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

by Gwyn, Peter

  On the death of his father in 1521, the earl of Derby had been made a royal ward, and though it is not entirely clear why he ended up in Wolsey’s household, it is hardly likely that he had much say in the matter.70 As regards the others, there is no reason to doubt that their parents, at least, had been free to choose Wolsey’s household as a training ground for their children; and clearly it made an enormous amount of sense. It was very common for children of aristocratic and leading gentry families to send their children away to other households, including those of leading churchmen: the future 4th duke of Norfolk was to be a page with successive bishops of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner and John White – a fact to which his grandson the earl of Arundel referred when instructing his own younger son William in all things to ‘reverence, honour and obey my lord bishop of Norwich as you would any of your parents … and in all things esteem yourself my lord’s page; a breeding which youths of my house far superior to you were accustomed to’.71 Arundel’s instructions may serve to make the point that there had always been a familiar, if respectful, relationship between the nobility and leading churchmen, the latter being, just as much as the nobility, pillars of their local communities, living in palaces and enjoying the income from vast estates. The more important the bishop, the more likely it was that the nobility should seek to enter their sons in his household; and what better training, other than service in the king’s household, for a young Tudor nobleman than service in Wolsey’s?

  Of course the willingness of the nobility to entrust their children to Wolsey’s care may not by itself be evidence of a great liking for him; they may just have been making a cynical calculation that while the king chose to favour this man it could only be advantageous for their children to be associated with him. The evidence does not exist that would allow a judgement on this. But there is enough evidence to challenge the usual assumption that Wolsey’s ‘rule’ was somehow inimical to the nobility as a class. Merely to point out that there was nothing unusual about a leading churchman of Wolsey’s background playing a major role in royal government goes some way to undermine it, but it could be that his especially egocentric personality and his apparent dominance over the king caused the nobility unusual concern. Or, to put it another way, perhaps by becoming a royal favourite Wolsey destroyed the subtle balance between king and political nation, of which the nobility composed the most important part, thereby imposing great strain on the body politic until the nobility rose up against him and engineered his downfall. Were the nobility excluded from high office, banished from the royal Council, deprived of the fruits of royal patronage? Or looking at it more from Wolsey’s point of view, did he spend his fifteen years in high office feeling so insecure about his relationship with the king that he was constantly having to exclude possible rivals from the court, whether nobles such as the earl of Surrey, or other clerics, such as Richard Pace, who as the king’s secretary became far too close to Henry for Wolsey’s comfort – or so it has been alleged? Then there was that newly formed body composed of gentlemen of the privy chamber, who as personal servants and constant companions of the king played, it has been claimed, a significant political role, and were seen by Wolsey as such a threat that from time to time he felt the need to ‘purge’ them. It is issues such as these that must now be addressed.

  Even at a first glance it becomes obvious that the nobility were just as active in royal government as they had ever been, and in some ways perhaps a little more so than during Henry VII’s reign. Traditionally kings had made use of noblemen to dominate those regions of their kingdom where they themselves lacked a local affinity. It was always a balancing act between allowing them so much power that they themselves posed a threat to royal authority, or so little that the area became ungovernable. In early Tudor times it was in the North that this balancing act can best be studied (and will be in the next chapter). What is perfectly clear is that neither Henry VIII nor Wolsey was anxious to weaken the position of the nobility there, and indeed their problem was to find a nobleman who could provide a leadership effective enough not only to deal with the wild men of those northern upland valleys, but also to defend the border from the constant threat from Scotland. In the more settled Midlands and South the problems of good government were not so acute, but no attempt was ever made to weaken the position of particular noblemen, while the Crown was perfectly happy to build up the power and influence of a new magnate, such as Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk in first Suffolk and then Lincolnshire.72 And as regards the government of the localities the nobility was made use of in every conceivable way.

  First and foremost they served on the important commissions of the peace, which, appointed for each county and sitting in quarter sessions, were increasingly used for every kind of government intervention in local affairs as well as acting in their main capacity as a judicial body with very wide responsibilities for law enforcement. During Wolsey’s lord chancellorship probably every eligible nobleman sat as a justice of the peace on at least one commission, and most on more than one. This remains as true for the last years of Wolsey’s chancellorship as for the first; the slight drop in figures from thirty-six nobles for 1514-15 to thirty-one in 1528-9 being accounted for by the absence of some of the later lists of commissions. There was during this time a slight increase in the number of clerical JPs, but it is extremely doubtful that this was some deliberate ploy by Wolsey to undermine the influence of the local nobility and gentry. In 1528-9 there are known to have been only thirty-eight clerical JPs, which averages less than one per commission – hardly an invasion. In fact the clerical representation was concentrated in the counties close to the Welsh and Scottish borders. The reason for this was that from 1525 members of the newly constituted Councils of the North and of the Marches of Wales, which included a significant, but not overwhelming, clerical presence, were automatically placed on these commissions. But, as will be argued in the following chapter, that was for no other reason than that they were particularly well qualified for the heavy legal burdens that these Councils had to bear.73

  The commissions of the peace were but one of a number of different commissions that were at work in Tudor England and on which noblemen sat. Many were of an ad hoc kind. Thus in 1522 Wolsey instituted a major survey of England’s wealth and military potential, and to carry it out the nobility were very much called into service. Indeed, when writing to the English ambassadors with Charles v, Wolsey gave the impression that the various commissions entrusted with the survey were entirely made up of noblemen; at the same time he explained to Henry that it would be inconvenient to go to war with France immediately, given ‘the employment of the nobles in viewing the people’.74 Three years later Wolsey decided to supplement the already large subsidy granted by parliament in 1523 with a request for a voluntary aid, otherwise known as the Amicable Grant, to pay for an immediate invasion of France. Given the many recent demands for money, which included not only the first payment of the subsidy but an anticipation of the next, not to mention the heavy loans of of 1522-3, it was clear that a good deal of persuasion would be needed to secure this new demand. Consequently ‘the greatest men of every shire’ were appointed commissioners for the Amicable Grant.75 Unfortunately no lists of the commissioners have survived, but we know that these included in East Anglia the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the earls of Essex and Oxford and Lord Fitzwater; in Kent Lord Cobham; in Berkshire Viscount Lisle, and in the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire Lords Conyers and Latimer.76 When in 1527 the harvest failed, noblemen were put on the commissions to search for grain, set up to cope with the shortages.77

  In 1525, and again in 1528, there were disturbances, especially in parts of East Anglia. In the end they may not have amounted to much, though large assemblies of angry people had always to be taken seriously – and were. The Crown looked to the nobility and the leading gentry to put them down, for only they could quickly get together the necessary armed forces. Thus when, in May 1517, the London apprentices had gone on the rampage it
was the duke of Norfolk and his son, the earl of Surrey, along with the earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Bergavenny, who had restored order in the City.78 When in August 1525 there was trouble at Coventry it was the leading nobleman in the area, the marquess of Dorset, who headed the commission set up to deal with it. In fact by the time he had been appointed, the trouble was probably over. Nevertheless, Dorset informed his fellow commissioner and relative, Sir Henry Willoughby, that he intended to take with him to Coventry between thirty and fifty armed men, and trusted that Willoughby would bring some as well.79

  The main feature of the government’s response to the disturbances in East Anglia, both in 1525 and in 1528, was the co-operation between the likes of Norfolk and Suffolk with Wolsey, prompting him, on the first occasion, to thank the two dukes for their ‘wise, discreet and politic’ handling of the situation, ‘wherein you have deserved high and great praise’.80 Arguably they deserved even more praise for the handling of the situation in 1528, when bad harvests, food shortages, trade embargoes, and illness were making life very difficult for the inhabitants of East Anglia – and for those who governed them. By this date, in most accounts, an aristocratic faction led by the two dukes was already plotting Wolsey’s downfall. Of such plotting there is not the slightest hint in any of the many letters they wrote to the cardinal from East Anglia at this time. Indeed, on 9 March Norfolk wrote him a long letter, the tone of which could hardly have been more friendly.81 He begged Wolsey to inform the lord admiral, Lord Lisle, that the pirates who had captured a small trading ship had in their turn been captured by the men of Dunwich. At Norfolk’s command they had been put in prison until instructions were received from the lord admiral as to what he wanted done with them; meanwhile the cost of keeping them in prison would be charged to him. Norfolk then turned to a more important matter, his meeting with forty of the most substantial clothiers in the locality. After great difficulty he had persuaded them to start up work again and take back their laid-off men, but he urged Wolsey to persuade the London clothiers ‘not to suffer so many cloths to remain in Blackwell Hall unbought’, for if the East Anglian clothiers could not sell their cloth, they would have to lay the men off again. Finally, he turned to a matter of great personal concern to Wolsey, his new college at Ipswich. He ‘had been to Ipswich and saw a platt [plan] made of the whole house of St Peter’s, which your grace shall see at my coming, and I trust my poor advice in your building there shall save your grace large money’. As it happened, Norfolk’s coming up to see Wolsey was delayed, for no sooner had he finished the letter than he received a royal command to remain at home. This threw his plans into confusion, for amongst other things he was short of ready cash which he had intended to obtain while in London. In the circumstances, the tone of his postscript was very reasonable. He would, of course, obey the royal command, but nevertheless hoped that he would be allowed to come up to London, ‘though I do not tary VI days in going, coming, or abiding there’.82 And one reason that he gave for wishing to come up was that he might still be able to consult with Wolsey. At the same time, he made it clear that if he had thought that there was ‘any danger in time of my absence’ he would not have made even this request. In fact, both Henry and Wolsey took the view that at this critical time Norfolk’s place was in East Anglia, and, apart from a brief visit to London in June, this is where he remained for much of the rest of the year.83 But as this letter, and his more than busy career, make very plain, a nobleman such as Norfolk was a linchpin of Henrician government, whether dealing with the side effects of piracy, the problems of large-scale unemployment or the threat of insurrection; and this was as true in Wolsey’s time as later.

  All the same, however useful the nobility might be in the maintenance of good government at home, it was on horseback and doing daring deeds on the battlefield that they really came into their own. Chivalric ideas still permeated the top levels of English society, and to win renown in the tiltyard or on the battlefield was still the ideal of every self-respecting nobleman and knight. More mundanely, it was only the wealthy landowner who could afford to provide men and weapons for the king’s armies. During the time that Wolsey was a leading royal councillor no attempt was made to undermine the noblemen’s military role. Armies continued to be recruited in the traditional way, largely from the retinues provided by them and by the leading gentry. All the important military expeditions were led by noblemen: the marquess of Dorset to Guienne in 1512; the earl of Surrey – soon to be restored to the dukedom of Norfolk – against the Scots in 1513; his son, by then himself earl of Surrey, in Ireland from 1520 to 1522, and against the French and Scots in 1522, 1523 and 1524; and the duke of Suffolk against the French in 1523. Moreover, when expeditions against the French in 1525 and against the Imperialists in 1528 were planned, appointed to command them were, respectively, Norfolk and Suffolk. It is true that in 1521 Wolsey opposed Henry’s wish to appoint a nobleman to command an English force to be sent to provide immediate help for the emperor. But only a very small force of archers was involved, and anyway Wolsey’s objection had nothing to do with any inherent hostility towards the nobility, and everything to do with the very tricky diplomacy he was currently engaged in, the success of which depended upon maintaining some appearance of neutrality as between Habsburg and Valois. To appoint a nobleman to command the force could only draw attention to it and thus to the breach of neutrality that sending the force involved – as, in the end, Henry accepted. Once war against the French had been openly declared, no more was heard from Wolsey about not having a nobleman to command a royal army.84

  The only point in commenting on the vital military role that the nobility continued to play during this period is that, like so much else, it must undermine the notion of a Wolsey inimical to their interests and way of life. Indeed, insofar as Henry and he pursued a forward foreign policy, it could be argued that quite the opposite was true. When in 1513 Henry led over to France what was probably the largest expeditionary force that had hitherto left English shores, he took with him twenty-seven noblemen out of a total of forty-seven alive at the time. This sixty-two per cent turn-out becomes even more impressive if the eleven noblemen involved in the campaign against the Scots of that same year, the four who were too young to take part, and the one, Edward Lord Burgh, who was a lunatic, are removed from the reckoning. And of the three noblemen so far unaccounted for, all sent their sons to France, so presumably they considered themselves too old for active campaigning.85 What this adds up to is that, whether in France or in Scotland, all the nobles who could possibly do so fought on Henry’s behalf in 1513. It was an excellent turn-out, and no doubt both Henry and Wolsey worked hard to attain it. It may also indicate that the young King Henry had succeeded in capturing the imagination of a nobility whose pride and morale, if not their real power, had suffered a good deal during the previous reign. I suggested earlier that the main purpose of this expedition was to make a point about English power, and to establish a bargaining position as a result of which England could play a dominant role in European affairs.86 Such a view does not exclude the possibility that the expedition was also seen as a means by which the winning of honour and glory abroad might secure the loyalty of an at least mildly discontented nobility. In other words, not only may Henry VIII have captured the nobility’s imagination, but he may have deliberately set out to do so.

  Alas, there is very little evidence for all this; nothing to compare, for instance, with the speech made to the 1472 parliament, perhaps by the chancellor, Robert Stillington, in which one of the chief justifications for a campaign against the French was that since the Norman conquest internal peace had never long prevailed ‘in any King’s day, but in such as have made war outward’.87 The appearance in 1513 of a new and slightly expanded translation of Titus Livius’s biography of Henry v may be a straw in the wind. It does not appear to have been commissioned by the king (though this has been alleged),88 but its message – that the virtuous king with justice, and therefore God, on his side would b
e successful in battle and thereby win great honour and lasting fame – was calculated to rally the nobility of England behind a king who shared both the name and some of the qualities of the great victor of Agincourt. And Lord Berners’s translation of Froissart’s Chronicles, the first volume of which appeared in 1523 when England was again at war with France, was made ‘at the high commandment of my most redoubted sovereign, Lord King Henry the Eighth’.89 Berners’s purpose was to spur on ‘the noble gentlemen of England’ by enabling them ‘to see, behold, and read the high enterprises, famous acts, and glorious deeds done and achieved by their valiant ancestors’. And if two translations hardly make a very convincing case, Henry’s and Wolsey’s determination to conduct a forward foreign policy was bound to enhance the role of the nobility.

  As I have argued elsewhere in this book, a forward foreign policy did not necessarily mean war; peace could bring just as much honour as long as it was achieved in the right way. The signing of the Treaty of London in October 1518 had been a great coup for Wolsey, and had brought great honour to his master. Not surprisingly it had been accompanied with the greatest ceremonial possible: the marriage settlement by which the Princess Mary was betrothed to the dauphin was signed by no less than three dukes, a marquess and three earls.90 Two years later even more noblemen graced the Field of Cloth of Gold than had taken part in the expedition of 1513, and with retinues almost as large.91 And whatever its diplomatic significance, the event itself was a glorious celebration of chivalry. When, by 1522, the alliance with France had broken down, the Emperor Charles paid a visit to England to inaugurate the Great Enterprise against England’s former ally. On arriving at Canterbury he was greeted by no less than eighteen noblemen, nine of whom were to put their signature to the ensuing Treaty of Windsor.92 By 1527 England’s ally was once again France, in a year that saw much diplomatic ceremonial, the highlight had been an exchange between the two monarchs of the premier chivalric orders – that of St Michael and the garter.93