The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (24 page)

To do this we must return to the autumn of 1515 to assess the precise circumstances that had to led to England getting involved in any kind of anti-French alliance. The fact was that Francis
I
had moved too quickly for everyone, had got into Italy by an unexpected route, on 14 September had won the great battle of Marignano before his enemies could co-ordinate their plans, and with the support of Venice had secured the effective mastery of Northern Italy. No wonder Leo
X
was
anxious to come to terms with him. It is, of course, true that success creates its own problems; it not only concentrates the minds of existing enemies, but also creates new ones. Thus in September, when Wolsey first put out feelers for some plan to curb the French, he got a favourable response: Maximilian, Ferdinand, the duke of Milan, and the Swiss were all found to be eager for English support.
⁹⁵
Pace’s mission to the Swiss was the English answer to the response, and was in that sense well-timed. But if the English intention had seriously been to prevent French expansion in Northern Italy, the mission had been incredibly badly timed. Francis
I
had made no secret of his desire to recover Milan, and England had had all summer to try to prevent it. Why had she not joined the anti-French league from its inception? Why, indeed, not invade at an earlier date? The time for a successful invasion was when Francis and his army had been struggling to cross the Alps, not after he had won a great battle, and was in a position to turn his attention back to the North. But rather than doing anything very practical, Henry and Wolsey had spent much of their time loudly proclaiming that Francis would never cross the Alps because England would not allow him to. When they were not doing that they were busy negotiating with him – and, as it happens, it is those negotiations that provide the key to England’s foreign policy.

The message that England had spent the spring and summer trying to get across to Francis was that though she was anxious for his friendship, this would be impossible to achieve if Francis insisted on acting in an unfriendly manner. If he would not return all the jewels and plate owing to the dowager queen of France, Mary Tudor, if he insisted on sending the duke of Albany to Scotland in order to deprive Henry’s other sister, Margaret, of her rightful position as regent for her own son, James
V
, if he refused to provide English merchants with adequate compensation for acts of piracy committed by Frenchmen, if, above all, he refused to take Henry into his confidence – then no friendship was possible. On the other hand, if Francis would only show some sign of valuing her friendship, then England would remain his most faithful ally. One way of getting this message across was to make use of the Venetian ambassadors; hence all that boasting to Giustinian about not letting Francis invade Italy, and even threats that if it did take place Henry would invade France.
⁹⁶
And if the stick, as it were, could be most effectively wielded by the Venetians, the carrots could be delivered by English envoys to France. One such carrot was the prospect of returning Tournai to Francis.

The capture of Tournai had been the high point of Henry’s campaign in France in 1513, and in the following year its future had been very much at the centre of the peace negotiations.
⁹⁷
Obviously, the French were anxious to recover what would otherwise always be a symbol of defeat, and moreover, as a French enclave in the Low Countries, it had some strategic importance. On the English side, there was some reluctance to relinquish what had just been so splendidly won, but there were disadvantages in retaining Tournai, especially the cost of garrisoning it and rebuilding its fortifications. Thus its return to France was never non-negotiable. Instead it was seen as a useful bargaining counter, but one to be played only if great
advantages accrued. In 1514 England had got more or less what she wanted from Louis
XII
without having to use it, and thus Tournai had been retained. On 1 January 1515 Francis had succeeded to the throne and he quickly brought up the subject of its return, offering to pay the costs England had incurred in winning it.
⁹⁸
The English response was not discouraging, but it was made clear that rather more than the costs would be required. Moreover, the English envoys in France strongly recommended that if Tournai was to be returned, it should not be made part of any renewal of the peace treaty between the two countries, because then people would think that England had had to relinquish it in order to secure the renewal. Instead the envoys suggested that a separate agreement should be made, to be kept secret until the two kings had met, when it would be announced as a gracious and entirely voluntary gesture of goodwill on Henry’s part.
⁹⁹
In other words, not only was it important to secure real gains from the surrender of Tournai, but it was equally important not to lose any face over it. The difficulty, however, was that Francis was unwilling to pay a sufficiently high price. Furthermore, if the carrot did not work, neither did the stick.

Wolsey’s problem was how to bring effective pressure to bear on Francis, a problem made much more difficult by Francis’s marriage alliance with Charles of Burgundy made in March 1515,
¹⁰⁰
and the generally pro-French policy of Charles’s regents which this alliance reflected. It meant not only that Wolsey could not expect any practical help from them, but, much more important – because he was not really thinking of going to war with France – it prevented him from using the threat of an English alliance with Charles to put pressure on Francis. Indeed, all the pressure that Wolsey was able to muster in the summer of 1515 was verbal, just those boasts made to the Venetian ambassador of what England would do if Francis ignored her. Unfortunately for Wolsey, Francis called his bluff. He was willing to continue the payment of the French pension that his predecessor, Louis
XII
, had agreed to. He was willing to entertain the possibility of a summit meeting with Henry, but only after he had returned from Italy.
¹⁰¹
He was willing to make the occasional friendly noise. That, however, was all, and as Wolsey frequently pointed out to Giustinian, it was not enough.
¹⁰²

At this stage it is important to stress that Wolsey, and indeed Henry, had very much wanted to make favourable terms with Francis, and expended a great deal of effort towards that goal. As soon as the news of Louis
XII
’s death reached England, a high-powered delegation consisting of the duke of Suffolk, Nicholas West (shortly to become bishop of Ely), and Sir Richard Wingfield had been sent over to open negotiations. Suffolk and Wingfield remained until the middle of April. West stayed until the middle of May in order to witness Francis’s confirmation of a treaty signed in London on 5 April, by which the French, while agreeing to continue the pension, had refused to meet any other English demands.
¹⁰³
Thus, almost as soon as
West had returned, Sir William Sidney was sent over to reopen negotiations with Francis, who was by now on his way to join his army for the invasion of Italy. Sidney crossed early in July, caught up with Francis at Lyons, but their meeting achieved nothing.
¹⁰⁴
Neither did the arrival in London in August of an envoy from Francis, who brought with him a formal announcement of Francis’s intentions to recover the duchy of Milan.
¹⁰⁵
This was hardly news to the English court, but coupled with the refusal of the envoy to discuss any of the disputed issues it represented a slap in the face for Henry who, it will be remembered, had been saying that this would never happen without his permission. At this point Wolsey may have planned to send yet another envoy. Instructions have survived for Richard Wingfield, outlining in great detail the arguments he should put to Francis. Their dating is very uncertain, and it seems that they were never in the end presented to the French king. Nevertheless, they are indicative of the English determination to come to terms with him, and also of the great difficulties involved. Mention is made of all the contentious issues – the English merchants’ complaints, Mary’s dowry, Albany – but perhaps the most interesting section relates to Tournai. It was hoped that Francis would raise the matter himself, because he would undoubtedly have heard of the English plans to refortify the town and should have been worried by them. However, if he did not raise it, Wingfield, though only in a private capacity, was to do so himself. He was then to hint at the many inconveniences to France of the English plans, and to imply that this was the right moment, before the fortifications were up, for Francis to strike a bargain.
¹⁰⁶
In other words, Wingfield was to cast a fly in the hope that Francis would bite. In the event it looks as if Wingfield never made his cast, but it would have been only one amongst the many that Wolsey had made during the spring and summer of 1515, all to no avail.

It looks as if Wolsey made one more bid to tempt Francis. On 26 October 1515 the French ambassador officially informed Henry of his master’s great victory at Marignano over the Swiss. Henry was not especially delighted, and even managed to get into a quarrel about how many Swiss had been slain on the battlefield, suggesting that the ambassador had greatly exaggerated the numbers and declaring anyway that the Swiss troops were as nothing compared with the German. It was a typical combative performance, and Wolsey, when presented with the news, behaved in an equally typical way. He was delighted to hear of Francis’s victory – hardly a truthful statement, but then neither was his denial of any warlike preparations by England. Partly, it depended on one’s interpretation of the phrase. There was indeed very little physical preparation by England, but by late October Pace was already on his way to Switzerland with offers of money and military help to whoever might oppose the French. Nevertheless, in a private interview shortly afterwards Wolsey tried to revive the French interest in negotiations. There was no prince whom Henry loved more than the king of France, and indeed these two princes were so alike in their great abilities and virtues that they really ought to love one another. And after the soft soap, the hard talk: the ambassador should remind his master ‘that the time is no longer such as it used to be’, which vague as it was,
may have been a hint that following his great successes opposition to Francis was mounting and therefore he would increasingly need English support. Less vague was Wolsey’s statement on Scotland. If Francis would recall Albany, the English would not insist on Margaret, Henry
VIII
’s sister, being the effective guardian of her children, though they would want her to retain the courtesy title and be allowed unrestricted access to them. If Albany was not recalled, then Henry was determined to aid his sister, and to that end had recently made a treaty with Ferdinand who had agreed to support England in any war with Scotland, in return for England’s support in Guienne. Wolsey ended the interview by once more turning on the charm. Henry’s affection for Francis was again stressed, and if only the French king would treat him a little better, then of course Henry would not make any treaty with the king of Aragon, or any other person hostile to Francis.
¹⁰⁷
Unfortunately for Wolsey, by early November the dying Ferdinand was not much of a threat, but then this had been Wolsey’s great difficulty throughout 1515: he had very little to threaten Francis with. He was to spend the next two years trying to rectify this.

If this point is understood, a lot that has so far been inexplicable makes sense. Why did Wolsey allow himself to become entangled with the completely untrustworthy Maximilian and the not so trustworthy Swiss? Why, when the untrustworthiness and incompetence of these allies had been made patently clear in the débâcle before Milan, were Henry’s hopes of success apparently so quickly revived? Why, though he and Wolsey had shown a little displeasure at what had taken place there, were they willing to go on encouraging Maximilian to greater efforts? And it must be stressed that neither was taken in by Maximilian’s customary consummate performance. The constant wearing of the garter and the flattery, as when he praised the style of Henry’s Latin and French secretaries, made not the slightest difference to their extremely cold-eyed view.
¹⁰⁸
In June 1516 Wolsey informed Pace that Henry quite agreed with his unfavourable assessment of the emperor, but this only meant that Pace must use him accordingly.
¹⁰⁹
Shortly afterwards Wolsey was advising him to play Maximilian along, and then in July he wrote to say that though the Council thought the emperor’s conduct strange, ‘it was necessary to use policy therein and dissemble for a time.’
¹¹⁰
Maximilian’s offer of the Imperial title made no impression on Henry: ‘We think they mean nothing … touching the vicary general of the Empire, which we set little by.’
¹¹¹
Neither Henry nor Wolsey ever set much store by Maximilian, but the point was that if pressure was to be brought to bear on Francis, they had to make use of what was available, and Maximilian just happened to be one of the few people who was.

This same need to make the best of what was available explains Wolsey’s desperate efforts to build up some kind of anti-French league in the summer of 1516, despite the overwhelming difficulties which the creation of such a league presented: in essence Maximilian’s untrustworthiness and the regents’ opposition. The regents’ treaty with Francis at Noyon in August 1516 was a severe blow to Wolsey, but was not sufficient to put him off completely. He argued, quite correctly, that it was in
many ways unfavourable to Charles. The loss of Navarre; the surrender of his claim to Artois; the recognition of Francis’s claim to Naples, which was to be admitted as the young French princess’s dowry despite the fact that the prospective husband was already the
de facto
ruler of that kingdom; the disparity of ages between Charles who was seventeen and the Princess Louise who was less than a year old – all these things, Wolsey believed, made it most unlikely that Noyon would hold.
¹¹²
But in order to make sure that it did not, he was prepared, as we have seen, to risk paying for Maximilian’s ‘descent’ into the Low Countries to remove the pro-French regents. When he hit on this plan Wolsey knew there was a possibility that Maximilian might deceive him, but he had been prepared to take a risk because any alliance, however fudged or improbable, was better than none. Without one he had no bargaining counters, and it was these that he was desperately seeking.