The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico)

by Gwyn, Peter

  At this point it may be helpful to mention another problem that was causing friction between Crown and Church and one which, as in the case of benefit of clergy, led in 1519 to a conference presided over by Henry himself. It concerned the innumerable sanctuaries, which, as a consequence of the peace associated with any sanctified place, provided a refuge from arrest.107 The most common sanctuary was the parish church, and for it there were elaborate rules, governing such matters as the area of the church that constituted the sanctuary, the length of time any person might remain there, and what was to happen when that time elapsed. Forty days were allowed before the fugitive, if he was still determined not to face trial, had to confess his crime and then abjure the realm – that is to say, go into permanent exile. Such a fate might appear harsh, and certainly the taking of sanctuary was not intended as an easy option, but it should be remembered that it was only permitted for offences for which the penalty was death. Given this choice, permanent exile might well seem more attractive. Furthermore, there were many opportunities for taking advantage of the privilege. One might escape from one sanctuary to another, thus prolonging the period of protection, or one might escape altogether – and the often very long journey from the sanctuary to the nearest port, from where a fugitive was supposed to begin his exile, offered ample opportunity for this. More open to abuse were the private sanctuaries, those created by a grant either from the pope or from the Crown. Many imposed no time limit, and the area involved was often quite extensive. They could, therefore, provide the professional criminal with a permanent refuge, not to say convenient base from which to conduct his operations.

  It is hard to assess just how serious a hindrance to law enforcement sanctuaries were, or, indeed, whether they were becoming more so. Both contemporary comment and particular cases at least suggest that the privilege was frequently abused;108 and what is certain is that Henry VII’s reign had witnessed a new determination to tackle the problem.109 One of the ways chosen was for judges to insist that any holder of the privilege must produce a royal, not a papal, charter granting it to them, on the grounds that the prerogative of mercy, of which the right of sanctuary formed a part, pertained in England only to its king. Or, in other words, the judges were asserting the king’s ‘imperial’ jurisdiction.

  The discussion in Star Chamber on 10 November 1519 centred on the claims of the order of St John of Jerusalem and Westminster Abbey to possess the privilege of sanctuary.110 The former’s claim was quickly dismissed on the grounds that it did not possess a royal charter. Wolsey appears to have accepted this decision, for later in the conference he opened a debate on the principles involved by pointing out that in the Old Testament it had been princes who had created sanctuaries. Other examples of royal initiative were produced, and reference made both to the first English king and to Romulus; the conclusion reached was that not only was the creation of sanctuary a royal prerogative but that anyone who relied on a papal grant was guilty of praemunire. It is not quite certain from Keilwey’s Reports whether this conclusion was delivered by Wolsey himself, but his opening remarks suggest that he was in full agreement with it. It also seems clear that he shared the judges’ desire to reform the abuse of the privilege. But since Westminster Abbey’s sanctuary, unlike most others, was based upon a royal grant, it was in a strong position to resist any attempt at reform. Chief Justice Fineux tried to get round the problem by arguing that the abuse of a privilege must result in its removal.111 Wolsey’s solution was not so radical. Long before the conference took place he had set up a commission to establish the precise boundaries of the Westminster sanctuary, the lack of which was one of the reasons for the abuse. He had also insisted on all its sanctuary men taking an oath not to commit treason, murder or felony outside the sanctuary, while still resident there, in an effort to stop them using it as a base for their criminal activities. However, on the second day of the conference he had had to admit that the oath had been ineffective; furthermore, Abbot Islip made it clear that he considered it to be invalid as contrary to the existing and perfectly legal privileges.112

  The abbot of Westminster’s rejection of the oath, and thus of Wolsey’s solution, ended the conference – and there is no evidence that during the 1520s the Abbey’s sanctuary was in any way modified. Must the conclusion be that this episode illustrates Wolsey’s ineffectiveness as a reformer – an ineffectiveness deriving in great measure from the fact that his heart was not really in reform? To the extent that Westminster’s sanctuary remained, and no doubt continued to harbour all manner of rogues, the answer must be yes.113 But Westminster was a special case. Given its royal charter, its sanctuary was virtually unassailable unless one was prepared to abolish all private sanctuaries. There is no evidence that Wolsey ever contemplated such a step, and thus there was little he could do. On the other hand, during the 1520s the judges continued to attack the problem of sanctuary, with the result that it became virtually impossible to plead sanctuary with success.114 Considering how closely Wolsey worked with the judges in Chancery and Star Chamber, it seems most unlikely that he was opposed to what they were doing – indeed, there is evidence to the contrary. In 1526 a William Gilbank, having at first taken sanctuary in Colchester Abbey, removed himself to that of the Crutched Friars in the same town. A certain John Veer was deputed by Wolsey to arrest him. This meant tackling the prior about the rights of his house to provide sanctuary and, in particular, whether he possessed a royal grant. The prior’s rather lame reply – that he possessed no grant himself but he assumed the head of the order had one – led Gilbank to the conclusion that his protection might suddenly be removed, and he decided that the sooner he confessed to a coroner and abjured the realm the better.115 Here was a minor victory for Wolsey’s insistence on a more effective supervision of the privilege of sanctuary. His failure with Westminster is merely evidence of the intractable nature of so many of the matters in need of reform.

  The question of whether Wolsey was an effective reformer is one that will recur constantly. Here it has been raised merely as a coda to the Standish affair. Sanctuary was never such a divisive issue as benefit of clergy because, though it raised similar theoretical issues, it was only of real concern to the few custodians of private sanctuaries. This made it much easier for the Church as a whole to accept that the privilege was open to abuse and hence more willing to accept royal interference – and as his presence at the discussions in 1519 indicate, interfere was what Henry intended to do.116 Wolsey was of the same mind, even to the extent of accepting that the granting of the privilege was entirely in the gift of the Crown – this incidentally having the important practical consequence that very few private sanctuary holders could substantiate their claims. On the other hand, Wolsey’s aim was reform, not revolution. He did not take on the Church directly by seeking to abolish all private sanctuaries at one stroke, as was done in 1540. As he saw it, the best way of reforming the Church was to secure its co-operation, and this would include the co-operation of such a man as John Islip, abbot of Westminster.

  A policy emerges. In 1515 Wolsey’s immediate task was to end the serious conflict between Crown and Church which, brewing for some time, had come to a head with the Standish affair. To do this he had tried to solve the problem of criminous clerks in a way that would meet the criticisms of the laity without unnecessarily antagonizing the Church. And that he did not wish to antagonize the latter is not evidence of parti pris, but that he realized that without greater powers he was in no position to make the Church do what he, or his master, wanted. Henry’s involvement has been little understood. Historians have been so obsessed with their vision of the power-hungry and extravagantly ambitious Wolsey, that they have seen his wish to be made legate a latere as merely evidence of this vision. But would a Henry, who had made his views on the subject of clerical pretensions so abundantly clear in 1515, have supported efforts to secure such an appointment, if it would only have served to further Wolsey’s own pretensions? The answer must be no. What, then, was
the reason for Henry’s support? It must have been because he had every confidence that Wolsey’s domination of the English Church meant, in fact, domination by the Crown – a domination, indeed, such as had never previously been achieved. In 1515 Henry did not change his views; merely his tactics. He still intended to control the Church, but he would achieve this through a papal legate who happened also to be his leading councillor.

  The change of tactics was not without its difficulties, the chief one being that the legatine commission had yet to be obtained, and in 1515 Leo x would go no further than to make Wolsey a cardinal. And not everyone would be fooled by the fiction that it was a papal legate who was reforming the Church rather than a king’s leading councillor – and not everyone would want to be reformed! But undoubtedly the legatine powers would help to disguise the fact, or at least soften the blow that it was the Crown that was taking the initiative in the Church’s affairs. Moreover, they would make it very difficult for any opponent in the future to do what the Church had tried to do in 1515, that is to appeal over the head of the king to the pope, for in effect Wolsey, as far as the English Church was concerned, had become the pope.

  The news that Wolsey had been created a cardinal reached the English court at the end of September 1515, and on 15 November the cardinal’s hat, brought from Rome by the protonotary of the papal court, was carried through the city of London in great splendour. It was then placed on the high altar of Westminster Abbey to await the ceremony of installation, on Sunday the 18th. As was only fitting on this great occasion, the mass was sung by the archbishop of Canterbury assisted by the bishops of Lincoln and Exeter. Also present were the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin and six other bishops, including Fisher of Rochester and Wolsey’s old patron, Fox of Winchester. The papal bull was read out by none other than the dean of the Chapel Royal, John Veysey, and the sermon was delivered by the dean of St Paul’s, John Colet. The laity were equally well represented. For some unknown reason Henry himself seems to have graced only the sumptuous banquet which followed the service, but present at the Abbey had been the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the marquess of Dorset, the earls of Essex, Shrewsbury, Surrey and Wiltshire, along with nine barons, a goodly number of knights, the judges, City Fathers, and really anybody who was anybody.117

  In his sermon Colet dwelt not only upon those virtues of Wolsey that had led to his ‘high and joyous promotion’, but on Henry’s as well, because that promotion had been secured by ‘the great zeal and favour that our holy father, the pope, hath to his grace’ – thereby indicating that he, at least, appreciated that aspect of Wolsey’s elevation which so many historians have missed. He then stressed the need for humility. This has always been taken as a timely warning to a man who was singularly lacking in that quality. He may have intended something of the sort, but it is highly unlikely, and not just because it was hardly the occasion for personal criticism. The point that Colet stressed about humility was service: ‘Remember that our Saviour in his own person said to his disciples: “I came not to be ministered unto but to minister …” My lord cardinal, be glad, and enforce yourself always to do and execute righteousness to rich and poor.’ Justice to rich and poor alike was something that Wolsey always believed in, and as lord chancellor he strove to make it a reality. Colet also stressed ‘the high and great power of a cardinal’ who ‘representeth the order of seraphim, which continually burneth in the love of the glorious Trinity’ and is therefore ‘metely apparelled with red’.118 Wolsey’s obsession with dressing up in red, along with his love of ceremonial, has come in for a good deal of criticism.119 It did not worry Colet, and neither is it likely to have worried another great reformer of the time, Giles of Viterbo, who placed a great deal of emphasis upon magnificent church ceremonial.120

  More will be said on the subject of ceremonial later, as also on Wolsey’s relationship with Colet. Meanwhile, the service at Westminster Abbey and the subsequent banquet provide a fitting end to this discussion of the Hunne and Standish affairs and the way in which they helped to mould Henry’s and Wolsey’s policy towards the Church. Most of the leading participants were present, many of whom had taken diametrically opposed views on the issues that had emerged during the course of the year. One would give anything to know what they were all thinking, as Wolsey lay ‘grovelling’ on the floor of the Abbey while they were asked to pray for him.121 No doubt there was much apprehension, but also hope – hope amongst some that as a prince of the Church he would defend its liberties, and amongst others that as the Crown’s leading councillor he would ensure that the Church did not exceed its proper role. And amongst all shades of opinion there may have been an awareness that things might never be quite the same in the Church. But to discover whether their hopes and fears would be realized they would all have to wait a while. The ceremony was merely symbolic of a new policy. It could only become a reality when Wolsey became legate a latere, and that was not to happen until 1518.

  1LP, ii, 892.

  2 For these first efforts back in May 1514 see LP, i, 2932 – a letter from Vergil in Rome to Wolsey; for Leo X’s early resistance to the idea see LP, i, 3300. See also LP, i, 3140, 3304, 3495-7.

  3LP, ii, 374.

  4 On the general subject of papal relations with the secular powers in the late Middles Ages see Thomson, Popes and Princes.

  5LP, ii, 960; more generally for Henry’s involvement see LP, i, 3140, 3300, 3497; ii, 763.

  6Inter alia see E. J. Davis, EHR, XXX (1915); Derrett; Fines, EHR, lxxviii (1963);Milsom; M. J. Kelly, ‘Canterbury jurisdiction, pp.127-47; Ogle; Schoeck, ‘Common law and canon law’; Smart; Wunderli.

  7 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, pp.183-205.

  8 More stated that Hunne was ‘well worth a thousand marks’ (More, CWM, 6, p.318), that is £666 13s. 4d. Whether this figure referred to income or capital, it is a considerable amount of money, putting him just below London’s ruling élite of successful overseas merchants.

  9 Ogle, pp.55-6; St German, CWM, 9, pp.194-5.

  10CWM, 6, pp.326-7.

  11 For the evidence for this, and indeed for all the details of the various cases brought by or against Hunne, see Milsom, pp.80-2.

  12 This is argued by J. D. M. Derrett in ‘Hunne and Standish’, pp.222-4, following More’s statement in his Supplication of Souls, pp.59-60 that this is precisely what the church authorities did.

  13 Baker, ii, pp.240-1 for the interesting legal aspects of his case.

  14 Hall, p.573; Wriothesley, p.9.

  15 Baker, ii, pp.66-8.

  16 ‘If any man … dare be so hardy to indict a priest of any such crime, he hath, ere the year go out, such a yoke of heresy laid on his neck, that it maketh him wish that he had not done it … Had not Richard Hunne commenced an action of praemunire against a priest, he had been yet alive, and no heretic at all but an honest man’ – from Fish’s Supplication for the Beggars, p.28. See Bowker, ‘Some archdeacons’ court book’, pp.310-12 for the suggestion that there was a widespread dislike of heresy trials, but, leaving the Hunne affair aside, the only evidence that they were rigged or that accusations of heresy were lightly or unfairly made comes in Bishop Nix’s letter to Warham in 1504; see p.45 below.

  17 Derrett, p.217.

  18 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, iv, pp.183-4, 186-90 for the charges. Foxe transcribed them from Fitzjames’s registers, but they are no longer to be found there. Evidence about Hunne has a tendency to disappear, but for new material for the heresy trial see Fines, EHR, xxviii (1963). All these accusations were common Lollard beliefs; see Thomson, The Later Lollards, pp.162-70.

  19CWM, 8, p.126.

  20 Ogle, pp.66-8.

  21 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, iv, p.184.

  22 Fines, EHR, lxxviii.

  23 See p.40 below.

  24 On heresy in London see Brigden, ‘The early Reformation in London’, pp.87 ff; Thomson, The Later Lollards, pp.139-71 and EHR lxxvii (1963); for Fitzjames and heresy see S. Thompson, p.124.

  25 S. Thompson, ‘English a
nd Welsh bishops’, pp.166-8. My generally favourable view of Fitzjames owes a good deal to Thompson’s work. (He points out that Fitzjames personally examined candidates for ordination, probably the only bishop at this time to do so. S. Thompson, ‘Bishop in his Diocese’, p.76.)

  26 Dickens, pp.66, 91. For Elton, Fitzjames was an ‘old bigot’! (Reform and Reformation, p.57).

  27 Lack of evidence will probably always prevent this episode from being dealt with satisfactorily but see inter alia Allen and Kaufman; for contemporary comment see CWE, 2, p.248; 3, pp.48, 296.

  28 Thomson, The Later Lollards, p.238; S. Thompson, ‘English and Welsh bishops’, p.124 refers to 60 heresy cases in the London diocese for 1510-12.

  29 The matter has been complicated by Fish’s statement that Horsey paid £600 for a pardon, but there is no other evidence that he did, and, as More pointed out, since Horsey never received a pardon it would have been difficult for him to pay for one! (CWM, 6, 326). Despite this, many historians have accepted that a ‘fine’ was imposed; see Ogle, p.109; Schoeck, p.29.