The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico)
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114Sp. Cal., F.S., p.240.
115 Not until 6 Sept. The agreement with Charles and Margaret was reached on 2 July; see LP, iii, 3149; Sp. Cal., F.S., pp.208, 216.
116 Eaves, pp.126 ff.
117 Cf. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.125 ff. who argues for a divergence of view between Henry and Wolsey from the start.
118LP, iii, 3149.
119 Gunn, ‘French wars’, p.33.
120 Gunn, EHR, ci, pp.607-9.
121St. P, i, p.132 (LP, iii, 3320).
122St. P, i, pp.135-40 (LP, iii, 3346).
123 Scarisbrick, pp.128-9 for this explanation.
124LP, iii, 3346; Sp. Cal., F.S., p.275.
125 I call it Henry’s, but his letters at this time were written by More, acting as royal secretary in the absence of Pace.
126 For instance called a débâcle by Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.130.
127 For all of this see Gunn, EHR, ci, pp.611 ff.
128LP, iv, 8; Sp. Cal., F.S., p.318.
129 Gunn, EHR, ci, pp.611 ff; Knecht, pp.152-6.
130Sp. Cal., ii, 355. It was confirmed at Windsor in June 1522 (Sp. Cal., ii, 441).
131LP, iv, 8, 61, 186, 684, 1628-9; Sp. Cal., F.S., pp.298-304.
132St. P, iv, p.333 (LP, iv, 605).
133LP, iv, 349, 356-7, 365.
134 Eaves, pp.160 ff; Rae, pp.157 ff. In fact peace was not formally concluded until Jan. 1526 but a series of truces beginning on 4 Sept. 1524 produced much the same effect.
135LP, iv, 365.
136LP, iv, 615; Hall, p.684.
137LP, iv, 615; Hall, p.684.
138LP, iv, 420-1, 440-2, 503, 510, 589.
139 For his posting to Bourbon see LP, iv, 361-2, 374, 420-1, 456.
140 He arrived on 13 June.
141St. P, vi, p.313 (LP, iv, 420).
142St. P, vi, p.314 (LP, iv, 442).
143 On this point see LP, iii, 3l23, 3154, 3217.
144St. P, vi, pp.333 ff. (LP, iv, 605). For their full correspondence see LP, iv, 420-l, 440-2, 503, 512, 589.
145St. P, vi, p.333, n.1; ibid, p.364, n.2; Knecht, pp.163 ff.
146 Jacqueton, pp.53-4 for a biographical sketch. The work is of great importance because it makes full and highly intelligent use of material not otherwise readily available. My one complaint concerns the many highly critical comments on Wolsey!
147 A.F. Pollard, pp.137-8; Wilkie, pp.114 ff.
148 A.F. Pollard, pp.137-8.
149 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.131 ff.
150 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.24 ff.
151LP, iii, 3372, 3377, 3389, 3587, 3592, 3609, 3659; Sp. Cal., F.S., p.276; also Chambers, ‘English representation’, pp.512 ff; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.109-10.
152 See pp.98 ff., 144 ff. above.
153St. P, vi, p.282 (LP, iv, 185). For Scarisbrick’s interpretation see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.132.
154St. P, vi, p.282 for Wolsey giving them freedom to decide when the right moment was; for the whole letter see St. P, vi, 278-86 (LP, iv, 185).
155LP, iv, 6, 184.
156 See pp.205 ff. above; also Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.40-5.
157LP, iii, 3659; iv, 26; Sp. Cal, F.S., p.318; made use of in Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.131.
158LP, iv, 446, Clerk to Wolsey, 25 June.
159 That this was what they sought was Giberti’s view in 1525; see LP, iv, 1467.
160LP, iv, 170.
161 Jacqueton, pp.42 ff. for a fuller account.
162Inter alia Sp. Cal., iii (i), p.78.
163LP, iv, 394, 684, 1083.
164LP, iv, 882, 1018.
165LP, iv, 671, 684, 841, 1083, 1132, 1190; Sp. Cal., F.S., pp.335 ff. for Imperial concern; LP, iv, 1002, 1017 for papal concern; LP, iv, 1072 for Venetian concern.
166 His first visit appears to have been brief, but he was back again in June and then stayed for over a year.
167 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.139; but also Hall, p.693.
168 Jacqueton, pp.90-1.
169LP, iv, 394; see also LP, iv, 684.
170LP, iv, 1093, 1160; Jacqueton, pp.66-96.
171 See Sp. Cal., iii (i), pp.23-4, 40, 52, 76, 160.
172LP, iv, 1190.
173LP, iv, 671.
174St. P, i, p.152 (LP, iv, 882).
175 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.28-9 for the view that it was accidental. For Wolsey’s detailed account see St. P, vi, pp.386 ff. (LP, iv, 1083).
176Sp. Cal, iii (i), pp.75 ff.
177 Knecht, pp.160-1.
178LP, iv, 8, 26, 30, 61, 170, 186, 356.
179 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.24-5; Jacqueton, pp.63 ff.
180LP, iv, 882, 1002, 1015, 1017.
181 His letter to Sampson of 19 Nov. was perhaps the most pessimistic (LP, iv, 841), but as against this see LP, iv, 882.
182 Thomas More, Correspondence, pp.314-16 (LP, iv, 1018).
183 Cf. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.7-8.
184St. P, i, p.157 (LP, iv, 1078).
185St. P, i, p.158 (LP, iv, 1078).
186 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, p.30.
187St. P, i, p.157 (LP, iv, 1078).
188Sp. Cal., iii(i), pp.75-82.
189LP, iv, 1160.
190LP, iv, 1628-9 for a list drawn up in Sept. to be used against Imperial objections to England’s seperate peace.
191 See pp.78 ff. above.
192 Jacqueton, pp.90-1 and Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.139 for the view that an agreement was about to be made; Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, p.30 for the view that it was not.
193 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, p.31 for the view that the smallness of England’s contribution was a serious flaw in Wolsey’s policy; also Jacqueton, pp.107-8. For Imperial attitudes see LP, iv, 1190, 1213, 1237-8; Sp. Cal., iii (i), pp.75 ff.
194 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, p.32 for the Angel Gabriel; also Sp. Cal., iii (i), pp.82 ff.
195LP, iv, 1212.
196 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.141.
197 This is the central theme of Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion.
198Sp. Cal, iii (i), p.8. 95, with its reference to ‘last Tuesday’, the 24 March 1525 being a Friday.
199Sp. Cal., iii (i), pp.82 ff; LP, iv, 1199, 1200, 1212.
200LP, iv, 1249, 1255.
201LP, iv, 1249, 1255.
202LP, iv, 1261, 1265.
203LP, iv, 1301; Sp. Cal., iii (i), pp.86 ff.
204LP, iv, 1243.
205LP, iv, 1443 Clerk’s report of his interview dated 22 June. Wolsey’s letter to him, brought by Casale, must have been written on or about 19 May; at any rate letters delivered by Casale to Russell and Pace were dated 18 and 19 May respectively; see LP, iv, 1410, 1419.
206St. P, i, 160 (LP, iv, 137); for its dating see Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, p.51, n.210.
207 BL Vespasian C iii, fo.76v (LP, iv, 1488).
208 Henry Ellis, 2 ser, i, p.335 (LP, iv, 2033).
209Sp. Cal., iii (i), p.132.
210Sp. Cal., iii (i), p.135.
211Sp. Cal., iii (i), pp.111-2.
212LP, iv, 1301, 1307.
213Sp. Cal., iii (i), p.153.
214Sp. Cal., iii (i), p.153.
215 Due on 9 Feb. but not paid until considerably later though interestingly, given the widespread pleas of poverty, almost in full; see Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.125-9.
216 Harriss, HJ, 6; J.R. Lander, Crown and Nobility, pp.220-41; Ross, pp.205-38, 278-95.
217 The decision to postpone was taken sometime before 7 April and the instructions went out on 21st; see LP, iv, 1249; LP App, 34.
218 Charles was anyway to be offered about £40,000. He was also advised to ask his own subjects for a benevolence; see St. P, vi, pp.421-3, 427-8 (LP, iv, 1212).
219LP, iv, 1301 (1); Sp. Cal, iii (i) 92, 109-12, pp.125, 131-6, 146.
220 Hall, p.694; Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, p.56.
221 Bernard, War, Taxation and
Rebellion, pp.76 ff.
222 On 1 April Norfolk reported some initial opposition in Norwich, but by 14th Lynn and Yarmouth had agreed, while three days earlier most of Suffolk was ‘conformable’; see LP, iv, 1235, 1260, 1265.
223LP, iv, 1272.
224 The St. George’s day celebrations on and around 23 April would have provided the opportunity.
225 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.56-60.
226LP, iv, 1332.
227 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.138-40. According to Hall the poorest category asked to pay consisted of those worth between £20 and £1. In Kent no one worth less than £20 appears to have been approached (LP, iv, 1306). In Norfolk they were, but a clear distinction was made between those worth over and under £20, which seems a high dividing line if those under £1 were to be included (LP, iv, 1241, 1265).
228 Hall, pp.699-700; LP, iv, 1236.
229 Ross, p, 217; Chrimes, Henry VII, pp.203-5.
230 Chrimes, Henry VII, pp.88-92.
231LP, iv, 1319, 1323, 1325; Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.136-49.
232LP, iv, 1319.
233 BL Cleopatra F vi, fo.261 (LP, iv, 1323) a document which for once was inadequately calendared.
234 PRO SP l/34/fo.196 (LP, iv, 1329).
235LP, iv, 1330.
236LP, iv, 1329.
237 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.138-9; Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp.66-7 for a rejection of such a view.
238 Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp 60-6 for a full treatment of this important point.
239LP, iv, 1233. This much mutilated letter is printed in Jacqueton, pp.316-20. He dates it to the first fortnight of May (ibid, p.112). In LP it is placed at the beginning of April.
240LP, iv, 1371, dated by Bernard 27 May (War, Taxation and Rebellion, p.51, n.210); Ven. Cal., iii, p.446 for Joachim’s departure from Lyons; Braudel, i, p.362 for the speed of letters.
241 BL Vitellius B vii, fo.116 (LP, iv, 1336).
242 BL Vitellius B vii, fo, 126 (LP, iv, 1336).
243LP, iv, 1600-6, 1609; Jacqueton, pp.113 ff.
244LP, iv, 1609, 1617.
245LP, iv, 1379.
246LP, iv, 1390, 1484, 1557, 1559.
247St. P, vi, pp.468-71 (LP, iv, 1557). The comments are in Tuke’s handwriting, but are clearly Wolsey’s views for Henry’s benefit.
248St. P, vi, pp, 469-70.
249 Most informative is probably the one just discussed (LP, iv, 1557), but see also LP, iv, 1380, 1421-2, 1555, 1655.
250St. P, vi, 470 (LP, iv, 1557).
CHAPTER TEN
WOLSEY AND THE COMMON WEAL
IT WOULD BE TO MAKE NO JUDGEMENT ON HIS MORAL WORTH TO STATE THAT Wolsey took a great interest in the well-being of the king’s subjects: what he and his contemporaries called ‘the common weal’. Whatever his private shortcomings, as a leading royal councillor he could hardly have avoided doing so. Unhappy subjects are dangerous, or at the very least uncooperative, and even the most cynical of regimes is inclined to avoid trouble if it can. The lord chancellor’s special responsibility for the poor, discussed earlier, devolved to him from the king, whom both theory and tradition enjoined to ‘seek the profit of the people as much as his own’.1 Tradition and theory can, of course, be ignored, but unless necessity compels otherwise most people are conventional enough to go along with them, even to believe in them! As a starting point, therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that Henry VIII and his councillors, including Wolsey, were no exceptions.2 It was also the case that both late medieval and early modern governments very much favoured state regulation over the workings of the free market. Whether, as a consequence, it makes sense to talk of them having an economic policy – what for the early modern period has been called mercantilism – is much disputed; most recent historians have tended to be sceptical, in part because so much government intervention in social and economic matters was apparently so half-hearted and ineffective.3 In what follows this larger issue cannot be ignored, but a warning is called for. By its very nature, it is a wide and open-ended debate, for the subject matter ranges from the minutiae of village life to the complexities of the European money markets, taking in on the way the size and quality of pieces of cloth, the question of whether people should be allowed to play cards, what they should be allowed to wear, what Thames watermen should be allowed to charge, and so on. The terrain is vast, the existing maps unclear, and the danger of getting lost very great. Furthermore the problem of trying to define Wolsey’s contribution in this area is even more acute than elsewhere. No writings or memoranda by him on social or economic matters have survived, and it is even quite hard to connect him directly with any social or economic legislation. But in two matters, enclosure and the combination of bad harvests and the dislocation of trade during 1527-9, the government’s involvement was so great that, given his position and personality, it is not possible to doubt his personal involvement. Indeed, he seems to have instituted major government initiatives, and, furthermore, to have gone to considerable efforts to try to ensure their success.
It was in May 1517 that commissioners were appointed to inquire into the extent of depopulation and enclosure in all but the four most northern counties.4 They, in turn, were to summon juries of local men whose task was to report on
which and how many towns and hamlets, and how many houses and buildings, have been destroyed since the feast of St Michael the archangel in the 4th year [1488] of the reign of the illustrious Lord Henry VII, late king of England, our dearly beloved father, and how many and how large the lands which were then in tillage and have now been put down and converted to pasture, and also how many and how large parks have been emparked since the feast for the preservation of game, and what lands have been enclosed in any park at any time.5
For those who have seen Wolsey as power-hungry, self-obsessed and essentially frivolous, this apparent concern for the poor and dispossessed has been inconvenient, so it has been necessary for them to undermine his efforts. Pollard thought that they were ineffective and possibly illegal.6 More recently they have have been cited as evidence of a ‘crass absence of political sensitivity and an unflinching refusal to look reality in the face’.7 However, Wolsey has also had one recent champion in J.J. Scarisbrick, who in a very important essay, whose title this chapter deliberately echoes, sought to show that Wolsey deserved the plaudits and the tears bestowed on him by the poor commons on his final journey, for he had truly laboured on their behalf. It is this view that will be accepted here; indeed, much of what follows is but a commentary on Scarisbrick’s pioneering work.8
The charge of political insensitivity derives from the provision under the still operative statutes of 1489 and 1515, that held the landowners responsible for any infringements,9 so that it was on the whole important people who found themselves facing prosecution. This included not just the gentry, but heads of important religious houses such as Peterborough and Reading; Wolsey’s own episcopal colleagues, including his former patron, Richard Fox; and at least nine noblemen, amongst whom were the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk.10 But it is a point that can be overstressed. Since very few of these people were personally involved in enclosure and the charges against them were thus technical, the offence having been committed by tenants who were probably not even known to them, there was little personal blame attached to the prosecutions, nor was any slight intended. Indeed, those who were closely involved in government, which is to say the most powerful of them, were presumably as anxious as Wolsey that the government’s efforts to tackle the problem should succeed – and this is not entirely speculation.
The views on enclosure of only two royal councillors have survived. One, John Longland bishop of Lincoln, was positively in favour of what the government was doing, while the other, Sir Thomas More, was the author of a famous attack on enclosers. Both may have been prosecuted for enclosure! This does not, however, make them hypocrites. Longland himself may have escaped prosecution, but, if so, his predeces
sor William Atwater did not, which is to make the point that either would have been prosecuted not as active enclosers, but as, by virtue of their office, the chance owners of the land concerned.11 There is no doubt at all, though, that in Hilary term 1527 More did appear in court as a defendant in an enclosure case, but, as he had acquired the property in question only two years earlier, on the death of Sir Thomas Lovell, it is difficult to attach any blame to him.12 This is not to suggest that having to answer in court, even for an offence one had not committed, was not without embarrassment. It could also be tedious and costly, and may well have dampened enthusiasm for what the Crown and its leading minister were doing. But these prosecutions do not amount to a serious attack on the political nation, such as might justify the accusation of gross political insensitivity. This is especially so since, as will shortly emerge, the number of eminent people for whom enclosure was an important financial concern was probably very small.13