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

by Gwyn, Peter

  86 In suggesting this I have again relied heavily on H.A. Kelly’s work; see Matrimonial Trials, pp.75 ff. which needs to be consulted, especially for a detailed discussion of the sources; but see also V. Murphy’s introduction to Surtz and Murphy.

  87 A PS to Campeggio’s letter of 21 June in Ehses, Römische Dokumente, pp.107-10, translated in Gairdner, EHR, xii, pp.249-52 the PS is not in LP. The treatment of all Campeggio’s letters in LP needs to be checked with Ehses, Römische Dokumente.

  88 Ehses, Römische Dokumente, p.120 (LP, iv, 5775), though not a calendar of the complete letter.

  89 Ehses, Römische Dokumente, pp.116-17 (LP, iv, 5732), though a letter by Campeggio’s secretary, not, as stated in LP, by Campeggio). For du Bellay’s account see LP, iv, 5741.

  90 Ehses, Römische Dokumente, pp.117-18.

  91 H.A. Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, p.97.

  92 Cavendish, p.85.

  93LP, iv, app.21.

  94 Ehses, Römische Dokumente, pp.58-9.

  95 Cavendish, p.81; see also Ehses, Römische Dokumente, pp.108-9.

  96LP, iv, 4685 for Wolsey’s assertion.

  97 Ehses, Römische Dokumente, p.59 said by Catherine to Campeggio when taking confession.

  98LP, iv, 5774, 5778, 5783, 5791; see also Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, pp.112 ff.

  99 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.188, n.3. In addition to the references cited there see Sp. Cal., F.S., p.450. And in October 1529 Chapuys reported Henry allowing Catherine’s claim, admittedly only in order to convince her that the marriage would still be invalid because the original dispensation had made no reference to public honesty, an argument that interestingly Chapuys dismissed as being as thin as ‘la glace d’une nuit’; see Sp. Cal., iv (i), p.275.

  100 Catherine’s challenge was made in her mandate to the pope of 10 May 1529 and passed on to Henry in Clement’s letter of 7 Oct. 1529; see LP, iv, 5994. See also H.A. Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, pp.135-47.

  101 H.A. Kelly, pp.224-9.

  102 H.A. Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, pp.95-6. It looks as if, in answer to the question whether he had found her a virgin, he had admitted uncertainty, may even have said she was a virgin, an admission too damaging to have been left on the record. For the evidence of Campeggio’s secretary for Henry’s answer see LP, iv, 6694; also Sp. Cal., iv (i), p.656.

  103 H.A. Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, pp.120. Scarisbrick in Henry VIII, p.227, n.2 assigned the adjournment to the 31st. This would help to solve some of the puzzles surrounding Wolsey’s letter of 27th (LP, iv, 5797), which implies that the trial was still in progress, but the record of the trial does not support his suggestion, and a scribal error does not seem very likely; see H.A. Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, pp.127-8.

  104 For instance, Wolsey asked for the instant recall of Peter Vannes, but this does not seem to have happened until October.

  105St. P, vii, p.193, n.1.

  106St. P, vii, pp.193-4 (LP, iv, 5797).

  107LP, iv, 5789.

  108 For the fact that the dates were not binding see H.A. Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, p.78.

  109 But formally agreed to on the 16th; see Ehses, Römische Dokumente, pp.122-5; H.A. Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, p.136.

  110 Wolsey’s instructions to the English envoys at Rome of 27 July were for them to act on the assumption that the advocation had been granted; see St. P, vii, p.194, but then the decision back in May to go ahead with the legatine trial had been taken on the basis that an advocation was likely.

  111 This in Cavendish, p.90; but see also Hall, p.758, who has Suffolk making ‘a great clap on the table with his hand’.

  112 Hall’s version is a little more complicated but in it Henry knew of the postponement before it occurred and ordered Norfolk, Suffolk and ‘other nobles of the Council’ to intervene; see Hall, p.758. For Chapuy’s report see Sp. Cal.10 (i), p.263.

  113 See pp.591-2 below.

  114 For his actual words see Burnet, iv, p.84 (LP, iv, 5428).

  115 See pp.386 ff. above for a very full discussion of this volte-face.

  116 The treaty is well summarized in Knecht, p.185; for the financial terms see LP, iv, 1602-4; for Louise’s reluctance see LP, iv, 1609.

  117 Knecht, pp.209-10 for the terms.

  118 Lautrec left Paris on 2 July (LP, iv, 3215, 3225) and was rumoured to be at Asti on 2 Aug. (LP, iv, 3329).

  119St. P, i, p.255 (LP, iv, 3350).

  120LP, iv, 3337, 3343, 3362-4, 3381, 3400; amongst other things Wolsey had to fend off Henry’s worry that he was allowing Francis to make too many concessions to Charles.

  121 Knecht, p.189.

  122 Hook, pp.155 ff. for an excellent treatment of the sack of Rome.

  123St. P, i, p.254 (LP, iv, 3340).

  124 Ehses, Römische Dokumente, 69.

  125 Brandi, pp.352-3.

  126 For this episode involving Francisco Felipez see Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, pp.185-6.

  127LP, iv, 3312.

  128LP, iv, 3322 for Charles’s apologia to Henry for the sack of Rome.

  129LP, iv, 3247, 3311.

  130St. P, i, p.271 (LP, iv, 3400); see also LP, iv, 3401, 3423. For the view that these plans are evidence for Wolsey’s increasing megalomania see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.157-8.

  131St. P, pp.230-1, 270-1 (LP, iv, 3311, 3400).

  132 In his letter to Henry of 29 July Wolsey made it clear that the pope’s release was his chief priority, while as early as 2 June he had pointed out that the pope’s death or captivity would hinder the king’s affairs; see St. P, i, pp.189, 230-1 (LP, iv, 3147, 3311). See also LP, iv, 3179.

  133 For this and much of what follows see Hook, pp.219 ff.

  134 Pastor, x, pp.256 ff.

  135LP, iv, 4737).

  136 He fell ill on 9 Jan. 1529; for a useful chronology of the illness see Hughes, i, p.182, n.1.

  137St. P, vii, pp.104-6, 132-4 (LP, iv, 4897, 4978); LP, iv, 5038, 5073, 5151-2

  138LP, iv, 5038.

  139 Ehses, pp.54-5, 108; Gairdner, EHR xii, p.250; Parmiter, pp.66-7.

  140 Ehses, p.108; Gairdner, xii, pp.250-1.

  141 Hook, p.239.

  142 Hook, pp.198-9.

  143LP, iv, 4737).

  144 Hook, pp.201 ff; Stephens, pp.203 ff.

  145LP, iv, 5038.

  146 Pastor, x, pp.56-7.

  147LP, iv, 5133.

  148LP, iv, 4482, 4553.

  149LP, iv, 5016, 5421; LP, iv, app.145, 158, 177, 180, 196,203.

  150LP, iv, 5133; LP, iv, pp.2178, 2200. See also LP, iv, 3989 for Henry’s letter to the doge in Feb. 1528; also LP, iv, 5538â

  151LP, iv, 3957. The return of the two cities was central to Wolsey’s peace plans of December 1528; see LP, iv, 5028.

  152 On all this see Mallet and Hale, pp.225-9.

  153 For an assessment that Clement would turn to the devil if that would help get them back, see LP, iv, 4900; for Clement’s secretary’s view in April 1529 that Henry could expect no remedy while Venice retained papal territory see LP, iv, 5447.

  154LP, iv, 3826-7.

  155LP, iv, 4564.

  156LP, iv, app.162, 164.

  157LP, iv, 3959, 3966, 4376; see also pp.455-6 above.

  158Sp. Cal., iii (ii), pp.802-3, 808-14; LP, iv, 4909-10.

  159LP, iv, 5050 for Wolsey’s detailed presentation of them, but see also LP, iv, 4897, 5028, 5053, 5133, 5179; LP, iv, 5138-9, 5148 for papal reactions.

  160Inter alia LP, iv, 3641, 3913, 3921, 4251, 4897, 5417.

  161LP, iv, 4977, 5014; Hook, p.239.

  162 See p.464 ff. above.

  163LP, iv, 5138 for Clement’s favourable response; for Imperial worries see Sp. Cal, iii (ii), pp.922-3, 929-30.

  164 Hook, pp.244-6; Pastor, x, pp.32-67.

  165LP, iv, 5387; Sp. Cal., iii (ii), pp.911, 915, 921-2, 929-30.

  166 Hook, pp.246-8; Pastor, x, p.53; for Casale’s assessment to Wolsey of 21 April see LP, iv, 5478; also Sp. Cal., iii (ii), 924 for the importance of events in Florence.

  167LP, iv, 531
4.

  168LP, iv, 5428.

  169LP, iv, 5523.

  170 Pastor, x, p.52.

  171Inter alia Elton, Reform and Reformation, pp.110-11; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp.232-3.

  172LP, iv, 4945, 4985; for Tuke’s suspicions on 9 Dec. see LP, iv, 5018; also LP, iv, 5137, 5163, 5231 for early English awareness of Franco- Imperial negotiations.

  173 See especially Wolsey’s boast to du Bellay in early December that England would not be left in the lurch by the emperor and Francis in LP, iv, 5016; also LP, iv, 5572, 5636, 5701. As against this one needs to look at Tuke’s prescient analysis of why Francis and Charles needed peace, sent to Wolsey on 4 March.

  174 They left England on 17 May; see LP, iv, 2462. See also LP, iv, 5523, 5535, 5582, 5601; I assume the military proposals would be along the lines outlined to du Bellay in December, to be put into effect if Charles proved intransigent, see LP, iv, 5028. It was typical of Wolsey to become more bullish the heavier the going became.

  175 Bellay, Correspondence, pp.25-30 (LP, iv, 5601); also LP, iv, 5704; Knecht, p.219. It is clear that as late as 26 May Wolsey held some hope of averting Cambrai, but only some; see St. P, i, p.334 (LP, iv, 5595).

  176 LP, iv, 5801 Wolsey’s own assessment of 30 July.

  177 LP, iv, 5016

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WOLSEY’S DOWNFALL

  IN MAY 1519 SEBASTIAN GIUSTINIAN, THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR, REPORTED from England: ‘Within the last few days his majesty has made a very great change in the court here, dismissing four of his chief lords-in-waiting.’1 According to some accounts, both at the time and since, the man behind this ‘purge’ was Cardinal Wolsey. Some six and a half years later in the Eltham Ordinances of January 1526, he allegedly attempted another. In the meantime he had worked hard to ensure that Richard Pace, appointed royal secretary in 1516, was kept from the king’s presence by being despatched to Italy in December 1521, on a mission from which he did not return until November 1525, by which time he was insane. Thomas Howard, who became 3rd duke of Norfolk in 1524, was made of sterner stuff. Wolsey tried the same tactics with him: from 1520 to 1525 Norfolk was kept well away from the king by almost full-time employment in Ireland or on the Scottish border. But after 1524 potential trouble spots to which to banish him ran out, and Norfolk returned to court to begin his plotting against the cardinal. By 1527 Henry had fallen desperately in love with the duke’s niece, Anne Boleyn, and this provided him with his opportunity. Combining with the Boleyn family and other members of the nobility, in some accounts with almost all of them but certainly with Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk, he managed by October 1529 to persuade a weak-minded and dithering Henry to dismiss his lord chancellor from office. And, when Henry showed signs of restoring him, Norfolk and his allies were able to convince him of Wolsey’s treason, so that only his death from natural causes on 29 November 1530 saved him from the executioner’s axe. There have been many variations of this scenario, but always at their core is a simple model: an unpopular royal favourite constantly having to fight to retain his hold on a king all too easily manipulated by those around him. In the end Wolsey lost the fight, the nobility took their revenge and yet another meddlesome priest had been taught a lesson.

  It will be immediately apparent that this scenario has already been considerably undermined. Wolsey, it has been argued, was not a royal favourite, or certainly not to the exclusion of other royal councillors. He had not set out to antagonize the nobility, or in any way to harm its interests, except when they directly conflicted with those of Crown and common weal, which was not all that often. Moreover, he was far too skilful a political animal needlessly to offend anybody, nor is there any evidence that he did so on anything like the scale that the scenario requires. Above all, Henry was quite capable of making up his own mind about whom he consulted and when, and whom he rewarded and by how much. Thus, if there was faction fighting at court, his role would have been that of puppeteer rather than puppet. All this makes it highly unlikely that any conspiracy theory could explain Wolsey’s downfall – and that it did not will be the main thrust of what follows. However, before the question of the downfall is confronted, the earlier episodes involving Richard Pace and members of the privy chamber must be dealt with.

  The picture of the scholarly Pace being hounded into an abyss of paranoia and despair by one so much more politically adept than himself is not a pleasant one, and, if it were true, would have seriously to modify the view of Wolsey that has so far emerged. What is true is that in the autumn of 1521 Wolsey was cross with Pace. He was at Calais, heavily involved in complicated negotiations with the French and Imperialists while Pace had remained with the king in England, where his principal task as secretary was to act as a channel of communication between king and cardinal. This was not easy, especially as there were disagreements between the two. These, it was argued earlier, 2 had been to do merely with tactical matters, but they were nevertheless genuine; and given the complexities of the negotiations and the logistical problems involved in any communications, it is not surprising that misunderstandings occurred and that Pace received some of the blame. He was very much the pig in the middle, and things only got worse when Thomas More, who had been with Wolsey in Calais, informed him on his return that there were two more personal matters that Wolsey was annoyed about. In both these Pace was accused of interfering with Wolsey’s patronage. As regards the appointment of a new prior of Marton, a small Augustinian house in Wolsey’s diocese of York, Pace’s defence was that it was Henry who had recommended a particular canon for the office;3 and, given Henry’s interests in all such matters, that defence rings true. With the other appointment, to a minor office in Chancery, Pace maintained that there had been a genuine misunderstanding. He had been led to believe by the candidate that it was in the gift of the master of the rolls, whose candidate had therefore secured the office.4 Again, the secretary’s defence seems convincing: just the kind of muddle that can cause trouble, however benign the intentions of those involved.

  What lay behind the friction was the separation of king and cardinal, plus the enormous pressure imposed upon Wolsey, who was having to pretend to conduct an even-handed policy between the French and the Imperialists when he was doing nothing of the sort. Henry appears not to have been very sensitive to the circumstances, and hence the disagreements and poor Pace’s troubles. When appointments which Wolsey believed to be in his own gift had been made without his consent, and with Pace’s knowledge, it was the last straw, but not one that was likely to break his back. One thing that suggests this is that Pace did get to hear of Wolsey’s displeasure, and the matter came out into the open. How we interpret this depends to some extent on whether Wolsey had told More to give Pace a ticking off, or whether, as Pace’s friend, More had passed on Wolsey’s grumbles on his own initiative.5 The latter seems unlikely, but in either case surely Wolsey was being a little careless, even silly, in signalling his displeasure to someone who might be emerging as his arch-rival for the king’s favours? Alternatively, he saw him not as an arch-rival but as someone who was making a bit of a mess of things and needed to be told as much. Given that Wolsey was usually neither silly nor careless, it is the latter view that best fits the known facts.

  Wolsey arrived back from Calais at the end of November 1521, and by the end of December Pace was on his way to Rome and insanity. The price he paid for incurring Wolsey’s displeasure was heavy indeed – or so it has been alleged.6 A closer look suggests another interpretation. The first point to be made is that royal secretaries frequently went on diplomatic missions; indeed, until Thomas Cromwell’s appointment in 1533 these were very much part of the job description.7 There was thus nothing odd in sending Pace abroad, and in fact he was an excellent, if rather obvious choice, for the mission that he was sent on. Before being recruited to Wolsey’s household in 1514 he had spent over fifteen years in Italy, during the last five of which, as Cardinal Bainbridge’s secretary, he had been heavily involved in curial politics.8 He h
ad many friends in Italy, and his reputation as a published scholar would have boosted his standing in a milieu in which humanist studies were fashionable. It was for these reasons that he had been sent to Northern Italy with the important task of organizing opposition to the French, first in 1515 and then again in December 1521. On the second occasion there was a further reason, and one that explains the precise timing of his mission: namely, the death on 2 December of Leo x and the decision to nominate Wolsey in the ensuing election. In fact, Wolsey’s candidature was not very serious, 9 and it was important foreign policy considerations that really explain the choice of Pace. Wolsey, it may be remembered, had come back from Calais with an alliance with the emperor and plans, at least in embryo, for that major offensive against the French, the Great Enterprise. In these plans the situation in Italy was of vital importance, and it would be especially helpful if the alliance between France and Venice could be broken. It was this that soon became Pace’s main task, and by the end of July 1523 he had accomplished it. A fortnight later Pope Adrian VI died, and Pace was asked to stay in Italy to help promote Wolsey’s second candidature for the papacy, and to ensure that, if Wolsey failed, Giulio de’ Medici, considered favourably disposed towards the Anglo-Imperial alliance, did not. Once this had been achieved, it had been Wolsey’s intention to let Pace return home. Indeed, he did get as far as the Low Countries, but was then diverted back to Northern Italy to act as England’s representative with the rebel duke of Bourbon, whose co-operation was seen as essential to allied success.10