The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (23 page)

This has been a long story to make a small point, but it is, unfortunately, on such points that an interpretation of Wolsey’s foreign policy has to rest. If Giustinian’s reports of his interviews with Wolsey and Henry are taken at their face value, then a very misleading view of the conduct of foreign policy at this time results. If treated with care, much can be revealed. Meanwhile they have distracted from the general point being made, that in the conduct of foreign policy Wolsey did not fly blind. From the reports of his own ambassadors and other royal officials resident abroad, from his spy network, and from his conversations with foreign ambassadors, he kept himself fully informed about what was going on in Europe, so that ignorance cannot be the excuse for the apparent failure of his policy. But it has been suggested that his policy ran counter to the information and expert advice that he was receiving – and this suggestion needs to be looked at more closely.

On the central issue of Maximilian’s trustworthiness Wolsey hardly required much new information, for he had had plenty of experience in dealing with him in 1513. But Pace’s letters during 1516 and early 1517 were a never-ending stream of abuse about the emperor. He blamed him for the débâcle in front of Milan; he blamed him for taking money intended for the Swiss; and he blamed him for a general unwillingness to co-operate with the Swiss.
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In January 1517 he reported that in Switzerland it was common knowledge that Francis
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and Maximilian were about to meet, and he warned Wolsey to be on his guard because ‘Judas [Maximilian] does not sleep’.
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And as ‘Judas’ moved to the Low Countries and news of him became the responsibility of other English ambassadors, they took up the same refrain. We have
already seen that they were predicting the ‘sale’ of Verona long before it happened. They were also quick to point out that though Maximilian had promised to remove the regents, he showed no sign of doing so.
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Their removal was vital to the success of Wolsey’s policy. Yet the English diplomats clearly thought that there was no hope of Maximilian ever doing it, and by March 1517 they were suggesting that they should no longer be asked to push the issue, since such efforts were bound to be counter-productive.
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In fact, William Knight had already made this point when he wrote from Brussels on 16 February, saying that he would have liked to prevent the earl of Worcester from making any overture to Maximilian about removing the regents, because, since the emperor was getting on so well with them, they were bound to hear from him of Wolsey’s plan!
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Worcester, of course, was acting under Wolsey’s instructions, so that Knight’s comments ran completely counter to what Wolsey was trying to achieve.

Knight’s despatch of 16 February was in effect a critique of Wolsey’s handling of affairs, but, as he explained to him, if he was not ‘so plain’, he would be deceiving ‘the king and your grace, which I will never do during my life’.
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And apparently his fellow ambassadors were just as anxious not to deceive! Only four days earlier Worcester and Tunstall were advising Henry to shut his purse,
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while on 18 February Tunstall pointed out that it was foolish to think that Charles would ever confirm the league with Maximilian and Henry so long as the clause containing English financial claims on France remained; far better not to go pushing for its inclusion because to do so would only result in ‘strangers’ taking the bridle of English affairs. Henry should draw his foot out of the affair gently as if he perceived it not, giving good words for good words, ‘which yet they give us, thinking our heads to be so gross that we perceive not their abuses.’
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Shortly afterwards Tunstall was instructed to continue to push for the confirmation of the league, though a complicated compromise over the controversial clause, involving Maximilian’s arbitration, was grudgingly suggested.
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Tunstall remained unconvinced, as his joint letter with Worcester of 6 March addressed to Henry made clear:

And whereas your Grace in your said letter showeth unto us many great reasons moving the same to put the exclusion of the words ‘proventus et emolumenta’ in the Emperor’s arbitrement, which thing was seen to your most honourable council expedient, albeit our advice in our letters of the xiith. of the last month was to the contrary, after we saw your Grace’s pleasure we endeavoured ourselves to our best to the accomplishment of the same
.
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However, all too soon Tunstall was reporting that their best endeavours were getting nowhere,
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and in the end Charles confirmed the treaty only with the
disputed clause left out
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– just as the ambassadors had always predicted. It is very hard to escape the conclusion the the men on the spot always got it right and Wolsey always got it wrong – unless, that is, Wolsey’s real intentions were not understood by them.

At this stage it may be helpful to recall that the ostensible aim of English foreign policy from 1515 to 1518 was to remove the French from Northern Italy. This was not achieved, for under the Treaty of London of October 1518 the duchy of Milan was left in French hands. The argument so far has been that the aim was never likely to have been achieved because no other European power shared it sufficiently to make a reliable ally. Furthermore, most of the people involved in the conduct of English policy quickly became aware of the improbability of its success – but not, apparently, Wolsey or Henry. It is very puzzling. Enough has been written to indicate that Wolsey was not a fool, and yet during these years he appears to have acted like one. This paradox has suggested to some a possible explanation for English failure at this time: her policy did not succeed because Wolsey was not fully committed to it, having been forced into an anti-French posture because of Henry’s intense rivalry with the new French king, whose nearness in age and similar accomplishments could only have fuelled the competitive spirit of someone who saw himself as the natural successor of the victor of Agincourt, Henry
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. And as against the warrior king can be contrasted a Wolsey dedicated to peace. The resulting tension, so it has been argued, was not helpful to the smooth conduct of English foreign policy, and in particular it was responsible for much that went wrong in the period 1515-18.
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To see whether such a view can be sustained, it is necessary to return to the late autumn of 1515 when it appeared that the English intention was not only to drive the French out of Northern Italy, but also to recover Henry’s rights in France by means of an English invasion, led perhaps by Henry himself.
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During the following February both Pace and Wingfield were still referring to such a possibility,
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but early in March Pace had received instructions from Wolsey, asking for a delay to all invasion plans, mainly because there was no way in which England could be ready to invade from the north until August at the earliest. He, therefore, suggested that once Milan was taken, Maximilian and the Swiss should spend the early summer consolidating their position in Northern Italy rather than, as was originally intended, pressing on into south-east France.
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When by the end of March it became clear that Milan was not going to fall, at least for the foreseeable future, then it was Pace’s turn to ask for delay. And by 23 April he was having to explain that not only was any immediate Imperial-Swiss invasion of France no longer possible, but that even Wolsey’s revised date for an English invasion ‘must be set apart (after my
judgment) unto such time as your grace shall have knowledge of the end of this business here’.
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What emerges from this, therefore, is not that in the spring of 1516 Wolsey was being ‘soft’ on war, but that circumstances had dictated some modification and delay to the very ambitious schemes for a joint invasion of France that, ostensibly at any rate, had been at the forefront of English plans. But what of the two pieces of evidence that appear to suggest that there was at any rate a difference of emphasis between Wolsey and Henry in this matter? In the same letter to Pace in which he had asked for a delay, Wolsey had made another, rather curious, request. Could Pace and Wingfield, with all the skill at their command, try and make it appear that the request for delay had not originated with the English, and could they instead persuade the emperor and the Swiss to ‘make an instance to you to be a mean unto the king that they proceed no further but only into the duchy of Milan’?
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This has been taken to mean that when Wolsey made this request to the English ambassadors Henry either did not know about it, or more probably did know, but was not convinced that it was necessary.
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If, however, Wolsey could persuade the emperor and the Swiss to ask for delay themselves, then Henry would have little option but to agree. And sure enough, Henry did agree, for in a draft letter to Pace dated sometime in April 1516 he wrote that he was ‘right well contented’ with the proposal that the Swiss should spend the summer establishing themselves in the Duchy of Milan, and that in the meantime better provision could be made for an invasion of France the following year.
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The second piece of evidence comes in a letter from Wolsey to Silvestro Gigli, bishop of Worcester, at this time the most trusted English representative at Rome, written on 22 May. In it he remarked that though Henry himself was committed to an invasion of France, all his councillors had dissuaded him from crossing the sea until his allies were equally ready, lest, as on other occasions, he should be left in the lurch.
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In the spring of 1516 Henry was bursting to go to war and was only with difficulty restrained by his more cautious and peace-loving councillors, of whom the most important was Thomas Wolsey: is that really the truth? The answer must be no. Something has already been said about the difficulties of interpreting the correspondence of foreign diplomats, and most of those difficulties apply to English diplomatic correspondence. What were Wolsey’s intentions when he wrote those letters to Pace and to the bishop of Worcester? The answer seems clear enough; he genuinely wanted delay. Why did he want delay? Because England had made no military preparations, and therefore could not take part in an invasion even if she wanted to. Other reasons, as Wolsey’s letter to Pace also made clear, were an inability to finance three armies – those of England, the emperor, and the Swiss – and a basic mistrust of Imperial and Swiss intentions.
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No English army, not enough money, and no trust, are any of these things reasons that could be made known to England’s allies? Would such information inspire confidence in English leadership?
Wolsey was in an extremely difficult position. He had to delay, but he did not want the reasons for this to be known. The only solution was for Pace and Wingfield to try and manipulate a request for delay out of the allies, and for their own good reasons. Just how far Wolsey himself was manipulating the truth emerges if his letter to the bishop of Worcester is looked at in more detail.
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He began it by declaring that relations between Henry
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and Charles had never been better, despite a little difficulty from some of Charles’s ministers who remained apprehensive about the French. The truth was that relations were not at all good, and that ‘some ministers’ were none other than the regents, Chièvres and Sauvage, whose pro-French policy was not at all to Wolsey’s liking. Wolsey then went on to stress England’s good relations with Maximilian, who treated the king of England like a son, and with the Swiss who would certainly not desert to the French. In fact, whether he treated Henry like a son or not, Maximilian had just destroyed the English plans by his flight from Milan. Realizing that praise of Maximilian at this juncture might seem a little strange, Wolsey even provided an excuse for his behaviour: it was all due to the knavery of the banker, Frescobaldi, who had failed to get the English money to Maximilian on time. Of course, the truth was that, whatever the inadequacies of the banker, the real ‘knave’ was Maximilian, as Wolsey knew perfectly well. And it was following his defence of Maximilian that Wolsey introduced the picture of the warlike Henry restrained by his cautious councillors; and by now his reasons for doing so should be clear. He was trying to persuade Leo
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, via the bishop of Worcester, that England was still a power to be reckoned with, and that, whatever the temporary setbacks, the anti-French alliance, with England at its centre, still had credibility. True, England had not yet invaded France, but Henry had every intention of doing so whenever his councillors judged that the moment was right. Furthermore, when she did invade, Henry himself would lead so large an army across the Channel that the French would be defeated, whatever England’s allies chose to do. The implicit corollary of all this was that it would be very much in Leo
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’s interests to side with the English.

In both these letters, to Pace and the bishop of Worcester, Wolsey was trying to get his ambassadors to put the best possible case for the apparent inadequacies of England’s anti-French manoeuvring. They are not evidence of any difference of opinion between Wolsey and Henry, and no such difference could provide the explanation for the failure of English policy. This is not to say that either man had really intended to invade France in 1516. Indeed, it seems most unlikely that either seriously entertained such a plan during the three and a half years under review, the main reason for saying this being that there is virtually no evidence for any large-scale military preparations. So what has to be explained is why there was so much talk of invasion, not only in early 1516, but during the next eighteen months.