by Gwyn, Peter
What these statistics make abundantly clear is that while parliament did have a recognized role, the government could get on for quite long periods without it, and usually did. Only in rather exceptional circumstances did the Crown need ‘extraordinary’ revenue, and only then did it need to consult or inform. As for new laws, the demand was not all that great: witness the fact that so many early Tudor statutes were merely restatements of old ones. And from the subjects’ point of view there were not many advantages – and some disadvantages – in holding a parliament. After all, it invariably meant that they were going to have to pay out quite large sums of money, not only in taxation but also, for those who resided in a parliamentary borough, in expenses for their MP’s travel to and from London and for food and lodging while there.80 In return, an MP might be able to get through a private bill promoting his constituency’s interests, so the expense might not all be loss. As for the MP himself, there was usually plenty for him to do in London by way of legal and other business. Moreover, as will be shown, MPs took a considerable interest in the amount of money the Crown was asking for at any given time and were quite prepared to argue strongly about it. But to spend long periods there on matters which for the most part could have been of little concern, was in no one’s interest, so that once the question of taxation had been settled their inclination would be to return home as soon as possible. Neither would they wish to attend too often. Thus, when in 1504 Henry VII announced that ‘for the ease of his subjects’ he would not call another parliament for a long time, unless for ‘great, necessary and urgent causes’, his words almost certainly did not displease his subjects.81
The statistics on the frequency of parliamentary sessions also undermine the second foundation for the view that Wolsey was hostile towards parliament. If sessions were only ever occasional and brief, and if no one was especially keen on them, the comparative lack of such meetings in this period cannot have the significance as regards Wolsey’s attitude that is usually implied. Admittedly, an average of only one parliament in every seven years between 1515 and 1529 is well below the early Tudor norm of one every three and a half years, but there are quite straightforward explanations for the difference. From 1511 to 1518 England was either formally at war or paying other people to fight on her behalf. The result was a series of parliamentary sessions in which money was voted, the last being a subsidy agreed to in 1515 but not levied until two years later.82 In 1518 the Treaty of London inaugurated a brief period of European peace, but by 1521 war had broken out again and by the end of the year England was committed to the Great Enterprise against France. Again, the consequence was the calling of parliament, in 1523, which sanctioned the raising of a large sum of money spread over four years – the last portion was levied in 1527. In fact, by 1525 the Great Enterprise had failed and England had made peace with France, so there was no need to apply for further sums. Admittedly in January 1528 England had formally declared war on the emperor, but this, it will be shown, was largely a diplomatic manoeuvre with no fighting intended.83 But if a large-scale war had been seriously contemplated, no doubt a parliament would have been called – which brings us to the nub of the matter.
Nine times out of ten parliaments were called when the Crown needed money to finance a war, and Wolsey’s period in high office was no exception. The explanation for the apparent lack of parliaments is partly that between 1518 and 1522 England was at peace, and partly that the parliaments of 1515 and 1523 were so generous that, with the addition of the loans of 1522-3, further grants were not required, or at least were not considered politically viable.84 There was therefore nothing odd about the fact that between 1515 and 1529 only one parliament was called. Wolsey – and one should almost certainly include Henry VIII in this – called a parliament at precisely the moment when one would have expected him to do, and there was no obvious occasion when he failed to call one.85
There remains the evidence of the various literary accounts of the handling of the 1523 parliament – those written by Hall, Vergil and, perhaps above all, by William Roper in his celebrated life of his father-in-law, Thomas More. Irrespective of its intrinsic merits, this evidence is bound to loom large, because institutional or archival records for 1523 are virtually non-existent, which is to say that no Lords Journal for this parliament has survived.86 One should, perhaps, not make too much of this, for in many ways we are lucky to have such extensive literary evidence, but the lack of any formal archive by which to monitor it is a pity, especially given that bias against Wolsey that both Vergil and Hall so notably exhibit. As for Roper, his intention was to present his father-in-law in as good a light as possible, and one of the ways he chose to do this was by highlighting More as the virtuous Speaker standing up for the liberties of the House of Commons against the wicked and tyrannical Wolsey. Amongst other things, he portrays a Wolsey so angry with More’s behaviour during the parliament that he plotted to send him off to Spain as ambassador – a fate which, according to Roper, More considered would lead to his certain death.87 In fact some of the best Tudor councillors were sent to Spain, including Tunstall, Richard Sampson and Richard Wingfield, and though, while on his embassy in 1525, Wingfield did fall ill and die, it is not possible to argue that such a posting was thought to be a journey to certain death. Roper must be wrong about this, and thus may well be wrong on other matters. And as regards Wolsey’s view of More’s performance as Speaker, it is known that he went out of his way to praise More to Henry for ‘the faithful diligence … in all your causes treated in this your late parliament’, and as a consequence requested that More be paid an additional sum of £100 as a reward being ‘the rather moved to put your highness in remembrance thereof because he is not the most ready to speak and solicit his own cause’.88
Thus, though the literary evidence must be treated with caution, what does emerge without any shadow of doubt from it and from other bits of evidence, in particular that account of the parliament written to Surrey, is that there was considerable opposition to the very large sum of money requested.89 It is also the case that Wolsey asked for more than he was to obtain, and that in order to obtain what was eventually granted he had to indulge in a good deal of politicking. This probably involved two addresses to the Commons, which occasioned much unfavourable comment by both Roper and Hall; and arguably Wolsey did offend against the traditions of the House, at least insofar as he tried to engage the members in direct argument rather than merely stating his case. At any rate, his efforts were foiled by a combination of the MPs’ ‘obstinate silence’ and More’s tact.90 In addition, Hall recounts that when a delegation of the House asked Wolsey ‘to move the king’s highness to be content with an easier sum, he currishly answered that he would rather have his tongue plucked out of his head with a pair of pincers than move the king to take any less sum’.91 He also allegedly lied to the Commons about the Lords’ attitude to the subsidy, claiming that they had accepted the original amount requested, an allegation which seems a little improbable given that the Commons’ superiority in matters of taxation was already well established. So whether true or not92 – and Surrey’s correspondent made no mention of it – the statement was bound to be counter-productive. What does seem to have occurred was a split between the shire MPs and those representing the boroughs, the former having, however reluctantly, agreed to the payment of an additional sum from those with landed incomes of £50 and over, but on condition that those with a non-landed income of the same value should contribute a similar amount. Insofar as the county MPs were successful, this was clearly to the Crown’s advantage. What is not so clear is whether the division was engineered by it, and in particular by Wolsey. Hall says that the suggestion for an extra contribution from the wealthy landed gentry came from Sir John Hussey in order ‘to please the Cardinal’.93 This is not quite the same as saying that Wolsey initiated the move and, given that the division might well have jeopardized the whole subsidy, it seems unlikely. On the other hand, most of the sources state that considerable pr
essure was brought to bear upon what might be called the royal affinity in the House, which is to say the councillors, courtiers and household officials, first to secure their agreement to the subsidy and then to use their influence to get it through. Indeed, Surrey’s correspondent suggested that the subsidy was only passed in a thin House in which the royal affinity predominated, a manoeuvre which could probably only have been achieved with More’s connivance.94
If the details and especially the tone of the evidence that have come down to us are sometimes questionable – did the Commons, for instance, really discuss whether Wolsey should be allowed to address them ‘with all his pomp’, or is this just a ‘Utopian’ embellishment on Roper’s part – it is undoubtedly true that Wolsey had to battle to achieve the subsidy. What is in dispute is how skilfully he went about winning the battle, because win it he did. The great success of the 1523 parliament from the Crown’s point of view, resulting as it did in the granting of a very large sum of money, makes it hard to sustain any serious criticisms of Wolsey’s management of it – though not entirely impossible. If, for instance, parliaments had always been in the habit of happily granting the Crown large sums of money, then the difficulty in 1523 could be held against him. What is now required is a little more context in which to place the events of the 1523 parliament, in the course of which it will be necessary to modify some of the generalizations about this institution already made.
What emerges from even the briefest survey of parliament’s earlier history is that money had always been a bone of contention – not altogether surprising, since it derived its existence from the Crown’s need to extract money more frequently and from a much wider constituency than it had been able to do before parliament came into existence. Parliament was primarily a negotiating chamber where, in return for a sum of money, the Crown’s subjects could secure certain concessions. As such it was a place where conflict frequently arose. Looking back to an earlier period, for instance to Edward III’s or Henry IV’s reign, there was more or less one parliament every year, in contrast to the one every three and a half years referred to earlier as the early Tudor norm, though the sessions were equally brief. Moreover, there is evidence of conflict between Crown and parliament that is more usually associated with the seventeenth century, including impeachment proceedings against the Crown’s ministers and favourites, and an insistence that the Crown account to parliament on the way that taxes had been spent. It is always a mistake to see the conflict between Crown and parliament in purely constitutional terms, and a worse one to think in terms of an ever-increasing crescendo of conflict in which parliament slowly but inexorably gained the upper hand. Both in the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the background to conflict was provided by heavy financial demands from the Crown, the detail by any number of things, such as the, at least perceived, incompetence of the Crown and its ministers and an unpopular foreign policy. The conflict was not confined to parliament – it was in the Council and court that the real power lay and where the main drama was played out – but parliament provided a natural, if occasional, theatre for any competing directors to present their case – and well before 1523.95
What all this means is that in the earlier discussion to some extent the importance of parliament was underplayed, or at any rate the extent to which it had a life of its own and was not just an adjunct of royal power. But there was a reason, or at any rate an excuse, for doing so. The success of Edward IV and Henry VII in both political and financial terms undoubtedly lessened the occasion for conflict, and this in turn meant that not only was there no need to summon parliament so often, but when it did meet less conflict arose. What it does not mean is that there was no conflict, or that the potential for parliament to play a political role had suddenly ceased. And insofar as conflict existed, it was undoubtedly about money. The parliament of 1472-5 had proved extremely reluctant to provide Edward IV with the necessary funds for war with France, and when it did, it hedged the grants around with all sorts of conditions.96 The 1489 parliament was no less suspicious of Henry VII, and when in 1504 he asked for the customary feudal aids for the knighting of his eldest son and the marriage of his daughter, initially they turned the request down.97 Thus, if in comparison with what had gone before, the parliaments of these two kings were rather more malleable, they were never completely so, and undoubtedly needed some management.98 And to make some direct comparisons with what Wolsey did in 1523: on at least two occasions his predecessor as lord chancellor, William Warham, spoke directly to the House of Commons in an effort to persuade them to give money, on both occasions being accompanied by a large entourage.99 Furthermore, in 1512 he had used precisely the same tactic as Wolsey had in 1523, that of asking for a much larger sum than in the end he was willing to settle for.100
The conclusion has to be that the opposition to the request for a large subsidy in 1523 was neither unusual nor unexpected. And within the severe limitations set by the meagre evidence, the conclusion must also be that Wolsey’s response to the problem of raising money was neither unusual nor unexpected. Since it was his job to get the money that the king wanted, his attitude would inevitably be different from that of the majority of MPs and taxpayers. But to turn up in the Commons to plead the king’s case, to bargain, even occasionally to lie, was not only what his predecessors had done but what his successors were to do, never more than in the parliaments of the 1530s. Then, however, in part perhaps because the leading minister, Thomas Cromwell, was not lord chancellor or cleric, and thus was in one sense but another MP, the task of making the dramatic appearances devolved upon Henry.101 The kind of silliness that has singled out Wolsey’s management of the Commons for special condemnation must be put aside. Sadly, it is not possible to replace it with a more sophisticated criticism, because the evidence will not allow it. If at one stage in the proceedings he did lie to the Commons about the Lords’ attitude to the subsidy, one may feel that this was foolish, because so easily detectable. But given that the episode is mentioned by his critics, Hall and Vergil, it would also be foolish to make too much of it. Anyway, an attempt to isolate the Commons by suggesting that their elders and betters were all in favour was probably a gambit worth trying, even if it backfired. And what none of the contemporary comment, including that emanating from Wolsey and the king, suggests is that the government saw the outcome of the 1523 parliament as in any way a defeat; indeed, rather the contrary impression is given. Both Cromwell and Surrey’s unknown correspondent commented upon the unprecedented sum that had been granted, and it seems unlikely that Wolsey would have been anxious for Thomas More to be rewarded for his work as Speaker if he had felt that his management of the House had been a disaster. Thus, when in bringing the parliament to a close, Wolsey thanked it for granting a ‘right large subsidy’ and for ‘taking long pain, travail, study, costs and charges’ in devising statutes for the common weal, there is no reason to suppose that he was having to grit his teeth, or indulging in irony.102
By mid-August 1523, a whole two years after the plan had first been discussed at Bruges, Wolsey was at last in a position to embark upon the Great Enterprise, if that was indeed what he and Henry intended to do. The length of time it had taken to obtain the necessary resources and England’s refusal to commit to any major military intervention against France for another year are but two of the most obvious pointers that suggest that, whatever the propaganda, king and minister approached the Great Enterprise with considerable caution. More ambiguous is the rather cautious tone of the propaganda: much emphasis was placed upon the impossible behaviour of the French king that had prevented the continuation of peace, but very little was said about the conquest of France, or Henry’s rights to its throne. Of course, as time passed, so the circumstances that had led to the Anglo-Imperial alliance altered. When it had been first discussed, the French were still in control of the duchy of Milan, Francis and Charles were campaigning against each other on the north-east borders of France, major revolts in both Castile and Valenci
a were still grumbling on and the strategically important town of Fuentarrabia, situated on the Atlantic coast close to the borders of France, Spain and the disputed territory of Navarre, had just been captured by the French. Insofar as all this meant that the emperor was in need of English help, it resulted in the balance of the new partnership being, if not quite in England’s favour, at least much more so than it quickly became. On 27 April 1522 the French defeat at the battle of La Biococca confirmed her loss of the duchy of Milan the previous November. And when on 16 July Charles landed on Spanish soil again, his rebellious subjects were almost everywhere defeated. More generally, Charles’s residence in Spain during the next seven years inevitably meant that the Imperial centre of gravity went south with him, and this on the whole was bad news for Wolsey. There was first of all the emperor’s anxiety to recapture Fuentarrabia, but more importantly there was his need to achieve a satisfactory settlement in Italy. This meant finding a ruler for the duchy of Milan who, at the very least, would not be opposed to his interests, and persuading the pope to crown him emperor. What it did not mean, and never seems to have meant, as far as Charles and his leading adviser, the grand chancellor Mercurino Gattinara, were concerned, was any serious invasion of France. In other words, they had no real intention of keeping to the promises they had solemnly made at Windsor and Bishops Waltham in the early summer of 1522, just prior to their return to Spain.103
