The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (53 page)

And it is worth stressing the participation of his fellow councillors, not only in matters of treason but in anything concerning the interests of the nobility. Admittedly, when he was asked to intervene in the private affairs of, in the one instance, the Grey family, and the other, the De Vere and Howard families, Wolsey seems to have acted alone, but the point about both these matters was that they were private. When matters came before him as lord chancellor, whether in Chancery itself or in Star Chamber, he never acted alone. Thus, as we have seen, when in 1518 Wolsey had arbitrated in the case between the duke of Buckingham and his tenants in the lordship of Brecon and Hay, his fellow arbitrators had been the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Surrey and Lord Bergavenny.
¹⁰⁷
Those deputed to arbitrate in 1527 in a dispute between the marquess of Dorset and Lord Hastings were Wolsey himself, the 3rd duke of Norfolk, Thomas Boleyn, by that time Viscount Rochford, the two chief justices, the chief baron of the exchequer, the bishop of Bath, John Clerk, Sir Humphrey Coningsby and Sir Thomas More.
¹⁰⁸
A year later Boleyn himself was in dispute with a leading member of Henry’s household, Sir Henry Wyatt, and both men promised Wolsey to abide by the decision of the two chief justices and chief baron of the Exchequer.
¹⁰⁹
Thus, unless one assumes that everyone else in and around Henry’s court were mere yes-men, the simple truth is that Wolsey was never in a position to have done the nobility down, even if he had wanted to. And on the really big occasions, as when in 1516
Northumberland had submitted, or in 1519 when Sir William Bulmer had admitted his fault in wearing the duke of Buckingham’s livery in the royal presence, then not only were Wolsey’s fellow councillors present, but so also was the king himself.

In Wolsey’s time, it is possible to identify a handful of what might be labelled, if a little anachronistically, opposition peers, or at least peers whose faces somehow did not fit. Obviously Buckingham was one. So also was the earl of Northumberland, who never obtained the high office and position in the North of England that his rank and family name entitled him to.
¹¹⁰
Another Northern nobleman who obviously felt that he had been wrongly overlooked was Lord Darcy. His does seem to have been a rather difficult personality, made worse by his disappointment, but the reason why he was overlooked may have been that he lacked the local power and influence to perform the role that the Crown was looking for in that area. What is interesting about Darcy is that at an early stage he claimed Wolsey as a friend, and still failed to obtain what he wanted.
¹¹¹
Probably he exaggerated – or is this an example of the Machiavellian Wolsey discarding friends when they ceased to be of use? There is no way of knowing, though a similar claim for his relationship with Richard Fox was rejected earlier in this book. When in 1529 Henry was looking for information to use against Wolsey, Darcy saw his opportunity to draw up an indictment of Wolsey’s administration of the North. We shall return to this in chapter 7, but if he thought that on Wolsey’s downfall his time had come, he was to be disappointed yet again, and in 1537 he was beheaded for his part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. At the very least, therefore, one can say that Wolsey was not the only reason for his failure to get on with the Tudor regime.

Someone who was constantly in trouble, whether with his tenants, with rival familiies such as the Butlers of Warrington or with officials of the duchy of Lancaster, was the 2nd earl of Derby; and he was also, it will be remembered, on Henry’s list of noblemen to be watched in 1518. In many ways he does exhibit those characteristics that made the enforcement of ‘indifferent justice’ with regard to the nobility and leading gentry so difficult: in particular, a willingness to use his enormous influence in Lancashire and Cheshire purely for his own advantage.
¹¹²
That he found himself in trouble with the Crown, and with Wolsey, is not surprising – and not at all to Wolsey’s discredit. How they got on at a personal level is not known, but on his death in 1521 the earl bequeathed ‘to my lord cardinal’s grace a gold ring with a point of a diamond set in the same, and £20 in gold, beseeching his grace to be good to mine executors and favourable for the confirmation of my Chantry, beadhouse and free school’
¹¹³
– obviously something of an insurance policy, but all the same, would Derby have bothered to remember someone he hated or despised?

Unfortunately, even less is known of Wolsey’s relationship with George Neville Lord Bergavenny, though Wolsey would have often sat in council with him, as well as having to mete out various punishments, even in 1521 having him imprisoned; and it is precisely these contacts, and the ambiguities inherent in them, that are so
intriguing. No nobleman was more in trouble with the first two Tudors than Bergavenny, usually for illegal retaining. In 1516 he was again charged with this offence, though what seems to have been behind the charge was a long-standing quarrel with the Guildford family, Bergavenny’s chief rivals for power in the county of Kent.
¹¹⁴
The two half-brothers, Sir Henry and Sir Edward Guildford, pursued very successful careers in and around the royal household, and had the great advantage, unlike Bergavenny, of a father who had risen with the 2nd duke of Buckingham for Henry Tudor in 1485 and thereafter dedicated his life to him. However, if Bergavenny’s troubles in 1516 are ascribed to a conspiracy by a Tudor monarch and the Guildfords to do him down, it would have to be pointed out that his two brothers, Sir Edward and Sir Thomas Neville, were as much in favour with Henry
VIII
as the Guildfords were. Neither is it at all clear that Bergavenny suffered any serious consequences from his brushes with Star Chamber and King’s Bench in 1516. In 1521 he was in trouble again, on this occasion ‘from a small concealment proceeding from negligence’:
¹¹⁵
or in other words for failing to report to the Crown the treasonable words spoken to him by his father-in-law, the duke of Buckingham.

This time, for a brief period at any rate, the consequences were substantial. They included a recognizance of 10,000 marks, the payment of which appears to have entailed the possibility of losing his chief residence, the manor of Birling in Kent. He also had to surrender the office of lord warden of the Cinque Ports to none other than Sir Edward Guildford.
¹¹⁶
However, from these dire punishments Bergavenny did recover. In March 1522 he received a general pardon, and by the end of that year, though he had to find a large number of people to stand as surety for him, he was released from his recognizance. At the same time the threat of losing Birling was partially lifted, though as late as 1530 he was still having to pay out for its full recovery.
¹¹⁷
In 1523 he contributed a retinue to Suffolk’s abortive expedition to France.
¹¹⁸
There continued, however, to be some suspicion of him – sufficient, as we have seen, to prompt two of his fellow noblemen to warn Henry to keep an eye on him. Nevertheless, in June of that year he was sufficiently in favour to join in the ceremonies centring on the elevation to the peerage of the king’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy.
¹¹⁹
And in all these ups and downs at no point was Bergavenny dropped from the commissions of the peace for the three counties he was most associated with, Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Even more surprising, he was one of the peers who most frequently attended royal Council meetings, continuing to do so even after 1521.
¹²⁰

It is very hard to know what to make of a man who, suspected of Yorkist leanings in Henry
VII
’s reign and found guilty of misprision of treason in Henry
VIII
’s, was yet extremely active in all military matters on behalf of the Crown, and whose advice was most sought after by Henry
VIII
. Bergavenny was wealthy, and could raise a
large retinue. Moreover, the fact that his chief power and influence lay in Kent meant that his retinue was conveniently placed for an expedition to France; but it was also, from another point of view, dangerously close to London. Perhaps the nearest we can get is to suggest that he was too powerful and too useful to the Crown for his support not to be strongly desired, and yet, given some of his activities and connections, he could never be completely trusted – a point confirmed by the fact that he, and indeed his younger brother, Sir Edward, gave less than wholehearted support to the ‘break with Rome’. In other words, Bergavenny was a rather difficult customer, but the Crown’s handling of him, far from indicating any desire to destroy an overmighty subject, is evidence of skilful management of a potentially very important member of the political nation. This is also true of those other noblemen whose relationship with Henry
VIII
was not always of the best during the period of Wolsey’s ascendancy. All were treated with the respect due to their rank and position, all were made use of to varying degrees in the conduct of government and in court ceremonial – unless, that is, they were actively disloyal or showed an unwillingness to abide by the rule of law. When that happened, the Crown intervened. Only in the case of the duke of Buckingham did it feel compelled to take extreme measures.

Curiously, the only nobleman for whom it is possible to make a case that he personally mistrusted Wolsey is that most trustworthy and in most respects uncontroversial figure, George Talbot earl of Shrewsbury; the mere fact that Shrewsbury was that kind of man may suggest that the case is not all that convincing.
¹²¹
As lord high steward he was heavily involved in court ceremonial. He was a frequent attender at Council meetings, and, though not a lot of evidence has survived for this, he was no doubt active on the Crown’s behalf in those areas of the Midlands where he possessed considerable land and influence; it is no surprise to find him on the commissions of the peace for the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the three Yorkshire Ridings. He was also an important military figure. He led a large contingent to France in 1513, and in 1522 was appointed lieutenant general in the North. He may not have been the first choice for the post: the obvious candidate, given his previous experience in the North, was the future 3rd duke of Norfolk, but at that time he was needed for the war with France. Shrewsbury was also a rather reluctant candidate, Wolsey reporting to Henry that he had had some difficulty in persuading him to accept.
¹²²
But then campaigning in the North was never very popular, and Shrewsbury was not a man to seek the limelight. Nevertheless, we know that someone, probably Wolsey, judged him ‘to be as active a captain as can be chosen within your realm, meet, convenable, and necessary to be appointed for the leading of the army against Scotland’,
¹²³
and so off to the North he dutifully went.

However, back in May 1516 he had not been quite so dutiful in turning up at court, where Henry was most anxious for his presence.
¹²⁴
There is nothing sinister
about Henry wanting him there. As lord steward, Shrewsbury was an important figure in the royal household, who might, for instance, be expected to grace the Whitsuntide celebrations. But he was reluctant to come, and moreover was strongly advised not to by his servant Thomas Allen, whose letters are a principal source for this episode and who was at this time very active in London on his master’s behalf, and in contact with Wolsey.
¹²⁵
Shrewsbury maintained that serious illness prevented him from coming, for even if he himself was on the mend, the chaos caused by the illness of other members of his household made a journey to London administratively very difficult.
¹²⁶
The suggestion has been made that the talk of illness should be interpreted as a mild protest or coded message by which a trusty servant was informing the king that he did not like the way that his recently appointed lord chancellor was running his affairs – something rather similar to the present one-day strike.
¹²⁷
Henry certainly did not act upon the message, nor is there any evidence that he understood it in the way that has been suggested – but that does not mean that Shrewsbury did not intend it. There were a number of reasons why Shrewsbury might have wanted to stay away. It was a little embarrassing for him that the earl of Northumberland, the father of the man he was hoping to have as his son-in-law, had recently been made to acknowledge his guilt before the king and Council in Star Chamber.
¹²⁸
And Wolsey’s suggestion, however well intentioned, that rather than a Percy, he should take a Stafford as a brother-in-law would not have been very welcome either; and he quickly turned it down.
¹²⁹
The drive taking place against illegal retaining had led to a number of noblemen being temporarily in trouble before the Council, and Allen reported that a servant of Shrewsbury’s had been rather carelessly wearing his master’s livery.
¹³⁰
England’s foreign policy was going badly and because its purpose was being very much kept under wraps, it lent itself to rumour and misunderstanding. Moreover, it was only recently that two very senior councillors, Warham and Fox, had resigned from high office, with Wolsey replacing the former as lord chancellor, and this had also led to rumour and unease. More pertinently, Shrewsbury was himself involved in a case before Star Chamber. The details are obscure.
¹³¹
It seems to have involved the duchy of Lancaster, whose chancellor, Sir Henry Marney, was not his favourite fellow councillor, so he must have been delighted when he heard that Wolsey had put him in his place, by informing the chancellor that he ‘had done more displeasure unto the king’s grace, by reason of his cruelty against the great estates of this realm, than any man alive’.
¹³²
And indeed, a feature of the whole episode is that both Allen, and another correspondent of Shrewsbury’s, and one of those in trouble over retaining, Sir Richard Sacheverell, made it clear on more than one occasion that the earl was
very much in Wolsey’s good books.
¹³³
Indeed there is not a hint in any of the correspondence that Shrewsbury saw Wolsey as some bogey figure.