The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (158 page)

sixty-one years of age, very robust, and although not of very noble lineage, yet as he has for his wife his Majesty’s sister, widow of the King Louis of France, much honour and respect are paid him; and he has the second seat in his Majesty’s Council, which he rarely enters, save for discussion of matters of certain importance, passing his time more pleasantly in other amusements
.
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Not for Suffolk the loss of weight and sleep that his fellow duke had to endure in the service of his king, nor indeed frequent attendance at the no doubt often tedious Council meetings. Instead, what Suffolk seems to have wanted was the honour and respect due to a personal friend of the king whose family’s record of service to the
Tudors was outstanding, but not too much responsibility or hard work. This is not a man who hungered after Wolsey’s job, or who would have taken any initiative to bring him down.

The third point to make is that while there is plenty of evidence that Suffolk and Wolsey were friends, there is little to show that Suffolk and Norfolk were.
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Indeed, there is quite a lot to suggest that they were not. Even Suffolk’s elevation in 1514 probably did not help. The 3rd duke’s father’s great victory at Flodden virtually demanded that he be restored to the dukedom of Norfolk which he had lost on his attainder in 1485 for having fought at Bosworth for Richard
III
. But to ease the slight embarrassment that such a step involved, it may have helped to raise to a similar rank someone whose Tudor credentials were impeccable, Suffolk’s father having achieved the ultimate distinction of death on the field of Bosworth at the hands of Richard himself! And if the Howards’ reaction to being paired with Suffolk in this way must in the end remain speculation, in the following year Suffolk definitely saw them as rivals.
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Moreover, it so happened that a large part of the de la Pole lands, which had been granted to Suffolk on his elevation, had previously been granted to the 3rd duke of Norfolk. Some extremely complicated negotiations ensued, in which Wolsey was much involved and which resulted in Suffolk having to buy back some of his own land, while renting the rest for the considerable sum of £413 6
s
. 8
d
., to be paid annually, either until Norfolk died or forty years had elapsed, when the land would revert to him.
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Given their importance, considerable efforts must have been taken to make this settlement as acceptable as possible to both men, but it cannot have been pleasing to Suffolk, especially given the parlous state of his finances, to be paying out such large sums for land that was nominally his. This did not prevent him from co-operating with Norfolk in the affairs of East Anglia, but the assumption, at least implicit in so many accounts of Wolsey’s downfall, that the two men were natural allies should be resisted. Their characters and careers were very different, and indeed one of the few things they had in common was that neither was the kind of man to have taken upon himself the destruction of Wolsey. Such a conclusion flies in the face not only of most historians’ interpretations of Wolsey’s downfall, but also, and more worryingly, of a good deal of contemporary evidence, especially that of two very acute observers of the English political scene, the Imperial ambassador, Mendoza, and Jean du Bellay, bishop of Bayonne, since November 1527 the French ambassador in London. Why is it then, that so many people have got it so wrong? An examination of three particular moments in the story of Wolsey’s downfall may help to provide an answer.

The traditional story really begins with Mendoza’s reports of May 1527. It was at this time that he first got wind of Henry’s desire for a divorce, but even before then he was describing a London seething with discontent, a discontent directed particularly against Wolsey. His main explanation for this was a severe attack of francophobia brought on by the recent visit to England of an important French embassy. Much hard bargaining throughout April had at length resulted in new treaties, providing, amongst other things, for the marriage of Princess Mary either
to Francis himself, or to his second son, the duke of Orléans, a prospect which seems to have been especially unpopular. The treaties also increased the likelihood of an out-and-out war with the emperor, one consequence of which would be severe, if not complete, disruption of the vital trade with the Low Countries. But what concerns us for the moment is the report that Wolsey was about to be relieved of some of his duties; and one rumour had Tunstall, whom Mendoza anyway saw, along with Norfolk, as a secret opponent of Wolsey, succeeding to the office of lord chancellor. Wolsey was on the way out, and in support of this assessment Mendoza pointed to the fact that lately he had absented himself from court, pleading, what was for Mendoza at least, a purely diplomatic illness.
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How much truth was there in all this? Well, to begin with, Mendoza’s suspicions about the illness seem to have been groundless; at any rate, a reliable French source states that during the second half of April Wolsey was ill for about a week with a ‘tertian fever’.
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But if Wolsey had really been ill, he had also been exceptionally busy. There was, first, the negotiations with the French: these had lasted for over a month, had involved a great deal of hard bargaining, with himself very much in the thick of things, and there is nothing to indicate, whatever the citizens of London, or even Norfolk and Tunstall, may have thought, that Henry was at all unhappy with the outcome. Indeed, the French alliance was such an essential part of the strategy to achieve the divorce that Henry was bound to approve of it. Indeed, it is the emergence of the divorce as the dominant issue in English politics that makes it highly unlikely that Henry was contemplating getting rid of Wolsey in the spring of 1527. Put at its simplest, his own cardinal legate was his best weapon in the struggle to obtain the Church’s authorization for the divorce. Wolsey was already in April busy preparing the case which in May was to be presented to a court called by virtue of his legatine powers, over which he would preside. Arguably there had never been a time when the king needed Wolsey more, and so it can be said with reasonable certainty that on the matter of Wolsey’s position, Mendoza had got it wrong. What he almost certainly did not get wrong was Wolsey’s, and indeed Henry’s, unpopularity – but more of that in a moment.

Most later historians, while picking up on the general notion that Wolsey’s position first began to be threatened in the spring of 1527, have not followed Mendoza in thinking that Wolsey’s absence from Court at this time had any special significance. Instead they have focused their attention on his absence during the summer of that year on his famous mission to Amiens and Compiègne, seeing this as the moment when the aristocratic faction first began to put its act together.
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The main reason for doing this is the company that Henry was keeping while he was on progress and Wolsey was away; and it was indeed very distinguished, including the marquess of Exeter, the earls of Oxford, Essex and Rutland, and viscount Fitzwalter;
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plus the triumvirate of Norfolk, Suffolk and Boleyn, with whom, it was reported to Wolsey, Henry usually took supper.
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Obviously there could have been something very significant in all this, but the point that will be stressed here is that
there does not have to be.

To begin with, Wolsey was not in the habit of accompanying Henry on progress, so there would have been nothing unusual in his not being with him, even if he had not been in France. Noblemen, on the other hand, usually did, especially those whose estates lay in the parts of the country that Henry had chosen to visit. In the previous summer his progress had taken him through Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire, and so he had been accompanied by the earl of Arundel, Viscount Lisle, and the Lords Dacre of the South, de la Warr and Sandys, men whose chief residences lay in these counties. Their attendance upon the king had been duly reported to Wolsey,
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but nobody so far has suggested that they comprised an aristocratic faction! In 1527 Henry chose to centre his progress on his own palace of Beaulieu, or New Hall, near Chelmsford in Essex. It is not, therefore, all that remarkable that he was surrounded on this occasion by his East Anglian noblemen, who happened to include pre-eminently the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and Boleyn, who had sold Beaulieu to the king.
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And, given that these three were with the king, it is hardly surprising that they supped with him – much more remarkable if they had not. It is only with hindsight or if one already believes in he existence of the aristocratic faction that their presence at Beaulieu appears significant.

In the previous chapter it was suggested that at this time an elaborate charade was being acted out, to which Wolsey was privy, the purpose of which was to allay the queen’s fears about Henry’s intentions towards her and also to try and disperse any rumours about a possible divorce. In this sense there may have been some political significance in the progress of 1527, but it had nothing to do with any cabal to bring Wolsey down. Admittedly, there was criticism being voiced at Beaulieu at his suppression of monasteries to endow his new college at Oxford, and this criticism focused on two men closely associated with him, his leading legatine official, John Allen, and a member of his household, Thomas Cromwell.
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But to turn this very natural reaction into evidence for an aristocratic plot to destroy the cardinal is to stretch the evidence quite unjustifiably. The search for the divorce was increasingly to introduce an unsettling element into English politics but whatever else the triumvirate of Norfolk, Suffolk and Boleyn were doing at Beaulieu, they were not, or at least not according to the royal secretary, William Knight, taken into Henry’s confidence on the one matter that most concerned him.
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It may be true, though, that on this particular progress Henry had desired a specially good turn-out in order to demonstrate what was clearly not the case – that it was business as usual: with the queen at his side, and his noblemen arrayed around them, all was supposed to be well with the world.

A year later the French ambassador was describing a series of lengthy interviews with Wolsey in which the cardinal had appeared to be more than usually expansive and personal.
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He stressed his deep commitment to the French alliance, which in his usual fashion he claimed had cost him a great deal of popularity, a view which, it should be said, du Bellay fully endorsed. Wolsey also talked much about his own
future: if only he could bring about a perpetual amity between England and France, if only he could reform the laws and customs of England, and if only he could resolve all possible doubts about the royal succession, then he could retire, a happy man, in order to devote himself to the service of God. In his patron Fox and in Archbishop Warham, there were, indeed, recent precedents for such honourable retirements, but Wolsey in 1528 was a good ten years younger than both these men had been when they had resigned. Moreover, there were rather too many ‘ifs’ in Wolsey’s conversation for his words to carry great conviction, nor did du Bellay entirely believe them. Wolsey might be thinking of retirement, though not because he was hungering for a life of devotion to God, but because he was frightened of what would happen if Anne became queen even though, according to him, Wolsey was not fully apprised of Henry’s intentions as regards the divorce. Moreover, du Bellay reported ‘on good authority’, though he could not give it ‘as certain’, that recently ‘the king used terrible language [to Wolsey] because he seemed desirous to cool [the king], and show him that the pope would not consent to [the divorce]’. Of course, it is impossible to prove that such an episode did not take place, and Wolsey must frequently have had to counsel patience, something that Henry cannot have been eager to listen to. But as we saw earlier, there is substantial evidence to suggest that in the summer of 1528 king and minister had never been closer, and that at least until October and Campeggio’s arrival in England, expectations of success were high, at least on Henry’s part, and that until the second legatine court had taken place, there was no way in which he was going to dismiss Wolsey. So, like Mendoza a year earlier, du Bellay got it wrong, deceived by a more than usually brilliant performance put on by Wolsey to delay, even to avoid, the payment then due, of an English contribution to the French war effort.

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.