The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (47 page)

⁴⁸
LP
, iii, 1508;
Sp. Cal
, ii, 355 for the provisions of the Treaty of Bruges.

⁴⁹
Sp. Cal
., ii, 358 for Gattinara’s comment on Juan Manuel’s worries about the English efforts to secure a truce: ‘I should much like the king of England to be persuaded to declare against France.’ Manuel’s letter was dated 6 September 1521.

⁵⁰
LP
, iii, 1393, 1448, 1453, 1454, 1459, 1462, 1473, for the disagreement about who should command the force. Henry wanted an aristocrat, Wolsey preferred Sir William Sandys; in other words, Wolsey was anxious to play the whole thing down, though at one stage he did rashly promise to lead the force into battle himself.
St. P
, i, p.31 (
LP
, iii, 1462).

⁵¹
LP
. iii, 1533, 1544, 1558, 1577, 1594, 1611, 1629.

⁵²
Scarisbrick,
Henry
VIII
, pp.86, 89-96 for both disputes, and the argument that they indicate a major divergence over policy between the two men.

⁵³
LP
, iii, 1515, 1539, 1543 (
St. P, i
, pp.49, 50; vi, p.85).

⁵⁴
LP
, iii, 2292.

⁵⁵
LP
, iii, 1446, 1507.

⁵⁶
LP
, iii, 1560, 1568, 1573.

⁵⁷
LP
, iii, 1694 for Wolsey’s argument that the present war was hindering the eventual Anglo-Imperial success;
LP
, iii, 1518, 1538, 1762 for his view that if the war was going well, a truce should be delayed.

⁵⁸
LP
, iii, 1670, 1683 for their impossible demands.

⁵⁹
LP
, iii, 1695-6, 1707, 1727-8, 1742, 1749, 1763, 1776 for negotiations with Francis
I
.
LP
, iii, 1694, 1705-6, 1714-5, 1733, 1735-6, 1752-3, 1768-9, 1777-8, for negotiations with the emperor.

⁶⁰
LP
, iii, 1766 – for Margaret’s description of Charles’s anger.

⁶¹
LP
, iii, 1736.

⁶²
Scarisbrick,
Henry
VIII
, p.92.

⁶³
St. P
, i, p.90 (
LP, iii, 1762
).

⁶⁴
LP
, iii, 1802, 1810.

⁶⁵
Arguably an even greater one if peace had been his aim - though in the end unsuccessful. One of the difficulties of the ‘peace’ theory is that it requires Wolsey to be deceiving not only the French, but also the pope, the emperor, and even Henry
VIII
. Perhaps this was beyond even Wolsey?

⁶⁶
See p.355 below.

⁶⁷
‘The statesmen in Rome, however, are persuaded that the cardinal will do what is most lucrative for himself …’ – Juan Manuel to Charles v, 13 June 1520,
Sp. Cal
, ii, 281.

⁶⁸
A.F. Pollard, p.116, n.3.

⁶⁹
See p.85, n.2 above.

⁷⁰
I refer to questions of foreign policy affecting the Imperial alliance, not to such matters as the presentation to Leo
X
of Henry’s
Assertio Septem Sacramentum
: those were discussed.

⁷¹
Haneton and the resident Imperial ambassador were not to inform the English of it, unless they were proving obstinate (
LP
, iii, 1371) Apparently they were not, for it was not until 25 July that Wolsey wrote to Henry that from something in the Imperial ambassador’s letter he suspected that there was some agreement between them and the pope, ‘which as yet be kept to themselves secret’. (
LP
, iii, 1439).

⁷²
LP
, iii, 1402-3, 1430, 1477. For a contrary view, see Wilkie, p.121: ‘The progression of events during the following months was the direct result of the new understanding between de’ Medici and Wolsey which Clerk’s arrival in Rome was intended to implement.’

⁷³
LP
, iii, 1486.

⁷⁴
LP
, iii, 1510.

⁷⁵
LP
, iii, 1574.

⁷⁶
Sp. Cal
., ii, 359. His reports provide a running commentary on papal suspicions of Wolsey from the time of Clerk’s arrival.

⁷⁷
LP
, iii, 1694 point 8. The emperor’s concern for Italy was going to be much more damaging for Wolsey, and, indeed, the policy begun at Calais and Bruges would eventually flounder on this issue.

⁷⁸
Wernham, pp.98-101.

⁷⁹
St. P
, vi, p.86 (
LP
, iii, 1515).

⁸⁰
Recent historians have had difficulty taking it seriously, a notable exception being L. Baldwin Smith; see L.B. Smith, pp.161-7.

⁸¹
See pp.637-8 below for Wolsey’s apparent regrets.

⁸²
Wolsey received not only praise, but also St Albans Abbey; see
LP
, iii, 1759.

ON 8 APRIL 1521 A ROYAL MESSENGER ARRIVED AT THORNBURY CASTLE IN
Gloucestershire, the principal residence of Edward Stafford 3rd duke of Buckingham. He brought with him a request for the duke to attend upon the king. To someone in Buckingham’s position this was not unusual and there is no evidence that it aroused any suspicion in his mind. He set off almost immediately. Within a week he had been committed to the Tower of London, and within just over a month he had been found guilty of high treason before the court of the lord high steward of England. On 17 May he was taken under a guard of five hundred men to Tower Hill. Here he admitted that he had offended against the king, but only through negligence and lack of grace, a rather less fulsome confession of guilt than was usual in such circumstances.
¹
Nevertheless, he expressed the hope that his disgrace and execution would provide an example and warning to all other noblemen. He then recited the penitential psalms, gave the customary forgiveness to his executioner, ‘after which he took off his gown, and having had his eyes blindfolded, he laid his neck on the block, and the executioner with a woodman’s axe severed his head from his body with three strokes’.
²

The sudden and dramatic destruction of England’s leading nobleman, a son, moreover, of the man who had first raised the Tudor standard against the house of York, was bound to cause a stir both at home and abroad. At home it was ordinary Londoners who were most affected; or at least it was only they who were prepared publicly to show their grief for a man who, for reasons which are not altogether clear, had always been popular with them.
³
Abroad, there was only some embarrassing comment. Francis
I
mischievously offered to come to the aid of his ‘brother-in-distress’, thereby implying that the English nobility was in full revolt, with perhaps the further implication that this could have been brought about only by Henry’s incompetence. His offer was politely but firmly turned down.
⁴
What Buckingham’s fellow peers thought about his destruction is not known. Publicly, however, they, or at least the forty per cent of them who had taken part in his trial, were quite clear that he was guilty of high treason. Historians have tended to disagree.
⁵
The execution has usually been seen as a put-up job, either by Henry or by Wolsey. The king, like all good Tudors, is supposed to have had a strong aversion
to anyone who looked like an ‘over-mighty subject’, but especially one, such as Buckingham, who could boast a claim to the throne through both John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock, sons of Edward
III
. Wolsey, as the upstart son of an Ipswich butcher, is supposed to have disliked all noblemen, but especially those who might successfully compete with him for royal favour. In other words, Buckingham’s fall has been much used to support various theories concerning both the character and policies of Henry and Wolsey. Rather less attention has been paid to the event itself, and in particular the question, why April 1521?

It was Polydore Vergil who first outlined a conspiratorial view of Buckingham’s downfall, and predictably it was one in which Wolsey played the leading role. He had Wolsey first of all working to secure the removal of any potential ally of Buckingham’s. Thus, one of his brothers-in-law, the 5th earl of Northumberland, had been hauled before Star Chamber in 1516, and another, the earl of Surrey, had been packed off to Ireland in May 1520, not to return until Buckingham had been executed.
⁶
That Wolsey was planning Buckingham’s destruction five years before it took place may seem a little too far-sighted, even for someone of his intelligence, while not to have bothered to remove Surrey’s father, the duke of Norfolk, who might have been expected to show some concern at the fate of his son’s father-in-law, seems an unlikely oversight. And why wait until nearly a year after Surrey had gone to Ireland before moving against Buckingham? Where do Buckingham’s alleged grumblings about the waste of money and general futility of the Field of Cloth of Gold fit into such a scenario? They could hardly have been predicted by Wolsey in 1516! However, it is arguable that it was Wolsey’s fear of Buckingham exploiting the endemic francophobia of the English ruling classes in order to mount a successful attack on Wolsey’s handling of foreign policy, that triggered his own counter-attack. Surrey’s removal to Ireland just before the Field of Cloth of Gold, when Buckingham’s complaints may have already become audible, at first glance supports such an interpretation.

We have only Vergil’s word for it that Buckingham was unhappy about the Field of Cloth of Gold, and his presence there with the most splendid entourage does not support this notion. Moreover, by April 1521 the French alliance was very much under review, and by the end of the year England was to be associated with the emperor in the Great Enterprise against the French. This makes it difficult to make too much of a connection between foreign policy and Buckingham’s fall, even if after his execution Wolsey was to make some play of the duke’s dislike of the French in his complicated manoeuvring with the French king.
⁷
Moreover, it was Henry, not Wolsey, who had sent Surrey to Ireland,
⁸
so either the king also was planning Buckingham’s destruction, or Wolsey had had a stroke of luck! As with all conspiracy theories, the possible permutations are endless, and in the end not all that convincing – especially if there is a much more simple explanation.

Buckingham was executed for the very good reason that on the evidence presented to them a panel of twenty peers found him guilty of high treason. That they did so in May 1521 is because it was not until the previous autumn, at the
earliest, that the government had any notion that the duke had been indulging in treasonable thoughts – and it perhaps needs to be stressed that he was never accused of more than that. Thus the fact that no evidence for any major conspiracy against the Crown has ever been found in no way points to the duke’s innocence. As a precautionary measure, two of his sons-in-law, Lords Bergavenny and Montagu, were arrested, but they were soon released.
⁹
That Buckingham had ‘imagined’ the deposition and death of the king was due to his having taken heed of the prophecies of one Nicholas Hopkins, a Carthusian monk of the priory of Henton in Somerset, to the effect that Henry would have no male heir and that Buckingham would succeed him. When, back in 1511 or 1512, Buckingham had first listened to Hopkins, Henry had no heir; but on the last occasion, in March 1519, the Princess Mary was three years old. If Buckingham was to become king, therefore, not only Henry but also his daughter would have to die first, whether from natural or unnatural causes neither Hopkins nor Buckingham chose to make explicit. However, a good deal of evidence was produced at the trial to show that the latter was not averse to giving fate, or God, a helping hand.
¹⁰
In September 1519 he apparently told Bergavenny that if Henry should die, he intended to be king ‘whoever would say to the contrary’. Later in the same year he informed one of his relatives and estate officials, Charles Knivet, that if Henry had dared to arrest him for the unlawful retaining of Sir William Bulmer, his intention had been to put into effect a plan devised by his father to murder Richard
III
: the stabbing of the monarch while in private audience with him. In February 1520 Buckingham informed his chancellor, Robert Gilbert, that he considered that everything that Henry
VII
had done ‘had been done wrongfully’, while Henry
VIII
had not behaved much better. Despite this, he had decided to put off his ‘treason’ for a more convenient time because it could only be successful ‘if the lords of the kingdom would show their minds to each other, but some of them were afraid to do so’. He had also on various occasions been very critical of Wolsey, calling him an ‘idolator’ for using magic to retain the king’s favour, and king’s ‘bawd’ for using less transcendental means to achieve the same end. He had also made it clear that on his becoming king Wolsey would lose his head.
¹¹