The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (16 page)

It is not entirely clear what the outcome of the first Blackfriars conference was. Neither is it possible to date precisely the events which followed it, although their sequence seems clear enough. Shortly after it had ended, the Commons requested that the abbot of Winchcombe should publicly renounce the views he had expressed in his St Paul’s Cross sermon. The request was, however, refused, and when Standish continued to publicize his views in a series of lectures, he was summoned before convocation to answer a number of questions in what turned out to be the first steps in proceedings against him for heresy. On the central issues Standish stuck to his guns but, fearing the consequences, he appealed to the king, as indeed did the Church. A second Blackfriars conference was called, probably some time in November. Both sides repeated and developed their arguments, Standish getting full support from John Veysey, a doctor of civil law and dean of the Chapel Royal who, even before the second conference began, had informed the king ‘that the conventing of clerks before the temporal judges, as had always been the custom in the realm of England, might well stand with the law of God, and with the liberties of the Holy Church’.
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But, of course, the new development which had to be thrashed out was the validity of convocation’s moves against Standish. On this issue the Church suffered a real setback, for the judges declared that here convocation was guilty of praemunire, presumably for their partial reliance, in putting forward their case, on papal decrees which had not received the royal assent. Furthermore, they went on to argue that the Church had no role to play in parliament: the bishops were present in the House of Lords only by reason of their temporal possessions, and therefore the king was perfectly at liberty not to summon them.
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In other words, they were there on sufferance and had no say in the government of the country except that graciously allowed them by the Crown. It is not known what the bishops’ reaction to this broadside was, but a detailed defence against the praemunire charge has survived.
⁹⁰
Amongst other things, the point was made that it
was the duty of the Church to investigate possible cases of heresy, and it was thought quite unreasonable for parliament to be able to criticize the Church with impunity, while convocation could make no criticism of the laity without the threat of a praemunire charge.

What was now at issue was the very role of the Church in English society. It was high time that the king intervened directly. A further conference was called, this time at Baynard’s Castle, with Henry himself presiding and with everybody who was anybody being present – including Wolsey. Indeed, it was Wolsey who opened the proceedings by kneeling before Henry and declaring that

to his knowledge none of the clergy had ever meant to do anything in derogation of the king’s prerogative, and for his own part he owed his whole advancement solely to our lord the king; wherefore he said he would assent to nothing that would tend to annul or derogate from his royal authority for all the world. Nevertheless, to all the clergy this matter of conventing of clerks before the temporal judges seems contrary to the laws of God and the liberties of the Holy Church, the which he himself and all the prelates of Holy Church are bound by their oath to maintain according to their power
.
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Wolsey then requested that Henry should allow the matter to be decided at Rome, to which Henry replied that he thought the Church’s case had been fully answered by Dr Standish and others. This was too much for Richard Fox, who angrily retorted, ‘Sir, I warrant you Dr Standish will not abide by his opinion [but] at his peril’, whereupon Standish asked his famous question, ‘What should one poor friar do alone against the bishops and clergy of England?’
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After a pause for tempers to cool, Warham formally presented the Church’s case, reminding Henry that many holy fathers had resisted attempts by the Crown to limit ‘benefit of clergy’ and some had even suffered martyrdom in this cause – a reference, as everyone there would have known, to his predecessor, Thomas Becket.
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His case was answered by Chief Justice Fineux, who pointed out that since the practice of ‘conventing’ clergy had long been accepted by the English Church, this presupposed that for all this time it had never been considered contrary to the laws of God. Turning to the problem that had led to the Act of 1512 – the widespread feeling that handing clerics over to the ecclesiastical courts for sentencing was tantamount to letting them off – he argued that ecclesiastical law made no provision for cases of felony – which Warham denied – and that therefore there was no point in handing over clerics who had committed felonies to a court which was in no position to sentence them. To this Warham made no reply.
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At this point Henry gave his judgment:

By the ordinance and sufferance of God, we are king of England, and kings of England in time past have never had any superior but God only. Wherefore know you well that
we will maintain the right of our Crown and of our temporal jurisdiction as well in this point as in all others, in as ample a wise as any of our progenitors have done before us. And as to our decrees, we are well informed that you yourselves of the Spirituality do expressly contrary to the words of many of them, as has been well shown to you by some of our spiritual Counsel: nevertheless, you interpret your decrees at your pleasure. Wherefore, consent to your desire more than our progenitors have done in time past we will not
.
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All that remained was for Warham to make a last despairing plea for the whole matter to be decided at Rome, but all he received for his pains was a royal silence.

The crisis of 1515 was largely a political one, the culmination of a conflict between Crown and Church which had originated in the second half of Henry
VII
’s reign when he and his leading lay councillors had determined to assert greater control over the Church, and in particular to win back concessions granted to it by the Yorkist kings. These moves the Church determined to resist, though there may also have been at this time within the Church a more aggressive spirit abroad, associated with a greater interest in reform. The conflict was about spheres of activity within society, rather than about theology and religious observance, but this does not mean that the conflict was not serious; three conferences within the course of one year is evidence that it was. What has puzzled historians and has led them to underestimate the seriousness of the situation, is that apparently very little resulted from these conferences. Actually more came of them than has usually been realized, even if on the face of it their result was a stalemate: the Act of 1512 limiting benefit of clergy was not renewed but, on the other hand, the clerical demand for the end of the practice of ‘conventing’ was not met. But in reality the Church had suffered a defeat, even if the extent of that defeat was to be partially obscured by Wolsey’s political skill.

To understand the nature of the defeat, a return must be made to Henry
VIII
’s attitude towards the Church. It has been said of him that ‘if there is any single thread to his theological evolution it is his anticlericalism’.
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The only quarrel with this statement must be with the word ‘evolution’. The claims that Henry made for supremacy over the English Church in the 1530s, even his view that ‘all spiritual things, by reason whereof may arise bodily trouble and inquietation, be necessarily included in a prince’s power’, and that as a result God had assigned to the prince power over the Church’s ‘person, acts and deeds’
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– all this was implicit in the stance that he took in 1515. His declaration that ‘kings of England … have never had any superior but God only’ could hardly have been clearer. The English Church was subordinate to the Crown and had only a delegated authority; if what the Church was doing was not conducive to the ‘public good’, the Crown had a duty to intervene. This is what Standish and Veysey had argued, and to their argument Henry had given his full assent. Henry
VIII
was determined to be master of his Church. The instrument of his mastery was to be Thomas Wolsey.

Evidence of Wolsey’s direct participation in the two
causes célèbres
is extremely meagre. There is the letter which Fitzjames may have written to him asking for his
aid in protecting Horsey from the bias of a London jury.
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There is also the summary of the speech which he made while kneeling before Henry at Baynard’s Castle.
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That is about it, and one is thus forced back on conjecture. It does seem inconceivable that a man as close to Henry as Wolsey was in 1515, a man whom Henry was pushing for cardinal and was just about to make lord chancellor, could have been ignorant of Henry’s views on the Church. Indeed, the assumption must be that Henry and his chief minister had discussed the two affairs in some detail, and that each knew beforehand what the other was going to say at Baynard’s Castle. Both, of course, would also have been well aware of the strength of clerical feeling. The fact that the only copy of the Church’s defence to a possible charge of praemunire for questioning Standish on a suspicion of heresy is in the hand of Brian Tuke, at the time Wolsey’s secretary, is not evidence of Wolsey’s whole-hearted support for the clerical party, but only that he had detailed knowledge of their position, for whatever his personal views he would have needed to have such information.
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And at this point it is important to stress, especially in view of the emphasis which has been placed on Henry’s determination to exert his ‘superiority’ over the Church, that the main purpose of the conference at Baynard’s Castle was to put an end to a dangerous dispute. Although Henry had no intention of conceding anything to the Church on the principles at stake, equally there was no intention of widening the divisions – and in practice the offending bill was dropped. Wolsey’s role in all this was to act as mediator – his favourite role, and one that he was supremely good at. Hence his kneeling and his recognition of the king’s prerogative, but hence also his statement that ‘conventing of clerks’ was ‘contrary to the laws of God’. His was a conciliatory speech, quite unlike Warham’s with its talk of martyrdom, and quite unlike his former patron Fox’s interjection concerning Standish, which must have raised the temperature a good deal. Wolsey’s immediate tactics seem clear enough: he wanted to ‘cool’ the situation.

But what of Wolsey’s long-term aims? Or, to put it another way, was he entirely neutral in the conflict, or, if, as seems likely, he was not, which side did he favour? Wolsey was, of course, a cleric, indeed a bishop, and by the end of the affair a cardinal. In his speech at Baynard’s Castle he pointed out that as bishop he had sworn to maintain the ‘laws of God and the liberties of the Holy Church’. He also requested, as Warham did, that the matter might be determined at Rome. But by far and away the major ingredient in Wolsey’s rise was his personal relationship with Henry
VIII
. This being so, it seems unlikely – though bearing in mind the precedent of Henry
II
and Thomas Becket, not impossible – that in a conflict between Church and state he would side wholeheartedly with the Church.

Furthermore, not all churchmen opposed the Crown’s case for ‘superiority’ – Standish and Veysey to name but two. Standish, being a Franciscan, was a rather special case, but Veysey’s career seems to have been very typical of the careerist cleric. About ten years Wolsey’s senior, he too had gone to Magdalen College, Oxford, but unlike Wolsey, he had studied civil law, becoming a doctor in 1495. He had then embarked upon a successful ecclesiastical career, including spells as vicar-general
in two different dioceses. He accumulated innumerable benefices and canonries, and by 1515 was dean of Exeter as well as of the Chapel Royal and of St George’s, Windsor. Perhaps royal favour did influence his judgment at the second Blackfriars conference, but then most successful ecclesiastical careers depended to some extent on royal favour. If Veysey could side with the Crown, no doubt a number of other leading clerics could do so as well, but how many is not known. One of the many surprising incidents in 1515 had been Fox’s outburst against Standish. As has been shown, there was no more devoted servant of the Crown than Richard Fox – almost the quintessential clerical politician.
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Furthermore, he was no friend to Warham, having spent most of the previous ten years in dispute with him. In particular, he and a number of other suffragan bishops had strongly resisted Warham’s attempt to extend the jurisdictional privileges of the see of Canterbury, in the process hindering both the Church’s efforts at reform and its resistance to secular interference.
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Yet at Baynard’s Castle Fox had, most unusually, lost his temper, and made it very clear that he stood with Warham and against the king. Notwithstanding that Fox was on the point of retiring from politics and had been increasingly preoccupied with his diocese, his opposition is nevertheless an indication of how high feeling was running in some church circles at least. It is also a reminder of the problems facing the historian in trying to define the relationship between Crown and Church at any given time.

Most historians have emphasized the conformity of the early Tudor episcopacy with the royal will.
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This has been misleading and has, for instance, obscured the importance of the Standish affair. Of course, almost by definition leading clerics were also leading servants of the Crown, which needed the Church’s support just as the Church needed the Crown’s. Despite the papacy and its claims to temporal supremacy, much of the time there was no conflict. Insofar as there was the potential for it, it was one that people had learnt to live with. Henry could claim that he had no superior but God and yet consider himself a very loyal son of the pope. Wolsey could be both a prince of the Church and yet the king’s chief minister. Neither appears to have suffered overmuch from schizophrenia. That said, there was always likely to be conflict between a confident monarchy determined to exert its authority to the full and the entrenched vested interest that was the Church.