Thomas Wolsey was born in about 1473, the son of Robert Wolsey of Ipswich and his wife, Joan Daundy, yet history remembers him not as a butcher's son but as the most powerful man in England after the king. Widespread traditions identify his father as a butcher, a detail that became a weapon for his critics who could not comprehend how a man of such modest origins could amass wealth and power befitting the highest nobility. In reality, his father owned several businesses, and his mother was related to the influential Wingfield and Daundy families, providing a foundation for his rise. Wolsey attended Ipswich School and Magdalen College School before studying theology at Magdalen College, Oxford, where his education and career were significantly assisted by his uncle, Edmund Daundy. On the 10th of March 1498, he was ordained as a priest in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and remained in Oxford, first as the Master of Magdalen College School and soon the dean of divinity. From 1500 to 1509, Wolsey held a living as rector of St Mary's Church, Limington, in Somerset, and served as Dean of Hereford Cathedral in 1512. In 1502, he became a chaplain to Henry Deane, archbishop of Canterbury, who died the following year. He was then taken into the household of Sir Richard Nanfan, who made Wolsey executor of his estate. After Nanfan's death in 1507, Wolsey entered the service of King Henry VII, benefiting from Henry VII's policy of curbing the nobility and favouring those from more humble backgrounds. Henry VII appointed Wolsey royal chaplain, and in this position, he served as secretary to Richard Foxe, who recognised Wolsey's ability, dedication, industry, and willingness to take on tedious tasks. Wolsey's remarkable rise to power from humble origins attests to his intelligence, administrative ability, industriousness, ambition, and rapport with the king. In April 1508, Wolsey was sent to Scotland to discuss with King James IV rumours of the renewal of the Auld Alliance. Wolsey's rise coincided with the accession in April 1509 of Henry VIII, whose character, policies, and attitude to diplomacy differed significantly from his father's. In 1509 Henry appointed Wolsey to the post of almoner, a position that gave him a seat on the Privy Council and an opportunity to attain greater prominence and establish personal rapport with the king. A factor in Wolsey's rise was the young Henry VIII's relative lack of interest in the details of government during his early years.
The Other King And The War Machine
When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner, and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state. The highest political position Wolsey attained was Lord Chancellor, the king's chief adviser, in which position he enjoyed great freedom and was often depicted as the alter rex, or other king. The primary counsellors Henry VIII inherited from his father were Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, and William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. They were cautious and conservative, advising the king to act as a careful administrator like his father. Henry soon appointed to his Privy Council men more sympathetic to his own views and inclinations. Until 1511, Wolsey was adamantly antiwar, but when the king expressed his enthusiasm for an invasion of France, Wolsey adapted his views to the king's and gave persuasive speeches to the Privy Council in favour of war. Warham and Foxe, who did not share the king's enthusiasm for the French war, fell from power in 1515 or 1516, and Wolsey took over as the king's most trusted advisor and administrator. When Warham resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1515, probably under pressure from Wolsey, Henry appointed Wolsey in his place. Wolsey made careful moves to destroy or neutralise other courtiers' influence. He helped cause the fall of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, in 1521, and in 1527 he prosecuted, unsuccessfully, Henry's close friend William Compton and Henry's ex-mistress Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon, for adultery. In the case of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, Wolsey adopted a different strategy, attempting to win Suffolk's favour by his actions after the duke secretly married Henry's sister Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France, much to the king's displeasure. Wolsey advised the king not to execute the newlyweds but to embrace them; Brandon was already friends with Wolsey as well as a kinsman. However, the bride, both as sister to Henry and as Dowager Queen of France, had high royal status that could have threatened Wolsey had she so chosen. Wolsey's rise to a position of great secular power paralleled his increasing status in the church. He became a canon of Windsor in 1511. In 1514 he was made Bishop of Lincoln and then Archbishop of York in the same year. Pope Leo X made him a cardinal in 1515, with the titular church of St Cecilia in Trastevere. In 1518 he was appointed as abbot of St. Albans and bishop of Bath. Following the success of the English campaign in France and the peace negotiations that followed, Wolsey's ecclesiastical career advanced further: in 1523 he became Bishop of Durham, a post with wide political powers, and thus became known as Prince-Bishop of Durham. In 1529 he moved on from the bishop position in Durham to become the Bishop of Winchester. With his roles in the church came great wealth and estates, and with the accumulation of his different roles in the church he made upwards of £35,000 a year.
The Anglo-French War of 1512 to 1514 gave Wolsey a significant opportunity to demonstrate his talents in foreign policy. A convenient justification for going to war came in 1511 in the form of a plea for help from Pope Julius II, who was beginning to feel threatened by France. England formed an alliance with Julius, King Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, against King Louis XII of France. The first English campaign against France proved unsuccessful, partly due to the unreliability of the alliance with Ferdinand. Henry learned from the mistakes of the campaign and in 1513, still with papal support, launched a joint attack on France with Maximilian, successfully capturing two French cities and causing the French to retreat. Wolsey's ability to keep a large number of troops supplied and equipped for the duration of the war proved a major factor in the English success. He also had a key role in negotiating the Anglo-French treaty of the 7th of August 1514, which secured a temporary peace between the two nations. Under this treaty, Louis XII would marry Henry's young sister, Mary. In addition, England was able to keep the captured city of Tournai and secure an increase in the annual pension France paid. Meanwhile, a turnover of rulers in Europe threatened to diminish England's influence. With Henry's sister, Mary, married to Louis XII on the 9th of October 1514, an alliance was formed, but Louis was not in good health. Less than three months later, he died and was succeeded by the young and ambitious Francis I. Queen Mary had allegedly secured a promise from Henry that if Louis died, she could marry whomever she pleased. Following Louis's death, she secretly married Suffolk, with Francis I's assistance, which prevented another marriage alliance. As Mary was the only princess Henry could use to secure marriage alliances, this was a bitter blow. Wolsey then proposed an alliance with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire against France. The death of Ferdinand II of Aragon, Henry VIII's father-in-law and England's closest ally, in 1516 was a further blow. Ferdinand was succeeded by Charles V, who immediately proposed peace with France. After Maximilian I's death in 1519, Charles was elected in his stead; thus Charles ruled a substantial portion of Europe and English influence became limited on the continent. But Wolsey managed to assert English influence by other means. In 1517, Pope Leo X sought peace in Europe to form a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. In 1518 Wolsey was made Papal Legate in England, enabling him to realise Leo's desire for peace by organising the Treaty of London. The treaty showed Wolsey as the arbiter of Europe, organising a massive peace summit involving 20 nations. This put England at the forefront of European diplomacy and drew her out of isolation, making her a desirable ally. This is well illustrated by the Anglo-French treaty signed two days afterwards. It was partly this peace treaty that caused conflict between France and Spain. In 1519, when Charles V ascended to the throne of the Holy Roman Emperor, King Francis I of France was infuriated. He had invested enormous sums in bribing the electorate to elect him emperor, and thus used the Treaty of London as a justification for the Habsburg-Valois conflict. Wolsey appeared to act as mediator between the two powers, both of which were vying for England's support. Another of Wolsey's diplomatic triumphs was the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Wolsey organised much of this grandiose meeting between Francis I and Henry VIII, accompanied by 5,000 followers and involving court activities more than military discussion. Though it seemed to open the door to peaceful negotiations with France if the king wished, it was also a chance for a lavish display of English wealth and power before the rest of Europe, through flamboyant celebrations and events such as jousting, with the two kings competing, though not against each other. With France and Spain vying for England's allegiance, Wolsey could choose the ally that better suited his policies. Wolsey chose Charles mainly because England's economy would suffer from the loss of the lucrative cloth trade industry between England and the Netherlands had France been chosen instead.
The Annulment And The Fall
Henry's marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon had produced no sons who survived infancy; the Wars of the Roses were still within living memory, leading to the fear of a power struggle after Henry's death. Henry felt the people would accept only a male sovereign, not his daughter Mary. He believed God had cursed him for the sin of marrying the widow of his elder brother, and that the papal dispensation for that marriage was invalid because it was based upon the claim that Catherine was still a virgin after her first husband's death. Henry argued that Catherine's claim was not credible, and thus the dispensation must be withdrawn and the marriage annulled. His motivation has been attributed to his determination to have a son and heir, and to his desire for Anne Boleyn, one of his wife's maids-of-honour. Queen Catherine had no further pregnancies after 1519; Henry began annulment proceedings in 1527. Catherine, however, maintained that she had been a virgin when she married Henry. Because she opposed annulment and a return to her previous status as Dowager Princess of Wales, the annulment request became a matter of international diplomacy, with Catherine's nephew Charles V pressuring Clement not to annul the marriage. Clement faced a dilemma: he would anger either Charles or Henry. He delayed his decision as long as possible, infuriating Henry and Anne Boleyn, who began to doubt Wolsey's loyalty to the Crown over the Church. Wolsey appealed to Clement for an annulment on three fronts. First, he tried to convince the Pope that the dispensation was void as the marriage clearly disobeyed instructions in the book of Leviticus. Second, Wolsey objected to the dispensation on technical grounds, claiming it was incorrectly worded. Shortly afterwards, a correctly worded version was found in Spain. Third, Wolsey wanted Clement to let the final decision be made in England, which, as papal legate, he would supervise. In 1528 Clement decided to allow two papal legates to decide the outcome in England: Wolsey and Campeggio. Wolsey was confident of the decision, but Campeggio took a long time to arrive, and when he finally did, he delayed proceedings so much that the case had to be suspended in July 1529, effectively sealing Wolsey's fate. In 1529, Wolsey was stripped of his government office and property, including his magnificently expanded residence of Palace of Whitehall, which Henry took to replace the Palace of Westminster as his own main London residence. Wolsey was permitted to remain Archbishop of York. He travelled to Yorkshire for the first time in his career, but when he was staying at one of the Archbishop's residences, Cawood in north Yorkshire, he was accused of treason and ordered to London by Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland. In great distress, Wolsey left Cawood Castle on the evening of the 7th of November 1530. He lodged at Pomfret Abbey in Pontefract that night and the following day made it to Sheffield Park, where he spent the next 14 days hosted by George Talbot, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury. At Sheffield, Wolsey fell seriously ill with dysentery. Taken into custody by Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, Wolsey left for Hardwick Hall on the 25th of November. He was so ill that Kingston's guards believed Wolsey to be dying, and wept openly. Spending the night in the city of Nottingham, Wolsey proceeded to Leicester Abbey in the city of Leicester. He was so weak, he could barely sit on his mule. He reached the abbey on the evening of the 27th of November, and had to be carried upstairs. Wolsey remained in bed the next day, his health rapidly failing. He began to lose his sight, and repeatedly lost consciousness the night of the 28th to the 29th of November. He made confession at 7 a.m. on the 29th of November, and died an hour later. Wolsey was buried in a simple pine coffin, dressed in his episcopal robes and with his cross, mitre, and ring. He lay in state at the abbey until 5 p.m. on the 29th of November, after which his body was moved to the abbey church. The funeral Mass was sung at 4 a.m. on the 1st of December, and he was buried two hours later. Leicester Abbey was turned over to William Cavendish after the dissolution of the monasteries. His son tore down the abbey, and the site of Wolsey's burial was lost. The site of the former abbey is now Abbey Park.
Reform And The Price Of Justice
During his 14 years as chancellor, Wolsey had more power than any other Crown servant in English history. This led to his being hated by much of the nobility, who believed that power should be theirs. The king protected him from being attacked. As long as he was in the king's favour, Wolsey had great freedom in domestic matters, and had his hand in nearly every aspect of them. For much of the time, Henry VIII had complete confidence in him, and as Henry's interests inclined more towards foreign policy, he was willing to give Wolsey free rein in reforming the management of domestic affairs, for which Wolsey had grand plans. Historian John Guy explains Wolsey's methods: Operating with the king's firm support, and with special powers over the church given by the Pope as legate, Wolsey dominated civic affairs, administration, the law, the church, and foreign policy. He was amazingly energetic and far-reaching. He built a great fortune for himself and was a major benefactor of arts, humanities and education. He projected numerous reforms, with some success in areas such as finance, taxation, educational provision and justice. From the king's perspective, his greatest failure was an inability to get a divorce when Henry wanted a new wife to give him a son who would be the undisputed heir to the throne. Historians agree that Wolsey was a man dogged by other men's failures and his own ambition. In the end, abandoned by the king, Wolsey was charged with treason, but died of natural causes before he could be beheaded. Wolsey made changes to the taxation system, devising, with treasurer of the Chamber John Heron, the Subsidy. This form of tax was based upon accurate valuations of the taxpayer's wealth, where one shilling was taken per pound from the income. The old fixed tax of 15ths and 10ths meant that those who earned very little had to pay almost as much as the wealthy. With the new income tax the poorer members of society paid much less. This more progressive form of taxation enabled Wolsey to raise enough money for the king's foreign expeditions, bringing in over £300,000. He also raised considerable capital through other means, such as benevolences, and enforced loans from the nobility, which yielded £200,000 in 1522. Ultimately, Wolsey's fiscal policy became increasingly disliked. His forced loans and benevolences culminated in the Amicable Grant of 1525. This was met with hostility as the Amicable Grant provoked full-scale revolt in Suffolk, the most serious rebellion since 1497. As a legal administrator, Wolsey reinvented the equity court, where the verdict was decided by the judge on the principle of fairness. As an alternative to the Common Law courts, Wolsey re-established the position of the prerogative courts of the Star Chamber and the Court of Chancery. The system in both courts concentrated on simple, inexpensive cases, and promised impartial justice. He also established the Court of Requests for the poor, where no fees were required. Wolsey's legal reforms were popular, and overflow courts were required to attend to all the cases. Many powerful men who had felt invincible under the law found themselves convicted; for example, in 1515, the Earl of Northumberland was sent to Fleet Prison and in 1516 Lord Abergavenny was accused of maintaining a larger armed retinue than legally permitted. Wolsey also used his courts to tackle national controversies, such as the pressing issue of enclosures. The countryside had been thrown into discord by the entrepreneurial actions of landlords enclosing areas of land and converting from arable farming to pastoral farming, requiring fewer workers. The Tudors valued stability, and the resulting mass urban migration represented a serious crisis. Wolsey conducted national enquiries into enclosures in 1517, 1518 and 1527. In the course of his administration, he used the Court of Chancery to prosecute 264 landowners, including peers, bishops, knights, religious heads, and Oxford colleges. Enclosures were seen as directly linked to rural unemployment and depopulation, vagrancy, food shortages and, accordingly, inflation. This pattern repeated in many of Wolsey's other initiatives, particularly his quest to abolish enclosure. Despite spending significant time and effort investigating the state of the countryside and prosecuting numerous offenders, Wolsey freely surrendered his policy during the parliament of 1523 to ensure that Parliament passed his proposed taxes for Henry's war in France. Enclosures remained a problem for many years. Wolsey used the Star Chamber to enforce his 1518 policy of Just Price, which attempted to implement price controls on food in urban markets. Those found to be charging too much were prosecuted by the Chamber. After the bad harvest of 1527, Wolsey bought up surplus grain and sold it off cheaply to the needy. This greatly eased disorder and became common practice after a disappointing harvest.
The Cardinal And The King's Art
From 1515, when he became cardinal, until his death, Wolsey used art and architecture to underpin his positions. He initiated a building campaign on a scale not only unprecedented for an English churchman and Lord Chancellor, but also exceeded by few English kings. In so doing, he brought Italian Renaissance ideas, classical embellishments, and architectural models into English architecture. Scholars generally cite Somerset House in London, built between 1547 and 1552, as the first classical building in England, built for Edward Seymour, the first Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector to King Edward VI. But Wolsey embraced Italian-inspired classicism nearly half a century before Seymour, though more theoretically than visually. Wolsey's subsequent disgrace over his failure to garner papal approval of an annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon has clouded the fact that he was not only the first high-profile patron in England to seek out and promote Italian classicism in art, architecture, and magnificence, but also that his contributions endured. Among Wolsey's projects were lavish, classically inspired additions to York Palace in London, the Archbishop of York's residence. He supervised the grandiose temporary buildings at the Field of the Cloth of Gold and renovated Hampton Court, which he later relinquished to the king. Wolsey's use of architecture as a symbol of power, along with his introduction of Italian classical ornamentation, set a trend continued by Henry VIII and others. Wolsey oversaw tombs for Henry's VIII's parents at Westminster Abbey and negotiated contracts for Henry VIII's tomb as well as one for himself. If these works had been completed as planned, they would be among Europe's largest, most elaborate, and grandest tombs. The college originally founded and planned by Wolsey and refounded by Henry VIII, Christ Church, remains the largest and grandest of all Oxford colleges. In 1524 and 1527 Wolsey used his powers as papal legate to dissolve 30 decayed monasteries where monastic life had virtually ceased in practice, some in Ipswich and Oxford. He used the income to found a grammar school in Ipswich, The King's School, Ipswich, and Cardinal College in Oxford. In 1532, after Wolsey's fall, the king renamed it King Henry VIII's College. In 1525, as a result of his dissolution of Bayham Old Abbey in Kent, it led to a riot where local villagers occupied the Abbey and restored the canons before being removed after a week. In 1528 he began to limit the benefit of clergy. He also attempted, as legate, to force reform on monastic orders like the Augustinian canons. Wolsey died five years before Henry's dissolution of the monasteries began. As well as his State duties, Wolsey simultaneously attempted to exert his influence over the Church in England. As cardinal and, from 1524, lifetime papal legate, Wolsey continually vied for control over others in the Church. His principal rival was William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who made it more difficult for Wolsey to follow through with his plans for reform. Despite making promises to reform the bishoprics of England and Ireland, and, in 1519, encouraging monasteries to embark on a programme of reform, he did nothing to bring about these changes.
The Secret Life And The Final Journey
Wolsey lived in a non-canonical marriage for around a decade with a woman called Joan Larke of Yarmouth, Norfolk. The edict that priests, regardless of their functions or the character of their work, should remain celibate had not been wholeheartedly accepted in England. Wolsey had two children, both before he was made bishop: a son, Thomas Wynter, born circa 1510, and a daughter, Dorothy, born circa 1512, both of whom lived to adulthood. The son was sent to live with a family in Willesden and tutored in his early years by Maurice Birchinshaw. He later married and had children of his own. Dorothy was adopted by John Clansey, and was in due course placed in the convent at Shaftesbury Abbey. Following the dissolution of the monasteries under Thomas Cromwell she was awarded a pension. Following his rapid promotion, Larke became a source of embarrassment to Wolsey, who arranged for her marriage to George Legh of Adlington, Cheshire, circa 1519. He provided the dowry. Henry VIII had a mansion built for Legh at Cheshunt Great House. Before Wolsey was removed from power, he planned to make his home town of Ipswich a seat of learning. He built a substantial college, which for two years, 1528 to 1530, was parent of the Queen Elizabeth School or Ipswich School, which today flourishes on another site. All that remains of Wolsey's structure is the former waterside gate, figured by Francis Grose in his Antiquities, which can still be seen on College Street. In 1930 Wolsey was commemorated in Ipswich with a pageant play. An appeal was launched in 2009 to erect a permanent memorial to Wolsey in Ipswich. This led to the commissioning of a more-than-life-sized bronze statue from sculptor David Annand. Wolsey is shown seated and facing south towards St Peter's Church, the former medieval Augustinian priory church, which he annexed as the chapel of his college, teaching from a book, and with a cat at his side. The statue was unveiled in June 2011, when it was dedicated by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, and launched in a civic capacity by the Mayor of Ipswich. Another statue of Wolsey stands in Leicester's Abbey Park close to the site of his burial. It was donated by the Wolsey hosiery company, a major employer in the city and also named after the cardinal. Cardinal Wolsey's bust was used in the 1980s above the London Transport roundel on London's buses in west and south-west London as the symbol of the Cardinal bus district, which was named after him and his residence at Hampton Court. Carlos Logario, a Spanish doctor practising in England, was the doctor to Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey's tomb at Windsor was planned by Benedetto da Rovezzano and Giovanni da Maiano. Henry VIII contemplated using the impressive black sarcophagus for himself, but Lord Nelson now lies in it, in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral. Henry often receives credit for artistic patronage that properly belongs to Wolsey.