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

by Gwyn, Peter

  But it was not just a question of effective political manipulation. There were also genuine ambiguities that were difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, early Tudor society was one in which the arts of war were very much extolled and the joust and tourney were still the major recreations of the great, and on the other hand it condemned the riot and the brawl. It was a society in which the great man’s retinue was still an essential part of any royal army, yet one which declared that ‘illegal’ retaining was undesirable. It was a society which still considered ‘good lordship’ a cardinal virtue, but saw ‘maintenance’, the use of undue influence to protect one’s servants’ or clients’ legal interests, as an evil. No judgement upon the effectiveness of law enforcement can be made without these ambiguities being kept in mind.

  What needs to be done is to concentrate on the Crown’s ability to define and then impose acceptable limits to the exercise and influence of the great, while not expecting these limits to be narrow ones. Thus in Wolsey’s period Sir William Brereton was forced to appear in Star Chamber for aiding and abetting murderers, but he was not as a result deprived of office and influence in Cheshire. In 1516 George Neville Lord Bergavenny was charged, not for the first time, with illegal retaining, but he continued to act as royal councillor and in any war his ‘legal’ retinue was always welcome to the Crown. That at about the same time Thomas Grey marquess of Dorset was charged with the same offence is of particular interest because, unlike Bergavenny, he was personally close to the king – and, it should be said, remained so after his case had been tried. It is perhaps too often assumed that a person’s appearance in Star Chamber in such a case involved his disgrace and downfall, and it is an assumption based upon a misconception about the Crown’s and Wolsey’s intentions. These were well explained by Wolsey in that letter to Henry in the autumn of 1517, already quoted, in which he commented on the affray between the servants of Thomas Pygot and Sir Andrew Windsor:

  I trust at the next term to learn them the law of Star Chamber that they shall beware how from thenceforth they shall redress their matter with their hands. They be both learned in the temporal law, and I doubt not good example shall ensue to see them learn the new law of the Star Chamber which, God willing, they shall have indifferently ministered to them according to their deserts.180

  What Wolsey wanted to do was to teach them, and, by their example, others that no one, especially those with responsibility for the administration of justice, should see themselves as being above the law. But learning their lesson was never intended to entail their dismissal from office, for if that were the case there would have been no point in teaching them. And in fact Thomas Pygot retained his important office of king’s serjeant until his death in 1520, while so successful did Andrew Windsor’s career continue to be that in December 1529 he was created a lord. Admittedly, this elevation came after Wolsey’s downfall, but there is nothing to suggest that relations between him and Wolsey were seriously impaired by the events of 1517. Windsor continued to play a most active part in the administration of conciliar justice, and he could only have done this if Wolsey had been confident that he had indeed learnt his lesson.

  We noted earlier that there had never been any such thing as that ‘new law of Star Chamber’, and that what Wolsey had in mind was simply to put into effect the laws of the realm as they then existed. In attempting to sum up his efforts at law enforcement, we should perhaps emphasize this new determination. There is little doubt that, following the departure of the elderly, and politically not very influential, Warham, the arrival of someone with Wolsey’s enormous vitality and persuasion marked a new departure, and the fact that he was so close to his monarch must have added further to his authority. Just as this helped to make the conciliar courts even more popular and effective than they had been earlier, so it also helped to ensure that the machinery of justice was well maintained and the law better enforced. Of course, Wolsey did not solve the problems of law and order, because there are never any solutions to them. This being so, one should not be surprised that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the same difficulties – such as illegal retaining and maintenance – and the same solutions, for instance in the form of barely effective statutes, keep recurring. But this is no more evidence of royal ineffectiveness than the similar failure to cope with human fraility today. These problems do not go away; they can only be kept within limits. One way of doing this is for authority constantly to reiterate that such practices are undesirable, and another is to make examples of those offenders who are caught. Wolsey did both.

  That the powerful were brought within the law is evidence of Wolsey’s success in this area of government, and is much to his credit – but not to his alone. At this level, law and order is much more a political than a ‘police’ problem, and there is no way that the high and mighty would have submitted to correction if behind the figure of the lord chancellor had not loomed that of Henry VIII. Moreover, always necessary to any successful policy of law enforcement is a high degree of political stability, and for that Henry’s father and his ministers must take some of the credit, though just how much and in what ways is still a matter of considerable controversy.181 It has been argued that in this vital area of law enforcement Henry VII made very little sustained effort.182 My own inclination is rather to the opposite view that he did too much, and if that is right one last suggestion about Wolsey’s attitude in this area may be made.

  One of the chief agencies of Henry VII’s administration, at least by 1500, was the ‘king’s Council learned in the law’. Its most famous members were Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, those two of his father’s ministers that Henry VIII felt it expedient to sacrifice at the beginning of his reign because of their unpopularity. Both had legal training and experience, as had all those known to have been members. Like any Tudor council, its duties were multifarious: for instance, it heard suits between parties in just the same way as the Council in Star Chamber did. However, the main thrust of its activity was in that area that particularly concerned the king’s own rights and the collection of revenue resulting from them. Moreover, unlike the Council in Star Chamber, it did itself initiate the majority of the cases that came before it. It was thus an especially hard-nosed body with a tendency to forget about the rights of the subjects in pursuing, however legitimately, the king’s.183

  Wolsey made no attempt to revive the Council Learned, which had ceased to function as a conciliar court at Henry VII’s death. Instead, he worked essentially through the normal channels; that is, Chancery and the king’s Council sitting in Star Chamber. And though his chancellorship may have witnessed a significant increase in the latter’s legal business, the body itself was not only well established but, unlike the Council Learned, consisted of anybody of real importance, including nobles, who had been notably absent from the Council Learned. There may not have been anything overtly sinister about their exclusion; it could be that they were not put on it for the good reason that they were not learned in the law. But whatever the explanation, the result was a specialized and unrepresentative body, that did arouse antagonism.

  If, along with his use of bonds and recognizances to attach leading subjects to the Crown under financial penalty, it is permissible to see the Council Learned as in some way characteristic of Henry VII’s approach to government, and if one then compares this approach with what Henry VIII and Wolsey were doing, the picture that emerges might also be described as a gradual ‘return to normalcy’. This is not to say that Henry VIII and Wolsey were more complacent, but they were more relaxed and confident; and what was absent was that sense of strain, almost paranoia, that had been discernible during the previous reign. There were going to be difficulties for them. There was a serious riot in London in May 1517. There was the suspicion of an aristocratic plot, probably in 1518. There was considerable opposition to the ‘Amicable Grant’ in 1525. There was widespread discontent following the bad harvest of 1527. Arguably, indeed, by the end of the 1520s the rather heady co
nfidence of the earlier period of Wolsey’s ascendancy was dwindling. Nevertheless, the overall impression is of stability and of a government which felt itself to be very much in control of its own affairs. As a result, there was less of an obsession with furthering the Crown’s own interests, and less of a need ‘to keep all Englishmen obedient through fear’. Instead, the emphasis could now be placed on ‘the indifferent ministration of Justice to all persons high as well as low’. Moreover, it was a justice that was ministered at the highest level by a chancellor who did not doubt that ‘the king ought of his royal dignity and prerogative to mitigate the rigour of the law, where conscience hath the most force.’184

  1 Rymer, xiii, pp.529-30. The great seal was given to him on 22 Dec. and he took the oath on the 24th.

  2 Just how much of either is not clear. Many chancery appointments were in the gift of the master of the rolls, but the chancellor did appoint the eleven masters of chancery. He received £419 15s. Od. for diet, £40 for clothes and £200 for sitting in Star Chamber, but his real income was considerably more; see Maxwell-Lyte, pp.1-19; W.J. Jones, pp.86ff.

  3 Referred to frequently as Star Chamber, despite all the problems surrounding the dating of its emergence as a separate body from the king’s Council.

  4 For Chancery see Metzger, ‘Das Englische Kanzleigericht’, and his own English summary in ‘Medieval Chancery’. For Star Chamber see Guy, Cardinal’s Court and More, pp.37-93. Despite some disagreements, I would like to acknowledge J.A. Guy’s help in the legal aspects of Wolsey’s career. The extent to which I am indebted to his labours will emerge from the footnotes that follow.

  5 Cavendish, p.24.

  6 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.127-8.

  7 Ibid, p.71.

  8 Cf. ‘The chancellor gloried in his presidency of the council, drew suits unto himself especially those involving his conciliar colleagues and pompously demonstrated his political power and personal intelligence in star chamber.’ (Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.34). See also A.F. Pollard, pp.74, 80.

  9 Metzger. ‘Medieval Chancery’, p.80, n.5.

  10 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.51. The records for Star Chamber are far less complete than those for Chancery. They are also mainly undated, so there are great difficulties in assigning a case to a particular chancellor.

  11 Averages given by Ives in TRHS, 5 ser, xviii, p.166, but other figures are to be found. Pronay’s are considerably higher: 605 a year for 1500-15, and 770 a year for 1515-29; see Pronay, pp.88-9. See also Guy, More, p.50.

  12 Ibid, p.38; Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.15.

  13 This is the main burden of Guy’s work.

  14 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.51-71 for this and all the categories that follow. They are based on the study of the 473 cases for which there is sufficient evidence to make some categorization possible, though the fact that the second largest category is a miscellaneous one indicates how difficult the exercise is and suggests that one should not set too much store by it.

  15 Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, p.84. Life for the ‘layman’ is made more difficult by the fact that while Guy made use of Metzger’s work, he reworked the categories, thereby producing different figures; see Guy, More, p.39.

  16 This is Guy’s estimate; see More, p.39.

  17 Guy, ‘Equitable jurisdiction’, pp.84.

  18 An archivally significant date is 1387 when petitions to the chancellor first began to be calendared separately; see Pronay, p.88. See also Baldwin, pp.236-61, and, for an excellent survey for a non-scholarly audience, Underhill, pp.1-96.

  19Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, p.xxxiii.

  20 The most obvious being the English bill of complaint with which a plaintiff began his suit.

  21Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, passim, is essential reading.

  22 Apart from the works by Guy and Metzger already cited, Ives, TRHS, 5 ser, xviii, pp.165ff. and Blatcher should be consulted.

  23 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.54.

  24 Guy, ‘Equitable jurisdiction’, p.84.

  25 Metzger, Das Englische Kanzleigericht, p.152.

  26 Blatcher, pp.10-63. During the 1530s business in Common Pleas picked up quite dramatically, while that in King’s Bench continued to fall.

  27 Blatcher, pp.64-5.

  28 Ibid, p.65; Bellamy, Crime and Public Order, p.158; Hastings, pp.175-83.

  29 Blatcher, p.73.

  30 Ibid, pp.65-81.

  31 Ibid, pp.71ff.; Bellamy, Crime and Public Order, pp.91-3; Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.82-5.

  32 Blatcher, p.68. Baker compares them to gas and electricity bills; see Baker, ii, p.90.

  33 And was thought to be so at the time; see Sir John Fortescue’s comment that it was better that twenty guilty men escaped than a single innocent man escaped, quoted in Bellamy, Crime and Public Order, p.156.

  34Inter alia, Baker, ii, pp.70ff; Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.79ff.; W.J. Jones, pp.177ff.

  35 Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, pp.86-7.

  36 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.108.

  37 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.89.

  38 This a central criticism of Guy’s work; see ibid, 119ff. But see also Baker, ii, pp.77-80; Blatcher, pp.27-9.

  39 Pronay, p.92.

  40 W.J.Jones, pp.100ff.

  41 Guy, Cardinal’s Court pp.28-9 for a list of attenders.

  42 Cavendish, p.24.

  43 Baker, ii, p.318.

  44 See especially Guy, Journal of the Society of Archivists, v (1975).

  45 Quoted in Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.14.

  46 Ibid, pp.23-50 for what follows.

  47 A controversial subject because of Elton’s belief that Cromwell instituted a privy council, and that this had great constitutional and political significance; for which see inter alia Elton, Tudor Revolution, pp.316 ff., and Guy, ‘The privy council’. For my own part, I am yet to be convinced that anything significant happened to the king’s Council in the 1530s; for which see pp.202 ff. below.

  48LP, iv, 5666; the legatine court opened on 18 June.

  49 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.48.

  50 Ibid, pp.30-1. The information for all these Star Chamber set pieces is derived from Huntingdon Library California, Ellesmere MS, 2654, fos.22-5; 2655, fos.10, 15.

  51 Ibid, pp.31-2.

  52 Ibid, p.32.

  53 PRO STAC 2/19/372.

  54 Ibid; LP, iii, 1923. For a comprehensive treatment of these disputes see Coward, p.116.

  55LP, iii, 1923 (i).

  56 PRO E 315/313 A, quoted in Wolfe, pp.192-3.

  57 Coward, pp.147-8.

  58LP, iii, 1923 (i).

  59 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.60-1, 99.

  60 Ibid, p.31; PRO STAC 2/19/372 for Sir Edward Guildford’s report on Bergavenny’s retaining; for more on Bergavenny see pp.185-7 below.

  61LP, iv, 3926.

  62 See James, Past and Present, 48, for an extended treatment, though some of the detail is wrong; for instance Suffolk obtained the wardship in 1527 rather than, as he states, 1529. See also Gunn, Charles Brandon, pp.95-6.

  63 PRO STAC 2/2/279; STAC 2/20/400; LP, iv, 3997, vii, 223.

  64 Guy, More, pp.59-60, though Guy is surely a little too optimistic about More’s achievement.

  65 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.68-9; Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, p.clxi.

  66 In autumn 1517, on his pilgrimage to St Mary of Walsingham. An eighteenth-century history of Norwich mentions a visit in the company of Catherine of Aragon on 2 March 1520, Blomefield, iii, p.194, but I have not been able to confirm this.

  67Norwich, the Records, i, pp.cx, 43-4; ii, pp.cxxxvii-ix, 369-71.

  68 I owe the information about Hull to Dr P. Heath. For Bishop’s Lynn see Garrett-Goodyear, pp.251-3.

  69 Though not according to John Palsgrave, who in his polemic against Wolsey wrote: ‘As for one thing I must needs mislike, that his grace, being chancellor, should take up in manner all the great matters depending in suit in England, … and would suffer no way to take effect
that had been driven by other men. And hereof to show thee one example, call to mind the matter between the prior of Norwich and the city.’ (LP, iv, p.2562).

  70 Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, pp.80-6.

  71 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.81.

  72 Guy, More, pp.89-90.

  73 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp, 81-2.

  74 Ibid; Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, p.81.

  75 Hall, p.585.