by Gwyn, Peter
For legatine involvement with the important Dominican order there is only one piece of evidence. A full discussion is best left until later, but what it shows is Bishop Longland once again calling upon Wolsey’s legatine authority to interfere in the affairs of an ‘exempt’ house – in this case, King’s Langley. As regards the Carmelites and the very small order of Crutched Friars, there is nothing. For involvement with any order of nuns, there is only one dramatic episode – the so-called ‘Matter of Wilton’ – but, as with King’s Langley, it is better that consideration of it is postponed. Still, the final tally is not unimpressive: the two largest religious orders, the Augustinians and Dominicans, had had new statutes provided, while in one way or another the Cistercians, the Conventual and Observant Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Austin Friars had accepted Wolsey’s legatine authority; and probably all the others had as well. Only in the rather special case of the Greenwich Observants had he faced any serious opposition, in part because of the sensitivity he showed to the pride and susceptibilities of the different orders. There remains the important question of what qualitative difference his interference made, but before this is looked at some outline of the legatine machinery itself is called upon.
Precisely when Wolsey began to organize his legatine administration is not known. As early as 1519 he was asked by John Colet to arbitrate as legate in a dispute that, as dean of St Paul’s, he was having with his residentiary canons. The result was an elaborate composition, or legal agreement, which would have had to be drawn up by some officials, though perhaps at that date not by those with formal responsibilities for legatine matters.81 Still, the likelihood is that similar appeals would have been made, which would have forced a consideration of the setting-up of some permanent machinery. On the other hand, since Wolsey’s legatine commissions were for a long time granted only for limited periods, this would not have encouraged more formal arrangements. As mentioned earlier, originally they had to do either with the proposed crusade or with the reform of the religious orders. When, in January 1521, Wolsey secured a renewal of his commission, it included a passing reference to reform of the secular clergy, however eminent82 – an indication that he did mean business; and by then he had already issued his legatine constitutions. However, it was not until April of that year that he was granted a number of specific powers to intervene in the administration of the Church as a whole: to grant dispensations and exemptions, to absolve from excommunication, to license preachers, to grant university degrees and the like.83 Then, in July, his commission was extended for five years, and amongst a number of additional powers granted was one allowing him to appoint by ‘prevention’ his ‘familiars’ – that is, members of his household to any benefice in ecclesiastical patronage.84 Only then did it make sense to set up a legatine machinery, and the first indication that he was doing so may come from two letters to him from Archbishop Warham. Both are full of complaints of interference in his jurisdiction by Wolsey’s officials, despite Wolsey’s having promised him that this would not happen. If it continued, Warham lamented, he ‘should be as a shadow and image of an archbishop and legate [legatus natus], void of authority and jurisdiction, which should be to my perpetual reproach, and to my Church [Canterbury] a perpetual prejudice’.85 Maddeningly, on neither letter did Warham record the year, only the month – March and April respectively – but the suggestion here is that they should be assigned to 1522.86 And at any rate, by October 1522 a legatine court was definitely in being, because the proceedings of a testamentary case before it on 2nd of that month have survived.87 It was in this same month that a draft composition between Wolsey and Warham was drawn up, a final version being signed the following January.88
The composition concerned itself with one aspect of their respective jurisdictions, that to do with testamentary matters. The proving of those wills which had previously been part of the archbishop’s prerogative, that is wills of those with bona notabilia in more than one diocese, was now to be administered jointly by officials appointed by both Wolsey and Warham, and the resulting probate fees were to be divided equally between them. The value to be given to bona notabilia was not specified, which is strange, because it was precisely this that had been at issue in that major dispute between Warham and his suffragans only ten years before.89 The figure then agreed was £10 or over – and probably the same was assumed in 1523, for that amount was specifically mentioned in the composition between Wolsey and Bishop Longland made the following year.90 Where the testator left goods worth over £100, the proving of his will was reserved for Wolsey’s commissaries alone,91 as was the will of anyone who left goods in the exempt jurisdictions of Westminster, St Albans, Bury, and Bewley.
Little evidence of the workings of the joint-prerogative court that was set up as a result of this composition has survived. Its two leading officials were John Allen acting on Wolsey’s behalf, and John Cocks acting on Warham’s. Under them were two registrars, Robert Toneys and John Barrett, the former Wolsey’s and the latter Warham’s. Records of one or two of the cases have survived in a formulary prepared for Thomas Cromwell’s vicegerential probate court, which was modelled on it.92 A few more are known about as a consequence of Warham’s complaints to Wolsey, to be considered in due course, about the workings of the court. These, however, are just the tip of the iceberg, for in the year before Wolsey’s fall and the disbandment of the court, Warham received as his share of its revenues £315 1s 9d.93 How many cases this represented is impossible to calculate because it is not known what fees were charged, but it has to be in three figures. And whatever the fees, they do not appear to have been excessive, for otherwise some reference to this would surely have been included in the many charges prepared against Wolsey in 1529. Instead, there is only a reference to probate fees in the diocese of York, and even then the accusation is that Wolsey had used his position as lord chancellor to protect his diocesan officials from legal action by those who were dissatisfied with the fees they had charged.94
What is true is that the whole question of ecclesiastical fees, including probate fees, did become an issue in the first sessions of the Reformation parliament, and in the course of a debate on the subject Sir Henry Guildford declared that ‘he and others, being executors to Sir William Compton, knight, paid for probate of his will to the cardinal and the archbishop of Canterbury a thousand marks’ – a statement which, according to Edward Hall, opened the floodgates to all manner of complaints about ‘excess of fines’ exacted by the bishops.95 These complaints should be treated with some caution: modern research does not support them,96 while the circumstances in which they were made were hardly conducive to an impartial view. Moreover, the writers of the preamble to the statute of 1529, which laid down a new tariff, were extremely vague about the old one,97 perhaps because the detail would not have supported their case that it had been excessive.
Nobody likes paying fees, and in 1529 the Commons were given a unique opportunity to vent their dislike. So, also, was Sir Henry Guildford. With his close connections with the court he would have been well aware of the popularity in royal circles of any attack on the clergy, but, arguably, especially one directed against the far too independent-minded archbishop of Canterbury. Indeed, it may be that Guildford was put up to it by the king himself, if only because the accusation seems most improbable. Admittedly, Compton had been extremely wealthy. His movables alone were estimated to be worth nearly £4,500,98 but even so it is hard to arrive at any credible rate which would produce a fee of £666.99 It is known, however, that one reason for Compton’s wealth was his expropriation of royal revenues, something which, prior to his death, was preying on his mind. On 31 August 1527 he wrote to Sir Henry Guildford asking that in addition to any bequests to the king, a sum of 1,000 marks should be paid to him ‘as a recompense’.100 Given that this was the very sum mentioned in Guildford’s accusation, it could be that it was the payment of this debt that the joint prerogative court had been asking for. Certainly, it would be wrong to use the a
ccusation as proof that the fees asked for by that court were excessive, for the only precise information that we have – the £300 a year for Warham’s share – suggests otherwise.
One thing that Wolsey’s composition with Warham made clear was that he considered himself entitled to prove all wills, and that in allowing Warham a share in some he was making a concession. In support of his claim he served notice of his intention to appoint commissaries to every diocese, who, apart from looking after his own interests, could be appealed to by anyone who felt that his case might be more fairly or efficiently treated by them.101 In other words, Wolsey was challenging the testamentary jurisdiction of the English episcopate. In agreeing to the composition, Warham had conceded the validity of Wolsey’s claim, thereby making it virtually impossible for anyone else to resist it. In fact, nothing is known of Wolsey’s negotiations with the bishops on this matter. All that has survived is a reasonably complete copy of the composition he made with Longland of Lincoln,102 plus fragmentary, if at least direct, evidence of similar compositions with the bishops of Chichester, Ely, Hereford, and Norwich.103 However, what underlay the charges of praemunire brought in 1530 against a number of bishops, including those of Chichester, Ely and Norwich just mentioned, but also Bath and Wells, Coventry and Lichfield, Rochester, Bangor and St Asaph, was that these men had made compositions with Wolsey in his capacity as legate.104 True, these charges were in essence political, which is to say that they were a way of browbeating into submission leading representatives of a Church that was proving dangerously unsympathetic to Henry’s wishes.105 Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that Henry would have gone so far as to invent the compositions, and if so there is evidence for ten having been made – enough surely to suggest that no bishop escaped? As for their timing, that with Longland was dated 24 March 1524.106 A letter from West of Ely to Wolsey concerning their composition is dated 20 January – the year is missing, but it is probably 1524.107 And the composition with Booth of Hereford, on the evidence of a later receipt, was probably made in March 1524.108 All in all, therefore, it looks as if early 1524 is the best date for Wolsey’s composition with the bishops that can be arrived at.
By these compositions, the bishops bought back from Wolsey their episcopal rights, which in theory had been superseded by his legatine authority. These included the right to appoint to benefices, to make visitations, to hold ecclesiastical courts, and to prove the wills of testators whose goods and chattels were confined to their particular diocese. With these rights went the related fees. They, in fact, never made up a very large proportion of a bishop’s revenue, the bulk of which came from episcopal land. Just how much derived from this source, referred to as ‘spiritualities’, is difficult to calculate, partly because it was a variable figure depending in part on whether a bishop had conducted a visitation of his diocese in a particular accounting year.109 In 1535, the famous survey of ecclesiastical wealth, the Valor Ecclesiasticus, put the annual revenue of the English and Welsh bishops from their estates, or ‘temporalities’, at £26,100, and that from their spiritualities at only £3,450, a mere 12 per cent of their total revenue.110 In the poorer dioceses such as Carlisle and Rochester, though, the proportion of the bishops’ revenue from spiritualities was nearer to 25 per cent.111
The price that the bishops had to pay Wolsey for the recovery of their rights appears to have been a third of their spiritualities. Certainly this was true for Hereford, where Booth paid Wolsey the sum of £10 over a period of three years.112 A third was also mentioned by Bishop West in his letter to Wolsey on the subject, though he rather rashly added that he would not mind if Wolsey took all the profits of his jurisdiction; his desire to recover his rights was ‘not for any profit or advantage that I trust or intend to have by the same, but only for quietness and good order’.113 For Chichester, there is a reference to the bishop paying £20 a year, which, it has been suggested, meant a rate of a half rather than a third. However, Chichester’s spiritualities stood at £66 in 1522, which would fit the more likely proportion of a third – more likely because one would expect a standard rate.114 Whatever the rate, the amount of money involved was not very great; but given that they were merely paying for the exercise of rights which had been theirs for hundreds of years, the bishops could not have been pleased at the prospect of paying anything at all.
The workings of another part of Wolsey’s legatine machinery, the legatine court of audience, are, like so much of that machinery, rather shadowy. It is known to have been in existence by October 1522.115 The names of a number of its officials, or auditors, have survived.116 On seven occasions between 1525 and 1528 proceedings are known to have taken place against those who had failed to appear before it.117 A priest, Sir Christopher Nelson, brought a case against a certain John Cooke, who had reported him to the bishop of Winchester for making indecent advances to a young married woman. As a result, Sir Christopher had found himself for a short time in the bishop’s prison, and had subsequently been expelled from the diocese. Apparently William Burbank, one of the auditors of Wolsey’s court, was a relative of Sir Christopher’s, and this seems to have provided the expelled priest with an opportunity for gaining his revenge on Cooke. However, a letter from Bishop Fox convinced Burbank that Cooke had no case to answer, and he put an end to the proceedings.118 Superficially, at any rate, the episode reflects some credit both on Fox’s diocesan administration, and on Wolsey’s legatine court.
The outcome in two other cases is not known. One involved an attempt by a widow to prove a fictitious will.119 The other appears to have been a case of defamation, in the course of which the plaintiff’s lawyer made an interesting plea on behalf of his client: that her case had been prejudiced by being cited both to appear within the month of August, which the law recognized as a time when no one be compelled to do so, and at places where it was not safe for her to attend.120 This looks very much like a legal fiction or technicality of the kind used in the secular courts to bring cases before Chancery or Star Chamber, and it is tempting to suggest other similarities – for instance, that the legatine courts provided the same opportunity to escape from the excessive legalism and vested interests of the diocesan courts which the conciliar courts offered in the secular field. In fact, these faults do not appear to have been a major feature of the church courts, which have emerged reasonably unscathed from the scrutiny of recent research.121 Moreover, there existed already, in the archbishop of Canterbury’s courts of arches and audience, a body which would provide an alternative to, and perhaps a check on, the inferior ecclesiastical courts. So it is not at all clear that Wolsey’s legatine court had any very obvious function. Instead, it may have merely made an already complicated picture even more so. In 1521 Lewis More, the rector of All Hallows, London Wall, became involved in a dispute over the refusal of a parishioner, Robert Cockered, to pay his tithes. In one form or another, the case came before the bishop of London’s consistory and commissary courts, the archbishop of Canterbury’s courts of arches and audience, King’s Bench who sent it back to the ecclesiastical courts, and to Wolsey’s legatine court. The latter seems to have had no more success in resolving the case than any of the others, because Cockered refused to turn up, and the whole episode illustrates the comparative ease with which people could spin out a case indefinitely.122 Wolsey’s court could only have made this even easier.
However, to suggest that Wolsey’s court was unnecessary is not to say that it was badly conducted or that its chief purpose was to add to his already considerable revenues, for the little bits of evidence that have survived do not suggest this. In November 1526 the archbishop of Canterbury advised the rector of St Mary Aldermary, London, Clement Browne, to resign, following a dispute with his parishioners about the repair of the chancel. The reason he gave was that if the parishioners found that their case against the rector was being delayed by the archbishop’s favouring of him, they would bring the case before the cardinal’s court where, by implication, the rector was unlikely to fare well.123 On
the face of it at least, the advice is not to the archbishop’s credit, but, perhaps, a little to the legate’s.
A better-known case had to do with the will of John Roper, an important official in King’s Bench and father of William, the son-in-law and biographer of Sir Thomas More;124 and it was the small amount of money that was left to William in his father’s will that was at the heart of the dispute.125 The case had initially gone before the joint-prerogative court,126 but in February 1525 Warham wrote to Wolsey that Roper’s widow had been summoned to appear before Wolsey’s ‘commissaries at your chapel at York Place’ – which I take to be a reference to Wolsey’s legatine court of audience. This pleased Warham not one bit; rumour had it, he told Wolsey, that no testament could take effect ‘otherwise than your grace is content’, and many people told him that it had been ‘a great oversight in me that I would make such a composition with your grace which should turn so many men to trouble and vexation’.127 However, it was not so much the composition itself that pained Warham but the fact that it was not being observed, insofar as a matter which should have gone before the joint-prerogative court had been removed from it. His grief is not surprising, for he had a half-share in the revenue of that court, no share in that of Wolsey’s court of audience. At the same time, it is not altogether surprising that the case had been brought before Wolsey’s court. The will, as is the habit with wills, had resulted in a family quarrel, and the suggestion had been made that Roper’s widow had exercised undue influence over her husband just before his death in favour of the younger sons.128 So it seems probable that it was William Roper who had approached Wolsey’s court, rather than any initiative being taken by the court. Wolsey’s response to Warham’s complaint appears to have been a soothing letter, for on 6 March Warham felt able to write that he was glad to see how graciously Wolsey had taken his ‘plan-writing … Unless I had had in your grace’s undoubted favour and benignity towards me very singular trust and confidence to write without displeasure not only the plainness my mind, but also such reports as were brought unto me, I would in no wise have attempted to disclose my said mind and reports so openly.’129 He agreed with Wolsey that nothing further should be done until they had had a chance to discuss the matter, and the result appears to have been that the case proceeded before the joint-prerogative court.130
