The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (48 page)

Following Vergil, historians have tended to be so obsessed with conspiracy theories that they have refused to take the lengthy indictment against Buckingham very seriously. This has been a mistake, for it is utterly damning. For anyone to condone prophecies predicting his succession to the throne, to couple this with highly critical comments about the reigning monarch and his leading councillor, and, furthermore, to hint that he was willing to depose the king just as soon as he could find the necessary backing, was political suicide. This was especially so if, like Buckingham, you had not only a claim, however remote, to the throne, but were probably the most powerful nobleman in England and related by blood or by marriage to most rivals for that position.
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Furthermore, even in the technical sense
Buckingham probably had committed high treason. Concern has been shown by recent historians over the question of whether in the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries ‘overt action’ was required for a conviction of high treason, or whether mere words or ‘imaginings’ were sufficient.
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There was not a great deal that was ‘overt’ about what Buckingham had done, and thus if the law required ‘overt action’, he ought to have been acquitted. But his fellow peers were as concerned as recent historians with the question of what constituted high treason. They specifically asked John Fineux, the chief justice of King’s Bench, who was present throughout the trial to provide legal advice as to whether words alone were sufficient, and his answer was yes.
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Whether he was right can only ever be a matter of interpretation, but there is no reason to suppose that he merely gave the answer that the Crown wished to hear. There were precedents for his judgment in both Edward
IV
’s and Henry
VII
’s reign, most of them involving the court of the lord high steward, the very court in which Buckingham was tried.
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This court, and specifically the way in which Buckingham’s trial was conducted, has received unfavourable comment. Most of it has been misplaced, or at least anachronistic. Given that Buckingham had a right to be tried by his fellow peers and that parliament was not sitting, it was the only court that could have dealt with his case. There was, in fact, some discussion about whether parliament should be called,
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and the reason it was not was probably due to the inconvenience of such a step rather than to any Machiavellian plot to pervert the course of justice.
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Buckingham was tried by a jury consisting of twenty of the fifty noblemen alive at the time.
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Was it packed? The numbers alone suggest that it was not: to find twenty people guaranteed to be willing to pervert the course of justice is quite a tall order. Moreover, the government had only a limited choice. Five of the fifty were not eligible for selection because they were either minors or lunatics,
¹⁹
and one, the earl of Surrey, was busy in Ireland. Three peers – the duke’s brother the earl of Wiltshire, and his sons-in-law, the Lords Bergavenny and Montagu – were excluded as being too close to the duke; indeed, as has been mentioned, the last two were briefly imprisoned. On the other hand, it may be that two others, Lords Berkeley and Berners, were excluded for the opposite reason, that they were too antagonistic.
²⁰
The largest number of absentees, about twelve, was from the North; and though this meant the exclusion of Buckingham’s brother-in-law, the earl of
Northumberland, and another son-in-law, the earl of Westmorland, it does suggest that the reason for this mass exclusion, rather than anything sinister, was the practical difficulties of getting down south at short notice and an unwillingness to empty the North of its noblemen.
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And if most of Buckingham’s relatives were excluded, the court was presided over by the father of his son-in-law, the duke of Norfolk.

Thus, if there was some selection, it was not entirely determined by the desire to secure a conviction. Neither does it appear that the trial itself was conducted unfairly, given that the strong presumption at the time was that anyone accused of high treason was likely to be guilty. This may offend modern sensibility, but should not prejudice one’s treatment of a particular case. And it should be said that in 1534 a jury of noblemen sitting in the same court under which Buckingham had been tried was to find William Lord Dacre not guilty of treason. Though Fineux’s advice was available to Buckingham as to others in the court, he had no defence lawyer. Neither was he given any prior information about the charge. This was standard practice. He does, however, appear to have been allowed to cross-examine some of the witnesses testifying against him. If so, this was a departure from the norm, and one much in his favour.
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The likelihood is that Buckingham’s fellow peers were convinced by the evidence presented that he was guilty. Of course, it is just possible that that evidence was a complete fabrication, but if Henry and Wolsey were prepared to go to such lengths, they could have done so at any time – which brings us back again to the question of why they waited until April 1521 to make a move. If we can accept that it was only in the few months before this date that the Crown had any idea that Buckingham had been ‘imagining’ treason, then the question is solved.

Unfortunately it is impossible to be certain about this. The bulk of the evidence against the duke was provided by three members of his household: Robert Gilbert, his chancellor, John Dellacourt, his chaplain and confessor, and Charles Knivet, the relative and estate official already referred to. Edward Hall believed that it was Gilbert who talked first.
²³
He certainly had plenty of opportunity to do so, for he was often sent by Buckingham to discuss his master’s business with Wolsey, as he was at the end of November 1520.
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However, there appears to have been no obvious reason for Gilbert to turn against his employer. He had been with Buckingham for about twenty years, and enjoyed a position of great responsibility and remuneration. On the other hand, Buckingham was extremely difficult to work for. Many of his officials were dismissed, challenged in the law courts, arbitrarily put in prison, or had their lands seized. Some no doubt deserved their fate, but it is doubtful whether
this would have been true of John Russell whom Buckingham turned on in 1508. He had been Buckingham’s secretary for seven years, and his subsequent successful career in royal service – he became in 1525 secretary to the Princess Mary and a member of her Council of the Welsh Marches – hardly suggests disloyalty or corruption. Yet Buckingham accused him of embezzling over £3,000, and when he had the temerity to defend himself against the charge the duke seized his estates. Given this precedent, it is not inconceivable that, though Gilbert had no particular grievance, by 1520 he was so fed up with such a difficult master that he was prepared to tell all. The same may have been true of Dellacourt.
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Knivet, on the other hand, had an obvious motive. Some time in 1520 – Vergil says just before Buckingham’s departure for the Field of Cloth of Gold in very early July, though it may have been a little earlier
²⁶
– he was dismissed from his post as surveyor of the duke’s lands in Kent. As a result, he may have begun hinting to royal officials that he had information that would be of interest.

There is one other candidate for the role of first informer, one Margaret Gedding, former nurse to Buckingham’s children and lady-in-waiting to his wife, Eleanor. The evidence is frustratingly slight, but it is known that by 26 November 1520 Buckingham was worried about what Gedding may have told Wolsey, and that whatever it was, Knivet was involved.
²⁷
Some information about the government’s handling of Knivet survives in the form of a letter to Wolsey from an unknown correspondent, and, perhaps even more irritatingly, undated, has survived. The letter is of great interest. It suggests very strongly something that has been so far only implied: that the information about the duke’s treasonable activities came to Wolsey, rather than Wolsey going in search of it. The letter begins: ‘Please it your grace to be remembered as touching the matter that I showed unto your grace at the More of Charles Knivet, wherein you advertised and commanded me that I should handle it further the best I could to bring it to light and better knowledge.’ There is no suggestion in this, or in the rest of the letter, that Wolsey thought the matter of the utmost urgency or importance, but merely that it should be followed up – and after all someone in Wolsey’s position would have learnt to be sceptical of the many rumours and innuendoes that came his way, especially when, as in his case, the source was so biased. The letter makes it clear that the correspondent had not yet obtained any very concrete information, but only that he suspected the likelihood of ‘some great matter … or else is Charles a marvellous, simple, insolent body’. What also emerges is that Buckingham’s other dismissed servants had already made Wolsey aware of the general dissatisfaction with the government, and his reaction to this earlier information is instructive. Far from wishing to arrest Buckingham, Wolsey had gone out of his way to warn him not to indulge in foolish talk: he did
not mind so much what the duke said about himself, but ‘he should take heed how that he did use himself towards the King’s highness’. Meanwhile, Wolsey’s correspondent chose to give him a brief lesson in the art of extracting information from those unwilling to give it by telling him how Henry
VII
would have dealt with such a task – ‘circumspectly, and with convenient diligence, for inveighing, and yet not disclose it to the party nor otherwise by a great space after, but keep it to himself, and always grope further, having ever good wait and espial to the party’. There is in all this the slight feeling of someone trying to teach his grandmother how to suck eggs, but perhaps only if the usual picture of the Machiavellian Wolsey is strongly adhered to.
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Whoever came forward first, one thing is clear: by the end of 1520 Buckingham’s household was a very leaky vessel indeed, and it could only have been a matter of time before the Crown would have to take the leaks seriously. No wonder, then, that when Buckingham requested permission in November to go to Wales with three or four hundred men he was turned down. There was probably nothing untoward about the request: the duke was extremely unpopular with his Welsh tenants and he was probably wise to fear for his safety if he visited them. But, of course, by this time the Crown had good grounds for being highly suspicious, even if all the details of the case against the duke had not yet been assembled. The refusal is, thus, not evidence of a general distrust of him, but of a particular distrust arising out of information only recently received.
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Nevertheless, the question remains: how eager was the Crown to make use of that information to destroy Buckingham? The fact that the information was not looked for suggests that it was not especially welcomed. Such a view is supported not only by Wolsey’s warning to Buckingham not to make critical remarks about Henry: there is evidence of similar warnings, some from Henry himself.
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The prosecution of Sir William Bulmer in 1519 for wearing Buckingham’s livery in the royal presence, referred to earlier, may have been just such an occasion.
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No direct moves were made against Buckingham in this instance, just as none had been made against any of the noblemen, including Buckingham, involved in the rumoured ‘conspiracy’ of 1518. On the face of it, therefore, it does not look as if either Henry or Wolsey was anxious to destroy him, which is not to say that they trusted him. Indeed, it has to be remembered that the duke’s relations with the Crown had never been good, and this inevitably affected his relations with Wolsey.

Despite the advantage of his father’s attempt to topple Richard
III
and despite being for some time a royal ward, Buckingham had obviously been viewed with some suspicion by Henry
VII
. Given the pretext of two not very serious offences, Buckingham’s mother’s marriage and his own entry into his estates when not yet of age, both without royal licence, Henry imposed heavy enough fines to affect the duke’s financial position for some years.
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No wonder, then, that the duke was given to making rude remarks about him. He was not, however, alone in this – indeed, on
the accession of Henry
VIII
it was rather the thing to do. But as it turned out Buckingham’s relationship with the new king was not much better. Although he was immediately admitted to the Council, he was never a frequent attender. In 1509 his first attempt to secure the confirmation of his, as he saw it, hereditary office of great constable of England came to nothing, Henry only allowing him to exercise it for the day of his coronation.
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In May 1510 he had become involved in a quarrel with Henry concerning the honour of his youngest sister who, although married, was being courted by one of the king’s favourites, Sir William Compton, probably on the king’s behalf.
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During the following year the duke’s brother, the earl of Wiltshire, initially a close companion of the king much involved in the heavy round of jousting and revelling with which the new reign began, appears to have fallen from favour, though the reason for this is not clear.
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In 1514 Buckingham failed to obtain any serious reduction of his debt to the Crown. Earlier he had been relieved of the need to meet a bond for £400, but nearly £4,000 of the £7,000 debt remained, and this he had to continue to pay off in annual instalments of 500 marks.
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Too much should not be made of this. The payment was not chickenfeed, but for someone who was spending about £1,000 a year on rebuilding his chief residence at Thornbury, and could in 1519 spend £1,500 on entertaining the king at Penshurst it was hardly crippling.
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Rather it must have been, like so much else in Buckingham’s relationship with the Crown, extremely irritating, all the more so if he considered that there had been little justification for the debt in the first place.