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

by Gwyn, Peter

  This whole episode is evidence of Wolsey’s tactful handling of Warham.131 It also demonstrates that Wolsey’s legatine court was not, as has been alleged, ‘one of the most aggressive and powerful tribunals in the history of the English Church to his time’. The simple fact is that there is not sufficient evidence concerning the workings of the court for any such conclusive judgement to be made, and inherently it is unlikely to be correct. It would, of course, intervene in matters which touched upon Wolsey’s legatine rights, but the great bulk of the business before it would depend upon the voluntary choice of its clients. The service it provided, at this distance in time, may not appear very necessary, but if it was much used, this could only have been because it was popular.

  An aspect of Wolsey’s legatine powers which does not appear to have resulted in any controversy was his right to grant dispensations and licences of the kind that would normally have been obtained from the papacy, despite the fact that the papal power to make such exemptions had, throughout the Middle Ages, come in for a fair share of criticism.132 Undoubtedly too many exceptions were made and not enough care was taken to find out whether they were justified, and in 1514 the Fifth Lateran Council had tried to do something about this.133 In themselves, however, they were not a bad thing. It made perfectly good sense to allow a beneficed clerk leave of absence in order to further his studies, and it was humane to allow people within the prohibited degree of affinity to get married in certain circumstances. But if it became merely a question of paying, the whole justification for canon law would be seriously undermined. The difficulty was that with the best will in the world, the papal Curia was not in the best position to check the genuineness and particular circumstances of requests that were reaching it from all parts of Christendom and, given the distances involved, the procedures were bound to be complicated and expensive. Moreover, a large proportion of the papal revenue came from the granting of these requests, so the potential for abuse was great.134 Arguably, therefore, a resident papal legate was in a much better position to prevent such abuse than a distant Curia. Whether Wolsey did, in fact, do so is impossible to say. It is not even known what machinery he set up to administer the grants, but it must have been quite considerable because in the twelve months for which there is evidence, about a hundred were made. Moreover, the fees from these amounted to about £200, a considerable sum.135

  There is one scrap of evidence that shows that some kind of check on Wolsey’s granting of exemptions was made: when Bishop Fox discovered in 1527 that a fellow of Winchester College had secured a dispensation from Wolsey by falsely maintaining that his fellowship did not require continual residence, the fellow was ordered to explain why he should not incur the appropriate canonical penalties for misrepresentation.136 Of course, the episode reflects more credit on Fox’s episcopal administration which detected the misrepresentation than on Wolsey’s legatine administration which failed to, but the fact that the fellow considered that a misrepresentation was required may suggest that the securing of a dispensation from Wolsey was not a complete formality. But if Wolsey ever did intend to use his powers to grant licences and exemptions in order to bring about the reform of the English Church, no evidence for it seems to have survived. Moreover, it could be that his possession of these powers may marginally have made matters worse, for easier access to them may well have encouraged an anyway endemic abuse of the pope’s plenitudo potestatis.

  Wolsey’s legatine authority gave him the power to summon church councils, and in 1523 he attempted to do so, though the precise results of his efforts are not at all clear. In that year a parliament was called in order to secure financial help for the Great Enterprise against France. Following the usual practice, convocations of the northern and southern provinces were also called. But, as reported to the earl of Surrey, no sooner had southern convocation assembled on 22 April, and

  a mass of the Holy Ghost at Paul’s was done, my lord cardinal [adcited] all of them to appear before him in convocation at Westminster, which so did; and there was another mass of the Holy Ghost; and within six or seven days the priests proved that all my lord cardinal’s convocations should do, it should be void because that their summons was to appear before my lord of Canterbury, which things so espied, my lord cardinal hath addressed out of new citations into every country commanding the priests to appear before him eight days after Ascension [22 May], and then I think they shall have the [3rd] mass of the Holy Ghost. I pray God the holy ghost be amongst them and us both.137

  Surrey’s unknown correspondent got the date wrong, or perhaps it was changed after he wrote, for none of the surviving summonses for a legatine convocation gives 30 May as the date for its first meeting. He was also much puzzled by the number of invocations to the Holy Ghost, but he was clearly under the impression that a specially summoned legatine council, or convocation, was to meet, which is important, because, apart from the seven surviving summonses, there is no direct evidence that it did. Moreover, the one outcome of all these proceedings that is well documented, the clerical subsidy, was issued in the traditional manner – that is, in the name of the two separate provinces of Canterbury and York.138 In other words, there was no legatine subsidy. There is also the puzzling fact that while five out of the seven summonses give 8 June as the date of the legatine convocation, two give the 2nd.139 But for this, one would be inclined to believe that a formal legatine convocation did meet, for it would have been strange to have gone to the considerable trouble of calling the meeting only for it then not to have taken place.

  Whether or not it met must remain an open question. But this has not prevented historians alleging that at the convocation there was considerable opposition to Wolsey, led by none other than John Fisher and Richard Fox with strong initial support from an influential cleric, Rowland Phillips.140 The only direct source for this is Polydore Vergil. Enough has already been said about his unreliability where Wolsey is concerned to inject at once a note of caution, but since, as dean of Wells, Vergil was entitled to, and probably did, attend the convocation, in this instance his account must be taken seriously. This does not prevent it from being confused. He fails to mention the formal summons for a legatine convocation already discussed. Instead, he begins with Wolsey, after the northern and southern convocations had met separately, asking Warham whether he would mind them meeting together at Westminster Abbey under his chairmanship – a request which Vergil believed Warham readily granted because he realized that it would only increase Wolsey’s unpopularity.

  Thereafter the prelates and clergy met for some days in Wolsey’s ‘senate’. There sat Wolsey in person on a golden chair. At first he began to promise much concerning matters of religion, but then he began to deal with financial questions, on account of which the convocation had been summoned. But the man was ‘headlong and erratic in all his judgments’, and when a little later he learnt that there were legal impediments to prosecuting the business in the province of Canterbury except under Canterbury’s authority, he dismissed the prelate to St. Paul’s Cathedral and himself returned to his own provincial convocation.141

  There follows a discussion of the opposition in parliament to the demand for a very large subsidy, and Vergil then raises for the first time the question of clerical opposition, which according to him surfaced only when the two convocations had re-formed into their traditional constituents.

  For many opposed him [Wolsey], and especially Richard bishop of Winchester, John bishop of Rochester, and above all Rowland Phillips vicar of Croydon and canon of St Paul’s, who was a splendid preacher. This last speaker Wolsey summoned while the discussion was going on and so frightened him that he afterwards appeared no more in convocation, thereby very gravely impairing his integrity. Upon the leader thus withdrawing from a prolonged dispute, the rest gave way.142

  It is slightly curious that in such a trio Phillips should have been the leader and, if true, may suggest that neither Fisher nor Fox was as opposed to the clerical subsidy as Vergil implies. Mor
eover, the additional information concerning their and other clerical opposition at this time is not very convincing. A recent suggestion that, in order to punish Fox for his opposition, Wolsey had him assessed for the clerical subsidy at twice the amount he should have been, is incorrect, because the figure of £2,000 used to support it relates not to the subsidy but to the loan of 1522.143 It is true that Fox was one of those who was specifically excluded from the General Pardon with which, as was customary, the parliament ended, but exclusion in matters of current legal concern was perfectly normal, and, for instance, it was for just such a reason that a fellow bishop of Fox’s, Richard Nix, was also excluded from the 1523 General Pardon.144 And anyway, if Fox’s exclusion was a punishment, why were Fisher and Phillips not punished in the same way? Whether Phillips was silenced in the manner that Vergil suggests, it is impossible to say. He was not afraid of controversy, and was to spend part of the 1530s in prison because he was of the ‘papish sort’.145 But, there is no other evidence of any opposition by him to Wolsey, and he was quite happy, probably in March 1524, to write to Wolsey on behalf of the prior of Binham, a dependent house of St Albans, whom he recommended as a good religious man and a former scholar of his at Gloucester College.146

  Recently, it has been suggested that Wolsey deliberately engineered a charge of treason against Geoffrey Blythe, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield in order to forestall any possible opposition from him in the 1523 convocation,147 but this receives little support from contemporary sources. Hall mentions the case, but fails to make any connection with clerical opposition.148 Vergil fails even to mention it. Given both these writers’ willingness to discredit Wolsey, this suggests that any connection between the case and the 1523 convocation is coincidental. Moreover, the precise timings do not fit all that well. Blythe was imprisoned on 28 March which, though after he would have received his summons to the southern convocation, was before he would have had any knowledge of Wolsey’s intention to hold a legatine convocation – and thus it would have been difficult for the bishop to have been contemplating opposition to one! It is also unlikely that he would have made plans to oppose a clerical subsidy before knowing how much was going to be asked for. Furthermore, there is nothing in Blythe’s career to suggest that he would contemplate opposition of any kind. What probably happened is that an allegation was made against Blythe – perhaps by ‘a certain Welshman’ – that could not be ignored, even if it was not taken very seriously. He was tried by a commission comprising his secular peers headed by the duke of Suffolk, and was acquitted. It is true that Wolsey did not make any public statement about Blythe until he addressed the House of Lords on 10 June, the opening day of the second session, when he announced his acquittal. But rather than this being to his discredit, it may be that his chief concern was to play down the whole episode, for there is nothing in Wolsey’s career to suggest that he would have seen any private or public advantage in the trial of a fellow bishop.

  The case for strong opposition to Wolsey at the convocation of 1523 has really only ever rested on the not unbiased account of Polydore Vergil, and recent attempts to extract additional evidence do not stand up to close scrutiny. Nevertheless, the mere sequence of events does suggest a surprising uncertainty in Wolsey’s handling of them. Why, for instance, did he not formally summon a joint legatine covocation in the first place? One answer might be that his initial attempt to summon such a convocation in an informal way resulted from a snap decision which, in the event, did not turn out well. Alternatively, he may have always envisaged calling one, but thought that it would be easier to allow the traditional processes for calling the separate convocations to take their course, only to be genuinely taken by surprise by the legal objections raised at the joint assembly. Or perhaps he had always realized that there would be opposition, and so did not wish to signal his intention until the last possible moment. But whatever was in his mind, the fact that he did in the end feel it necessary to summon a joint convocation formally, which he then may never have allowed to meet, does suggest some kind of defeat, or at least a tactical retreat. It needs to be borne in mind that his position was complicated by having to pursue at least two, if not three, differing aims. The ostensible reason, as given in his summonses and hinted at by Vergil, was reform of the Church, but it is not necessary to share Vergil’s cynicism in order to accept his view that money was Wolsey’s major concern.149 He had, after all, already held meetings to discuss reform, and had taken a number of steps as a consequence. No doubt a joint convocation would provide an opportunity to monitor these steps and to exhort the clergy to greater efforts. But in 1523 it was the Great Enterprise against France, and the need to finance it, that was uppermost in his mind. It was because of this that a parliament had been summoned, and it was because a parliament was called that a convocation was also summoned. And the main reason why these assemblies were ever called was to provide the Crown with money. However, at the same time the need to call convocation did provide Wolsey with an opportunity to demonstrate his legatine authority just when he was beginning to put that authority on a regular footing: the composition with Warham had already been negotiated, and those with the other bishops were in the pipeline. In the end he may have had to compromise and concede to worries expressed about the legality of a joint convocation, in order to obtain the money. Certainly he would have been very reluctant to do anything to jeopardize its collection. All this is not to say that there was large-scale opposition, but that there was sufficient for Wolsey to have to show some flexibility – and in doing so he secured the largest clerical subsidy that had hitherto ever been granted.150

  The question of the extent of opposition within the Church to Wolsey’s legatine powers is naturally of great importance. But the opposition so far noted, at the convocation of 1523 and at some of the meetings in the diocese of Lincoln summoned to hear the legatine constitutions of 1519, does not add up to much, and it might be expected that it would have been greater. Nothing was more characteristic of the Middle Ages than disputes over rival jurisdictions, as much within the Church as amongst the secular authorities. A glance at the history of the English Church in the thirty years before Wolsey’s appointment as legate confirms this. In the 1480s and 1490s there had been the opposition to John Morton’s attempts to extend his powers as archbishop of Canterbury over both the secular clergy and the monastic orders, which led to serious conflict between him and Abbot Wallingford of St Albans,151 and with the bishop of London, Richard Hill. Both episodes involved appeals to Rome and, during the course of the second, Morton appears to have excommunicated the bishop and arrested one of his leading officials.152 Warham continued Morton’s aggressive attempts to extend Canterbury’s jurisdiction, especially as regards testamentary matters, and soon found himself faced with widespread opposition, spearheaded by Bishop Fox. The ensuing battle, which split the episcopacy into two camps, was taken to Rome, but the pope thought it wiser to pass the buck, and authorized Henry VIII to settle the matter, which with some difficulty and increasing annoyance, he did during the course of 1513.153 The details of this dispute can be ignored; the fact that it took place, and the fierceness with which it was waged, is the necessary background for assessing the amount of opposition to Wolsey.

  It will be evident that the person who was most directly affected by Wolsey’s legatine authority was Warham. There was, to begin with, the question of status and dignity already touched upon, resulting, if Cavendish can be trusted – and there has to be a doubt about this – in a dispute about whether the crosses of Canterbury or York should have precedence.154 Technically, once he became legate, Wolsey was correct to insist on his superior rank, but this need not have helped to reconcile Warham to his demotion. Then, as has been shown, there was the threat to his prerogative and jurisdictional rights that Wolsey’s legatine authority posed, and with it a possibility of serious financial loss. Furthermore, it had been Wolsey who, in 1515, had succeeded him as lord chancellor; and even if, as was argued earlier,155 Warham
had been quite willing to resign, in retrospect Wolsey’s succession may have begun to rankle. At his age it was perfectly seemly to retire gracefully from secular affairs, but then to be pushed around by the same man in spiritual matters, and in matters concerning the dignity of his see, about which Warham held strong views, may well have injected an element of paranoia into his attitude towards Wolsey.

  Warham’s initial reaction to Wolsey’s acquisition of legatine powers was to resist them, and the occasion that he chose to make his stand was the calling of that legatine meeting of bishops for 14 March 1519 referred to earlier. According to Wolsey, the calling of that meeting had been discussed with, and agreed to, by Warham some time before the formal summonses were sent out and, what is more, it was the king who had ordered Warham to discuss the matter with the new legate a latere. But having appeared to go along with Wolsey, however reluctantly, Warham had then proceeded, on 2 December 1518, to issue his own summonses for a provincial council to meet to discuss reform before Wolsey’s.156 It seems most unlikely that Wolsey would have invented the king’s involvement or Warham’s preknowledge of his own intentions, so it must be concluded that Warham’s decision to summon his own council was intended as a slap in the face for Wolsey and, less directly, for Henry. No wonder Wolsey was put out: