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

by Gwyn, Peter

  But if neither Norfolk nor Suffolk was a likely candidate for the role of factional leader, why, we must ask again, have so many intelligent people thought that they were? Part of the explanation is that whatever their character and ability, these two men were great figures on the political scene, and thus bound to be the focus of speculation and rumour. Moreover, it was always likely that they would be seen as Wolsey’s rivals, especially by foreign ambassadors. Since it was with the cardinal that the ambassadors did most business, it was natural for them to identify the current policy with him, and to some extent they were right: Wolsey was very much in charge of the conduct of foreign policy, and thus in a very good position to influence its direction. But it has been one of the themes of this book that the direction was of the king’s choosing, and that both he and Wolsey consulted with other councillors, including Norfolk and Suffolk. The temptation for the resident foreign ambassadors was to ignore this and to concentrate too much upon the figure of the cardinal, and in this way to get a slightly distorted picture of what was going on at court. Thus, for Mendoza, Wolsey was the emperor’s sole enemy against whom he hoped and believed Charles’s many friends in England were plotting. For du Bellay, he was the one friend of France surrounded by her many enemies. Both saw him much as it suited them to, as an isolated figure opposed by everyone else in England, but most significantly by the likes of Norfolk and Suffolk. Thus both ambassadors ended up with a similar picture of the politics of the late 1520s, but one that was sufficiently out of focus to have seriously misled subsequent historians as to the reasons why Wolsey fell from power. However, this would not have happened if their picture had been totally unrecognizable, and it is just as important to discover in what ways they got it right as how they got it wrong.

  It would not have displeased Mendoza to report in May 1527 a London near to rebellion, especially angered at the prospect of a French marriage for Mary. Handbills opposing it were being circulated at night, and pasquinades critical of both Henry and Wolsey were appearing all over the city.113 And although Mendoza was probably exaggerating, the government was taking the situation extremely seriously. Edward Hall records ‘a great watch’ being ordered throughout the city on the last day of April, 114 while on 30 June Henry wrote to all the great livery companies warning them against ‘divers persons of light disposition which study to raise and bring up seditious, untrue, and slanderous rumours’, ordering them to do everything possible to suppress their activities.115 At the same time a massive propaganda exercise, including an exchange of the highest chivalric honours the English and French kings could grant, the orders of the garter and St Michael, in order to win people over to the new alliance was undertaken. For his part, Wolsey appears to have made two lengthy speeches in Star Chamber, one shortly after his return from France, presumably in October 1527, 116 and the other in February 1528 following the formal declaration of war against the emperor.117 On both occasions the audience was large, including, at least on the first, not only representatives of the city of London but JPs from all over the country. But on neither occasion, at least according to Hall and he is about the only source for these two speeches, was the audience very impressed:

  Some knocked the other on the elbow and said softly he lieth, others said that evil will said never well, others said that the French crowns made him speak evil of the emperor, but they that knew all that you have heard before said that it was a shame for him to lie in such an audience.118

  Hall’s chronic francophobia calls for caution in interpreting his account, but it receives support from too many sources for it to be ignored or explained away.119 Nor did the unpopularity of the French alliance stem only from the traditional francophobia, which, after all, had not prevented the nation from earlier becoming increasingly reluctant to pay for a war against France, which had cost some £470,000. And having shown every sign of refusing to pay the Amicable Grant of 1525, now, in 1527, they were faced not only with the prospect of further taxation for war against England’s traditional friends, but also with a disruption of the vital trade with the Low Countries. What with the disastrous harvest of that year, bringing with it the likelihood of severe grain shortages and high prices, and, on top of all this, rumours that Henry was determined to get rid of his popular, ‘Imperialist’ queen, no wonder the government felt under some pressure!

  Before we discuss the consequences of this pressure upon Wolsey, it will be useful to dispose of the question of whether or not it was being in any way manipulated by his potential rivals, particularly Norfolk and Suffolk. Much of the argument already presented would suggest that the answer must be no. But that the two dukes turned down the opportunity afforded by the troubles in East Anglia to further a plot to topple Wolsey does not in itself settle the matter. To have come out in support of, or to have attempted to manipulate, the ‘many-headed monster’ that the poorer classes became when restless would have been to play with the kind of fire that Tudor noblemen on the whole avoided. On the other hand, to try to persuade the king that his chief adviser was advocating a foreign policy wholly detrimental to the king’s own interests would have been merely to perform the good office of a royal councillor. It is just conceivable that a dislike of the pro-French direction of foreign policy, which it would have been easy to blame on Wolsey, could have united enough important people in moves to change that direction by advocating the removal of the man so closely identified with it.

  The notion that this was what the triumvirate tried to do depends largely on the belief that Norfolk was at this time pro-Imperialist. But the evidence is slight and, such as it is, difficult to interpret. Given his assumption that everyone except Wolsey was on his side, the fact that Mendoza saw Norfolk as being sympathetic to the emperor is not very conclusive. Similarly du Bellay, who saw everybody as anti-French, included Norfolk in this category. So also did members of an important French mission to England in the spring of 1527. Moreover, a French account of that embassy appears at first sight to offer proof not only that Norfolk was pro-Imperialist, but that he was prepared to fight for a pro-Imperialist policy in direct opposition to Wolsey’s wishes, even as far as launching an attack, in the king’s presence, on both Wolsey and the policy he was pursuing.120 The only trouble with this as evidence is that it was supplied to the French by none other than Wolsey himself, and one does not go around advertising such opposition unless one has a specific purpose in mind which, of course, Wolsey did. He was up to his usual ploy with the French, and here one can see it working in a rather precise way. For the French envoys rushed a courier back to Francis to warn him that, because of the extent of the opposition to the alliance, further bargaining and delay could result in no treaty at all. Francis took the hint, the French duly settled, and Wolsey had won a small diplomatic victory of the kind he was rather good at winning.121 The price of victory, however, was almost certainly a little exaggeration, if not a downright lie, for it is highly improbable that there would have been serious opposition amongst royal councillors to a French alliance, whatever their natural inclinations, and whatever the evidence to the contrary.

  The attachment to France was fully discussed earlier, and all that needs to be stressed here is that to obtain the divorce it was essential, for it was only with French support that enough pressure could be exerted on the pope to grant it.122 This being so, to oppose the alliance would have been in effect to oppose the king in the matter nearest to his heart, not a very sensible move for anyone aiming to bring down the king’s leading minister. Admittedly, it could be argued that, since in those negotiations with the French in April 1527 the effect of the divorce on the conduct of English foreign policy would not have been obvious, the alliance might at least have been questioned, but even that is not very likely. The argument of this book has been that, if many of the tactical decisions were Wolsey’s, Henry controlled the general direction of foreign policy, so that talk of opposition to Wolsey’s policy has to be misleading. This does not exclude the possibility that different poin
ts of view were being put to Henry by different councillors, indeed, it was their duty to do so, 123 but if Henry decided the policy, then the only person to be toppled, if that policy was not to one’s liking was the king himself and the loyal and over-conscientious Norfolk was not likely to contemplate that! The French alliance had been the cornerstone of English policy for almost two years, and there is no evidence to suggest that in early 1527 Henry was having serious doubts about it.

  What should also be remembered is that the tactics being used by Wolsey at this time were not crudely anti-Imperial; and at no point during this period, despite the reluctant declaration of war in January 1528, was Wolsey not engaged in some kind of negotiations with the emperor. Moreover, he had moved quickly to obviate the problems that a dislocation of trade with the Low Countries would bring, by making a separate truce with the regent, Margaret of Austria.124 Norfolk may not always have followed the intricacies of Wolsey’s foreign policy, but he would have been well aware of its broad outlines and of how far the popular caricature of Wolsey as one who had sold himself to the French was from the truth. None of this means that the duke may not have had some worries – when did he ever not! In 1531 it was the departing Venetian ambassador’s assessment that Norfolk bore ill-will to all foreigners;125 and there was always something of the Little Englander about him, a characteristic which combined happily with the Howard caution. So it would be understandable if he had expressed some concern about where a military commitment to France might lead to, and none knew better that the discontent in East Anglia was not unconnected with the current direction of English foreign policy – but to express such concern is a long way from plotting and caballing.

  Dislike of the French alliance does not explain the plotting itself, but insofar as it greatly contributed to the growing unpopularity of Henry’s government from mid-1527 onwards, it does help to explain the widespread belief in such plotting, both at the time and since. Also contributing were the bad harvests, the disruption in foreign trade, and increasingly the divorce. Quite why the country came to Catherine’s defence in the remarkable way that almost every scrap of evidence suggests it did, is not entirely clear. She can hardly be called charismatic, but then perhaps merely by being a queen she acquired charisma. Moreover, she had been a devoted and loyal queen and wife for almost twenty years, and the injustice of her situation may have earned her the esteem of ordinary people, as well as many at court. True that it was perfectly possible under canon law to secure an annulment, and there may have been people, including, it would seem, Archbishop Warham, 126who genuinely believed that Henry had a case in law. But the common perception seems to have been, and surely quite rightly, that his case was mere casuistry, designed to enable him to marry the woman he loved or, more plainly, to bed his whore with a slightly better conscience. Not enough is usually made of the unpopularity of the divorce, or, indeed, of the general unpopularity of Henry’s government in the late 1520s, but it is a vital part of the present story, for it was bound to focus on the man who, as the king’s leading minister and cardinal legate, appeared to be responsible for much of what was going wrong. Criticisms of the king were also made, 127 but it was much safer to lay the blame on one of his councillors; and anyway the whole panoply of kingship made it difficult to confront the man behind it. When the Amicable Grant had made royal government a target in the spring of 1525, Warham in an effort to console Wolsey had pointed out that ‘it hath been and ever shall be that whatsoever be in most favour and most of counsel with a great prince shall be maligned and ill spoken of, do he never so well’.128 If the remark fitted Wolsey’s situation in 1525, how much better did it fit it two years later.

  And what the many problems facing Henry’s government in the late 1520s may have encouraged is that strain of anticlericalism which, it was suggested earlier, was endemic at court.129 In August 1527 the king’s secretary, William Knight, wrote to Wolsey, then in France, to warn him that since ‘the king and noblemen speak things incredible of the acts of Mr Allen and Cromwell’, it would be sensible for Wolsey to use someone other than Allen as his messenger to the king.130 The ‘Mr Allen’ was John Allen, Wolsey’s chief legatine commissary, who had carried out the visitations of monastic houses. Cromwell was at this time a leading member of Wolsey’s household, his principal task being the setting up of Wolsey’s colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. The suppression of the thirty-odd largely small monastic houses in order to provide endowments for these colleges had been unpopular, unleashing a combination of local sentiment and genuine religious feeling, as well as self-interest on the part of laymen with rights and interests in those houses.131 The following summer, in letters to Wolsey, Henry referred to the ‘great murmuring’ throughout England against Wolsey’s legatine officials, especially in connection with their work for his colleges, adding that he thought the murmuring justified. He had been informed that people were being forced to give money and land for the colleges in order to secure Wolsey’s favour, and, he alleged, many of these so-called gifts were illegal. Moreover, if, as reported, exempt monasteries were being allowed to buy back from Wolsey the right to be visited by members of their own order, this was to make a mockery of the whole purpose of Wolsey’s legatine powers. ‘If your legacy is a cloak apud homines’, warned Henry, ‘it is not apud Deum’, and he told Wolsey in no uncertain terms to mend his ways, and those of his officials, immediately.132

  Wolsey never accepted that these criticisms were valid, 133 and neither does the present writer. Even Henry may have been merely venting his anger on Wolsey for preventing his beloved Anne from getting her way in the Wilton affair; at any rate the criticism came as part of a royal blast concerning Wolsey’s behaviour during that episode.134 But however unfair, and indeed hypocritical, Henry’s charges were, what is indisputable is that the criticism was being voiced in high places, and that Henry was showing himself not averse to using it against his cardinal. In this respect it is different from, and, from Wolsey’s point of view more worrying, than the probably much more widespread criticism being levelled against the alliance with France, where he was very much putting into effect the king’s policy, and could therefore feel confident of his protection. As regards the criticisms being made of his legatine powers, the king was showing himself to be not very protective, and this might encourage other people to work against him. It might even encourage Norfolk and Suffolk, especially as they were both affected by Wolsey’s suppressions, Norfolk because an earlier duke had founded Felixstowe Abbey, Suffolk by virtue of an earlier duke of Suffolk’s alleged refoundation of Snape Priory.

  Both these houses were suppressed to provide endowments for Wolsey’s college at Ipswich, and both the suppressions led to complicated negotiations in which Cromwell, on Wolsey’s behalf, played a leading role. Whether the dukes got the worst of it is not clear, but it seems unlikely. The interests of the new college would not have been best served by alienating the leading men in the locality, and Norfolk, at any rate, seems to have done quite well out of it since he obtained possession of the lands of Felixstowe at an annual rent of £20, when it was worth double.135 It is true that in April 1529 the dean of the college, William Capon, reported that on a recent visit Norfolk had at first been ‘very rough’ because he had heard that Felixstowe’s lead and stone had been used on the college’s buildings. However, when it was pointed out that this was not the case, he had ended up by being ‘very kind’.136 A year earlier he had also been kind, for in March 1528 he had written to Wolsey to say that he had seen the plans for the new college and had thought of ways in which Wolsey might save on building costs.137 Admittedly, this seems to have been before he knew that Felixstowe was to be suppressed, but it is clear that he had no objections in principle to the new foundation, indeed rather the opposite. As for Suffolk, although in January 1529 he and his wife agreed to renounce all their rights in Snape without, it would seem, getting anything in return, not even the honour bestowed upon Norfolk of being made a co-founder of Ipswich College, ther
e is no evidence that he felt hard done by.138 And in becoming a co-founder, Norfolk had joined a select band including not only Wolsey but also the king and the archbishop of Canterbury. That he was granted this distinction is evidence of Wolsey’s customary tact and good sense in such matters. For the success of his college, the support of such an important local figure as Norfolk, and indeed of Suffolk, would be an enormous advantage. So he had every incentive to ensure that neither of the two dukes felt any grievance, and such evidence as there is suggests that he was successful.

  But if it seems unlikely that Norfolk and Suffolk were amongst those making rude remarks about Wolsey in August 1527, it remains true that criticisms were being made in the king’s presence and that he had chosen to take notice of them by telling Wolsey off in no uncertain terms. And that they had to do with ecclesiastical matters is of some significance. It is almost certainly wrong to exaggerate the strength of anticlericalism, for much of the time it probably amounted to no more than the occasional anticlerical joke amongst the young bucks at court. But it would not take all that much for such jokes to turn into something more serious, and some anticlericalism was anyway a bit more serious than that. As we saw earlier, relations between Church and state were not especially happy in the early Tudor period, and in 1515 it had taken a good deal of effort on Wolsey’s part to prevent a serious rift. It had been precisely so as to obtain a firmer control over the English Church that Henry had been happy for Wolsey to seek extensive legatine powers, thereby allowing the man he most trusted to have more control over the English Church than probably anyone had ever enjoyed. It has been one of the central arguments of this study that Wolsey’s legatine rule brought the Church considerable gains, amongst them protection from the unwelcome interference of the Crown lawyers. But there was a price to be paid, not only by the Church but by Wolsey personally, for what Henry would expect in return was that in matters close to his heart the Church would do what he wanted. Of course, English kings had always expected this, but insofar as Henry’s close relationship with Wolsey had increased his expectations, the resulting disappointment, not to say anger, if the Church refused, would be that much greater. In 1527 the moment came for Henry to collect. He wanted a divorce and only the Church could give it to him. He realized that there would be difficulties, and he was prepared to give it a little time to overcome them. In the end, however, he would go to any lengths to secure the payment, even if this meant schism, and with it the destruction of his cardinal legate.