The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (81 page)

The question of the extent of opposition within the Church to Wolsey’s legatine powers is naturally of great importance. But the opposition so far noted, at the convocation of 1523 and at some of the meetings in the diocese of Lincoln summoned to hear the legatine constitutions of 1519, does not add up to much, and it might be expected that it would have been greater. Nothing was more characteristic of the Middle Ages than disputes over rival jurisdictions, as much within the Church as amongst the secular authorities. A glance at the history of the English Church in the thirty years before Wolsey’s appointment as legate confirms this. In the 1480s and 1490s there had been the opposition to John Morton’s attempts to extend his powers as archbishop of Canterbury over both the secular clergy and the monastic orders, which led to serious conflict between him and Abbot Wallingford of St Albans,
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and with the bishop of London, Richard Hill. Both episodes involved appeals to Rome and, during the course of the second, Morton appears to have excommunicated the bishop and arrested one of his leading officials.
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Warham continued Morton’s aggressive attempts to extend Canterbury’s jurisdiction, especially as regards testamentary matters, and soon found himself faced with widespread opposition, spearheaded by Bishop Fox. The ensuing battle, which split the episcopacy into two camps, was taken to Rome, but the pope thought it wiser to pass the buck, and authorized Henry
VIII
to settle the matter, which with some difficulty and increasing annoyance, he did during the course of 1513.
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The details of this dispute can be ignored; the fact that it took place, and the fierceness with which it was waged, is the necessary background for assessing the amount of opposition to Wolsey.

It will be evident that the person who was most directly affected by Wolsey’s legatine authority was Warham. There was, to begin with, the question of status and dignity already touched upon, resulting, if Cavendish can be trusted – and there has to be a doubt about this – in a dispute about whether the crosses of Canterbury or York should have precedence.
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Technically, once he became legate, Wolsey was correct to insist on his superior rank, but this need not have helped to reconcile Warham to his demotion. Then, as has been shown, there was the threat to his prerogative and jurisdictional rights that Wolsey’s legatine authority posed, and with it a possibility of serious financial loss. Furthermore, it had been Wolsey who, in 1515, had succeeded him as lord chancellor; and even if, as was argued earlier,
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Warham had been quite willing to resign, in retrospect Wolsey’s succession may have begun to rankle. At his age it was perfectly seemly to retire gracefully from
secular affairs, but then to be pushed around by the same man in spiritual matters, and in matters concerning the dignity of his see, about which Warham held strong views, may well have injected an element of paranoia into his attitude towards Wolsey.

Warham’s initial reaction to Wolsey’s acquisition of legatine powers was to resist them, and the occasion that he chose to make his stand was the calling of that legatine meeting of bishops for 14 March 1519 referred to earlier. According to Wolsey, the calling of that meeting had been discussed with, and agreed to, by Warham some time before the formal summonses were sent out and, what is more, it was the king who had ordered Warham to discuss the matter with the new legate
a latere
. But having appeared to go along with Wolsey, however reluctantly, Warham had then proceeded, on 2 December 1518, to issue his own summonses for a provincial council to meet to discuss reform before Wolsey’s.
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It seems most unlikely that Wolsey would have invented the king’s involvement or Warham’s preknowledge of his own intentions, so it must be concluded that Warham’s decision to summon his own council was intended as a slap in the face for Wolsey and, less directly, for Henry. No wonder Wolsey was put out:

Assured I am that his grace [Henry] will not I should be so little esteemed that you should enterprise the said reformation to the express derogation of the said dignity of the see apostolic, and otherwise than the law will suffer you, without mine advice, consent, and knowledge, nor you had no such commandment of his grace, but expressly to the contrary
.

This being the case,

necessary it shall be that forthwith you repair to me, as well to be learnt of the considerations which moved you thus besides my knowledge, and also to have communication with you for divers things concerning your person, and declaration of the same of the king’s pleasure
.
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The tone of Wolsey’s letter was sharp, not to say threatening, and it may well be that one of the ‘things concerning your person’ was contained in a letter from one of Warham’s chaplains, Thomas Gold, written on 14 February, in which he described to Warham the efforts of ‘this great tyrant’ and the archbishop’s ‘great adversary’ to persuade the king’s Council to bring a charge of praemunire against him. Happily Wolsey’s efforts had been thwarted by the councillors’ ‘great love and favour’ towards Warham, ‘wherefore you may be glad that your great adversary is thus discomforted, and greater discomforted shall be shortly by God’s grace’. Gold also reported a meeting he had had with the bishop of Norwich, Richard Nix, who had told him

that he would assuredly stick by you … saying moreover that the cardinal laid no manner of thing to his charge as yet, but that he would that he should keep his day this
next Lent [the legatine convocation of March 1519], … also he said that if the king would not suffer him to have his lawful defence in the case of praemunire he would tell him that he would forsake him as his liege man … Therefore, I take of this bishop that he is stiffly set to this matter, which you know hath been always stiff in his causes
.
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‘Stiffly’ almost seems a euphemism, for what Nix was proposing was treason; but in fact no formal charge of praemunire against either him or Warham has survived for this date. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Wolsey would have wanted to take a step which would undoubtedly have raised the ecclesiastical temperature, thus making the general acceptance of his legatine powers much more difficult. Neither is Gold’s suggestion that Wolsey had been defeated in Council over the matter very likely: the royal support of his legatine powers tells against this, and moreover neither Gold nor his named source, ‘Doctor Sexten’ – perhaps John Sixtinus, a friend of Erasmus and Colet and resident in London at this time – was in a position to obtain accurate information of what went on in the Council, though no doubt there were leaks.

Nevertheless, Gold’s letter leaves no doubt that Warham and Nix were fearful of praemunire charges, and that Warham may even have been threatened with such a charge if he would not toe the line. It is worth remembering here that in October 1518 a charge of praemunire had been brought against Henry Standish, who only a few months earlier had been appointed bishop of St Asaph. It is often alleged that these charges were brought by Wolsey in order to take revenge on a man who in 1515 had dared to take on the English clergy and had been Henry’s rather than his own choice for St Asaph.
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The allegation has never been very convincing. It would have been the height of political folly to move against a man who was so in favour with the king without having first secured the royal consent – which would hardly have been forthcoming if Wolsey’s motivation had been merely to gratify a personal whim. What is not usually stressed is the precise charge, which was that Standish had allowed himself to be consecrated bishop before he had received the royal assent and done homage for his temporalities – and the person who had consecrated him was Warham. Given that Standish was Henry’s personal choice, the charge was ludicrous, but if Standish was technically guilty so also was Warham; and, in fact, Warham’s action in 1518 was to provide the basis for the charge of praemunire brought against him early in 1532.
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It seems possible therefore that the charge against Standish in the autumn of 1518 was an oblique way of putting pressure on Warham to accept the consequences of Wolsey’s new position. Whether anything more direct was tried is not known. People close to Warham believed it likely, and it may be that Warham was only saved from a praemunire charge because he gave way. His council never took place. Wolsey’s did.
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But if the major battle between Wolsey and Warham ended in the spring of 1519, there continued to be the occasional skirmish. As has been shown, it was not until late in 1522 that the two men reached an agreement on jurisdictional matters,
and not without some huffing and puffing from Warham. Nevertheless, the final result was not altogether unfavourable to him: if he had to share the revenue from his prerogative probate, he had at least had his rights to these fees, previously challenged by Fox and his supporters, confirmed. Indeed it may well be that, given the new impetus to their collection that resulted from the setting up of the joint-prerogative court, he may not have suffered any financial loss.
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And, at any rate, to share the revenue was a great deal better than no revenues at all, an outcome which he must have considered a real possibility when he first pondered on the consequences of Wolsey’s legatine appointment. In 1525 there had been some excitement over John Roper’s probate, but it had not taken a great deal of effort on Wolsey’s part to calm Warham down. Another cause not so much of disagreement but of hurt was Wolsey’s usurpation of Warham’s role as the dominant influence at Oxford university, despite the fact that Warham retained the office of chancellor of the university. In their preoccupation with securing Wolsey’s favour, the university often forgot to consult with Warham, who sometimes let his displeasure be known. In 1518 he reacted to their rather tardy notification of the appointment of a new bedel, a nominee of Wolsey and of Bishop Atwater of Lincoln, by remarking that he would prefer it if the university asked his opinion about appointments before they were made, rather than after.
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And when in 1522 all the statutes and privileges of the university were surrendered to Wolsey, who had been asked to produce new ones without, apparently, any consultation with its chancellor, one senses Warham’s annoyance beneath his dry observation that doubtless Wolsey was as devoted to the well-being of the university as he was.
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But however irritated the former fellow of New College may have been by the former fellow of Magdalen’s interference and munificence, he never allowed his irritation to develop into open conflict.

In reviewing every aspect of their relationship through the 1520s, the impression from their many surviving letters is not of great hostility, but rather of a willingness to put up with each other, and certainly to co-operate together in the king’s service. In 1520 Wolsey took some trouble to further Warham’s efforts at Rome to secure the papal privileges granted for previous jubilee celebrations to commemorate Becket’s martyrdom, but which were not on this occasion forthcoming.
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In 1521 there was a gracious exchange of presents, Wolsey’s being a costly jewel for Becket’s shrine.
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In January 1523 Warham, who had been ordered to bed by his doctor, thanked Wolsey for his advice to live on ‘high and dry ground as Knowle and such other’, and also for his offer of ‘a pleasant lodging at Hampton Court’ until the archbishop had fully recovered his health.
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Even when the two men were in disagreement, Wolsey was usually gracious and nearly always suggested a meeting to sort the matter out.
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Admittedly, in the major dispute over their respective reforming councils, Wolsey
had been less forthcoming, but even so he had ended his letter by pointing out to Warham that the nearness of Mortlake, which belonged to the archbishop of Canterbury, to Richmond, where Wolsey was going to stay, would make it possible for both of them ‘with little pain often to repair together as the case shall require’.
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Wolsey’s concern on this occasion to save Warham pain may have been somewhat lacking in sincerity, but it is difficult not to take Warham’s comments to Wolsey in 1525 at something near their face value. They were made in a letter written at the height of the difficulties over the collection of the Amicable Grant, and Warham took it upon himself to offer Wolsey some consolation. Given the circumstances, Wolsey must expect to receive a good deal of abuse. He, Warham, was being called an old fool. Wolsey must expect worse, because that was always the fate of those most in favour with the king, ‘do he never so well; but, whatever be spoken, the fruits which a tree brings forth will prove its goodness’.
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The phrasing of this letter is surely too particular and too apposite to be passed off as merely the conventional pleasantries of the Tudor establishment.

All the same, the evidence of this one letter should not be allowed to weigh too heavily in any final assessment of the two men’s relationship, for they were very different characters. As a somewhat buttoned-up but successful lawyer and civil servant with genuine scholarly interests, Warham was both the caricature of a Wykehamist and a representative figure of the late medieval English Church, and his ascent up the ladder of promotion, from New College, through the administration of the archbishop of Canterbury, to royal service, and then to the lord chancellorship and the see of Canterbury seems almost preordained. Wolsey’s rise, with its curious schoolmasterly beginnings, had required much more energy and personality, but also much more luck. There was a twenty-year difference in age and little reason for Warham to think very warmly of Wolsey. For his part, Wolsey may well have thought Warham a bit of a bore, and certainly from time to time the archbishop caused him trouble. But the argument presented here is that neither man – but especially Wolsey, if only because he was in the dominant position – allowed their differences to get so out of hand as to prevent them working together in a perfectly civilized way.