The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico)
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Assured I am that his grace [Henry] will not I should be so little esteemed that you should enterprise the said reformation to the express derogation of the said dignity of the see apostolic, and otherwise than the law will suffer you, without mine advice, consent, and knowledge, nor you had no such commandment of his grace, but expressly to the contrary.
This being the case,
necessary it shall be that forthwith you repair to me, as well to be learnt of the considerations which moved you thus besides my knowledge, and also to have communication with you for divers things concerning your person, and declaration of the same of the king’s pleasure.157
The tone of Wolsey’s letter was sharp, not to say threatening, and it may well be that one of the ‘things concerning your person’ was contained in a letter from one of Warham’s chaplains, Thomas Gold, written on 14 February, in which he described to Warham the efforts of ‘this great tyrant’ and the archbishop’s ‘great adversary’ to persuade the king’s Council to bring a charge of praemunire against him. Happily Wolsey’s efforts had been thwarted by the councillors’ ‘great love and favour’ towards Warham, ‘wherefore you may be glad that your great adversary is thus discomforted, and greater discomforted shall be shortly by God’s grace’. Gold also reported a meeting he had had with the bishop of Norwich, Richard Nix, who had told him
that he would assuredly stick by you … saying moreover that the cardinal laid no manner of thing to his charge as yet, but that he would that he should keep his day this next Lent [the legatine convocation of March 1519], … also he said that if the king would not suffer him to have his lawful defence in the case of praemunire he would tell him that he would forsake him as his liege man … Therefore, I take of this bishop that he is stiffly set to this matter, which you know hath been always stiff in his causes.158
‘Stiffly’ almost seems a euphemism, for what Nix was proposing was treason; but in fact no formal charge of praemunire against either him or Warham has survived for this date. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Wolsey would have wanted to take a step which would undoubtedly have raised the ecclesiastical temperature, thus making the general acceptance of his legatine powers much more difficult. Neither is Gold’s suggestion that Wolsey had been defeated in Council over the matter very likely: the royal support of his legatine powers tells against this, and moreover neither Gold nor his named source, ‘Doctor Sexten’ – perhaps John Sixtinus, a friend of Erasmus and Colet and resident in London at this time – was in a position to obtain accurate information of what went on in the Council, though no doubt there were leaks.
Nevertheless, Gold’s letter leaves no doubt that Warham and Nix were fearful of praemunire charges, and that Warham may even have been threatened with such a charge if he would not toe the line. It is worth remembering here that in October 1518 a charge of praemunire had been brought against Henry Standish, who only a few months earlier had been appointed bishop of St Asaph. It is often alleged that these charges were brought by Wolsey in order to take revenge on a man who in 1515 had dared to take on the English clergy and had been Henry’s rather than his own choice for St Asaph.159 The allegation has never been very convincing. It would have been the height of political folly to move against a man who was so in favour with the king without having first secured the royal consent – which would hardly have been forthcoming if Wolsey’s motivation had been merely to gratify a personal whim. What is not usually stressed is the precise charge, which was that Standish had allowed himself to be consecrated bishop before he had received the royal assent and done homage for his temporalities – and the person who had consecrated him was Warham. Given that Standish was Henry’s personal choice, the charge was ludicrous, but if Standish was technically guilty so also was Warham; and, in fact, Warham’s action in 1518 was to provide the basis for the charge of praemunire brought against him early in 1532.160 It seems possible therefore that the charge against Standish in the autumn of 1518 was an oblique way of putting pressure on Warham to accept the consequences of Wolsey’s new position. Whether anything more direct was tried is not known. People close to Warham believed it likely, and it may be that Warham was only saved from a praemunire charge because he gave way. His council never took place. Wolsey’s did.161
But if the major battle between Wolsey and Warham ended in the spring of 1519, there continued to be the occasional skirmish. As has been shown, it was not until late in 1522 that the two men reached an agreement on jurisdictional matters, and not without some huffing and puffing from Warham. Nevertheless, the final result was not altogether unfavourable to him: if he had to share the revenue from his prerogative probate, he had at least had his rights to these fees, previously challenged by Fox and his supporters, confirmed. Indeed it may well be that, given the new impetus to their collection that resulted from the setting up of the joint-prerogative court, he may not have suffered any financial loss.162 And, at any rate, to share the revenue was a great deal better than no revenues at all, an outcome which he must have considered a real possibility when he first pondered on the consequences of Wolsey’s legatine appointment. In 1525 there had been some excitement over John Roper’s probate, but it had not taken a great deal of effort on Wolsey’s part to calm Warham down. Another cause not so much of disagreement but of hurt was Wolsey’s usurpation of Warham’s role as the dominant influence at Oxford university, despite the fact that Warham retained the office of chancellor of the university. In their preoccupation with securing Wolsey’s favour, the university often forgot to consult with Warham, who sometimes let his displeasure be known. In 1518 he reacted to their rather tardy notification of the appointment of a new bedel, a nominee of Wolsey and of Bishop Atwater of Lincoln, by remarking that he would prefer it if the university asked his opinion about appointments before they were made, rather than after.163 And when in 1522 all the statutes and privileges of the university were surrendered to Wolsey, who had been asked to produce new ones without, apparently, any consultation with its chancellor, one senses Warham’s annoyance beneath his dry observation that doubtless Wolsey was as devoted to the well-being of the university as he was.164 But however irritated the former fellow of New College may have been by the former fellow of Magdalen’s interference and munificence, he never allowed his irritation to develop into open conflict.
In reviewing every aspect of their relationship through the 1520s, the impression from their many surviving letters is not of great hostility, but rather of a willingness to put up with each other, and certainly to co-operate together in the king’s service. In 1520 Wolsey took some trouble to further Warham’s efforts at Rome to secure the papal privileges granted for previous jubilee celebrations to commemorate Becket’s martyrdom, but which were not on this occasion forthcoming.165 In 1521 there was a gracious exchange of presents, Wolsey’s being a costly jewel for Becket’s shrine.166 In January 1523 Warham, who had been ordered to bed by his doctor, thanked Wolsey for his advice to live on ‘high and dry ground as Knowle and such other’, and also for his offer of ‘a pleasant lodging at Hampton Court’ until the archbishop had fully recovered his health.167 Even when the two men were in disagreement, Wolsey was usually gracious and nearly always suggested a meeting to sort the matter out.168 Admittedly, in the major dispute over their respective reforming councils, Wolsey had been less forthcoming, but even so he had ended his letter by pointing out to Warham that the nearness of Mortlake, which belonged to the archbishop of Canterbury, to Richmond, where Wolsey was going to stay, would make it possible for both of them ‘with little pain often to repair together as the case shall require’.169 Wolsey’s concern on this occasion to save Warham pain may have been somewhat lacking in sincerity, but it is difficult not to take Warham’s comments to Wolsey in 1525 at something near their face value. They were made in a letter written at the height of the difficulties over the collection of the Amicable Grant, and Warham took it upon himself to offer Wolsey some consolation. Given the circumstances, Wolsey must expect to receive a goo
d deal of abuse. He, Warham, was being called an old fool. Wolsey must expect worse, because that was always the fate of those most in favour with the king, ‘do he never so well; but, whatever be spoken, the fruits which a tree brings forth will prove its goodness’.170 The phrasing of this letter is surely too particular and too apposite to be passed off as merely the conventional pleasantries of the Tudor establishment.
All the same, the evidence of this one letter should not be allowed to weigh too heavily in any final assessment of the two men’s relationship, for they were very different characters. As a somewhat buttoned-up but successful lawyer and civil servant with genuine scholarly interests, Warham was both the caricature of a Wykehamist and a representative figure of the late medieval English Church, and his ascent up the ladder of promotion, from New College, through the administration of the archbishop of Canterbury, to royal service, and then to the lord chancellorship and the see of Canterbury seems almost preordained. Wolsey’s rise, with its curious schoolmasterly beginnings, had required much more energy and personality, but also much more luck. There was a twenty-year difference in age and little reason for Warham to think very warmly of Wolsey. For his part, Wolsey may well have thought Warham a bit of a bore, and certainly from time to time the archbishop caused him trouble. But the argument presented here is that neither man – but especially Wolsey, if only because he was in the dominant position – allowed their differences to get so out of hand as to prevent them working together in a perfectly civilized way.
The only other leading churchman with whom Wolsey had, from time to time, any serious difficulties was Richard Nix, bishop of Norwich since 1501. Unlike both Wolsey and Warham, his early career had been in ordinary diocesan administration, acting as vicar-general to Richard Fox at both Bath and Wells, and Durham. This did not prevent him from siding against his former patron and with Warham in the conflict over Canterbury’s prerogative jurisdiction, perhaps because of the support he had received from Warham in his conflict with Henry VII’s attorney-general, John Ernley.171 And as has already been shown, early in 1519 he had sided with Warham against Wolsey over the latter’s legatine powers, even expressing a readiness to forsake the king over the matter.172 Despite, however, being ‘always stiff in his causes’,173 Nix did at some point give way and make a composition with Wolsey; no doubt Warham’s surrender had left him in such an exposed position that he felt he had very little alternative. However, trouble broke out again in connection with Wolsey’s illegitimate son, Thomas Winter, who from 1526 to 1528 was archdeacon of Suffolk and subsequently until 1530 archdeacon of Norfolk. All seems to have been well while Winter held the former office, but when he moved a difficulty immediately arose because of Wolsey’s wish to replace him at the archdeaconry of Suffolk with one of his chaplains, ‘doctor Leigh’ – perhaps Rowland Lee the future bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.174 Nix had other ideas, and appointed one of his leading diocesan officials, Edmund Steward, which, as the office was in his gift, he had every right to do. Whether Wolsey had intended to ‘prevent’ ‘doctor Leigh’ by virtue of his legatine authority, or whether he had assumed Nix would go along with his choice and make the appointment on his behalf is not known. But at any rate Nix, having in August 1528 claimed Wolsey as his ‘good lord, the which I esteem a great treasure to me’, got his way and Steward remained as archdeacon.175 However, in the following May, Nix informed Wolsey that he had become positively ill on hearing of the cardinal’s ‘heavy mind and displeasure’ towards him.176 What had caused this was Nix’s challenge to Wolsey’s right to testamentary jurisdiction in the archdeaconry of Norfolk. Nix argued that in claiming and enforcing this right Wolsey had broken their composition, the purpose of which had been to exclude Wolsey’s legatine interference in the diocese in return for an agreed share of the bishop’s revenue from spiritualities.177 Wolsey’s defence is nowhere stated, but presumably he would have argued that the issue had nothing to do with his legatine powers and thus nothing to do with their composition, but entirely concerned the rights of the archdeacon of Norfolk on whose behalf he was acting.
Wolsey’s position, if this it was, might be more compelling had the archdeacon not been a teenager who happened to be his illegitimate son. It is also possible that in enforcing the archdeacon’s jurisdictional rights Wolsey may have intended to get his own back on Nix for his swiftness in appointing Steward to the archdeaconry of Suffolk. On the other hand, he may merely have been anxious to protect his son’s legally justified rights, which for better or worse he always viewed as his own. Nix was a crusty and combative man who was inclined to overreact, and it would be quite wrong to assume that his position was the correct one.178 But, whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular episode, there is no doubt that in the late 1520s relationships between the two men were not good. Moreover, in none of the surviving letters between the two men are there those touches of any personal regard to be found in those between Wolsey and Warham. Nix, not being nearly so involved in national affairs, would not have known Wolsey as well as Warham did, and he was anyway almost certainly a more difficult man to deal with. But if Wolsey’s handling of Warham, and indeed other people, is anything to go by, he would have treated the bishop of Norwich as tactfully as the situation allowed – and Wolsey’s tact is one of the explanations of the surprising fact that, when all is said and done, the amount of opposition to his legatine rule was surprisingly small.
What may also have helped Wolsey in avoiding opposition is the amount of patronage and therefore power that he had at his disposal. The more one can offer people, the more willing they are to do one’s bidding – or, at least, that is one view of the world. Or, to make essentially the same point in a slightly different way: if one fills all the posts with one’s own nominees, one is not likely to meet with much opposition. And the fact that neither Warham nor Nix was a nominee of Wolsey’s and, indeed, each had been made bishop at about the time that Wolsey secured his first benefice back in 1500, may in a negative way help to make this point. It also helps to introduce a note of caution into any consideration of Wolsey’s ecclesiastical patronage. The usual impression given, perhaps especially by A. F. Pollard in his sustained attack on Wolsey’s ‘despotism’ over the English Church,179 is that during the 1520s Wolsey monopolized ecclesiastical patronage. Such an impression needs to be seriously modified. To take episcopal appointments first: from early 1514 to his appointment as legate a latere in May 1518, a period during which Wolsey had considerable influence in royal government but was not master of the English Church, there were only three appointments to English sees, apart from his own to Lincoln and York in 1514 – those of William Atwater to Lincoln in 1514, of West to Ely in 1515 and of Booth to Hereford in 1516. From May 1518 until his downfall in October 1529, eleven appointments or translations were made, three of which involved himself: Bath and Wells in 1518, Durham in 1523 and Winchester in 1529, all held in commendam with York. Three others – those of Giulio de’ Medici to Worcester in 1521, of Geronimo de Ghinucci to that same see in 1523, and of Campeggio to Salisbury in 1524 – involved the appointment of foreigners, a practice much favoured by Henry VII and continued by Henry VIII and Wolsey as a way of rewarding foreign churchmen who had proved, or might prove, useful to the English Crown, especially in any negotiations with the Curia. These changes left the core of the episcopal bench very much as it had been before Wolsey’s ‘despotism’: Warham at Canterbury, Sherburne at Chichester, Blythe at Coventry and Lichfield, Nix at Norwich, and Fisher at Rochester remained throughout the 1520s, and Fox at Winchester until 1528.
Of the seven new appointments to English sees from 1514 to 1529 there is direct evidence of Wolsey’s involvement in two cases only, that of Cuthbert Tunstall to London in 1522 and of John Clerk to succeed him at Bath and Wells in 1523; and as regards the former the evidence is somewhat misleading. It comes in a letter from Warham in January 1522 in which he thanks Wolsey for advising the king to promote Tunstall who, ‘in [his] poor opinion’ was ‘a man of
so good learning, virtue, and sadness’ and therefore ‘right meet and convenient to entertain ambassadors and other noble strangers at that notable and honourable city’ in the absence of the king and Wolsey.180 The reason why Warham wrote was that until 1515 Tunstall had been his protégé, serving as one of his leading archiepiscopal officials. After 1515, admittedly, Tunstall became heavily involved in royal service as diplomat and administrator, and inevitably came into close contact with Wolsey.181 Presumably he would not have been so fully employed if he had not won Wolsey’s respect, but then Tunstall won the respect of everyone he met, for not only was he a most successful ecclesiastical lawyer and diplomatist but he was also part of the great humanist network centring on Erasmus. Tunstall was destined for a highly successful career in the Church, whether Wolsey had come along or not, and even if he was subsequently, but most reluctantly, to temporize over religious changes with which he was not in sympathy, he was in no obvious sense a yes-man to Wolsey, or anyone else.182