by Gwyn, Peter
The suggestion here is that it is this view which comes nearest to the truth, and the main reason for thinking this is the real concern that Wolsey appears to have shown in monastic elections. Never mind that there were particular reasons for his interest that were not all directly related to the good health of the houses involved. The important point is that his concern would have encouraged him to seek greater control, and here the outstanding example is the election in 1528 of a new abbess of Wilton.297 Wilton, in the diocese of Salisbury, with an absentee bishop (since late in 1524) in Campeggio, was effectively run on Wolsey’s behalf by Thomas Benet, the vicar-general, and it is this which probably explains Wolsey’s initial involvement with the election of the new abbess. Thus, unlike Butley, the Wilton election does not bear directly on the question of the intended scope of Wolsey’s interference in such matters. What is remarkable about Wilton is the evidence it provides of his determination to appoint the best candidate, because here the opposition to his choice was supported by none other than Henry himself. Wolsey and, at least according to Thomas Benet, the majority of the nuns favoured Dame Isabel Jordan, already prioress of the house, and, again according to Benet, reported to be ‘ancient, wise, and discreet’.298 A minority of the nuns supported Dame Eleanor Carey, sister to William Carey, a gentleman of the privy chamber and in close attendance on the king. Even more important than his position was the fact that he was married to Mary Boleyn, a former mistress of the king and sister to the woman who, if she could not be called the king’s current mistress, was the person with whom he was passionately in love. Thus Eleanor had, from outside the abbey, the most influential support possible in Anne Boleyn, and very quickly the king himself. She may even have had Wolsey’s support until he got to know more about the qualifications and qualities of the two candidates,299 and therein lay Dame Eleanor’s Achilles’ heel. Under cross-examination by Wolsey himself, she confessed that she had had two children by two different priests, and had recently been kept by a servant of the late Lord Broke. On the other hand, accusations of incontinence against Dame Isabel turned out to be at least unproven and, as even Henry admitted to Anne, she was anyway ‘so old that of many years she could not be as she was named’.300
To do Henry justice, once he had learnt of Dame Eleanor’s misdemeanour, he withdrew his support. However, so as to lessen the blow to his loved one and her friends and relatives, he decided that Dame Isabel should not be made abbess but ‘rather some other good and well disposed woman’.301 This decision Wolsey proceeded to ignore, pretending that he knew nothing about it.302 The result was a royal rebuke ‘written with the hand of him that is and shall be your loving sovereign’. If, as these words indicate, the tone of Henry’s letter was not too unfriendly, there was not the slightest doubt of his displeasure, not only at Wolsey’s refusal to comply with his wishes but at his pretence that he had known nothing of them: ‘My lord, it is a double offence both to do ill, and colour it too, but with men that have wit, it cannot be accepted so, wherefore good my lord use no more that way with me for there is no man living that more hateth it.’ And to underline his displeasure, Henry took the opportunity, though ‘upon no other ground, but for the wealth of your soul and mine’, to draw Wolsey’s attention to the many criticisms he was hearing about money being wrongfully exacted from monastic institutions to pay for the setting up and financing of Cardinal College.303 However, in the same letter Henry conceded that Dame Isabel would become the next abbess, although the confirmation of her election did not take place until four months later, on 13 November 1528.304 A discussion of those aspects of this important letter that bear on Henry’s relationship with ‘his best beloved servant and friend’, must be deferred until a later chapter. For the moment, what is important is the light it sheds on Wolsey’s attitude to the religious orders and to reform.
In thwarting the wishes of the king and of Anne Boleyn and her friends, Wolsey obviously took a risk. One might argue that the risk was easily calculated, in that he was still sufficiently confident of his influence with Henry to believe that he could happily survive his master’s temporary displeasure. One might even argue that it was deliberately calculated to thwart the growing Boleyn circle,305 though if so, it was an unusually stupid miscalculation on his part, given that his major task at this time was to secure an annulment of Henry’s first marriage so as to enable him to marry Anne. In fact, neither line of argument is as convincing as the position that Wolsey himself appears to have taken up in letters to Henry and his acting secretaries.306 Put simply, Wolsey’s view was not only that Dame Isabel was a better candidate than Dame Eleanor, but that she happened to be the right person for the necessary task of ‘reforming’ the nunnery of Wilton. Things had obviously become a little lax during the forty-odd years of the previous abbess’s rule. Moreover, in a nunnery noted for its wealth and for the high birth of its inmates, too much laxity, especially as regards the movement of the nuns in and out of the house, was always likely to be a danger. At any rate, it was stricter enclosure that Wolsey wanted from the new abbess and, moreover, he instructed Thomas Benet to go to Wilton to see that it was enforced. This proved easier said than done, for despite Benet’s actual residence there for some time and despite putting three or four of the leading resisters ‘in ward’ and closing up ‘curtains, doors and ways’, the opposition to reform continued, so that Benet was forced to pin all his hopes on a visit of the attorney-general, Richard Lister, who had promised to help Wolsey in this matter.307 The evidence is, therefore, quite convincing that Wolsey stuck by Dame Isabel because he considered that her appointment was in the best interests of Wilton – and it should be said that he came to this conclusion after having personally examined all the inmates.308 Moreover, he may have gone some way to convincing Henry of the wisdom of his decision. Henry did not, of course, admit this openly, but he did admit that he had been informed that ‘her age, personage, and manner’ showed her to be a person of some weight, which he prayed ‘God it be so indeed seeing that she is preferred to that room’.309 It was all very grudging, but there is just a hint that he realized that in supporting an obviously unsuitable candidate he had made a bit of a fool of himself; and that even if he had the best possible excuse for his error – his devotion to Anne – nevertheless it was now time for Wolsey to get on with the job of looking after the well-being of the nunnery of Wilton.
All in all, ‘the matter of Wilton’ is the best example of Wolsey’s genuine concern for the health of the religious orders, even if some problems of interpretation remain. It is, for instance, a little surprising, given his intention of enforcing enclosure at Wilton, that only eighteen months previously Wolsey had been chiding Bishop Fox for being too strict with the nuns in his diocese over just this issue.310 Presumably, the degree of inconsistency in Wolsey’s attitude on these two occasions depends to a great extent on how strict was strict: and the impression is that in 1528 Wilton was in a particularly bad way and thus in need of treatment which in other circumstances might have been too severe. Nevertheless, a worry remains. It may also have been the case – though it is not a view accepted here – that Wolsey’s zeal for reform may have been encouraged by the Boleyn opposition to his choice. And it is certainly not the case that Wolsey usually resisted royal intervention in church appointments, but then there was rarely any obvious clash between the king’s wishes and the good of the Church. In the case of Wilton there was, and it is striking that on this occasion he chose the Church.
Arguably, Wolsey’s involvement in the deposition or resignation of the heads of religious houses offers a better way of assessing his genuine concern for their well-being than his involvement in appointments, where it has been difficult to arrive at any convincing assessment of the quality of the people chosen. At least with an outgoing head, there is almost always some specific evidence of unsatisfactory conduct, even if the validity of the evidence is hard to confirm.
But before looking at particular cases, the general point needs to be made t
hat it was extremely difficult to remove anyone from the headship of a religious house. It could only be done by a judicial process in which the case against the incumbent would have to be proved, and this was a hard and costly process.311 Wolsey’s legatine commission in this respect made very little difference. It is true that his and Campeggio’s joint commission to visit and reform the religious orders gave them the power to depose delinquent abbots and priors, but only if their houses’ income was under 200 ducats312 – that is, roughly £45 a year. This meant that as regards about 70 per cent of all monastic houses Wolsey had no special powers, and that any deposition could only take place by the due process of canon law. The fact, therefore, that, rather than dismissing him outright, Wolsey was usually to be found attempting to negotiate the resignation of an unsatisfactory abbot or prior, should not be taken by itself for evidence of a lack of serious intent. Even though these negotiations usually resulted in the equivalent of the present-day golden handshake, in the form of a pension and somewhere to live, this was the most effective and, in most cases, the only way of removing such a person.
There is evidence of Wolsey having been closely involved in negotiations to secure the removal of eight heads of religious houses,313 and there is the suspicion that he was involved in at least two other attempts.314 Of the six, there is most evidence about the resignations of John Birchenshawe, abbot of St Werburg’s, Chester, in 1524, and Edmund Kirton, abbot of Peterborough, in 1528. Both appear to have been powerful personalities; both were builders – their additions to their abbeys, in both cases subsequently cathedrals, can still be enjoyed; both were involved in jurisdictional disputes with the governing bodies of the towns in which their abbeys were situated; and both presided over their abbeys’ affairs for a considerable time, Birchenshawe having been elected in 1493 and Kirton three years later.315 The removal of Birchenshawe is of particular interest, because of all the cases in which Wolsey participated this one came nearest to being a formal deposition – and, indeed, it may even have been one. Certainly in 1534, in a letter to Thomas Cromwell, Birchenshawe referred to a time ‘when I was put from my abbey by the late lord Cardinal’.316
Birchenshawe’s problem seems to have been that he could not resist a quarrel. Between 1507 and 1509 he was in conflict with the mayor and corporation of Chester over rival claims to jurisdiction in the city. He was a defendant in a Star Chamber case for the alleged eviction of a family from their smallholding, in the course of which he had all their household goods thrown ‘into a great pond of water’.317 But his real battle was with the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Geoffrey Blythe, over two related matters: Birchenshawe’s right to a mitre and pontifical staff, and the right of his monastery to exemption from all episcopal jurisdiction. It is easy enough to see why the second matter, in particular, could have led to disagreement, for the prospect of being denied the supervision of a leading institution within his diocese must have been irksome to any bishop. It cannot, therefore, be assumed that the conflict was all of Birchenshawe’s making; and in fact both the matters under dispute had been decided in the abbey’s favour by the end of the fourteenth century, and it was the bishop who was challenging the status quo when he took the abbot to the Roman Curia.318 However, Birchenshawe’s refusal to produce the relevant documents, his subsequent excommunication by the pope, and the absolution he arranged for himself by a local priest ‘in contempt and derision of the apostolic see’, all point to his abrasive personality being at the root of the problem. Wolsey was first drawn into the dispute, at the pope’s request, in December 1516 in order to deal with the abbot’s uncanonical behaviour, but it appears that he initially had no more success in bringing about peace than the Curia had had.319 But when the abbot, in an effort to strengthen his position, sued for a papal confirmation of the abbey’s exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, Wolsey seized his opportunity, threatened him with praemunire for appealing to a foreign jurisdiction, and in this way forced his resignation.320 There is an obvious irony in Wolsey’s use of praemunire; but it also shows his confidence that his own theoretical reliance on papal authority would not be challenged. The important point is that Birchenshawe’s offence had given Wolsey a specific lever with which to bring pressure on him – something which most other cases lacked. Whether an abbot had or had not sued for a papal bull was easily proved; whether he had, or had not, slept with someone was not.
What it is impossible to say is whether Birchenshawe’s rule had been detrimental to the well-being of the abbey, because there is no evidence one way or the other. Neither is there evidence of any moral lapse on his part. It may be, therefore, that his forced resignation hardly served the interests of reform. Moreover, it has been suggested that Wolsey had a personal grievance against him for his part in a land transaction harmful to the interests of his concubine’s husband, George Legh of Adlington,321 and favourable to another member of the local gentry, Sir John Stanley. At any rate, article 38 of the charges drawn up against Wolsey at his fall accused him of wrongfully imprisoning Sir John until he had returned a lease to the abbot of Chester for him to reconvey it to Legh.322 Whatever the truth of this allegation, as regards the central matter of Birchenshawe’s dispute with Bishop Blythe, all one can say is that on general grounds Blythe – and Wolsey – were in the right. Monastic exemptions were liable to lead to just this kind of disagreement which could harm the religious life of a diocese, especially when the monastery concerned was as influential as the abbey of St Werburg. Furthermore, its earlier history – for instance, in 1437 it had had to be placed in royal custody ‘by reason of it having been wasted by misrule’ – does not inspire confidence that Abbot Birchenshawe’s resistance to the bishop’s claim to jurisdiction was in the best interests of either abbey or diocese.323
The removal of Abbot Kirton from Peterborough presented Wolsey with rather different problems. Technically, Birchenshawe had committed an offence, which, fairly or not, could be used to lever him out. Kirton had not, and was therefore in a much better position to resist the manoeuvres to oust him. On the other hand, that he deserved to be removed can be shown much more clearly than in Birchenshawe’s case, because of the survival of a long list of complaints made at the time of Bishop Atwater’s visitation of the abbey in June 1518.324 Of course, complaints are by their nature partial, and the autocratic Kirton’s hot temper, plus his insistence on the strict observance of the daily offices, no doubt encouraged a jaundiced view of him amongst his fellow monks. Moreover, it should be stressed that no complaint was ever made about his private life. What was wrong with Kirton was that he had systematically broken all the customs of the house, had gained complete control of its finances, had occupied every important office, and had then used the concomitant power and money to further his own ends. These were not necessarily bad in themselves. A lot of the money had, for instance, been spent on the so-called ‘new building’ at the east end of the abbey and on other improvements to its fabric, but a lot had also been spent on improving his private accommodation.325 And this seems to have been the problem. The ends envisaged were entirely his own, and not those of his fellow monks. As a result he had succeeded in destroying any sense of community. The complaints against him were made in 1518, long before either Wolsey or Bishop Longland was involved in efforts to secure his resignation, so that, whatever their reasons for reviving the opposition to him, the case against the abbot was not their invention. Their efforts, beginning at least by August 1526,326 were to continue until March 1528, when Kirton finally resigned, though not before he had secured for himself a reasonable pension.327 He may also have paid a substantial contribution to Cardinal College. It is, of course, this that throws doubt on the genuineness of Wolsey’s desire to further the interests of Peterborough Abbey, and the historian’s problem is to try and decide how far his undoubted wish to obtain money for his college dominated the negotiations with Kirton.
The evidence, as so often, permits no certainty and, indeed, it is not even known whether in the en
d a contribution was made, despite the considerable and entirely frustrating haggling that went on. Perhaps the wisest course is to concentrate on the one undoubted fact – that in the end Kirton did resign, so if he was hoping to prevent that happening by offering the bribe, the tactic failed, even if it did win him delay. What may have happened is this: Wolsey and Longland decided that it was time Kirton went. Kirton responded by offering a large sum of money for Cardinal College, initially as much as 2,000 marks (£1,333 6s 8d).328 However, he then discovered that though Wolsey jumped at the offer, he was not very willing to pay the quid pro quo – Kirton’s continuation as abbot. This put Kirton on the spot, for to withdraw his offer immediately would expose his real intention in making it in a rather humiliating way. The result was an elaborate farrago, during which Kirton repeatedly lowered the amount, mainly by conveniently forgetting how much he had previously offered. But he could hardly end up by offering nothing, because there were such matters as the size of his pension to be considered. At one point he offered 400 marks, which, after a short pause for consideration, he raised to 500.329 Longland obviously considered the reduction of the original offer by as much as £1,000 to be unacceptable. Kirton, in his view, was only trying to waste time and he argued that if he continued to ‘swerve and warble’, he should be made to resign almost immediately – that is, by Michaelmas 1526.330
