The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (17 page)

So, whose side was Wolsey on? The answer must be – the Crown’s. Time and again one comes back to the point that Henry made Wolsey what he was, that their relationship was a personal one, that Wolsey’s own ambitions were subsumed in Henry’s, and – what will appear more clearly in the following chapters – that it was the desire to make royal government fairer and more effective that was the main driving force behind Wolsey’s life’s work. At the same time he was a cleric who took his religious duties seriously. He was also a consummate politician – hence the stand he took in 1515. As archbishop of York, even as cardinal, Wolsey was not master of
the English Church. To be in a position to override Canterbury, he required to be legate
a latere
. Already in 1515 he and Henry were working on that,
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but until he could obtain such a commission there was no point in unnecessarily antagonizing Warham and his supporters, and indeed it was never Wolsey’s policy to antagonize anybody unnecessarily. Much of his performance at Baynard’s Castle had been directed towards the bishops rather than towards Henry, who needed no reassurance that Wolsey was not his enemy. The bishops, and Warham in particular, did, and thus his appearance of supporting Warham’s efforts to get the issues raised by the Standish ‘affair’ settled at Rome. Wolsey did approach the pope, not, however, to get his views on the principles at stake, but to ask for a bull prohibiting anyone being admitted to minor orders unless he at the same time became subdeacon, that is, took holy orders. This Leo granted, though not without pointing out that the proposal was not in accordance with the laws of the Church.
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It was a skilful move by Wolsey. It saved the Church’s face by obviating the need for it to endure any secular limitation of ‘benefit’. At the same time it removed the Crown’s main objection to benefit, that it applied as much to people who had not the slightest intention of pursuing a career in the Church as to genuine clerics. That it seems not to have been very effective might suggest that it was a purely tactical move by Wolsey to dampen things down, but against this is the fact that towards the end of the 1520s Wolsey returned to the problem. In 1528 he secured a bull giving him authority greatly to simplify the machinery whereby a ‘criminous clerk’ could be degraded from both major and minor orders, and thus handed over to the secular courts for sentencing.
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The bull is indicative of Wolsey’s not always acknowledged determination to solve a problem once identified. More relevantly it suggests that he did not share Warham’s and the clerical party’s resistance to all innovations, however beneficial, that might infringe in any way upon the Church’s liberties.

At this point it may be helpful to mention another problem that was causing friction between Crown and Church and one which, as in the case of benefit of clergy, led in 1519 to a conference presided over by Henry himself. It concerned the innumerable sanctuaries, which, as a consequence of the peace associated with any sanctified place, provided a refuge from arrest.
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The most common sanctuary was the parish church, and for it there were elaborate rules, governing such matters as the area of the church that constituted the sanctuary, the length of time any person might remain there, and what was to happen when that time elapsed. Forty days were allowed before the fugitive, if he was still determined not to face trial, had to confess his crime and then abjure the realm – that is to say, go into permanent exile. Such a fate might appear harsh, and certainly the taking of sanctuary was not intended as an easy option, but it should be remembered that it was only permitted for offences for which the penalty was death. Given this choice, permanent exile might well seem more attractive. Furthermore, there were many opportunities for taking advantage of the privilege. One might escape from one sanctuary to another,
thus prolonging the period of protection, or one might escape altogether – and the often very long journey from the sanctuary to the nearest port, from where a fugitive was supposed to begin his exile, offered ample opportunity for this. More open to abuse were the private sanctuaries, those created by a grant either from the pope or from the Crown. Many imposed no time limit, and the area involved was often quite extensive. They could, therefore, provide the professional criminal with a permanent refuge, not to say convenient base from which to conduct his operations.

It is hard to assess just how serious a hindrance to law enforcement sanctuaries were, or, indeed, whether they were becoming more so. Both contemporary comment and particular cases at least suggest that the privilege was frequently abused;
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and what is certain is that Henry
VII
’s reign had witnessed a new determination to tackle the problem.
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One of the ways chosen was for judges to insist that any holder of the privilege must produce a royal, not a papal, charter granting it to them, on the grounds that the prerogative of mercy, of which the right of sanctuary formed a part, pertained in England only to its king. Or, in other words, the judges were asserting the king’s ‘imperial’ jurisdiction.

The discussion in Star Chamber on 10 November 1519 centred on the claims of the order of St John of Jerusalem and Westminster Abbey to possess the privilege of sanctuary.
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The former’s claim was quickly dismissed on the grounds that it did not possess a royal charter. Wolsey appears to have accepted this decision, for later in the conference he opened a debate on the principles involved by pointing out that in the Old Testament it had been princes who had created sanctuaries. Other examples of royal initiative were produced, and reference made both to the first English king and to Romulus; the conclusion reached was that not only was the creation of sanctuary a royal prerogative but that anyone who relied on a papal grant was guilty of praemunire. It is not quite certain from Keilwey’s
Reports
whether this conclusion was delivered by Wolsey himself, but his opening remarks suggest that he was in full agreement with it. It also seems clear that he shared the judges’ desire to reform the abuse of the privilege. But since Westminster Abbey’s sanctuary, unlike most others, was based upon a royal grant, it was in a strong position to resist any attempt at reform. Chief Justice Fineux tried to get round the problem by arguing that the abuse of a privilege must result in its removal.
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Wolsey’s solution was not so radical. Long before the conference took place he had set up a commission to establish the precise boundaries of the Westminster sanctuary, the lack of which was one of the reasons for the abuse. He had also insisted on all its sanctuary men taking an oath not to commit treason, murder or felony outside the sanctuary, while still resident there, in an effort to stop them using it as a base for their criminal activities. However, on the second day of the conference he had had to admit that the oath had been ineffective; furthermore, Abbot Islip made it clear that he considered it to be invalid as contrary to the existing and perfectly legal
privileges.
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The abbot of Westminster’s rejection of the oath, and thus of Wolsey’s solution, ended the conference – and there is no evidence that during the 1520s the Abbey’s sanctuary was in any way modified. Must the conclusion be that this episode illustrates Wolsey’s ineffectiveness as a reformer – an ineffectiveness deriving in great measure from the fact that his heart was not really in reform? To the extent that Westminster’s sanctuary remained, and no doubt continued to harbour all manner of rogues, the answer must be yes.
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But Westminster was a special case. Given its royal charter, its sanctuary was virtually unassailable unless one was prepared to abolish all private sanctuaries. There is no evidence that Wolsey ever contemplated such a step, and thus there was little he could do. On the other hand, during the 1520s the judges continued to attack the problem of sanctuary, with the result that it became virtually impossible to plead sanctuary with success.
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Considering how closely Wolsey worked with the judges in Chancery and Star Chamber, it seems most unlikely that he was opposed to what they were doing – indeed, there is evidence to the contrary. In 1526 a William Gilbank, having at first taken sanctuary in Colchester Abbey, removed himself to that of the Crutched Friars in the same town. A certain John Veer was deputed by Wolsey to arrest him. This meant tackling the prior about the rights of his house to provide sanctuary and, in particular, whether he possessed a royal grant. The prior’s rather lame reply – that he possessed no grant himself but he assumed the head of the order had one – led Gilbank to the conclusion that his protection might suddenly be removed, and he decided that the sooner he confessed to a coroner and abjured the realm the better.
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Here was a minor victory for Wolsey’s insistence on a more effective supervision of the privilege of sanctuary. His failure with Westminster is merely evidence of the intractable nature of so many of the matters in need of reform.

The question of whether Wolsey was an effective reformer is one that will recur constantly. Here it has been raised merely as a coda to the Standish affair. Sanctuary was never such a divisive issue as benefit of clergy because, though it raised similar theoretical issues, it was only of real concern to the few custodians of private sanctuaries. This made it much easier for the Church as a whole to accept that the privilege was open to abuse and hence more willing to accept royal interference – and as his presence at the discussions in 1519 indicate, interfere was what Henry intended to do.
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Wolsey was of the same mind, even to the extent of accepting that the granting of the privilege was entirely in the gift of the Crown – this incidentally having the important practical consequence that very few private sanctuary holders could substantiate their claims. On the other hand, Wolsey’s aim was reform, not revolution. He did not take on the Church directly by seeking to abolish all private sanctuaries at one stroke, as was done in 1540. As he saw it, the best way of reforming the Church was to secure its co-operation, and this would include the co-operation of such a man as John Islip, abbot of Westminster.

A policy emerges. In 1515 Wolsey’s immediate task was to end the serious conflict between Crown and Church which, brewing for some time, had come to a head with the Standish affair. To do this he had tried to solve the problem of criminous clerks in a way that would meet the criticisms of the laity without unnecessarily antagonizing the Church. And that he did not wish to antagonize the latter is not evidence of
parti pris
, but that he realized that without greater powers he was in no position to make the Church do what he, or his master, wanted. Henry’s involvement has been little understood. Historians have been so obsessed with their vision of the power-hungry and extravagantly ambitious Wolsey, that they have seen his wish to be made legate
a latere
as merely evidence of this vision. But would a Henry, who had made his views on the subject of clerical pretensions so abundantly clear in 1515, have supported efforts to secure such an appointment, if it would only have served to further Wolsey’s own pretensions? The answer must be no. What, then, was the reason for Henry’s support? It must have been because he had every confidence that Wolsey’s domination of the English Church meant, in fact, domination by the Crown – a domination, indeed, such as had never previously been achieved. In 1515 Henry did not change his views; merely his tactics. He still intended to control the Church, but he would achieve this through a papal legate who happened also to be his leading councillor.

The change of tactics was not without its difficulties, the chief one being that the legatine commission had yet to be obtained, and in 1515 Leo x would go no further than to make Wolsey a cardinal. And not everyone would be fooled by the fiction that it was a papal legate who was reforming the Church rather than a king’s leading councillor – and not everyone would want to be reformed! But undoubtedly the legatine powers would help to disguise the fact, or at least soften the blow that it was the Crown that was taking the initiative in the Church’s affairs. Moreover, they would make it very difficult for any opponent in the future to do what the Church had tried to do in 1515, that is to appeal over the head of the king to the pope, for in effect Wolsey, as far as the English Church was concerned, had become the pope.

The news that Wolsey had been created a cardinal reached the English court at the end of September 1515, and on 15 November the cardinal’s hat, brought from Rome by the protonotary of the papal court, was carried through the city of London in great splendour. It was then placed on the high altar of Westminster Abbey to await the ceremony of installation, on Sunday the 18th. As was only fitting on this great occasion, the mass was sung by the archbishop of Canterbury assisted by the bishops of Lincoln and Exeter. Also present were the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin and six other bishops, including Fisher of Rochester and Wolsey’s old patron, Fox of Winchester. The papal bull was read out by none other than the dean of the Chapel Royal, John Veysey, and the sermon was delivered by the dean of St Paul’s, John Colet. The laity were equally well represented. For some unknown reason Henry himself seems to have graced only the sumptuous banquet which followed the service, but present at the Abbey had been the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the marquess of Dorset, the earls of Essex, Shrewsbury, Surrey and Wiltshire, along with nine barons, a goodly number of knights, the judges, City Fathers, and really anybody who was anybody.
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