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

by Gwyn, Peter

  But to what end? To answer this, the reasons which had originally led Wolsey to seek a French alliance back in 1514 must be touched upon. Very simply, he had calculated that, given the lack of any reliable allies, a serious campaign in France might well end in disaster. He had also grasped that despite her great financial and military resources, France was the country most amenable to English pressure, precisely because it did make some sense to threaten an invasion. It was close, the possession of Calais provided a secure harbour for both men and provisions, while the possession of a rightful claim to the throne of France provided a justification. To invade Spain or the Low Countries had none of these advantages: no rightful claim, difficult logistics and the worst possible disruption of trade, which was increasingly concentrated on Antwerp. These considerations were not lost on the rulers of these countries, with the result that first Ferdinand and later Charles could afford to be unreliable allies: England might huff and puff, but it was most unlikely that she would do more. What had completely thrown Wolsey’s calculations was Francis’s initial unwillingness to accept his logic. Instead of deferring to the English, he had virtually ignored them. Wolsey had therefore set out to show Francis the error of his ways by forcing him to acknowledge how dependent on the English he really was. The Treaty of London is evidence that Wolsey had succeeded. But if France could be brought to heel, why not the rest of Europe?

  To answer this question, we must consider that aspect of the London negotiations which resulted in a treaty of universal peace on 2 October. That it was initially signed only by England and France may throw some doubts on its universality, but the terms themselves were impressive enough. The signatories were to live in peace with one another, which meant that not only invasion of one another’s territory, but also any unfriendly or harmful action, was prohibited. No aid or asylum was to be given to rebels, and any outside request for their return had to be complied with within twenty days. Another clause prohibited the hiring of foreign troops. As all armies were heavily dependent upon such troops, especially those from the Swiss cantons, this was an eminently sensible attempt at least to limit the scale of warfare. The most important provisions concerned the action to be taken in the event of any breach of the peace. Any aggressor was to be requested to curb his actions forthwith, and to make reparations for any injury or loss he had inflicted. If he refused, everyone else was to declare war on him within one month, and within two was to be at war. It was expected that the pope, Maximilian and Charles would sign the treaty within four months, thereby, along with Henry and Francis, becoming ‘principal contraherents’, with the right to nominate other adherents who would have eight months to make up their minds. In this way it was hoped that almost every state in Europe would become signatories.182

  Nothing Wolsey had done until this moment quite prepares one for this treaty, and it has been a puzzle to everyone who has given it any thought.183 Even Wolsey’s authorship is not absolutely certain. A rough draft in his own hand is suggestive, perhaps more significant is the general assumption by contemporaries that he was responsible.184 But when it comes down to it very little is known about its origins, what precedents were used, what sources of inspiration tapped. One obvious source would be the great Erasmian polemics against war; the most famous of these, ‘Dulce Bellum lnexpertis’, first appeared in the much revised edition of his Adages of 1515, while The Complaint of Peace, dedicated to one of the regents, John le Sauvage, was published in December 1517. Thus, the dates fit well, while Wolsey certainly knew who Erasmus was if only because the great author had frequently badgered him for gifts and favours – not, incidently, with much success. Furthermore, it is probably safe to assume that he would have been aware of Erasmus’s views on war, for he was surrounded by people who were. By 1518 such a close friend of Erasmus as Sir Thomas More had become a royal councillor – and he was, as it happened, with the king at Woodstock during the spring of 1518. There was Andrew Ammonio, the king’s Latin secretary, responsible for much of Wolsey’s correspondence with the papacy. There was Richard Pace who had just become the king’s secretary and had been for a short time Wolsey’s. Cuthbert Tunstall, appointed master of the rolls in May 1516, had during the three years under discussion become one of Wolsey’s most trusted diplomats. All these men were close to Erasmus and close to Wolsey, and no doubt the rights and wrongs of warfare were discussed by them, perhaps in Wolsey’s hearing. Nevertheless, to have a secondhand acquaintance with someone’s views is very different from being deeply imbued, and there is no evidence for Wolsey having first-hand acquaintance with any work of Erasmus.

  Mention of Erasmus does, however, suggest a point that must be made in any discussion of Wolsey’s universal peace treaty. By far the most influential writer of his day had for some years before 1518 been clamouring for peace, and he was influential just because he had important friends in high places, not only in England but throughout Europe. Europe was, thus, prepared, even eager for peace, so that Erasmus could write in a letter to the German humanist, Wolfgang Faber, on 26 February 1517: ‘At this moment, nonetheless, I should be almost willing to grow young again for a space, for this sole reason that I perceive we may shortly behold the rise of a new kind of golden age.’185 Inspiration is difficult to assess, but for that reason should not be ignored.

  But if ‘affairs everywhere were tending towards peace’,186 it was not only inspiration or Erasmus that had brought it about. Europe had been in an almost continuous state of war ever since the first French invasion of Italy in 1494. A war weariness was setting in that disposed rulers to accept unpalatable facts which they would have challenged when feeling more buoyant or more financially solvent. By his adherence to the Treaty of Noyon in 1516 Maximilian had accepted that for the time being he was not going to obtain any territorial gains from Venice, and by that same treaty Charles accepted the French occupation of Milan, while Francis in effect accepted the Spanish occupation of Naples. What may also have greatly contributed to these moves towards peace was the death of Ferdinand early that same year, the youthfulness of his successor, Charles, and his urgent need to establish his rule in Spain. Only when this had been achieved could he don his grandfather’s mantle as the chief opponent of the crown of France; and in 1521 Europe would be at war again, war weary or not.

  In 1518 there was another consideration which inclined some people towards peace, and that was the Turk. In a series of successful campaigns during 1516 and 1517 Selim I had defeated the Syrian and Egyptian sultans with the result that he found himself in control of much of the Middle East. As he already held much of the Balkans and the Greek peninsula, he appeared to be ominously poised for an attack on Christian Europe, whether along the Mediterranean to Italy and Spain or by land through Hungary. In 1517 and again in 1518 Leo X had made serious efforts to concentrate the minds of the European leaders on this threat. On 6 March 1518 a five-year truce amongst the European powers was solemnly declared in Rome, the purpose of which was to facilitate a crusade. To show that he meant business Leo nominated four papal legates a latere to attend upon the four principal rulers of Europe to obtain their adherence to his proposals.187

  A Wolsey devoted to peace might have been expected to respond enthusiastically to his spiritual prince’s call, but in fact his response was lukewarm.188 He never rejected the truce, but he made certain that the papal proposals were completely subordinated to his own. Rightly or wrongly, he never took the Turkish threat very seriously, and thus might justifiably have felt that the plans for a crusade were an irrelevance as far as European peace was concerned.189 He could have had no such excuse when rejecting Francis I’s proposal in September 1516 that England should become a signatory to the Treaty of Noyon. As we have seen, it was this treaty that had removed, for a time at any rate, the real obstacles to European peace, essentially by the acceptance by its signatories of the status quo in Italy, and its contribution to European peace was in reality much greater than anything that would be achieved by the Treaty of London. But
what was Wolsey’s reaction? Not only did he reject Francis’s offer to join, but he did everything in his power to destroy it. The only conclusion that can be drawn, as also from his reaction to Leo X’s proposal for a European truce, is that if Wolsey was devoted to peace, it was to peace on no one else’s terms but his own.190

  Such a conclusion is not intended to engender cynicism. If it does, it seriously misleads. For one thing, Wolsey himself was not a cynic, but believed passionately that it was his duty to work for the greater glory of Henry. For another, it could easily obscure what is, after all, the logical consequence of this conclusion, which is that having obtained a favourable peace Wolsey would work hard to maintain it. It was not only that the peace treaty guaranteed the favourable terms obtained from France, though that was its most important function. It also obviated the danger that Francis might use his new alliance with England to advance yet further his Italian ambitions,191 and these ambitions were much more troublesome to England in 1518 than they had been three years previously. This had nothing to do with Wolsey’s alleged love of the papacy, but was a consequence of Ferdinand’s death. With his successor Charles as both king of Naples and duke of Burgundy it was harder than ever before to isolate the affairs of Italy, and the particular danger for England was that in the furtherance of his Italian ambitions Francis might get dragged into a war in the Low Countries, thereby threatening vital English trading interests.

  Peace was also a much cheaper way of securing England’s dominant role in European affairs than subsidizing expensive anti-French alliances. Ever since Henry had joined the Holy League in November 1511 royal expenditure had been outrunning royal income by a considerable amount, despite the £290,000 received from parliamentary and £115,000 from clerical taxation. Between April 1512 and June 1513, admittedly the period of greatest military involvement, over £600,000 was paid out by the treasurer of the Chamber for the purposes of war, and when it is borne in mind that Henry VIII’s ordinary revenues were running at just over £100,000 a year, the financial strain that war produced can be easily understood.192 More will have to be said about England’s ability to finance the ambitious foreign policy that both Henry and Wolsey were determined to pursue,193 but there seems little reason to doubt – though it is nowhere mentioned – that the high cost of war combined with England’s comparative lack of financial resources provided a strong incentive to work for the peace of Europe, especially when that peace did so much to uphold the honour and prestige of the English monarch. Where others had failed to bring about peace England had succeeded. The treaty had been signed in London with the greatest possible publicity, while England’s pivotal position was built into it by the fact that adherents only signed an agreement with England, not with each other. Henry and Wolsey as the peacemakers of Europe! It was an exciting and honourable role, and for the next three years they played it with the utmost panache. The caveat must be that circumstances change, and it would not always be in England’s interests for the maintenance of peace to be the principal aim of English foreign policy. When that happened, it will be shown that Wolsey had no great difficulty in adapting.

  Richard Fox informed Wolsey that the Treaty of London was ‘the best deed that was ever done for the realm of England, and, after the King’s Highness, the laud and praise thereof shall be to you a perpetual memory’.194 Something for which Wolsey has not received so much praise is that first acquisition, on 17 May 1518, of legatine powers with which this chapter began.195 What this meant for Wolsey and the English Church will be considered in another chapter. This will conclude with some attempt to disperse some of the myths and misconceptions that have grown up concerning the way in which these powers were obtained.

  When in late March 1518 Henry had been informed of Leo X’s decision to send Cardinal Campeggio to England as legate a latere in order to further the papal plans for a crusade, his initial reaction was to suppose that, though it was not really the English practice to admit such officials, it would be all right as long as Campeggio confined his activity to doing just that.196 Wolsey had other ideas. If Leo wanted his legate to enter England, why not insist that he make Wolsey legate with him? Henry had immediately taken the point.197 On 11 April a request was sent to Rome, and, whatever Leo’s personal feelings may have been, he had little option but to agree if he wanted his own plans to proceed.198

  Three things should be said about this episode. Henry’s comment that it was not the English practice to admit legates a latere was substantially correct. The rules and precedents were against doing so, though exceptions had been made.199 Second, other countries took a very similar attitude to papal legates, while that same year Maximilian and Cardinal Gurk used precisely the same tactics as Henry and Wolsey to ensure that Gurk was made a co-legate with Cardinal Cajetan, who was the Pope’s choice as papal legate for Germany.200 The last point is that Leo’s grant to Wolsey in 17 May predated Campeggio’s arrival in Calais by about a month,201 so that the commonly stated view that he was delayed there until the grant was made is incorrect.202 The real reason for his enforced delay was that Wolsey was anxious for Leo to grant him a further request. It concerned the unfortunate Adriano Castellessi. Wolsey’s relationship with this cardinal had never been very good, and had worsened considerably during the winter of 1514-15 when he had discovered that Polydore Vergil was writing rude comments about him to Castellessi. Subsequently, their relationship appeared to improve, but probably only because it was difficult for Wolsey to do much about a man who had been a loyal friend of the English Crown for well over twenty years and, perhaps more importantly had great influence in the Curia. However, in the summer of 1517 Castellessi gave Wolsey his opportunity by becoming implicated in a plot to murder Leo. The trouble was that it soon became clear that his involvement had only been slight, and Leo, who always found decisive action difficult, proved reluctant to move against him. One reason for this was that he knew that Wolsey was less concerned for his, the pope’s, safety than with getting his hands on the bishopric of Bath and Wells, held by Castellessi for the last fourteen years, and which Wolsey intended to hold in commendam with York. Leo saw no point in making unnecessary concessions to Wolsey, and thus resisted the demand for Cardinal Castellessi’s deprivation, a demand which was also being pushed by Castellessi’s main rival for English favour at the Roman Curia and fellow English bishop, Silvestro Gigli.203 It appears to have been Gigli’s idea to keep Campeggio waiting in Calais until Leo gave in on this point,204 and whosoever idea it was it worked. On 5 July Castellessi was deprived both of his cardinal’s hat and of his English bishopric.205 As soon as Wolsey heard the news he sent over a knight of the garter to escort Campeggio from Calais to London where he was received with the greatest honour possible.206

  This, briefly, is the story of Campeggio’s first journey to England, and Wolsey’s acquisition of his first legatine commission. Leo had intended that it should last only for as long as Campeggio remained in England. Moreover, he must have hoped that as a result of granting it Wolsey would help Campeggio to further the papal project for a crusade. As it turned out, Wolsey was to remain a legate a latere until his downfall, while his interest in the crusade, as has been shown, was minimal. His real reasons for wanting to become legate will provide the subject of another chapter.

  1 Rawdon Brown, ii p.113 (LP, ii, 3558); see also p.440-2 below.

  2 Rawdon Brown, pp.126-9 (LP, ii, 3634, 3655) – this in Aug. 1517.

  3LP, ii, 3748, 3788.