The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (153 page)

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LP, iv, 5801 Wolsey’s own assessment of 30 July.

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LP, iv, 5016

IN MAY 1519 SEBASTIAN GIUSTINIAN, THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR, REPORTED
from England: ‘Within the last few days his majesty has made a very great change in the court here, dismissing four of his chief lords-in-waiting.’
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According to some accounts, both at the time and since, the man behind this ‘purge’ was Cardinal Wolsey. Some six and a half years later in the Eltham Ordinances of January 1526, he allegedly attempted another. In the meantime he had worked hard to ensure that Richard Pace, appointed royal secretary in 1516, was kept from the king’s presence by being despatched to Italy in December 1521, on a mission from which he did not return until November 1525, by which time he was insane. Thomas Howard, who became 3rd duke of Norfolk in 1524, was made of sterner stuff. Wolsey tried the same tactics with him: from 1520 to 1525 Norfolk was kept well away from the king by almost full-time employment in Ireland or on the Scottish border. But after 1524 potential trouble spots to which to banish him ran out, and Norfolk returned to court to begin his plotting against the cardinal. By 1527 Henry had fallen desperately in love with the duke’s niece, Anne Boleyn, and this provided him with his opportunity. Combining with the Boleyn family and other members of the nobility, in some accounts with almost all of them but certainly with Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk, he managed by October 1529 to persuade a weak-minded and dithering Henry to dismiss his lord chancellor from office. And, when Henry showed signs of restoring him, Norfolk and his allies were able to convince him of Wolsey’s treason, so that only his death from natural causes on 29 November 1530 saved him from the executioner’s axe. There have been many variations of this scenario, but always at their core is a simple model: an unpopular royal favourite constantly having to fight to retain his hold on a king all too easily manipulated by those around him. In the end Wolsey lost the fight, the nobility took their revenge and yet another meddlesome priest had been taught a lesson.

It will be immediately apparent that this scenario has already been considerably undermined. Wolsey, it has been argued, was not a royal favourite, or certainly not to the exclusion of other royal councillors. He had not set out to antagonize the nobility, or in any way to harm its interests, except when they directly conflicted with those of Crown and common weal, which was not all that often. Moreover, he was far too skilful a political animal needlessly to offend anybody, nor is there any evidence that he did so on anything like the scale that the scenario requires. Above all, Henry was quite capable of making up his own mind about whom he consulted and when, and whom he rewarded and by how much. Thus, if there was faction fighting at court, his role would have been that of puppeteer rather than puppet. All this makes it highly unlikely that any conspiracy theory could explain Wolsey’s downfall – and that it did not will be the main thrust of what follows. However,
before the question of the downfall is confronted, the earlier episodes involving Richard Pace and members of the privy chamber must be dealt with.

The picture of the scholarly Pace being hounded into an abyss of paranoia and despair by one so much more politically adept than himself is not a pleasant one, and, if it were true, would have seriously to modify the view of Wolsey that has so far emerged. What is true is that in the autumn of 1521 Wolsey was cross with Pace. He was at Calais, heavily involved in complicated negotiations with the French and Imperialists while Pace had remained with the king in England, where his principal task as secretary was to act as a channel of communication between king and cardinal. This was not easy, especially as there were disagreements between the two. These, it was argued earlier,
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had been to do merely with tactical matters, but they were nevertheless genuine; and given the complexities of the negotiations and the logistical problems involved in any communications, it is not surprising that misunderstandings occurred and that Pace received some of the blame. He was very much the pig in the middle, and things only got worse when Thomas More, who had been with Wolsey in Calais, informed him on his return that there were two more personal matters that Wolsey was annoyed about. In both these Pace was accused of interfering with Wolsey’s patronage. As regards the appointment of a new prior of Marton, a small Augustinian house in Wolsey’s diocese of York, Pace’s defence was that it was Henry who had recommended a particular canon for the office;
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and, given Henry’s interests in all such matters, that defence rings true. With the other appointment, to a minor office in Chancery, Pace maintained that there had been a genuine misunderstanding. He had been led to believe by the candidate that it was in the gift of the master of the rolls, whose candidate had therefore secured the office.
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Again, the secretary’s defence seems convincing: just the kind of muddle that can cause trouble, however benign the intentions of those involved.

What lay behind the friction was the separation of king and cardinal, plus the enormous pressure imposed upon Wolsey, who was having to pretend to conduct an even-handed policy between the French and the Imperialists when he was doing nothing of the sort. Henry appears not to have been very sensitive to the circumstances, and hence the disagreements and poor Pace’s troubles. When appointments which Wolsey believed to be in his own gift had been made without his consent, and with Pace’s knowledge, it was the last straw, but not one that was likely to break his back. One thing that suggests this is that Pace did get to hear of Wolsey’s displeasure, and the matter came out into the open. How we interpret this depends to some extent on whether Wolsey had told More to give Pace a ticking off, or whether, as Pace’s friend, More had passed on Wolsey’s grumbles on his own initiative.
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The latter seems unlikely, but in either case surely Wolsey was being a little careless, even silly, in signalling his displeasure to someone who might be emerging as his arch-rival for the king’s favours? Alternatively, he saw him not as an
arch-rival but as someone who was making a bit of a mess of things and needed to be told as much. Given that Wolsey was usually neither silly nor careless, it is the latter view that best fits the known facts.

Wolsey arrived back from Calais at the end of November 1521, and by the end of December Pace was on his way to Rome and insanity. The price he paid for incurring Wolsey’s displeasure was heavy indeed – or so it has been alleged.
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A closer look suggests another interpretation. The first point to be made is that royal secretaries frequently went on diplomatic missions; indeed, until Thomas Cromwell’s appointment in 1533 these were very much part of the job description.
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There was thus nothing odd in sending Pace abroad, and in fact he was an excellent, if rather obvious choice, for the mission that he was sent on. Before being recruited to Wolsey’s household in 1514 he had spent over fifteen years in Italy, during the last five of which, as Cardinal Bainbridge’s secretary, he had been heavily involved in curial politics.
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He had many friends in Italy, and his reputation as a published scholar would have boosted his standing in a milieu in which humanist studies were fashionable. It was for these reasons that he had been sent to Northern Italy with the important task of organizing opposition to the French, first in 1515 and then again in December 1521. On the second occasion there was a further reason, and one that explains the precise timing of his mission: namely, the death on 2 December of Leo x and the decision to nominate Wolsey in the ensuing election. In fact, Wolsey’s candidature was not very serious,
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and it was important foreign policy considerations that really explain the choice of Pace. Wolsey, it may be remembered, had come back from Calais with an alliance with the emperor and plans, at least in embryo, for that major offensive against the French, the Great Enterprise. In these plans the situation in Italy was of vital importance, and it would be especially helpful if the alliance between France and Venice could be broken. It was this that soon became Pace’s main task, and by the end of July 1523 he had accomplished it. A fortnight later Pope Adrian
VI
died, and Pace was asked to stay in Italy to help promote Wolsey’s second candidature for the papacy, and to ensure that, if Wolsey failed, Giulio de’ Medici, considered favourably disposed towards the Anglo-Imperial alliance, did not. Once this had been achieved, it had been Wolsey’s intention to let Pace return home. Indeed, he did get as far as the Low Countries, but was then diverted back to Northern Italy to act as England’s representative with the rebel duke of Bourbon, whose co-operation was seen as essential to allied success.
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Pace, it should be stressed, made it quite clear that this new task was one he welcomed.
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Like so many of his colleagues in the upper echelons of royal service, he was a committed Imperialist and entirely approved of the notion of bringing Francis
I
to his knees. Arriving at Bourbon’s camp, he was soon writing glowing reports of the duke’s personal qualities, and making optimistic assessments of his chances of success. Pace’s judgement in this matter was of vital concern to Wolsey because
upon it would depend whether or not Henry himself invaded France. Wolsey made all this very clear to Pace, itself evidence of Wolsey’s continuing confidence in him.
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It is also true that he was well aware that Pace’s enthusiasm for the Imperialist cause coloured his judgement. Commenting in a letter of 31 August on Pace’s desire that Henry should invade, Wolsey allowed himself a little irony: ‘For the helping whereof, you desire me to lay my cardinal’s hat, crosses, maces, and myself in pledge.’
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He also warned Pace: ‘In this matter necessary it is that you look substantially to yourself that by fair words, promises, or demonstrations you be not seduced, nor, giving over-much credence to them, provoked to allect the king’s highness or his army over the sea.’
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Pace, for his part, accused Wolsey of taking a remark of his too seriously, though, as it had been to the effect that if Henry failed to gain the French crown, the responsibility would be Wolsey’s, his seriousness is understandable.
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In September 1508 Erasmus had described Pace thus:

a young man so well versed in knowledge of Greek and Latin letters that his intellect would enable him unaided to bring fame to the whole of England; and who is of such high character, and so modest withal, that he wholly deserves the favour of yourself, and those who resemble you
.
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The praise could hardly have been more generous, and undoubtedly Pace did win favour amongst a lot of people, including both Henry and Wolsey at home, and the Venetian signory abroad, as well as the devotion of people such as Thomas Lupset and Reginald Pole. But as a colleague, his over-anxiousness and hyperactivity, which by March 1525 had begun seriously to undermine his sanity, caused problems. In August 1524 the Imperial ambassador at Rome commented that Pace wrote ‘“in a thousand colours”’. In one letter he says that the Imperial army is prosperous beyond all expectation … and in another he pretends that all is ruined, and the army is lost. Such letters do much harm.’
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In November Pace had told a Venetian friend that when he returned to England he would be urging Henry to invade France in person, and had then added ‘whole sackfuls of bravadoes’.
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In December the Imperial diplomat, Nicholas Schomberg, archbishop of Capua, told the Venetian Gasparo Contarini that ‘he did not approve of Pace because he was too vehement’.
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These comments, it should be stressed, were from people to whose cause Pace was wholly committed. What some may find surprising, particularly given Wolsey’s own detached attitude towards the Imperialists, is the patience that he showed throughout the summer and autumn of 1524 in dealing with Pace’s outpourings. If there was criticism, there was also much praise, and always Wolsey emphasized how great was his and Henry’s trust in him. There was also some acute probing behind Pace’s over-involvement with Bourbon in order to arrive at a
realistic assessment of the duke’s chances of success.
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By the end of September Bourbon’s army was in retreat from Marseilles. By October Francis had entered Milan. The Great Enterprise was in ruins, and with it Pace’s dreams. He was ordered back to Venice with the important task of trying to prevent the republic from reverting to its former ally. At the same time, though, he was increasingly having to deny rumours that his own master was involved in serious negotiations with the French. Not surprisingly he found this painful, especially as he suspected, rightly, that the rumours were true.
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If the French defeat at Pavia on 25 February 1525 caused him some happiness, it was short-lived, because by 5 March he was seriously ill.
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In a letter to Wolsey of the 12th of that month he described his illness as a fever,
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but it soon transpired that the problem was mental. One symptom was insomnia, and he may also have been suffering delusions.
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Shortly after Pace’s return to England in November paranoia had set in. He was melancholy, and thought that the king had taken all his possessions and that he had been left penniless.
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Some of his paranoia may have focused upon Wolsey. In October 1524 Pace had apparently blamed the failure of Bourbon’s mission on Wolsey and suspected that, lured by generous bribes and his own ‘base nature’, he had come to some secret understanding with the French.
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In the following April the signory advised their newly appointed ambassador to England not to praise Pace too highly in Wolsey’s presence, for they understood that he was not in great favour with the cardinal
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which suggests that Pace’s criticisms of Wolsey were common knowledge in Venice.