CARDINAL WOLSEY, HIS RISE TO POWER AND HIS FALL FROM GRACE

Cardinal Wolsey, from very humble beginnings had a phenominal rise to power. Henry VIII of England on ascending the throne, took very little interest in the day to day affairs of state and, once Cardinal Thomas Wolsey had gained the King's favour, he was allowed a huge amount of freedom.

Apart from his private and leisure activities, the dream of King Henry VIII lay in Military glory. As more and more of the King's time, thoughts and inclinations were directed towards foreign policy, to achieve these military ambitions, it gave Cardinal Wolsey a free hand to plan and carry out his own agenda.

During the fourteen years after he became Chancellor, to his downfall, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey held unprecedented power, both secular and ecclesiastical, more than any other servant of the Crown throughout the history of England.

As a result of failing to achieve an annulment from the Pope of Henry's first marriage to Katherine of Aragon, he lost the confidence of the King, and therefore no longer enjoyed the sovereigns favour. From that moment on his downfall was assured.

Cardinal Wolsey, was the son of Robert Wolsey, an Ipswich butcher and cattle dealer, and his wife Joan Daundy. Born between 1471 and 1475, he was to die in 1530, on his way from York to London, probably to be executed on a trumped up charge of treason.

He appears to have had a relatively comfortable upbringing and was educated first of all, at Ipswich School, from where he progressed to Magdalen College, Oxford. Thomas Wolsey had then decided he wanted to enter the Church and was ordained in 1498.

He proceeded to hold a number of positions before entering the service of King Henry VII in 1507. He became one of the domestic chaplains to Henry Dean, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, until the Archbishop's death in 1503, when he became chaplain to Sir Richard Nanfan, the deputy lieutenant of Calais.

Quickly seeing the remarkable talents which Thomas Wolsey possessed for administration, Sir Richard entrusted him with his financial affairs and wasted no time in bringing him to the attention of the king.

With the death of Sir Richard in 1507, Wolsey was appointed royal chaplain, which made him secretary to Bishop Richard Foxe, who was Lord Privy Seal, Bishop of Exeter, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Bishop of Winchester, as well as being King Henry VII's closest adviser.

It was Bishop Foxe who had baptized King Henry VII's son, the future Henry VIII of England in the year 1491, at the Church of the Observant Friars, which was situated beside Greenwich Palace.

Foxe immediately recognised Thomas Wolsey's inbred qualities, which comprised of enormous dedication, intelligence, organisational abilities and willingness to undertake the most difficult tasks at hand.

These were qualities which Thomas Wolsey would use to the full in his remorseless ambition and drive to achieve power. An example of his character, was the famous episode where Wolsey made a journey to Flanders on behalf of King Henry VII.

Henry had begun more and more to use Thomas Wolsey on diplomatic missions. On this occasion the king had sent him on a mission as special envoy to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. He travelled with such speed that he accomplished the journey to Flanders and back in under three days.

Returning with such rapidity, the king on seeing Wolsey, was under the impression he was still preparing to leave and rebuked him for being so slow in carrying out the duty to which he had been entrusted. Imagine the king's surprise on learning that the mission had already been accomplished.

In his position as Master of the Rolls, he was able to initiate reforms which eased and also accelerated the performance of the court enormously.

Upon being crowned King of England after his victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, King Henry VII had set about curbing the powers of the nobility. In their place, he favoured lawyers and churchmen, who came mainly from more humble backgrounds, to be his close advisors.

Wolsey's appointment therefore, could not have come at a more opportune moment for an ambitious young man, aged between thirty two and thirty six years of age.

With the death of King Henry VII in 1509, his son, King Henry VIII appointed Wolsey to the post of Almoner, a position which carried with it, a seat on the Privy Council. This gave him close access to the king and the perfect opportunity to gain his confidence, forming a close and understanding relationship with the young King.

He obtained the living of St. Bride's Fleet Street, London; Torrington in Devon and a prebend in Hereford Cathedral. Appointments as Canon of Windsor and Registrar to the Order of the Garter followed.

In his early years as King, the young Henry VIII of England, took little interest in politics, instead he was a pleasure loving spendthrift, occupying all of his time feasting, when not satisfying his love for sports.

With this being Henry's attitude, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was able to exercise more power, something he could never have done in the reign of Henry's father, the late King Henry VII.

Bishop Foxe, assisted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, had been the two most important advisers to King Henry VII,but they were both moderates.

Continuing in this role as counsellors to the new King, they wanted him to carry on where his father had left off, advising him to be a strong and careful administrator, just like his father had been before him. However, the new king did not take after his father, his character and policies were widely different to king Henry VII.

The young king dreamed of military glory and together with his love of sports and feasting, it did not leave him much time in which to become interested in the day to day details of governing the country.

In 1511 Pope Julius II proclaimed a Holy league against France. Cardinal Wolsey, who had previously been anti war changed his mind and with King Henry VIII wanting to invade France, was able to give very persuasive speeches to the Privy Council in favour of war.

The Holy League was used as an excuse by Henry VIII of England to invade France with the intention of expanding his holdings. The Treaty of Westminster was duly signed with his Father-in-Law Ferdinand II of Aragon, pledging mutual aid against France.

Thomas Wolsey at this point replaced both Archbishop William Warham and Bishop Foxe as King Henry VIII's most trusted advisor and chief administrator. They had both fallen from power for failing to share the King's enthusiasm for an invasion of France.

The first campaign against France was not successful, but Thomas Wolsey learned from the mistakes which had been made. In 1513 another English invasion force joined up with the Imperial troops and routed the French cavalry at the Battle of Guinegate.

Thomas Wolsey made a name for himself during the battle of Guinegate, which took place on 16th August 1513, by providing the army for King Henry VIII. His ability to keep these troops supplied and equipped with state of the art weapons for the entire war was a major factor in it's success.

It was probably due to pressure from both King Henry VIII and Thomas Wolsey, that the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham in 1515 resigned as Lord Chancellor, his position being taken by Wolsey whom the king appointed in his place.

With Wolsey increasing his standing and enjoying more and more favour with the king, he was already attracting the dislike of the nobility.

This dislike turned to hatred as his power grew, making Thomas Wolsey many enemies. However, as long as he maintained the king's favour, he was safe.

Thomas Wolsey's phenominal rise to a position of great secular power was accompanied by an equivalent rise to a position of great ecclesiastical power. It was in 1511 that he became Canon of Windsor.

The Bishopric of Lincoln was given to him in 1514 followed by the See of York, when he was made Archbishop of York. The following year Pope Leo X made him a Cardinal.

He was now Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and this appointment, together with the Titulus St. Caeciliae , made made him far more powerful than the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 1517 Pope Leo X sought peace between all warring European nations so that the impending threat posed by the expansionist Ottoman Empire, which had started to encroach into the Balkans, could be met and countered.

When Cardinal Wolsey was made Papal Legate in 1518, it afforded him the chance to bring about the Pope's wishes, by organising a huge peace summit involving twenty nations.

It started in London initially between England and France, and since it had been designed by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, it was signed by the ambassadors of each nation in London and became known as the Treaty of London.

The Treaty committed the signatory States, not only to not make war on any of the other signatories, but also bound them to make war on any State that broke the terms of the Treaty. Although it was a huge triumph for Cardinal Wolsey, it reflected much glory on King Henry VIII, as well.

Another diplomatic triumph for Cardinal Wolsey, was a meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France in 1520. Aptly named The Field of the Cloth of Gold, it was one of the most flambouyant and expensive events ever to have been staged.

Because of his successful peace negotiations, he was given a further accolade by being made Prince-Bishop of Durham in 1523.

At about the same time, and helped by an up and coming young man by the name of Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey, with the full blessing of the Pope, shut down about thirty of the minor religious houses in England. They had become what was termed as 'decayed' due to the lack of religious men and women occupying them.

The proceeds were certainly not misused, as the income was used to found a grammar school in Ipswich and Cardinal College in Oxford. It could however, be considered to be a prelude of what would eventually happen, in the widespread destruction that was to follow.

The Ipswich School continues to flourish and does exceptionately well with university entrances, sending six to twelve students to Oxford and Cambridge every year.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was hated throughout England, by both the nobility and the common people. The nobility were deeply resentful of the power he wielded, a position they themselves used to hold before the king's father Henry VII had curbed their own power.

His lowly birth compared to their own, intensified their bitterness towards him. His imposition of new and punitive taxes, whilst he himself continued to live in opulence, flaunting his extravagant lifestyle, with his lavish displays of wealth and power, drew unfathomable resentment from everyone.

However, as long as Cardinal Wolsey held the confidence of King Henry VIII he was safe, despite the many enemies he had made for himself.

In the wars of 1522-23, the English had failed to gain much, although the capture of the French king, Francis I by the Holy Roman Emperor's forces at the battle of Pavia in 1525, had certainly been helped by the English contribution to the war effort.

Henry VIII of England, now felt he had a realistic opportunity of realizing his dream to reclaim the French crown, which the English kings had laid claim to since the end of the hundred years war in 1453, when the Plantagenets had finally been expelled from France.

Parliament however refused to raise taxes in order to fund a war. This led to a tax which was imposed by the Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey in 1525, called the Amicable Grant. At the time it was known as a benevolence, but in actual fact it was a forced loan.

In theory, it was supposed to be a donation, which was freely given by his subjects to the king, hence the name, benevolence, when in actual fact it was a very heavy tax which was imposed on the populace without Parliamentary approval.

The imposition of this new tax, or forced loan, was levied on one third of both the clergy and the laity's incomes. Cardinal Wolsey had finally overstepped the mark.

The resentment which everyone felt for him finally boiled over. Resistance to his impossible demands provoked major widespread rebellions at cloth manufacturing towns in Suffolk such as Lavenham, spreading throughout East Anglia and the south east of England. The citizens of London refused to pay.

King Henry VIII was forced to do a U turn and abandon the Amicable Grant, claiming it had been imposed without his permission, However, it is extremely unlikely that Cardinal Wolsey would have taken upon himself this course of action without the king's knowledge or approval.

With his Chancellor's failure to provide the revenue Henry so badly needed, and the resulting civil disorder which his attempts at trying to raise that revenue had perpertrated, Henry's confidence in Cardinal Wolsey took a tremendous dive.

It most certainly was a contributary factor in the downfall of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey four years later in 1529.

Cardinal Wolsey's foreign policy from 1527 was completely dominated by his attempts to acquire an annulment from Pope Clement VII, for his master, King Henry VIII, from his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.

However, in the same year, Pope Clement had been captured by Katherine of Aragon's nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, when he had sacked Rome. He was now being held prisoner by Charles, thereby frustrating Cardinal Wolsey's attempts to secure an annulment.

King Henry VIII wanted to strengthen his alliance with France, which had been arranged between Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More and the French ambassadors against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

Their main aim was to obtain the co-operation of King Francis 1 of France in applying pressure on Pope Clement to grant the annulment.

Cardinal Wolsey persuaded Henry to send him on a diplomatic mission to France to try and persuade king Francis to exert this pressure. He was accompanied by his secretary Stephen Gardiner. The mission however, was not a success.

Acting independantly of Cardinal Wolsey, King Henry VIII sent his secretary William Knight to seek an annulment from the imprisoned Pope. Knight encountered great difficulty in obtaining access to the prisoner of Katherine of Aragon's nephew and was forced to return home empty handed.

King Henry VIII, had no other choice now than to place the matter into the hands of Cardinal Wolsey, who did absolutely everything in his power to obtain the decision that Henry wanted.

The following year in 1528, Gardiner, who was still in the service of Wolsey, was sent by him, along with Edward Foxe, who was the provost of King's College, Cambridge, to Italy to try to persuade the Pope to allow the final decision to be made in England.

Pope Clement VII decided to allow two Papal Legates, Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio to decide the case in England. However, it took a long time for Campeggio to arrive and when he did arrive, he delayed the proceedings so much, that Anne Boleyn and her family finally convinced Henry that it was Cardinal Wolsey who was deliberately sabotaging the case.

It did not take Cardinal Wolsey long to relise that the matter of conducting the trial was entirely in Campeggio's hands, but all the attempts Campeggio made to avoid holding the trial failed and an ecclesiastical court was convened at Blackfriars in London on 31st May 1529.

Both Katherine and Henry attended this Court on 18th June when Katherine asked for the case to be heard in Rome after she had challenged the Court's authority and the qualifications of the two legates to hear the case. Her wish was denied.

Henry informed the Court that he feared his marriage to his brother's wife was the reason behind their inability to produce a male heir to the English throne.

In reply, Katherine made a very strong and emotional speech defending the legitimacy of her marriage to the king, re-stating her wish for the case to be heard in Rome as she did not recognise the authority of the Court.

When permission was refused, Katherine left the Court and did not appear before the hearing again. On 16th July the Pope decided on the case being heard in Rome instead of England and recalled the Papal legate.

King Henry VIII on receiving a summons in August to attend an official assembly of the Catholic Church in Rome (the Papal Curia), which would be presided over by the Pope, was incensed. He now began to realise he would never get an annulment from the Pope.

The failure of the Blackfriars trial was the last straw for Anne Boleyn who held Cardinal Wolsey entirely to blame for the delay in settling the matter of the annulment she so desperately wanted.

She and her family used their huge influence to bring about the Cardinal's downfall by convincing King Henry VIII that he had slowed the proceedings considerably. This resulted in his being indicted for praemunire and he was arrested in October 1529. Confessing his guilt, Parliament was summoned and it indicted him on forty four charges.

Although King Henry VIII kept him out of prison, Cardinal Wolsey was forced to surrender the Great Seal when he was stripped of his governmental office as Lord Chancellor.

His properties, including Hampton Court Palace, which still stands today, and the magnificent York Place, which he had extensively expanded to such an extent, that it surpassed even the King's London Palaces, leaving Lambeth Palace alone to rival it as the greatest house in London.

They were all acquired by the king, who replaced the Palace of Westminster,( which had been the centre of government of England and the main London residence of the king since Edward the Confessor in 1049), with York Place as his principal London residence, renaming it the Palace of Whitehall.

Cardinal Wolsey was permitted to remain as the Archbishop of York and travelled there for the first time in 1530, sixteen years after he had been appointed Archbishop in 1514. Here he is reported to have spent the last six months of his life carrying out his duty as Bishop and leading a life of sincere devotion.

Edward Hall, the Tudor chronicler, wrote a contemporary account of the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, but this can be considered both prejudiced and hostile.

Wolsey is supposed to have written to the Pope and several other Princes in which he reproached the King, stirring them to avenge his case. He was also accused of always declaring how he was unjustly and untruly commanded and spoke so eloquently, that many men believed that he spoke the truth.

These accusations led to his arrest on 4th November 1530. Whilst preparing at his residence at Cawood castle in north Yorkshire, for his enthronement in York Minster, he was accused of treason by Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland and ordered to go to London.

In obvious distress, knowing what awaited him, he and his personal chaplain, Edmund Bonner, set out for London. Having suffered with ill health for a number of years, the journey from Cawood in north Yorkshire to the Tower of London proved too much for him.

He again fell ill on 29th November 1530 and was taken to Leicester Abbey, where he died. He was around sixty years of age.

He is reported to have said while lying on his deathbed " If I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs."

Wolsey in his lifetime was noted for the erection of some magnificent buildings for his own use. It was no more than was to be expected that he would also design a splendid tomb for himself.

An impressive black sarcophagus, made from Italian marble was designed for this purpose, which King Henry VIII considered using for himself.

However Cardinal Wolsey is buried in Leicester Abbey (now Abbey Park) in a grave without a monument and King Henry VIII is buried in St. George's Chapel Windsor Castle, alongside his third wife, Jane Seymour.

The black Italian marble sarcophagus can now be seen in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral London, situated directly under the dome, where it contains the remains of Admiral Nelson. It had been presented by King George III to entomb the body of the great English naval hero.

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