Wolsey, Thomas

WOLSEY, THOMAS.

His Rise and Dignities (§ 1).
His Policies and Statesmanship (§ 2).
His Fall (§ 3).
His Faults and their Extenuation (§ 4).

Thomas Wolsey, cardinal, papal legate, and chan cellor of England, was born, according to tradition, at Ipswich, Mar., 1471 (more probably Mar., 1475, or late in 1474), and died at Leicester Abbey (Y4 m. n. of Leicester) Nov. 29, 1530. That he was a

"butcher's boy" was probably the r. His slander of an enemy, for his father

Rise and seems to have been a grazier and wool

Dignities. merchant, and certainly possessed land and other property at Ipswich, while he also had relatives who were well-to-do. The future cardinal studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and received his first degree at the age of fifteen, win-

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ning the name of the "boy bachelor." He became fellow of Magdalen, then master of a grammar-school attached to the college, and was its bursar, 1498-1500. He was ordained priest Mar. 10, 1498, and in 1500 Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset (whose sons attended the Magdalen grammar-school), gave him the living of Limington in Somerset. About 1501 he became chaplain to Henry Deane, archbishop of Canterbury, and after Deane's death (Feb., 1503) he was chaplain to Sir Richard Nanfan, deputy lieutenant of Calais. Nanfan was an old man and turned over to Wolsey the more arduous duties of his post; he commended him to the king (Henry VII.), and about 1507 Wolsey entered the royal service as chaplain. In 1509 he became dean and prebendary of Lincoln and royal almoner (the latter by appointment of Henry VIII., who succeeded to the throne in April), and the next year he was appointed prebendary of Hereford; in 1511 canon of Windsor and registrar of the Knights of the Garter; in 1512, dean of Hereford; in 1513, prebendary and dean of York and precentor of London; in 1514 bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of York; and in 1515 cardinal (the red hat was placed on his head with magnificent ceremonial in Westminster Abbey Nov. 18, John Colet preaching the sermon; his title was S. Ca?cilia trans Tiberim), and (Dec. 14) lord chancellor. In 1518 he became legatos a latere and bishop of Bath and Wells (in commendam); in 1521 abbot of St. Albans; in 1523 bishop of Durham (resigning Bath and Wells); and in 1529 bishop of Winchester (in commendam; soon after this appointment he resigned Durham). In addition to these dignities in England, he was made bishop of Tournai after the English captured the town in 1513, and in 1520, at the instigation of Charles V., was made bishop of Badajoz (he never actually obtained possession of Tournai, and surrendered his claims to it in 1518 for a pension of 12,000 livres; Badajoz was worth 5,000 ducats; an annual pension of 2,000 ducats was added from the bishopric of Palencia). His princely revenues from all these appointments were augmented by various livings in England, and as early as 1501 he obtained a dispensation to hold two incompatible benefices with Limington. In 1506 he was instituted to the parish church of Redgrave, Suffolk, and a papal bu13 permitted him to hold the vicarage of Lydd, Kent, and two other benefices with Limington. In 1509 or 1510 he was granted the parsonage of St. Bride's, Fleet Street, London, and from Nov., 1510, until he became bishop he held the parish church of Torrington, Devonshire. He resigned Limington before July 2, 1509.

Wolsey's first diplomatic employment was a mission to Scotland in 1508, and later in the same year he was sent to the Emperor Maximilian in Flanders, acquitting himself with such dispatch that he was back in England on the evening of the third day after his departure. His signature as privy councilor first appears in the latter part of 1511, after which his hand soon became the guiding one in English public affairs, and till 1530 his history was the history of England. It is a dreary recital of diplomatic intrigue and sixteenth century statecraft, belonging to secular, not religious, history. Rig

paramount aim was to exalt his country abroad-and herein he succeeded; he found England a third-rate power; he made her the arbiter of a. His Europe. Secondarily, he contemplated Policies at home a judicious scheme of social, and States- economic, and ecclesiastical reform,

manship. which he failed to carry out; changes were made later by others, who used methods they had learned from Wolsey, though they worked with a spirit and a motive far different from his. Of all his misfortunes, none was greater than this, for it led men of his time, and long after, to judge him by merely apparent results of his policies; and the evil was aggravated because these results were more or less closely bound up with matters of religion and ethics. Since the publication of the state papers of Henry VIII. and other authorita tive documents in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the enlightened judgment of an age more free from religious prejudice and personal animosi ties has increasingly recognized that Wolaey was a statesman rather than an ecclesiastic; that he com prehended the problems and conditions of his time as probably no other did; that his aims were wise and good; that he made skilful use of indifferent opportunities and instruments; that he was un sparing in labor, tenacious of purpose, fertile in ex pedient, ever undismayed and ready to begin anew when a particular plan failed; above all, that he fired the English imagination, roused the national spirit, and, more than any other, created the Eng lish greatness of the later time. Bishop Creighton, his latest Anglican biographer, pronounces him the greatest political genius and most devoted patriot that England has ever produced. The Roman Catholic Ethelred Taunton acclaims him as the greatest statesman of all Europe, the master mind of his age, and thinks that, had he been made pope, he might have averted the schism of the sixteenth century.*

What he might have attempted at Rome is indicated by his plan of ecclesiastical reform for England. He aimed to bring the English Church into accord with national needs by restricting its excessive privileges; by limiting the jurisdiction of its vexatious courts; by reducing the number of its unnecessary officials; by reorganizing on a more efficient basis its antiquated episcopal system; and by applying some of its superabundant revenues to the social welfare, particularly by diversion of some of its wealth from the maintenance of idle and ignorant monks to the education of a body of learned clergy. This comprehensive and judicious plan

* He was three times a candidate, or quasi-candidate, for the papacy-in 1521-22, when Adrian VI. succeeded Leo 7C.; in 1523, when Clement VII. succeeded Adrian VI.; and in 1529, when Clement VII. fell ill and it was believed he would die. On the two former occasions Wolsey seems neither to have expected nor desired to be elected; it was Henry who was eager that his cardinal and minister should be chosen, and Wolsey's own attitude can not justly be characterized as more than one of willingness to gratify the king by accepting the honor in case the choice should fall upon him. Certainly he did not shape his previous policy with any such end in view. In 1529 the case was different; election then would have meant triumphant escape from the difficulties crowding hard upon him at home. But Clement recovered, and Woleey was not to be saved in this way.

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failed, partly because Wolsey made his domestic policy secondary to foreign affairs, more because he thought to carry reforms through by power rather than by persuasion, and strove unwisely to gather and wield all power in his own hands. It may well be doubted whether mistakes would not have frustrated his good intentions, had he occupied the chair of St. Peter. He was a churchman and theologian of the old school, deeply versed in Thomas Aquinas. His studies did not lead in the direction of the new learning, and he had not its spirit, though his practical sense and experience made him friendly to some of its representatives and ideals. He was ready to spend himself to confer benefits on those beneath him, but he would have all reforms made in due order, propriety, and dignity, and would have repressed democratic aspirations. On his deathbed he admonished Henry to " have a vigilant eye to suppress the hellish Lutherans "-having in mind, as the full text of his message shows, the social and political disorders bound up with the Reformation on the continent.

Wolsey was never popular with the old nobility, whom he thrust aside, while he fell into disfavor with men of lesser rank when they had to pay the cost of his (and the king's) policies. He was secure only so long as he had the royal sup3. His Fall. port; and this he lost when he failed to obtain the divorce for Henry from Catharine of Aragon. The divorce became a pressing matter in 1527, but Wolsey did not approve of the new marriage, however willing he may have been to be rid of Catharine, who was an obstacle to his plans. On other occasions, when his judgment differed from the king's-as when Henry chose to be a candidate for the imperial crown in 1519, and desired war with France in 1521-25-he had temporized and striven, successfully; to minimize the harm from following the less judicious course. The matter of the divorce, however, was too hard for him, and as it dragged along his enemies obtained the king's ear, finding a potent ally in the ambitious and frivolous Anne Boleyn. Wolsey gave up the great seal on Nov. 19, 1529, and three days later he acknowledged a Praemunire (q.v.) and turned his property over to the king. He was ordered to repair to a, house belonging to his bishopric of Winchester at Esher (in Surrey, 15 m. s.w. of London), where he lived for three months, in great distress of mind, ill, and suffering pecuniary straits. In Feb., 1530, he resigned (unwillingly) Winchester and St. Albans, but was granted a general pardon and had the possessions of his archbishopric restored to him. It does not appear that Henry was ever, even to the last, of his own volition unfriendly to Wolsey, and probably the real situation was that the king (one of the ablest of English sovereigns, and an apt scholar) felt that he had learned the moves and stratagems of statecraft, and could now play the game as well as the minister. He was content to be rid of the cardinal in public affairs, and purposed to relegate him to the ecclesiastical sphere-incidentally appropriating his wealth, especially as by this course he hoped to keep Wolsey in reserve, should need of him yet arise. Wolsey's foes bent their energies to prevent a meeting between him and the king, and when

Henry permitted him, for his health, to move to Richmond (nearer the court), they ordered him threateningly to go to his archbishopric. He proseeded northward by slow stages, apparently hoping things would yet turn in his favor, and reached Cawood (10 m. s. of York) in the early fall. He avoided ostentation, busied himself with ecclesiastical duties, and won the hearts of many who had previously been prejudiced against him, although he was continually subjected to much petty persecution. He arranged to be instituted, quietly, on Nov. 7, but three days before that date he was arrested, charged with high treason. He seems to have hoped for some amelioration of his affairs through the intervention of Francis I., and attempted to open negotiations with the French envoy; really his offense was not great, but this indiscretion was enough to equip his enemies with a trumped-up charge against him, though his keepers were lenient and traveled slowly toward London because of his weakness. He was very despondent and asserted constantly that he was being led to execution. Death, however, saved him from this possible fate. Midway between York and London, at Leicester Abbey, his strength failed completely, and here, tended by the kindly ministrations of his brother monks (he had joined the abbey some years before), he breathed his last. He was buried in the abbey.

Wolsey was ambitious; proud, perhaps arrogant; lavish, even extravagant, in both public and private expenditure.* He applied church revenues shamelessly to personal ends as well as to the devious scheming of diplomacy, and he fol-

4. His lowed all the tortuous ways of his proFaults and fession, prevaricating, bribing, and their Ex= choosing the means to his ends with the tenuation. recklessness and cynicism of a very practical politician. He accepted bribes. His private life is said to have been impure. He was subservient to the king, even cringing when he feared to lose his master's favor. He appears weak and pitiable in adversity. On the other hand, he was no mere self-seeker. He was not ruthless, vindictive, or blood-thiraty.T He must have been lovable, for in his fall his servants stood by him

* He accompanied Henry to France in 1513 (not yet even a bishop) with a retinue double those of Bishops Fox and Ruthall. His household in London numbered 800 persons (cf. Cavendish, chap. v., Of the Orders and Offices of his House and Chapel; cf. also chap. vii., Of the Manner of his Going to Westminster Hall; chap. viii., Of the Cardinal's Magnifi cence in his House, an account of an entertainment for the king and court, utilized-in many lines verbatim-in Shakespeare's Henry VIII., I., iv.; chap. xiii., Of the French King's Redemption out of Captivity arid of the Cardinal's Ambassage into France; chap . xiv., Of the French Ambassador's Enter tainment and Dispatch). The Field of the Cloth of Gold, the most magnificent of medieval pageants (1520), was entirely under Wolsey's direction, and in all the glittering throng none was more splendid than Wolsey; none also was busier with weighty matters of state amid all the show. He took a ninety-nine years' lease of Hampton Court from the Knights of St. John in 1515, adorned and extended the palace in succeeding years to suit his taste, and made it his favorite retreat, though in 1525 he presented it to the king as "too magnificent for a subject."

f It is worth noting that no one brought before his legatine court on a charge of heresy was burned; and in political matters and toward personal enemies he showed a like selfrevtmint and toleration.

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nobly, and he made friends of all with whom he came personally in contact; when he was led from Cawood the crowd ran after him crying: " God save your Grace! The foul evil take them that have taken you from us 1 " His subserviency to his royal master was grounded in a conviction that Henry's sovereignty was the only guaranty against civil strife; furthermore, that the royal power was the only power in England strong enough to work nec essary reforms. Herein public opinion strenuously endorsed Wolsey's. Likewise, his magnificent life accorded with the spirit of his time; the subven tions he received from France and Spain were ques tioned by no one; his apparent misuse of church offices and revenues was sanctioned by time-honored custom. And he has better extenuation than the specious and commonplace plea that " his faults were those of his time." The ostentatious display in which he lived and with which he clothed all his enterprises was a part of his great aspirations and plans, and was, moreover, an effective means toward the ends he was striving for. It impressed foreign potentates, and pleased and animated men at home; probably nothing contributed more to Wolsey's greatest and permanent achievement-the awaken ing and invigorating of the English spirit-than the magnificent life of the English cardinal. "Bribes" may be too harsh a word to apply to his pensions, annuities, and subsidies; they were given and ac cepted openly, and they never caused him to waver in his duty to England. A churchman of the highest rank, he served the State and used the Church's money for the public good, because in the early sixteenth century churchmen alone had the educa tion, experience in affairs, and general training req uisite for public duties, and the Church possessed by far the larger share of the national wealth-a greater share, moreover, than it needed for the work it was doing. A conspicuous example is his diver sion of abundant wealth to grand educational foundations. As early as 1518 he sought and ob tained exceptional powers in the visitation of monasteries.. Making use of these powers, aug mented by later bulls, he suppressed a number of religious houses and applied their revenues to the foundation of Christ Church College at Oxford (1525) and a school at Ipswich (1528), the latter intended to be the first of a series of in stitutions scattered over England to meet local needs. Thus he. would have corrected a fault in the English educational system, which, after his fall, remained unrelieved until the century just ended. No incident of his fall occasioned him deeper grief than the news that his two colleges were to be sup pressed. The Oxford institution was ultimately saved (partly in response to Wolsey's earnest en treaties), but its name was changed from Cardinal College to King's (it is now Christ Church) and its plan was much curtailed. Another trait, less patent but more noteworthy, linking Wolsey with the open ing twentieth century, is his steadfast belief that the greatness and prosperity of his land and of all lands are truly promoted by peace, not by war. He worked constantly, devotedly, untiringly for peace, winning the title of cardinalis paeiftcus, and he utandb forth, in the long line of English statesmen,

as the great peace minister-than whom no other is more fit to be. taken as patron by those who would now substitute arbitration and reason for pillage and bloodshed in the settlement of international disputes.

Bibliography: Among the sources may be mentioned in the Rolls Series: Letters arid Papers of . . . Richard 111. arid Henry VII., 2 vols., 1861-33; Calendars of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vols. i-vi., 1862 sqq.; Calendar of Letters between England and Spain,.vols. ii.-v., 1868 sqq.; Venice, State Papers and Manuscripts, vols. ii.-v., 1864 sqq.; and J. S. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII., ed. Gairdner, 2 vols., 1884. Besides these, reference should be made to all original publications dealing with the reign of Henry VIII., as well as to the works on the history, secular and ecclesiastical, dealing with that period. The so-called life by George (not William) Cavendish contains the reminiscences of a faithful servant, written late in life (in the reign of Mary). Cavendish remained with Wolsey to the end, was present at his deathbed, and personally carried the news of his death to Henry VIII. The book is gossipy, deficient in dates and other data for reconstructing Wolsey's life, and has value chiefly for the picture it. gives (very favorable) of Wolsey the man by one who knew him long and intimately. A copy of the first edition (The Negotiations of Thomas Wolsey, the Great Cardinall of England, Containing his Life and Death, etc.. London, 1641), bound in red levant morocco, gilt edges, brought $50 at the Hoe sale (1910). The work has frequently been reproduced and in cheap form, as in Morley's Universal Library, London, 1885, recent ed., ib., 1908. The best life of Wolsey is Mandell Creighton's Cardinal Wolsey in Twelve English Statesmen Series, London, 1888 (written with abundant knowledge of English and continental history and shrewd discrimination, treats of Wolsey as a statesman, but is rather hard reading). Of importance is E. L. Taunton's Thomas Wolsey, Late and Reformer, London, 1901 (a eulogy of Wolsey as churchman, thus supplementing Creighton; it is rather loosely written, and is not to be implicitly trusted in dates, citations, and, perhaps. conclusions, though it has interest and value as the work of a liberal Roman Catholic; cf. his article in American Catholic Quarterly Renew, xxv (1900), 289-329); F. A. Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, chap. ii:, London, 1888, rev. ed., 1899 (unfavorable to Wolsey). The drama, Henry VIII., attributed to Shakespeare (really written by him and Fletcher and containing more of Fletcher than Shakespeare), is not history, but has value in that it doubtless presents Wolsey,as men of his time and immediately succeeding generations saw him; the eulogy (IV., ii. 48-68) is inadequate, but just as far as it goes.

Other works which may be consulted to advantage are: T. Storer, Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, London, 1599, reprint, Oxford, 1826; R. Fiddes, Life of Cardinal Wolsey, ib. 1724; J. Grove, Hist. of the Life and Times of Cardinal Wolsey, 4 vols., ib. 1742-44; C. Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Biography, 4 vols., ib. 1853; W. Busch, Drei Jahre englischer Vermittlungspolitik, 1618-21, Bonn, 1884; idem, Cardinal Wolsey und die englische kaiserliche Allianz, 1522-26, ib. 1884; idem, in Historisches Taschenbuch, vols. viii. ix.; Cambridge Modern History, ii. 4245, 416-435, New York, 1904; DNB, )xii. 325-343.