The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (174 page)

We are left with the second possibility, that it was Henry who conspired against Wolsey, as the only credible interpretation, despite the fact that the evidence is almost entirely circumstantial. The reasons for believing in it are, nevertheless, strong. Given the continuing unhappiness about, not to say opposition to, his desire for a divorce both at Rome and amongst his leading subjects, both lay and clerical, it would have been remarkable if Henry had not tried to make some use of a cardinal archbishop with whom he could do more or less as he wanted. That the story as put out by Henry could belong only to the world of Walter Mitty merely increases the suspicion that he did precisely that. But for those who like their evidence cut and dried it will not convince. And Wolsey’s death before Henry’s intentions could be revealed makes any interpretation more than usually provisional. Still, it would be very surprising if any direct evidence for what Henry was up to had survived, since it would have served him not at all for it to have got out that a conspiracy had been a set-up. One possible danger was Agostini, who in this scenario would have been all too well aware of the lengths to which the government had gone to invent a case against Wolsey. The way round it was that curious recognizance by which Agostini promised on pain of a fine of £100 not to reveal to anyone what was contained in a book ‘written with his own hand concerning the late cardinal of York’.
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It was also probably fear of what might emerge about the set-up that explains why surprisingly – whatever one’s interpretation of the events – the government did so little to exploit the propaganda value of Wolsey’s ‘treason’, which by no means needed to disappear with his death. Interestingly, insofar as it was exploited at all, it was very briefly used with the French who, just because they were more anxious than the others to keep in with Henry, were the least likely to challenge the official story. What is also true is that a dead Wolsey provided Henry with neither the room for manoeuvre nor the impact
that he had hoped for. A posthumous trial would have been an anti-climax, while a dead man could hardly grant him a divorce. One way and another, it probably seemed better to let the matter drop.

As this book draws to a close, it is proper that the focus of attention should return to the man whose political career has been its subject. Wolsey had reached Southwell, in the south of his very extensive diocese of York, on 28 April, and there he remained for the next three months. He was extremely busy, performing both the role of pastoral bishop and that of leading representative of the Crown, keeping open house for the important families of the area and helping to settle their disputes.
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The high point was to have been his enthronement as archbishop in the great abbey church of St Mary’s, York, on Monday 7 November, when he had hoped also to open northern convocation. As it was, his arrest on the 4th intervened, prompting some people to argue that it was precisely to prevent his enthronement that it occurred when it did. Far from being unpopular in the North, he had won golden opinions from almost everybody; and almost everybody of importance would have been present at York for his enthronement. This surely was the moment for him to declare his hand, and in the name of Catherine, or the pope, or the emperor, or Francis, or perhaps in the name of all of them – it is all so unlikely that it hardly matters who it was – to declare war upon his former master.
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In this version of events Wolsey’s performance as the good bishop is entirely hypocritical, calculated only to secure for himself a power base from which to attack the king. But there is no inconsistency between Wolsey the active resident bishop and Wolsey the cardinal legate and lord chancellor. There has been no attempt in this study to portray him as a deeply religious man, but he certainly believed that active intervention in the affairs of the day, whether national or local, was to the benefit of the common weal. It was very much in his nature to get involved. He also had great confidence in his own ability to put things right, and justifiably so. Negotiator
par excellence
, it mattered little to him whether the dispute was between humble villagers or pope and emperor. So it is not at all surprising that, having been denied the larger theatre, he threw all his energies into the life of his diocese.

And if one has to admit that his conduct in the North would have been the same even if more Machiavellian motives had lain behind it, the same can hardly be said of the many other matters which occupied him at this time. He was still embroiled in trying to rescue as much from his initial downfall as possible: organizing a defence of his colleges, which involved trying to secure the support of all those supposedly his enemies such as Norfolk and the Boleyns;
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fighting off attempts to exploit his conviction for praemunire in order to secure the title to archiepiscopal land;
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and coping with demands from hither and yon for the payment of past bills and debts, the inevitable consequence of his loss of political clout and credit-worthiness.
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Moreover, he found that the lack of a resident archbishop, whatever its effect on
the spiritual life of the diocese, had certainly done nothing for the archiepiscopal properties. Many repairs were needed, which Wolsey maintained were of an extremely modest and essential kind, while to his enemies they smacked of his usual extravagance and love of magnificence.
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Then in August he was faced with the demands of a former comptroller of his household, Thomas Strangeways. For some reason, perhaps because in a quarrel between him and Thomas Cromwell Wolsey had sided with the latter, this man appears to have formed a grudge against the cardinal. At any rate, Wolsey’s political disgrace gave him an opportunity to appeal to the Council concerning the sum of £700 which he claimed Wolsey owed him in connection with a wardship. It was all extremely aggravating, not least because any claim for money at this time was an acute embarrassment.
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In none of these matters did Wolsey show many signs of giving in to the pressures imposed by his new circumstances. True, he had to write letters to former colleagues seeking their help, and to that extent he had to be conciliatory. During the 1520s he had usually signed himself in letters to Norfolk as his ‘loving friend’,
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but by August 1530 he had become ‘your daily chaplain and bedesman’.
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What he did not do – despite much prompting – was to give in on what he considered to be matters of substance. As we have seen, many people, including Norfolk, had advised him to stop badgering the king and to be content with what he had got.
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But the very last thing Wolsey was during the last months of his life was content, nor was he at all averse to letting people know it, including foreign ambassadors. Earlier it was suggested that what Wolsey was hoping to gain from these contacts was the support of their masters for his efforts to recover everything he had lost at his downfall, in return for which he would do his utmost to further their causes. With Chapuys, at least, he frequently raised the issue of the divorce, apparently offering advice very favourable to Catherine. If that advice is taken at its face value, it will incline one to the view that he was up to no good though, as was pointed out earlier, to be in favour of Catherine at this time was technically no crime. What was also suggested was that it would be wrong to take this particular evidence at face value. All Wolsey was doing was making noises that he knew would please Chapuys who would then favour his cause, but in the full knowledge that his advice was neither here nor there and that he was not giving anything away. This was more or less what the Milanese ambassador reported Wolsey had been up to,
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and it makes a good deal of sense, especially when the very public nature of Wolsey’s contacts with these foreign ambassadors is borne in mind. There is little to suggest that Wolsey’s or his chaplain’s letters to Chapuys were clandestine ones, nor that Chapuys took Wolsey’s suggestions very seriously. One way and another, for supposedly one of the best political operators in Europe, Wolsey seems to have gone about organizing his conspiracy in a curious way. Short of writing to Henry to tell him of it, he could hardly have behaved with greater stupidity, on the one hand drawing attention to himself by his constant complaints and high profile, and on the other making no
secret of his many contacts with foreign powers. It really makes no sense at all – unless the truth is that he felt no need to behave in a Machiavellian way because he did not believe that what he was up to was in any way treasonable.

This was certainly Wolsey’s own view, for on his arrest on 4 November he immediately declared his innocence to the two men to whom the task of making the arrest had been delegated, the earl of Northumberland and Walter Walsh.
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And it was a declaration that he was to repeat to each of his new custodians in turn. The earl of Shrewsbury, whose treatment of him could hardly have been more courteous and sensitive, received many protestations of his innocence, and to this effect: if someone who owed everything to Henry’s favour and who now, when his enemies had gained the upper hand, was more in need of his support than ever before, should have set about conspiring against him, then, indeed, ‘all men might justly think and report that I lacketh not only grace, but also both wit and discretion’.
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All he now wanted to do was to prove his innocence by confronting his so far unnamed accusers in the king’s presence, ‘when I doubt not but you shall see me acquit myself of all their malicious accusations and utterly confound them’.
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It was while he was staying with Shrewsbury that the first symptoms of the illness that was to kill him appeared, difficult to diagnose at this distance in time, but he himself seems to have thought that he was suffering from some form of dysentery,
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and certainly diarrhoea and sickness were the most obvious symptoms. He had no illusions about his chances of surviving, and was to predict the exact hour of his death the day before it occurred,
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if that is not a literary embellishment of Cavendish’s. In a final interview with Sir William Kingston, keeper of the Tower, who had recently arrived to escort him on the last part of his journey south, he was very conscious of his impending death, and that it was going to be God rather than the king to whom he would have to answer, and that God could in no way be deceived.
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His remarks were, therefore, much more than a defence against a specific charge; and in fact his last words were a warning of the dangers of ‘this new perverse sect of the Lutherans’ who, like past heretical sects, would destroy not only the clergy but the whole natural order of things, unless Henry moved swiftly against them. As for what had befallen him, he saw it as God’s judgment; for, in those much quoted words, he felt sure that if he had served him ‘as diligently as I have done the king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs. Howbeit this is the just reward that I must receive for my worldly diligence and pains that I have had to do him service, only to satisfy his vain pleasures, not regarding my godly duty’.
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He then ventured to issue Kingston a warning, which has perhaps been too often ignored by historians. Henry, he told his custodian, was

a prince of royal courage, and hath a princely heart; and rather than he will either miss or want any part of his will or appetite, he will put the loss of one half of his realm in danger. For I assure you 1 have often kneeled before him in his privy chamber on my
knees the space of an hour or two to persuade him from his will and appetite; but I could never bring to pass to dissuade him therefrom. Therefore, Master Kingston, if it chance hereafter you to be one of his privy council (as for your wisdom and other qualities ye be meet so to be) I warn you to be well advised and assured what matter ye put into his head; for ye shall never pull it out again
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The picture is of a Henry that readers of this book will recognize. It is hoped that what also emerges is a Wolsey who will be recognized, not least the man who, even at this unpropitious time, in his complimenting of Kingston did not fail to show his accustomed charm. It may be objected that what is being presented here is fiction. The source for this last scene, as indeed for Wolsey’s arrest and subsequent journey south, is almost entirely Cavendish, and it can be argued that he could hardly have remembered the conversations he purported to have had with Wolsey when, nearly thirty years later, he sat down to write. At worst, the whole account could have been a white lie. The truth that Cavendish was concerned with was not the kind that the professional historian of today spends much time worrying about; and, particularly where Wolsey’s downfall and the destruction of the Catholic Church in England merge, it may well be that he thought the message was more important than any literal report. Be that as it may, I find his account of Wolsey’s last weeks on the whole convincing; and without wanting to be paradoxical, it is fair to say that even those aspects of his account that have not been accepted help to reinforce this conviction. In the circumstances that Wolsey found himself in, it would be surprising if he had not come to believe that there were enemies at work determined to destroy him. That someone to whom one has devoted one’s life no longer needs one is the kind of unbearable fact that many people have chosen to ignore, even when the evidence is there for all to see. Moreover, when that person is a sixteenth century king it becomes even harder, for built into the panoply of sixteenth century kingship was the notion that he could do no wrong. And, of course, if Wolsey did believe that it was his enemies who destroyed him, then Cavendish was right to record the fact. That he accepted it is no more surprising than that Wolsey believed it – none of which, however, is proof that either man was right.