Thomas Wolsey

Thomas Wolsey was an English statesman and Catholic cardinal. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state. He also held important ecclesiastical appointments. These included the Archbishop of York—the second most important role in the English church—and that of papal legate. His appointment as a cardinal by Pope Leo X in 1515 gave him precedence over all other English clergy.
The highest political position Wolsey attained was Lord Chancellor, the king's chief adviser. In that position, he enjoyed great freedom and was often depicted as the alter rex. After failing to negotiate an annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Wolsey fell out of favour and was stripped of his government titles. He retreated to York to fulfil his ecclesiastical duties as archbishop, a position he nominally held but had neglected during his years in government. He was recalled to London to answer to charges of treason—charges Henry commonly used against ministers who fell out of his favour—but died from natural causes on the way.

Early life

Thomas Wolsey was born in about 1473, the son of Robert Wolsey of Ipswich and his wife, Joan Daundy. Widespread traditions identify his father as a butcher; his modest origin became a topic of criticism later, when he amassed wealth and power that critics thought more befitting a member of the high nobility. In reality his father owned several businesses and his mother was related to the influential Wingfield and Daundy families. Wolsey attended Ipswich School and Magdalen College School before studying theology at Magdalen College, Oxford. His education and career were assisted by his uncle, Edmund Daundy.
On 10 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. He 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.
Wolsey benefited from Henry VII's policy of curbing the nobility and favouring those from more humble backgrounds. Henry VII appointed Wolsey royal chaplain. In this position Wolsey 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.

Political career

Rise to prominence

The primary counsellors Henry VIII inherited from his father were Richard Foxe and William Warham. 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, 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.

Foreign policy

War with France

The Anglo-French War 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 7 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 9 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.

Papal legate

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.

Field of the Cloth of Gold

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.
Under Wolsey's guidance, Europe's chief nations sought to outlaw war among Christian nations. Garrett Mattingly, who has studied the causes of wars in that era, found that treaties of non-aggression such as this one could never be stronger than their sponsors' armies. When those forces were about equal, the treaties typically widened the conflict. That is, diplomacy could sometimes postpone war, but could not prevent wars based on irreconcilable interests and ambitions. What was lacking, Mattingly concludes, was a neutral power whose judgements were generally accepted either by impartial justice or by overwhelming force.