as stated,89 for Cavendish the story represented a symbolic truth: if Wolsey wanted to achieve something, nothing could stop him. And Cavendish relates what was for him a rather similar episode, though this time he was himself an eye-witness, at least to some of it. This took place at Compiègne in 1527 following some rather stormy negotiations with the French, at which, however, Wolsey had eventually got his way. Cavendish describes what then happened as follows:
the next morning after this conflict, he [Wolsey] rose early in the morning about four of the clock, sitting down to write letters into England unto the king, commanding one of his chaplains to prepare him to mass, in so much that his said chaplain stood revested [in his vestments], until four of the clock at afternoon. All which season my lord never rose once to piss, nor yet to eat any meat, but continually wrote his letters with his own hands, having all that time his nightcap and keverchief on his head.90
As with the previous episode, there is something almost miraculous for Cavendish about Wolsey’s behaviour, though on this occasion it was his master’s capacity to concentrate for so long that caused him to marvel.
This view of Wolsey, as a man who combined both enormous ability and unstoppable determination, is not the invention of a doting household servant. Even Vergil admitted that Wolsey was intelligent and daring, and when he portrays Fox trying to convince the king of Wolsey’s ability it is his ‘sound judgement, vigilance and hard work’ that Vergil has Fox specifically mention.91 This is not to say that he agreed with Fox’s assessment, but even his criticisms of Wolsey testify to the man’s ability. And if one turns from the literary evidence to the documents that went out under Wolsey’s name, what immediately impresses is not only their quantity and length – each one frequently over five thousand words – but the range of business they cover. It might be the formation of an alliance with a foreign power, or a ‘universal peace treaty’; an enclosure commission or a new constitution for the Augustinian canons; the founding of a college at Oxford or the settling of a dispute in Chancery – and often all these things at much the same time! The multiplicity is endless and the workload staggering; but Wolsey was evidently able, both physically and mentally, to take it in his stride.
Of course, what one has described is no more than anyone in a similar position, from the first pharaoh to Margaret Thatcher, has to cope with; and given that for fifteen years Wolsey was closely involved with every aspect of royal government, that he had these qualities should come as no surprise. Why it might is because, as was pointed out in the Introduction, there has been a tendency to hide Giustinian’s man ‘of vast ability’ under the glitz and razzmatazz of Renaissance politics, in the process turning Wolsey into some kind of strutting peacock devoted only to self-glorification and self-indulgence.92 The truth is much more sober, which is not to deny a glamorous side to politics. It is also true that ability and hard
work can combine very happily with intense ambition – and even worse! Whether this was so in Wolsey’s case is best dealt with as the story unfolds, but it is right to start with the fact that Wolsey was a man of enormous ability, for it provides the simple answer to the question why he became the king’s leading minister.
There are many more descriptions of the young Henry VIII than there are of the early Wolsey. All are extremely complimentary. William Lord Mountjoy, writing to Erasmus in May 1509, referred to his ‘exceptional and almost more than human talents’,93 while in 1511 Andrea Ammonio wrote to the same correspondent about the king ‘who every day shows himself in a more godlike guise’.94 As for Erasmus himself, his praise of Henry and his court – the only court in the world, he wrote to a friend in 1518, that he would consider being a part of95 – is almost too well known to be quoted,96 and like all his praise of potential or actual patrons has to be viewed with some suspicion. On the other hand, it is hard to see why Erasmus should have bothered to conceal his true feelings when writing to Cochlaeus in 1529. His purpose was to explain to the Catholic polemicist why he was convinced that Henry was the true author of the royal attacks on Luther, and one reason he gave was his first-hand knowledge of Henry’s great ability as a young man, for when he was ‘no more than a child, he was set to study. He had a vivid and active mind, above measure able to execute whatever tasks he undertook. He never attempted anything in which he did not succeed … You would say he was a universal genius.’ And amongst the many pursuits at which Erasmus claimed Henry excelled were riding, music, mathematics, reading and disputations, ‘of which he is very fond’ and in which he conducted himself ‘with remarkable courtesy and unruffled temper’.97 What the humanist did not dwell on were Henry’s more martial accomplishments, those jousts and tourneys with which he was so obsessed, or even hunting, in which, Giustinian reported, he never took part ‘without tiring eight or ten horses, which he causes to be stationed beforehand along the line of the country he may mean to take, and when one is tired, he mounts another, and before he gets home they are all exhausted’.98 What also caught Giustinian’s imagination, as it did many other observers, was Henry’s physical appearance, for he found him
