← Not Just the Tudors
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash. Subscribe.
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- [01:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History. Hit the podcast in which explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. No advisor to Henry viii, not even Thomas Cromwell, was as important to Henry as Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey was a churchman from Suffolk who rose to the King's attention because of his brilliant organisational skills, his immense capacity for hard work and his evident charisma. He became Lord Chancellor and Henry VIII's Chief Minister, enjoying the King's special and constant favour for 15 years. The Venetian ambassador observed that Henry left everything in the charge of Cardinal Wolsey whilst Erasmus thought that Wolsey governed more really than the king himself. Foreign diplomats who negotiated with him and were outmanoeuvred by him excused themselves by calling him a man as difficult as any in the world, the most rascally beggar in the world, and the most devoted to the interests of his master. But his close attendant, George Cavendish, wrote of the power of Wolsey's words, that he had a special gift for natural eloquence with a filed tongue, that he was able with the same to persuade and allure all men to his purpose. Here's another chance to hear my interview, first released in January 2022 with Glenn Richardson. He's professor of early modern history at St Mary's University, Twickenham, and his book Warsi was published by Routledge in 2020. He has two new publications coming out this year. A new biography of Francis I, the Night King and Renaissance Monarchs at War, the Battle of Pavia, 1525. So Professor Richardson's a busy man and I was especially pleased he made time to talk to me about Cardinal Thomas Woolsey.
- [04:09]
Glenn Richardson
So the first thing that most people know about Thomas Wolsey, or the first thing most people learn is that in the biography of Wolsey that was written 30 years after his death by his attendant George Cavendish, we get told that Thomas Wolsey was an honest poor man's son born in Ipswich. We also know that his enemies called him a butcher's cur. And the crucial question about Wolsey is always, how could such a man rise from these humble beginnings to great power? What was his path to power?
- [04:40]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Wolsey was the son of a butcher, in that his father Robert conducted a number of sort of small businesses in and around the town of Ipswich. He did some part time brewing, he had a pub. He was probably better described as a grazier. You needn't imagine him standing there on the high street in a red and white apron selling sausages. But he made his money that way. But he must have been doing reasonably well. His wife, Wolsey's mother, was rather better connected in Ipswich society, so he was doing well for himself. But compared to the upper gentry and the nobility, of course, Wolsey came from obscure origins. I don't think anybody was more conscious of that than Wolsey himself. Whereas everybody else harped on about the whole time, he said very little. I think like many boys of that kind of social group, he was clearly naturally intelligent and he was engaged and education first in Ipswich and then he went to Magdalen College school at Oxford. Famously, he said he went there very young and had graduated by the time he was 15. I think we tend to think that is a bit of a problem with the actualite from Wolsey. But he was certainly very young and he did make his way to Magdalen College and came under the attention of Richard Fox, who was the official visitor or the superintendent of the college at Oxford, as he was studying theology. And he clearly saw this bright young man. And Thomas Gray, the Marx of Dorset, also had connection. Woolsey was a schoolmaster at some point, a tutor, really, to his sons. And that's how Woolsey shifts from, as it were, the potential of the Church, of ordination and life as a priest and then academia, into the world of politics. Royal service, not immediately, but to those people who are around Henry vii and some of them pretty prominent in Henry VII circle, not least the aforementioned Fox, but also Sir Richard Nanfan, who's deputy of Calais. And Woolsey is his chaplain for a time, just before he then moves into the household of Henry VII as a chaplain. That's how he rises. And although it's exceptional, it's not untypical of a lot of talented boys from that sort of background in Woolsey's period.
- [06:50]
Glenn Richardson
One thing you say in your book is that this kind of meteoric success was explained in the years after his death in ways that are very derogatory towards him. How was it accounted for?
- [07:02]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
He's portrayed as ambitious and being overly influential and nefarious in his intentions and all that sort of stuff. It's not dissimilar to politics of our own age, in that the people who get on their enemies will accuse them of ambition. And Wolsey was ambitious. I think he did want to seek a life for himself that was beyond the sphere into which he was born. I don't think he particularly necessarily knew from one year to another where he was going, but he did seem to have a gift for getting things done. He had a tremendous appetite for work, which, of course, that also gets up the nose of people, particularly nobles, who don't like to do that much work. So he was really very useful. He was energetic, he was perspicacious, and he also had an ability to, given the range of responsibilities with which Henry charged him, he had a mind that could turn itself on a penny to any number of different things, it would seem, and to deal with both with meticulous care, that eye for detail which was necessary, but also, and perhaps most importantly about how he arose, is what Cavendish calls his filed tongue. That is his eloquence. He clearly had an ability to speak persuasively. Even Polidor Virgil, who's his greatest critic, the Italian papal tax collector in England, even he says that he could put off his Persona as a priest and tell a joke. He clearly was a person who had a certain charisma, a certain winningness, a charm. And when you get that way of doing things matched with the eye for detail, the energy and the capacity for work, then if you are somebody like a young Henry who is looking for people to help you out to get what you want done, you can see how he seized on Woolsey when he met him.
- [08:56]
Glenn Richardson
So Henry VIII became king in April 1509, and not immediately, as you say, but six months or so. Wolsey is starting to get some sort of royal patronage, and he becomes the king's almoner. Could you tell me what precisely this was and chart for us quickly Woolsey's rise through the ranks after that?
- [09:19]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Okay. He'd been a chaplain under Henry vii, and there was no necessary reason why he should be appointed by the new king. But this is, I think, where people like Fox come in to perhaps bring him to Henry's attention. The almond is responsible for the king's charitable giving. He arranges for certain amounts that are paid out by the king formally on particular high days and holy days. But he's also got some quasi legal responsibilities. So, for example, things that have been involved in felonies, stuff that might have been sold, or the proceeds of felony or whatever are forfeit to the crown, and then they're used for charitable purposes. So there's a lot of legal information and stuff that has to be gone through. It doesn't mean the almoner has to himself be a lawyer. But I think that probably helped Wolsey in beginning to know how to deal with these things. But crucially, it gives him a seat on the royal council because it does have legal implications, and it is to do with the king's reputation and the king's justice. And that's where one imagines he started talking about some obscure matter when asked to, and probably didn't say anything for his first couple of meetings. But then when he did, he explained it very succinctly and clearly, and Henry's ears probably pricked up. And then very quickly, Henry starts to listen to Woolsey's advice and values it. And very soon he is the only one who Henry will listen to. At least he's the first one that Henry will listen to. And one of the big issues at the time, the issue of war, which Henry had been very concerned with, he was very ambitious, wanting to invade France, renew the Hundred Years war. And his 18 years into the start of his reign, he's still wanting to do things, but all these old blokes like Fox and Warham are trying to keep the status quo, which is advantageous to England in the council. And so they're always saying, no, you can't go to war and there's no reason to go to war. And it's Woolsey again, if we follow Cavendish who comes along and turns the whole thing on its head. By 15, 11, 12, the situation internationally is such that Henry can become part of an international league against Louis XII of France. And rather than trying to keep Henry out of it, Wolsey says this is the perfect opportunity for the young king to do what he needs to do. He needs experience on the battlefield and we can support the Pope Julius II at the time in alliance with the emperor Maximilian. And Henry sees this guy who's arguing for him and turns the whole thing around. So the council votes because it knows that really Wolsey speaks for the king by this time, that Henry should himself go personally to War in 1513. That is very briefly how on that side of things, Wolsey rises. There is one other point in that. Henry, when he first came to the throne, was very young, wanted to be seen as a great patron and he was giving away lots of grants and things to people. And so the council put in this very elaborate administrative system called the course of the seals, whereby where the king wanted to give something, somebody, it had to be checked and double checked and thrice checked before the council would agree with it. It was a way of keeping tabs on him, really. And Henry was chafing under that. And Wolsey's trust with Henry is such that he's able to tell at one point Archbishop Waram that a warrant from the king and from Wolsey to him will be his sufficient warrant to allow him to do something as the chancellor. So bypassing this elaborate system and that again, we're back to chicken and egg. Is that because Henry now trusts Woolsey and this is what Woolsey advises? Or can Wolsey see that this is the way to increase his own influence with the king? I think it's the young man who's being held back by very well meaning, very educated, earnest counsellors. Along comes Woolsey, who's also well meaning, also very earnest, but takes a totally different view of how the king should best be the king. And that's the magic of the relationship that then lasts for another 20 years.
- [13:05]
Glenn Richardson
And so, as a result of his swift rise in the Church, Dean of York, Bishop of London, Bishop of Lincoln, Archbishop of York, and it's Henry, he will intervene in the end to make Wolsey a cardinal. It's interesting, though, thinking of him as a churchman, because one thing that actually is picked up in Hilary Mantel's novels is that Wolsey was a man who was in a relationship and that he had two children. I think we forget about that quite often.
- [13:29]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Yes, that's right. Without entirely dismissing, as was the tendency in the 19th century and much of the 20th century to dismiss Wolsey's priesthood. It is very much a case of professional association. Cavendish, in his biography, wants to insist that Wolsey says mass and he's very devout and I can believe that. But all the positions that he gets are all part of the professional cause. Certainly gives him income, huge income, and makes him a patron in his own right. For that reason, all that's happening. But yes, he has a relationship which is described as his concubine or whatever, but really it's his de facto wife. The relationship goes for quite a few years and there are two children. Thomas Winter is his son and Wolsey's daughter Dorothy couldn't be in his household or family, but she grows up with a sort of surrogate family or a kind of adoptive family, and apparently eventually becomes a nun. We know that because of a pension that's granted to her by Cromwell later. Thomas Winter follows his father into academia and church, but he doesn't quite have Paulsey's abilities. He studies in France for a while, so we know little bits of information, but that seems to sit quite well. People criticise Woolsey for all kinds of things, but nobody says anything about his relationship with his partner.
- [14:52]
Glenn Richardson
It is interesting, though, that question that you've raised about the nature of Wolsey's own religious faith. We know that his adopted motto indicates that he may have had a faith, Dominus michi aditur, the Lord is my helper. But do we actually know anything about Woolsey's religious perspective?
- [15:12]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Very little. It's hard to know. I couldn't discover any particular saint. For example, a lot of people in the period had a devotion to a particular saint, perhaps gave patronage to a guild in the name of that saint or churches, or had chapels in churches dedicated to particular saints. He does go to Walsingham, but then everybody goes to Walsingham I think after a sickness which he has, my sense is that he's a very conventional, Catholic, devout, believing man. He probably did see God as his helper. He had good reason to when he looked back in his mid career and looked where he'd come from. For all his theological studies, he never wrote or expressed himself particularly publicly. He delivered sermons and things, but we don't know who wrote them for him. His attitude towards religious dissent and heresy was very sort of academic and intellectual to a large extent. I think he was engaged by the ideas of human and the critiques of the Church which were around at the time. But as to his personal faith, I think it was probably quite conventional.
- [16:15]
Glenn Richardson
So we have this kind of parallel picture from our modern minds of him rising in secular terms and rising in ecclesiastical terms. But you've said one and the same thing and he becomes cardinal and then eventually the Papal legate. What does it mean to be those things?
- [16:33]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
He's a very prominent churchman by 1514 when he's made the Archbishop of York, because Thomas Bainbridge, the previous incumbent, died and he was also himself a cardinal and was in Rome. And it's an important aspect of what happens to Woolsey because Henry VII and of course kings before that had been very assiduous in cultivating relations between England and Rome. And they had the emergence of these people called Cardinal protectors who were in Rome and who looked after the interests of the English Church and the crown in Rome. England is still a relatively small country in a small population compared to Spain and France and the empire etc. Henry only has one cardinal, so he becomes Cardinal in 1515 and shortly afterwards Henry makes him the Chancellor. So that is tricky for Woolsey because as a cardinal he of course is a prince of the Church. His primary responsibility is the election of the ex Pope and he really should be England's representative to the papacy, as Bainbridge was. But he's also the Lord Chancellor of England, responsible for the legal system in England and all the parliament and the whole operation of Henry's authority in England. So how is he going to get to Rome? You know, how is he going to square that particular circle? Now, there was an increasing tradition of cardinals actually remaining in their countries, so it's not completely beyond the pale, but what it sets up for Woolsey is a sort of dynamic which I think explains his success, but also in a way explains his downfall. Because there is in England, being Henry's cardinal, telling Henry that anything he needs and wants from Rome he can sort, which of course Is his job great? Equally, he's telling Rome, I'm here to ensure that you have peaceful, cooperative, financially useful relations between England and the Holy See. So I'm your man to both of them. I'm the Pope's cardinal. I'm the king's cardinal. And then to cap that all and to make sure that really is the case and to give him the fullest possible plenitude of power in 1518, when Leo X decides that he wants to have this truce between Christian princes, Woolsey and I insist on Henry too, because he will later make much of this, that in order for Leo X's scheme, for Henry to buy into it, Wolsey must be made a legate. Now, a cardinal legate is somebody who has a status literally coming from the side of the Pope. So he is, in effect, a sort of papal plenipotentiary in England for the agreement of this universal truce. And Woolsey then uses that authority to turn the universal truce into a universal peace, which is a much different thing, much to Leo the 10th's constellation. One of the main subjects of his relations with Rome for the next five, six, seven years is the extension of the Legatian power, both in duration and also in jurisdiction. So initially, he was given power to do some reforms in the domestic church in line with the ideas that were beginning to happen. But Wolsey keeps going back and saying, no, I want more power, I want it for a longer period and I want to be able to do more things with it. Now, why does he do that? I think he wants to match or to synchronize, as it were, the government of the realm, the secular government and the overlapping or parallel government of the Church. So once again, it's him who's in the middle. But it creates a tension and a potential contradiction times between his duties as the head of the Church in England under the Pope and the King and as the head of the legal system.
- [20:24]
Glenn Richardson
And of course, it's that contradiction which will in the end be very important. But before we move on from Woolsey being a cardinal, much is made of Woolsey's hat. Tell us about his hat.
- [20:36]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Yes, he gets very exercised about this hat because it's a clerical hat. All clerics have them, but this is a super duper one called the galero, and attached to the galero are all these sort of tassels. Anyway, the clerical hat is as. I think it's Cavendish, or maybe hall says it's almost like the equivalent of the crown or the professor's bonnet or Something it shows his status. And Woolsey has a great ceremony arranged for it to be delivered and it's brought to England in a. Basically a post bag by the Papal nuncio. And Woolsey's not at all impressed. And he says, no, you wait there. And he fits him out with new clothes and this sort of stuff. And then the hat is brought to an enthronement ceremony and before the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury puts it on his head. And it really seems to have meant an awful lot to him. And then he doesn't wear it all the time. There's the famous picture of Woolsey wearing rather a more small clerical cap, which is probably what he normally wore, but the galero, the wide brimmed cardinal's hat. It's a long time since the English nobility and indeed the clergy have seen a real live cardinal in their midst. And so he really wants to use the ceremony of his installation as cardinal as a compliment to Henry, because the Pope is giving him a cardinal, but also a reminder to everybody of just how important and significant he is as the Pope's cardinal and the King's cardinal.
- [22:00]
Glenn Richardson
You just mentioned there the portraits that we have of Wolsey. One thing I found was fascinating is that you suggest actually that the portraits we have are themselves a product of critical views of him. How so?
- [22:14]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
There's no real provenance for the famous National Portrait Gallery portrait, which is everywhere, including on the front of the book. It's the conventional accepted one of Woolsey, but it presents him under his clerical skirts is this enormous man. Perhaps that's the effects of the fashion of clerical skirting and the way that clerical costume fitted people. But if you look at his face, it's quite full, it's quite jowly. There's no particular indication as to how old he was when it was painted. It's not a portrait from life, so I think it's an imagined version of Wolsey. There is a portrait of him in a French collection. It shows a rather different, more useful Woolseyer sort of man in on the verge of middle age, but still relatively youthful. And there's no sense of him being obese. I think the idea that he's corpulent, that he's indulgent, there is actually very little evidence at all for that. But it's another one of those things that hall and others throw at him, indicating that he's self centered, ambitious. And this is proven by his overindulgence in food and wine and all the rest of. For which there's no actual evidence. The other portrait of him which is known particularly is by SAMSON Strong, that 17th century and clearly modelled on the what's now called the National Portrait Gallery painting, but it just reproduces that. So what I say in the book is it's extraordinary to me that from the mid-1520s, firstly, he goes to France a couple of times, where you have people like Jean Clouet, the great portrait artist in the French court, he could easily have painted Woolsey at some point. But more significantly, of course, you have people like the Horenbo family and then Holbein in England from the mid to late 1520s, when Wolsey's at the height of his power and everybody gets painted by Holbein but Woolsey doesn't.
- [24:04]
Glenn Richardson
That's really interesting. It's the same sort of question about why we're missing the information that might give us more of his thoughts. I was thinking of Durbin McCulloch's work on Thomas Cromwell, and he has a theory about Cromwell's kind of outtreck, as it were, being destroyed when they're coming for him. Do you think that perhaps we could speculate that there was some similar process of erasure when Woolsey fell?
- [24:26]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
I think so. Whether that included a portrait of Woolsey, perhaps by Holbein, as you say, we can only speculate, I don't know. But that was the way things were done, that erasure, and it's very hard to even speculate to what extent that happened.
- [24:42]
Glenn Richardson
So Wolsey, you've said, really came to the king's attention because of his desire to support the king in going to war, but then goes on to persuade Henry that he can make peace just as magnificently as he can wage war. Tell us about the high moment of the field of Cloth of gold, which you've written about so much.
- [25:03]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
I think Henry comes to the throne with a view that he's Henry V reborn, that he must make his name in Europe through battle and through the conquering of France and all the rest of it, and has a go at that in 1512, 1513, an alliance with Ferdinand and Aragon and Maximilian. And the emperor doesn't do too badly. He captures, then destroys, the little town of Terouan and the more important city of Tournai. So it makes a good first stage. But the situation is so much more complicated, perhaps we might say, for him than it might have been, perhaps for Henry V. And Wolsey, I think, is the one who basically introduces the king to the concept of there being more than one way to skin A cat that with this worry about the advance of the Ottomans, with the rise of criticism of the Church, with Luther in particular and with Erasmus even for then Erasmus's critique of Julius II and wanting to make Europe work in a more consistent way, the elimination of war, the promotion of peace. Wolsey sees a way in which the rhetoric of peace can be as glamorous. I referred earlier to the virtue of magnificence, that whatever a monarch does, according to Machiavelli, and indeed Erasmus and things has got to be done with authority and greatness. And Erasmus's argument is that kings should make peace in a great way, that they should be not war, but peace should be the aims of kings. Very idealistic, but that's actually quite useful political material. When you're in a situation, as Henry was in 1514, where he'd done his best, it's all right, but he hasn't got any allies. For international reasons, they've abandoned him and he's got no money. So he flips the whole thing round on its head and says, make peacemaking. As glamorous as going to war is, that's what happens in 1518. But the creation of the treaty of universal peace. So Woolsey picks up on Leo X desire for a truce between Christian princes and turns it into an even more amazing glamorous. All singing, all dancing. We're not just going to be not having wars, we're going to be in a confederation of peace together. It's like NATO. It really is the same principle of NATO. Attack on one is attack on all. If anybody breaks the peace, everybody else will gang up on them. And who's the arbiter of all of this? Who's going to be the king? Who will decide who stepped out of line? Not the Pope, it's Henry. And so he's sold on the international stage as this great young prince of peace. And it works. Everybody comes along to London, everybody's sick of war, it's expensive. They all sign up to it. Even Francis, Henry's great rival, signs up to it. And that's what the field of cloth of gold is about. That is really the occasion in which Henry and Francis, their alliance, which underpins again another reversal. England and France, these traditional enemies, now they're going to be allies in the service of Christian peace. So what do you do to celebrate that? You have a pretend war. Of course, you're a noble, that's what you do. So it's a tournament and England and France come together, not against each other, but together in defense of the idea of Christian peace. It's the occasion where Woolsey is trying to get the antipathy or the competition between Henry and Francis. As young kings, both eager to do something great, trying to again recast that not as enemies but as powerful friends as a new axis in Europe, England and France, they spend extravagant amounts of money on this, ostensibly to demonstrate to everybody else the veracity of this new idea of Christian royal peace. Of course, underneath all that, and I think, as Woolsey perfectly well understands, it's a way of both of them showing off to each other, saying, you are not what you could be in Europe unless you cooperate with me. So Francis wants to be Duke of Milan, all these other things. Henry says to him, you've got to cooperate with me, otherwise I'll block you. And Francis is more or less saying the same thing back to Henry. You're sitting there on your island, marvellous. But if you want any role in Europe, you really need an ally like me to help you. So assist and help me. So each king meets the other, seeing himself as being affirmed and strengthened by their alliance. And that is all Wolsey's work. He completely recasts what it is to be allies and his vile tongue, that gift for rhetoric, that gift being able to dress things up in a way his spin doctor, as I've also called him, the Pope, who doesn't actually want all of this particularly much, is more or less forced to go along with it. And it is really quite a remarkable event which had long term consequences, I argue in the book, although not the ones that were intended.
- [30:16]
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- [32:30]
Glenn Richardson
And a year after this glorification of the field of cloth of gold 1520, we have something that has been thrown at Woolsey ever since, which is the matter of the execution of the Duke of Buckingham. How dirty were Woolsey's hands in that? If they're nice and clean in the creation of peacemaking, how much does he dirty them?
- [32:49]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
At this point it's an easy thing to associate Woolsey with the downfall of the great man because there was animosity between them and just shows what an upstart Woolsey was. All that narrative. I don't think Woolsey was there to help Buckingham. Doubtless it suited him if such a powerful figure was in trouble. In the book I talk about this curious incident when he's coming down to London, still not under arrest, but being called upon his oath to come and speak to the council and to give account of himself. Buckingham calls into York Place on the river to see Woolsey and Wolsey, whether he's in the building or not. He doesn't appear and the servants say, sorry, he's not at home, sorry. And then Buckingham says, I will have a drink of my lord's wine as I pass. This is all reported by Edward hall, who's not Wolsey's biggest friend, and there's a curious incident where he does he served wine in the cellar and he just waits around for a bit. And then he asks again to see Wolsey and he's told, sorry, he's not here. And then he says, I'll see how it is. And he gets back on his barge and goes down the river to wherever he was going. That's when he's arrested and taken into the Tower. Make of a what you will. Why would he bother doing that? Does he turn up and want to have it out with Woolsey and say, why are you opposing me and what's all this about? Or as I think, does he turn up because he really does need Woolsey's help? There had been cases in Star Chamber, the court over which Woolsey presides, the Royal Council sitting as a judicial court in which Buckingham had come off worst. But there's no sense that Buckingham denied the authority of that body. He may have grumbled about it and complained, but he didn't contest that. He didn't accuse Wolsey himself of being against him. So maybe he was looking for Woolsey. Maybe he realised Woolsey was very powerful and tried in that moment to get him to do something for him.
- [34:37]
Glenn Richardson
And he obviously thought that Woolsey wasn't so implacably opposed to him that he wouldn't get that support.
- [34:42]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
That's right. Otherwise, I haven't understood why, why he would bother doing that, why he would turn up. It's just a curious contradiction in the perception of Woolsey as implacably opposed to Buckingham. And again, I have to admit, I followed Peter Guin in thinking on this, that there really isn't any evidence. We can see that Woolsey is adamantly opposed to Buckingham and he doesn't profit, really. He doesn't get any of Buckingham's lands or anything. It's retained by Henry, gives some of it to Norfolk and one or two others. And the family itself doesn't suffer either very directly from the great man's fall.
- [35:17]
Glenn Richardson
One thing you talk a lot about in the book is Wolsey's considerable patronage. And we can see this even in terms of his artistic acquisitions, his architecture. Do you think that he was trying to be, as his enemies called him, this Alterex, this other king?
- [35:33]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Yeah, it's not just his enemies. I think some of his friends even say that. I think the phrase is IPSE or alter rex. They use both. Some of the ambassadors talk about that. Henry uses Woolsey as a fire guard. He deals with everything. So when ambassadors really want to get to Henry, they get frustrated by the fact that the only person that they can deal with is Woolsey. And so it's an easy assumption in your frustration to criticize the king for not having sufficient authority by calling this minister the real king. It's a partnership, really. The letters that you read. I don't think Woolsey does see himself as the other king or the in fact king. To what extent? He doesn't, in fact, in a lot of ways see himself as deputy king or all but king. And there is a crucial difference. I think he wants to exercise Henry's authority as fully as possible all the time and make everybody clear that he is exercising the king's authority to its fullest extent. But it's really interesting how often in the correspondence Wolsey checks all the time. If he can do something, he wants to make sure that Henry will give him as much authority as possible, but Henry does, then Wolsey uses as fully as possible. So that's what's really going on. And people, whether they're ambassadors or whether they're petitioners in star chamber, I think they present that they wish there was another way around. Why is this man the only way to the king? And that's what Woolsey intends. I think Woolsey sees himself as doing his job as protecting Henry, leaving Henry as free as possible to do what Henry wants to do and to focus on those aspects of kingship that Henry enjoys, particularly foreign policy and all that sort of stuff. And he will just take the flak if that's what happens. And he serves Henry Very well 99% of the time. And they do have disagreements. There is evidence that they do disagree. They do argue. Ballsey stops doing things that Henry doesn't want. When it comes to the amicable grant, the great demand for extra taxation and extra vires taxation, as it were, in 1525, Wolsey takes the rap for that. Even though it's clearly the idea of the council that they're going to ask people to pay money outside of what's already been paid in parliament. So it's one of those questions that it's right to ask. And we can always speculate upon it. And I think in any system where you have, whether it's a prime minister or a president or whatever, where do the real intestacies of power lie? It's an easy accusation to make alter eggs. But actually, I don't think there's evidence that Wolsey was trying to rule instead of Henry.
- [38:10]
Glenn Richardson
I suppose the question would be, before the matter of the annulment, is there any instance that we can see of Woolsey seriously acting against The King's wishes.
- [38:20]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
One that's often talked about is the abbess of Walton Priory, the relative of William Carey. I think there's two different candidates for this position at the priory. And Woolsey wants one particular lady to have at Anne Boleyn and her circle intervene on behalf of another Lady Carey to have it. I think Henry communicates, or by implication he communicates, what his preferred choice is. And Woolsey pretends that he didn't get the instructions and lets the other lady have the position. And Henry hears about that and it's an extraordinary letter which he writes. The gist of it is, don't think you can pull the wool over my eyes. I'm trying, you know, perfectly. I wrote to you and told you that I wanted her to have it and you just ignored that. Don't try that one with me again. But two or three times in that letter, Henry calls Woolsey his friend. Now he's being very sarcastic. He's really angry. It is not the office of a friend. I don't expect that of a friend. But it's the only time that in a sense, the anger and the sarcasm almost reinforces the fact that he's feeling hurt, he's feeling rejected or ignored by Woolsey. Why would he call him his friend unless he really did think he was his friend? He's seen walking with his arm around Woolsey on occasions. The only other person who has a very similar relationship in that sense is probably Sir Thomas More. He's also seen walking arm in arm with them at various times. I think Henry tremendously respects Woolsey's intellect, his capacities, his commitment. And so when this incident over the Priory happens, I think Henry really is, for whatever reasons the details of it, genuinely angry that this is the way Woolsey has behaved on this occasion. But he's at pain. He writes back to him very quickly as soon as Woolsey capitulates and says, yeah, sorry, okay, fine. And in the end, Henry agrees with Woolsey. Anyway, as usual, Henry writes another letter saying, oh, look, there's no problem. All anger is gone. Everything is fine. So I think it's a very difficult relationship. I think it's a very complex relationship. And as I think I say in the book, the only other person, apart from, for diplomatic reasons, Henry is recorded on paper as calling, my friend is Francis the First. But apart from that, the only other person he calls my friend is Anne Boleyn.
- [40:36]
Glenn Richardson
Isn't that interesting? It is, of course, Anne who becomes the rival for the King's loving fancy. As it's described and we know the story of the annulment and we shan't go into that in great detail, but I want to think about Wolsey's downfall. Obviously he's unable to produce the annulment from the Pope that Henry wants. And you say in your book that Wolsey falls from grace because he's caught between the irreconcilable expectations of the Pope and the king. Explain what you mean.
- [41:04]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Some people have argued that implicitly, as papal legate over the Church in England, Wolsey had jurisdiction, which he did over matters of divorce and things. And some people have said he could have just pronounced on the divorce there and then. I've never accepted that's actually legally, technically true anyway. But more importantly, I don't think he wanted to take that risk. Woolsey is a risk taker. He couldn't have got where he did if he hadn't been. But he's a calculated risk taker and what he and Henry wanted was an absolute cast iron annulment case. There could be no doubt about this. So if anybody could say he was acting outside his powers, he didn't actually have the matter. The most recent one before that had been the divorce of Jeanne de France from Louis XII in France, and that had required a special commission, papally appointed because it's a king you're talking about, not just Mr. And Mrs. Jones. So Woolsey and Henry both want cast iron. But of course, this is my point, which you alluded to, is for 20 odd years Woolsey has been telling and seems as far as Henry's concerned, showing that whatever he wants from the papacy he can get, whether it's setting up new monastic patronage or whatever it is, Woolsey will get it for him. Equally, the papacy has been pulled by Woolsey. Anything you need or any difficulties that you've got with Henry, I consult them. And of course, this is precisely the cleft into which he falls because both sides say, you need to do what I want you to do. And it's an impossible, irreconcilable position. He does incredibly well to try to do everything. He's imaginative, Woolsey, but he's also quite conventional. That's the very thing that Henry likes about him. Henry knows that Woolsey knows the law, whether it's ecclesiastical or whether it's secular. And so Wolsey wants to make sure that it's all done properly, by the book. So it has to be done through the Pope and legates and all the rest of it. But other people around the king and okay, whether it's Arnold, Anne circle or people who she patronize, there is another view. And when Wolsey goes to France in 1527, the crucial time to stitch up now an eternal peace with Francis the first, for reasons which we didn't go into, he's away from the king. And while he's away, Anne and her circle start to question, is Woolsey actually as on par with the Pope as he's telling you? If he is, surely you can just ask for it yourself. Which is why we get the attempt by Henry to more or less spill the beans and ask the Pope straight out for what he wants, which Woolsey would never do, because Woolsey is desperate to keep Anne Boleyn out of the picture. So there is that clash of jurisdictions into which Woolsey has fallen, but there's also the clash of convention and doing it legally. So it's all sound and can't be gone back on with the more gung ho. Let's just sort this out between Fran's approach that Henry decides to take for a time in 27, early 28, although he too then falls back into line with Woolsey's view of things, which is why you get the legatine commission at Blackfriars in 29. But that just brings Wolsey face to face. That's what had happened, for example, with Louis and Jeanne de France. There'd been a similar kind of legatine court. And Wolsey would have said it'll be all right. But because of the situation in Italy, Clement VII is not going to do anything for Henry. That's going to antagonize Charles V who is the nephew of Catherine. And there's nothing Woolsey can do about it. For all his conventionality, for all his imagination, it all comes to nothing. It's a terrible moment for him when Campeggio stands up and baroques the court.
- [44:50]
Glenn Richardson
Yes, because if you are serving both these masters, or at least apparently and the one the Pope will not give you what the king requires, there is no way out of the situation. And so it makes sense that within a few months Wolsey will be charged with treason, but particularly by primunari, which is treason by allegiance to a foreign power. Because basically he has done.
- [45:13]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
Yes, Wolsey has been having to take into account the jurisdiction of a foreign power, which is exactly that shift that happens from the end of the Blackfriars court to the summer of 1530 is absolutely crucial. That's when Henry himself begins to really put the basis, not that I need this annulment and I'm entitled to it. And please give it to me by the summer of 1530. It's. I'm entitled to this and you will give it to me. My authority is what is paramount. And your jurisdiction over my realm is, in the legal terms, ultraviores. It's outside your power to tell me what to do or what I can and cannot do. And that's a very rapid shift because up until that point, Henry had been quite as conventional as Wolsey about how this was going to be resolved. Okay, it was a bloody complicated thing and it's set back and set back, etc. But there are indications when sir Francis Bryan goes to Rome, I think it's in May 1529, from memory, he writes back to Henry and says, look, I don't know. Nobody here is going to do anything for you. All the cardinals and Campeggio, who is the cardinal who sent to England to sit on the commission with Wolsey, he says of him, if Wolsey's the king's cardinal, then Campeggio is certainly the pope's cardinal. And I think that's where people have talked about the influence of the evangelicals and Anne and all the rest of it. That does really begin to tell after the failure of the legatine court because Henry is desperate and will take a whole different legal, theological, jurisdictional view of the significance of what he's asking for or now what he's demanding, to the point, as we know, eventually where he's not even asking anymore. He's just deciding within his own realm, by which Tom Wolsey is, of course, God. The treason thing is interesting because Wolsey admits to the premonuri of acknowledging a jurisdiction, even though he knows and tells Henry more or less. We both agreed that I should become a cardinal and a legate at your insistence. So how can I possibly be holding power from the papacy without your consent? We both know you wanted me to become a Legate in 1518. Henry, of course, doesn't want to know about that by then. And Woolsey knows that's a political game. He knows what's going on. So what he desperately wants to do is to keep it out of the hands of the parliament, which is convening at the end of 29. Which is why the only thing he can do is capitulate to Henry, admits to prominenurae and is forgiven. And that begins the whole story of what happens to him in the last year of his life. He reaches a settlement and forfeits his livings, etc. But the bishopric of Winchester and the abbacy of St. Albans and of course the Archbishop Duke of York are restored to him. He's still a cardinal because it's not in Henry's gift to take that from him and he's sent to go up to York to be a good Archbishop up there.
- [48:19]
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- [49:27]
Glenn Richardson
But let us tell the end of the story, which is that having gone up to York, perhaps desperate attempt to try and find a way out of the situation and then William Walsh sent to arrest Woolsey on this charge of high treason and I don't know whether better or worse for him, Wolsey falls ill on the journey and dies at Leicester Abbey. Do you think had he not got dysentery, if he had made it down to London, could he have defended himself? Would he have been beheaded or could.
- [49:58]
USA Auto Insurance Representative
He have survived the last 12 months of Woolsey's life are really important in retrospect. Looking at the relationship with Henry viii, Wolsey had been in discussions with the French ambassador, Sir Nicholas Vaux, and also Eustace Chapuy, who's the Imperial ambassador. He'd sailed fairly close to the wind about asking to be restored to power and maybe that was treason in itself, seeking the assistance of foreign powers, but equally, writing letters of commendation for each other's servants was quite normal between kings. And if that was treason, then that was treason. What the substance which comes out later is that the allegation was that in those conversations Woolsey had suggested that France should provoke a war between charles v and henry in the papacy. And this would allow francis to help scotland invade england, would allow francis to avoid his debts to henry. All these kinds of things, it all rests on the supposed evidence of wolsey's physician, a guy called agostini, who apparently wrote a letter setting up this plot. The letter was never sent. Apparently mysteriously was destroyed. But agostini remembered absolutely everything that he'd written and told norfolk and henry all about it. Basically, wolsey was verbal. They exaggerated whatever he may or may not have said about getting himself restored to power. Why? Because by then, remember, we're talking about the summer of 1530. Wolsey's on his way up to yogany, gets there in the autumn. Why? Because as I've just been saying, there is a shift in henry's attitude now. He's desperate to not be rid of woolsey, but to use wolsey as an example of papal treachery. He's not in the wrong. The papacy's in the wrong. And the papacy has been plotting with woolsey or wolsey with the papacy to overthrow him. This is terrible. In other words, the whole thing is a made up conspiracy. Woolsey is really not in a position to counter anything because he has been having discussions with his ambassadors and he can't deny it equally. Both ambassadors tell their own governments whatever he said to us, I don't mind talking about it meant nothing at all. It was very vague, whatever he said. So they're basically stitching up a situation in which wolsey can be portrayed internationally as now the pope's cardinal in a very dark kind of way, plotting against henry. And that would have been the substance of the trial had one happened. But as you've alluded to, perhaps mercifully for him, wolsey dies. Had he got back to london, that would have been a pretty big thing to try and stand up in court. But he's an international figure. To put a cardinal on trial for treason with the complicity of the papacy was a big thing to have to do. Now how would they have stood that up already? The ambassador of milan, who knew all about this, sends a report to his duke saying the whole thing is a complete stitch up and nobody takes it seriously. And I don't know what they're going to do with him. And he also confirms that at his death, Woolsey, as a devout or certainly very ordinary pious catholic, he takes the sacrament and says, if I have ever done anything against the service of my lord, may it be the damnation of my soul to do that. And it's not just Cavendish putting those words into his mouth. It's also confirmed, as I say, by the Milanese ambassador, that this happens. So I don't think there's any evidence that would have stood up. The evidence of Woolsey really plotting against the Papacy and the fact that once news of Woolsey's death is known to Henry, he drops the whole theme. He wants to know about some money which he's lent to Woolsey and Cavendish tells him about it. But then he says, okay, I don't want to know anything about any of this anymore. He says, I regret that he died. He was worth to me £20,000 a year or something. So he says he's sorry that Woolsey's died, but he doesn't want to hear about it. The council stops inquiries into this great plot against Henry by the Papacy and Woolsey when he's dead. Now, if there was any real substance to it, there would still have been a political edge to doing it. And it could all been done with Woolsey dead. But it's all dropped just as suddenly as it starts, which to me is perhaps evidence that there was nothing to it really. So I want to acquit Woolsey of the charge of treason against Henry. I also not sure what would happen if he did go back to London. He could have stood trial equally. Maybe Henry would just have put him in the Tower for a bit, just to see what would happen. The assumption that people say, oh, it would have been executed and that would have been it. I don't think that was necessarily what Henry had in mind. I think Woolsey was probably more used to him alive and in prison than dead. It's a terrible kind of comment on how much Henry still needed Wolsey, even in a very dark, destructive way, in 1530.
- [54:40]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And we have Cavendish recording, as among Woolsey's last words, if I had served God as diligent as I have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs, which I always find very moving. Thank you so much, Glenn, for this extraordinary virtuoso tour of Wolsey's life.
- [55:01]
Glenn Richardson
Thanks for listening to Not Just the.
- [55:03]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Tudors and to my researcher, Alice Smith and my producer, Rob Weinberg.
- [55:07]
Glenn Richardson
And do join me, Professor Susannah Lipscomb.
- [55:10]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Next time for another episode of Not.
- [55:12]
Glenn Richardson
Just the Tudor From History.
- [55:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hit.
- [55:24]
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