by Gwyn, Peter
29 Cavendish, pp.11-14.
30 Tyndale, Exposition and Notes, p.308.
31 Skelton, p.295, ll.663-5.
32 Calendared in LP and Ven. Cal., but for full transcripts see Rawdon Brown. For his first comments on Wolsey see ibid., p.110 (LP, ii, 666).
33 See Vergil, pp.194-200 for his account of Wolsey’s rise. It appeared first in the 1555 edition; those of 1534 and 1546 ended with Henry VII’s death.
34 There has been no recent detailed study of Fox, so that E.C. Batten’s introduction to Registers of Richard Fox of 1889 still provides the best biographical information. But for a recent pen portrait see Oakley, pp.285-300.
35 Called by S.B. Chrimes, in his Henry VII, p.109, ‘Henry VII’s ace negotiator’.
36 Tucker’s is the only recent life – though I am not happy with the interpretation.
37 Virgoe.
38 Tucker, pp.68-9.
39 Most notably G.W. Bernard in Early Tudor Nobility, pp.21-3, but see also A.F. Pollard, p.109. For a more sceptical view see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.42.
40 For all the quotations above see Vergil, pp.194-200, though I have translated from the original Latin given there.
41 For ambassadorial comments to that effect in 1510 see Ven. Cal., ii, 64; Sp. Cal., ii, pp.40-2.
42LP, i, 157 (PRO SP1/229/fo.8).
43 For these see R.H. Brodie in LP, i, intro., xiii f; A.F. Pollard, pp.10-11, 17; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.25-6; Tucker, pp.94 ff.
44LP, i, 157.
45 Tucker, pp.51-74.
46 Gunn, Charles Brandon, pp.6-8; Starkey, ‘The king’s privy chamber’, pp.80 ff.
47 Gunn, Charles Brandon, p.8.
48LP, i, 3376 – Suffolk to Wolsey, 20 Oct.
49 Gunn, Charles Brandon, p.8.
50 Very much my own judgement, based on the readily available sources, without the benefit of S. Vokes’s research into the early career of Thomas, the future 3rd duke, which appeared too late to be consulted. But I am thankful to her for a number of conversations on the subject.
51 Richard Fox, p.54 (LP, i, 880). It provides a full transcript.
52LP, i, 1480.
53LP, i, 1852, 1883, 1965.
54 For a full discussion of this topic see pp.178-9, 565-70.
55 Tucker, p.98.
56 Cavendish, p.7.
57 Richard Fox, pp.52-3 (LP, i, 880).
58 Richard Fox, p.53 (LP, i, 880).
59 Richard Fox, pp.56-8 (LP, i, 1356).
60 Richard Fox, pp.60 ff. (LP, i, 1858, 1881, 1885, 1899, 1912, 1960, 1976).
61 Richard Fox, p.73 (LP, i, 1976).
62 Richard Fox, p.70 (LP, i, 1912).
63 Commenting on England’s adherence to the Holy League against France in Nov. 1511, Pollard wrote: The peace party … had received a shot between wind and water. Its mainstays had been Foxe and Warham; but how could they resist when the silver trumpet called them not to convocation, but to war? Henry and Wolsey were at one, but Warham at least held out.’ (A.F. Pollard, p.17). Later he has Wolsey in ‘full control’ during 1513 and 1514 (ibid, p.108). For Scarisbrick, ‘if Wolsey mattered, as he did, by 1512, he mattered still more by the end of 1513. It was his firm hands which had largely shaped the campaign in France of that year …’ (Henry VIII, p.41). There was gossip to the effect that Wolsey and Ruthal were responsible for the French and Scottish campaigns of 1513; see Ruthal to Wolsey, 24 Oct. 1513 (LP, i, 2394).
64 Recorded in John Taylor’s diary of the expedition (LP, i, 2391, p.1059).
65 Cruickshank, p.148.
66LP, i, 2367, 2372.
67 Hall, p.569.
68LP, i, 5140.
69 In conversation with the Venetian ambassador; see Rawdon Brown, i, p.111 (LP, ii, 666).
70 Richard Fox, p.75 (LP, i, 2811).
71LP, i, 2888 – the draft of a letter from the Council to Poynings, interestingly in Fox’s handwriting.
72LP, i, 2611.
73LP, i, 2928. It is his reference to the pope receiving their letter of 7 Feb. which suggests the probable date for LP, i, 2611.
74 ‘We twain, qui non solum in hoc sanctissima causa verum in omnibus aliis sumus semper unius animi …’ (LP, i, 2611).
75 Richard Fox, pp.114-17 (LP, iii, 1122, where it is placed, wrongly, in 1521).
76 Richard Fox, pp.82-4 (LP, ii, 1814).
77 In April 1527, when giving evidence about Henry’s marriage to Catherine, he stated that he was seventy-nine.
78 He called himself ‘deaf as a stock’ in a letter to Wolsey, 12 May 1513, implying that he had been for some time (Richard Fox, p.70). The first report of his blindness was by the Venetian ambassador in June 1523 (Ven. Cal., iii, 687), and Batten’s opinion was that it happened in 1521 (Registers of Richard Fox, p.112).
79 ‘… understand by my fellow, William Purdie, that of late your said lordship [Wolsey] divers times asked of him when I intended to be there, and that finally you commanded him to send to me for my coming thither’ (Richard Fox, p.82).
80 Richard Fox, p.83 (LP, ii, 1814).
81 Richard Fox, p.93 (LP, iii, 2207, where misdated to 1522).
82 Richard Fox, p.96 (LP, add., 185 (10 May 1517).
83 See pp.70-1.
84 In this matter of tone piecemeal quotation is no substitute for reading the letters in full, and I would like to stress how easily this can be done by consulting Richard Fox.
85 Rawdon Brown, ii, p.314 (LP, iii, 402).
86 Cavendish, p.7.
87 Ibid, pp.7-10.
88 Ibid, p.13.
89 Ibid, p.195; Ridley, The Statesman and the Fanatic, pp.26-7.
90 Cavendish, pp.58-9.
91 Vergil, pp.194 ff.
92 Thus Elton in Studies, p.110 writes of ‘the childish flamboyancy, the spirited deviousness of mind, the overpitched ambitions and overcharged emotions which made up so large a part of Wolsey’s personality’. Elton’s ‘Wolsey’ in my view tells us much more about his own personality than Wolsey’s, just as he believes Pollard’s ‘Wolsey’ tells us more about Pollard – and no doubt the same will be said about my ‘Wolsey’!
93CWE, 2, p.147.
94CWE, 2, p.160.
95CWE, 6, pp.62-3.
96 For praise of Henry VIII’s court see inter alia CWE, 3, pp.86-7, 94-5; 5, pp.392-3, 411; 6, pp.62-3, 356-8, 364-5, 377-80, 387, 405.
97LP, iv, 5412.
98 Rawdon Brown, ii, p.312 (LP, iii, 402).
99 Ibid.
100 Rawdon Brown, i, p.76 (LP, ii, 409); see also ibid, i, pp.79, 86 for the equally enthusiastic reactions of his fellow Venetians, Nicolo Sagudino and Piero Pasqualigo; also LP, i, 2351 for that of a correspondent of the duke of Milan, Paulo da Laude.
101 See, for instance, Sir Robert Wingfield’s assessment of Francis I in Nov. 1516: ‘He is young, mighty, insatiable; always reading or talking of such enterprises as whet and inflame himself and his hearers … his trust is that by his valour and industry the things which have been lost lettyn and spoiled by his ignoble predecessors shall be recovered, and that the monarchy of Christendom shall rest under the banner of France, as it was wont to do.’ (LP, ii, 2536).
102 Gunn, ‘French wars’, pp.36-7; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.22-3.
103LP, i, 1656.
104 I have not thought it helpful to provide detailed references to my very general treatment of foreign policy in this chapter, but it is based upon a detailed study of the calendared documents.
105 For a typical view see Elton, Reform and Reformation, p.39: ‘The 1513 expedition, spectacularly mounted and much dreaded by the French, turned into a futile sideshow with almost no effect upon the war.… The knight of Christendom came as near to being a figure of fun as ever he was to do in his long reign.’
106 Rawdon Brown, ii, p.313 (LP, iii, 402) for Giustinian’s assessment that Henry VIII was ‘very rich indeed’.
107 One of the few historians in recent years to reject the myth has been L.B. Smith, whose extended essay on the king’s character in hi
s Henry VIII deserves more recognition; in this context see ibid, pp.39-49; also Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.40-5.
108 See pp.205 ff.
109LP, IV, 4206.
110 Cromwell’s ‘Remembrances at my next going to the court’ are especially instructive in this respect; and they, for instance, make it clear that it was Henry who decided the fate of More and Fisher; for which see LP, viii, 892.
111 Roper, pp.20-1 and Cavendish, p.179.
112 Cavendish, p.179 – Wolsey’s advice to Sir William Kingston if he ever became a royal councillor. More’s advice to Cromwell on becoming a councillor was the more ambiguous: ‘ever tell him what he ought to do, but never what he is able to do … For if a lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.’ (Roper, pp.56-7).
113 The difficulties in any kind of ‘psycho-history’ hardly need spelling out – but they will not prevent speculation, and as long as the limitations are borne in mind, it is good that they do not. Here, I am following L.B. Smith, pp.63-6.
114 Skelton, p.291, ll.492-4.
115 See Walker, pp.139-43.
116 Lydgate, bk 2, ll.239-40.
117 Skelton, p.293, ll.574-8.
118 Ibid, p.293, ll.585.
119 A large, and not uncontroversial, subject but see inter alia Aston, Duncan and Evans, p.50; McConica, Collegiate University, pp.666-89; McConica, ‘Scholars and commoners’.
120 See R. G. Davies.
121 Storey, ‘Gentleman-bureaucrats’.
122 See R. G. Davies, p.55.
123 Aston, T.H., p.30; Aston, Duncan and Evans, pp.80-1, where it is suggested that, contrary to what has been normally held, in all but the really top jobs ‘theologians’ were doing increasingly well during the fifteenth century; R. G. Davies, p.55; Storey, BP, 16 (2nd edn., 1972), pp.13-17.
124 J.R Lander, p.120.
125 By my calculation the six were Walkelin, William Giffard, Henry of Blois, Aymer de Valence, Henry Beaufort and Peter Courtenay – this out of twenty-two.
126 It was C.S.L. Davies who first impressed upon me the relevance of Morton’s career to a study of Wolsey, for which I am extremely grateful. Unfortunately there is no adequate study of Morton’s political career, though see C.S.L. Davies, EHR, CII (1987) for his vital contribution to the accession of Henry VII; and for his churchmanship, see Harper-Bill, JEH, 29.
127 I do not mean to imply that there has been none – and, for instance, Robert Cecil has received more criticism than his father, William – but I do believe that the general perception is that Wolsey’s ostentation was sui generis, and that is a mistake.
128 See p.xv.
129King’s Works, pp.300-6.
130King’s Works, pp.126-35.
131LP, iv, 1708.
132LP, iv, 3105, p.1407.
133 The Hampton/Richmond exchange remains something of a mystery, but see King’s Works, p.127.
134 Cavendish, p.187.
135 Cavendish, p.21. I have found it impossible to reconstruct in any detail the workings of Wolsey’s household, but see LP, iv, 2972, 3216, 4623, 6185 for various lists, mainly to do with tax assessments. They indicate that it certainly numbered over four hundred, so Cavendish’s figure is not so far out.
136 A fifteenth-century churchman’s comment that ‘though he was poor, the which made a man to be reputed no great wisdom, yet he would do such service as he could’, may be of some relevance. The italics are mine.
137 Heal, Of Prelates and Princes, pp.39-40; Hembry, ‘Episcopal palaces’ – the archbishop of Canterbury had a choice of twenty-one residences, and Winchester fifteen.
138 M.J. Kelly, ‘Canterbury jurisdiction’, pp.9-12.
139 Stoyel, Archaeologia Cantiana, c (1984), p.261, but the figure derives from William Lambarde’s A Perambulation of Kent (1576).
140 M.J. Kelly, ‘Canterbury jurisdiction’, pp.39-40.
141 Stoyel, p.261.
142 Ridley, Thomas Cranmer, pp.137-40. For Henry’s exchanges with noblemen see Miller, English Nobility, pp.217-19.
143 Cavendish, p.25.
144 Cavendish, p.28.
145 Ibid.
146 See pp.569-70.
147 See pp.571-2.
148 See 165 ff.
149CWE, 2, pp.147-8.
150 More, Latin Epigrams, p.138.
151 Cavendish, pp.15-17; Hall, p.583; Vergil, p.231.
152CWE, 3, p.233 (LP, ii, 1552).
153CWE, 3, p.312 (LP, ii, 2941 – but wrongly dated).
154CWE, 3, p.233 (LP, ii, 1552).
CHAPTER TWO
CHURCH AND STATE IN EARLY SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
ON 10 SEPTEMBER 1515 POPE LEO X CREATED WOLSEY CARDINAL.1THIS decision had nothing to do with religion and all to do with Francis I’s invasion of Northern Italy, which had started the previous month and which, not unnaturally, Leo viewed with great alarm. English support was now of great importance to him and thus he was willing, at last, to give way to the systematic pressure for Wolsey’s elevation that had been applied by the English court for well over a year.2 As recently as April, when the new French king’s intentions were not entirely clear, Leo had declared that it would be quite impossible to create Wolsey cardinal without at the same time satisfying Francis’s and Maximilian’s desire for the creation of their own cardinals, and that this would require some time to sort out.3 Four months later, and only three days before Francis’s great victory at Marignano, this argument was forgotten and Wolsey was created cardinal on his own.
The pope’s motives need to be fully understood. For instance, far from wanting to further his own interests in England at the expense of the Crown, the opposite is true. Many of the concessions he granted, including the bestowal of legatine powers on Wolsey, actually involved him in financial loss and some diminution of papal involvement in the affairs of the English Church – but this was the price he was prepared to pay for English diplomatic and, if possible, military support.4 More importantly, he was not primarily interested in pleasing Wolsey, but Henry. To please Wolsey some more private and particular favour would have been the obvious course, something that the king might not have been aware of, and that therefore would not make him suspicious of his councillor’s advice. To make Wolsey cardinal was the most public act possible, involving, amongst other things, a day of high ceremonial in London. And it certainly did please the king. As he explained to Leo, he esteemed the distinction bestowed upon a subject for whom he had the greatest affection as if it had been bestowed upon himself.5 But in stressing that the creation of an English cardinal brought honour to the English, Henry was not telling the whole story. There were more practical reasons – not to do with the ambitions of his leading councillor but with his own relations with the English Church. These were more complicated than has sometimes been presented. Two causes célèbres, both concerned with the position of the Church in England and both of them occurring even while pressure was being put on the pope to create Wolsey cardinal, will provide some insight not only into Henry’s attitudes, but also Wolsey’s. One involved a certain Richard Hunne, the other Henry Standish.6
Before discussing these incidents a word of warning is necessary. Although at the time the Standish affair was felt to be much more important, by and large it is Richard Hunne who has captured the historical headlines. This is not surprising. The Standish affair, though it had its exciting moments, failed to produce any dead bodies and had no obvious hero or villain. The Hunne affair, in contrast, has all the classic ingredients: a dead body, a number of villains, including a stagey gaoler, and a popular hero in Richard Hunne, the upright citizen of London doing battle with the church establishment. And not only was Hunne upright, but he also took a critical view of the Roman Catholic Church, thereby becoming one of John Foxe’s martyrs.7 All this has led to the significance of the Hunne affair being exaggerated: on close inspection it appears to be merely one more example of tension between the laity and clergy in the early sixteenth century, albeit a tension which was no
t as great as it had been. It is also a misleading example, because it suggests that the danger to the Church came primarily from below – in this instance from the citizens of London – whereas the real danger came from above and in particular from Henry VIII himself.
Richard Hunne was a London tailor of some wealth and standing who,8 in 1511, refused to pay a mortuary fee for the burial of his infant son. A year later the aggrieved rector, Thomas Dryffeld, took him before the archbishop’s court of audience where it was decided that Hunne should pay. This decision was almost certainly correct, though Hunne’s defence, that as the bearing sheet was his, it could not be demanded as the child’s mortuary fee, did raise issues which were recognized both by the canon lawyers and by such critics of ecclesiastical jurisdiction as Christopher St German.9
