The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (58 page)

Just how often they met during the remainder of the year is hard to establish. Writing in probably June 1528, Heneage reported Henry’s remark that Wolsey was ‘always accustomed to be with him as upon Monday night’;
²²⁶
and that there were regular weekly meetings is confirmed by Cavendish, though he has it that they took place on Sunday.
²²⁷
Evidence for these meetings is, however, difficult to pick up, presumably because, since they were regular there was no need for any special
arrangements to be made. One has to rely on the reports of foreign ambassadors. They could not have been aware of every meeting of king and cardinal, but nevertheless they do report their meetings sufficiently to confirm that they were very frequent. Thus, in May 1519 Giustinian recorded that Wolsey had visited Henry at Greenwich twice within three days,
²²⁸
while another Venetian ambassador in letters of 13 and 17 January, 19 February and 28 March 1526 reported that Henry and Wolsey were together at Greenwich.
²²⁹
In December 1522 the Imperial ambassadors found Wolsey at court,
²³⁰
and on January 1523 the king and cardinal kept them in conversation for two consecutive days.
²³¹
None of these meetings appears to have required any special arrangements, but on occasions these had to be made. Thus, in 1518 Henry had dashed up to London from Woodstock to have a secret meeting with Wolsey to consult about the negotiations with the French.
²³²
In October 1523 Henry agreed to move to Windsor to be near enough to Wolsey to consult about the many military and foreign policy issues which were then preoccupying them both, and in fact shortly after this Henry stayed at Wolsey’s ‘poor house’ in London.
²³³
April 1525 was also a difficult time, what with the Amicable Grant and the consequences of the Imperial victory at Pavia to be decided upon, and again the reaction of both Henry and Wolsey was to consult in person. On this occasion it appears to have been Henry who took the initiative, but Wolsey’s response was that nothing could be more advantageous, offering to put Henry up at the same ‘poor house’, if that would facilitate the meeting.
²³⁴

Henry and Wolsey did meet and, when they were geographically close, probably very often. When they did not, letters passed between them almost daily, and it is such of these which have survived – not many, alas – that provide one with the best opportunity of making some assessment of how king and cardinal worked together. Twenty-four letters have survived for August and September 1523, and they are additionally interesting because many of them were written by Thomas More, acting as royal secretary, something he seems to have done quite a lot while the actual secretary, Richard Pace, was on his long mission abroad.
²³⁵

One thing that emerges from this correspondence is that the normal practice was for letters addressed to the king to go directly to him rather than, as is often implied, for them to be opened first by Wolsey.
²³⁶
More importantly, Henry either read or had read to him virtually all letters addressed to Wolsey that in any way related to his own affairs.
²³⁷
Sometimes those about him complained of his
dilatoriness in grappling with his correspondence,
²³⁸
but in fact a portion of each day was devoted to this task; on 1 September More mentioned that he had spent over two hours going through it.
²³⁹
Much went through on the nod, but this is what one would expect. However, if Wolsey was anxious to draw Henry’s attention to a particular matter, he was in the habit of adding his own comments in the margins,
²⁴⁰
or he would ask whoever was in attendance on the king specifically to bring it up.
²⁴¹
Many of the policy initiatives to be found in these letters came from Wolsey, but again one would expect this. Indeed, this was what he was paid to provide. On 1 September Henry agreed to Wolsey’s redrafting of instructions to Sir Richard Wingfield, while a letter Wolsey had written to Margaret of Scotland he ‘so well liked that I never saw him like thing better’.
²⁴²
On the other hand, Henry himself was all the time putting forward his own views. More’s letter to Wolsey on 26 August was full of the king’s advice on Scottish affairs.
²⁴³
On 12 September Wolsey was instructed to convey Henry’s views on strategy to English and Imperial commanders in France,
²⁴⁴
and on 20 September he was presented with two thousand words on why the siege of Boulogne should not be raised.
²⁴⁵
It was a brilliant presentation of the arguments, many of which were to prove all too prescient; but in fact the siege was to be abandoned and the alternative strategy of a march into the bowels of France adopted. This is not evidence of a weak and easily led Henry. Wolsey himself had only just changed his mind, and received praise from Henry for doing so, for ‘his highness esteemeth no thing in counsel so perilous than one to persevere in the maintenance of his advice because he has once given it’. And the reason why Wolsey had changed his mind, and why Henry did as well, despite his serious reservations, is that the commanders in the field were so strongly in favour of abandoning the siege.
²⁴⁶
Moreover, Henry was quite consciously raising his reservations with Wolsey so that ‘such final determination may be taken by his grace and yours, as shall, with God’s grace, bring his affairs to good and honourable effect’.

What we have here is evidence of that genuine partnership that was referred to at the beginning of this book. Wolsey was Henry’s leading councillor because the king trusted him to carry out his wishes, but it was Henry who was king, and Wolsey was never allowed to forget it. Thus, Wolsey was told to arrange a marriage for a member of the royal household.
²⁴⁷
The king noticed that copies of letters from Surrey to Margaret of Scotland, which had been sent to Wolsey, had not been sent on to him, and he wanted the omission remedied. In the same letter he also ‘much desireth … thinketh it very necessary, … also requireth’. He concluded by having sent back to Wolsey all the Scottish documents ‘to be by your good grace again sent unto his highness, with your most politique counsel thereupon’.
²⁴⁸
How Wolsey must
have cursed when it was all deposited back on his desk, but if these were the king’s wishes, so be it, and sure enough the missing material with Wolsey’s additional comments were soon back with Henry.
²⁴⁹
Even the evidence of Wolsey taking the initiative turns out to support the view of a king genuinely in charge.

On 7 December 1523 Wolsey reported to Henry that he had ‘incontinently devised new instructions’ for the duke of Suffolk, the English commander in France, and what he meant by this was that he had sent them without Henry seeing them.
²⁵⁰
This could be taken as evidence that it was really Wolsey who was running affairs, but to do so would be to ignore the explanation Wolsey gave to Henry. Firstly, there was the necessity for speed. There was, after all, a war being fought, and though I am reluctant to make too much of the difficulties of communication in the early sixteenth century, clearly Wolsey was right to want to get instructions off as quickly as possible, especially as Sir William Fitzwilliam, who was already deputed to go out to Suffolk, was with Wolsey and waiting to leave. His second reason was that he ‘had well incorporated in my mind your full deliberation and intent in that matter, as well by such consultation as I lately had with your grace therein, as also by the knowledge of your pleasure signified unto me by the said Sir Thomas More’. And two further comments. First, it was Wolsey who had sought the meeting with Henry ‘for the better furtherance and advancement’ of the king’s affairs, which ‘may be more perfectly communicated and more speedily set forth by groundly consultation in presence than by letters in absence’.
²⁵¹
Secondly, if Wolsey had not ‘incorporated’ Henry’s mind in drawing up the new instructions, he would not have got away with it because he immediately sent the king a copy of them.

All these letters do need to be interpreted, and in the end everyone must make up his or her mind – since these letters have been printed, they can quite easily be consulted. The conclusion here is that they firmly support the view of a Henry, while confident of Wolsey’s great abilities, very much on top of his own affairs. It is a view that is confirmed by much else, including the earlier suggestion in this chapter that it was the king who exercised his own patronage and was perfectly happy to consult with people other than Wolsey. It is also confirmed by the considerable amount of evidence of foreign ambassadors’ dealings with him. None of them gave any indication that Henry was ever out of his depth or incompetent. Indeed, they all present a picture of a man fully informed of all that was going on in foreign affairs, and, like Wolsey, possessed of all the skills of a good negotiator, including an ability to turn on and off the charm as the occasion required.
²⁵²
If one were to take a modern analogy, Henry’s role was that of chairman of the board, responsible ultimately for everything, including the hiring and firing of all who worked in the firm. His councillors are the directors, some of them part-time, others more actively involved. Wolsey is the managing director, responsible for the day-to-day running of affairs, and in a strong position to influence what happened, just as long as he retained the confidence of his chairman. Like all analogies, it only goes so far, and in particular it leaves out that essential element which is so hard to capture,
but which must have had its effect on those who served Henry: the magic of kingship. But it may help to explain how it is that one can ascribe to Wolsey such an active role in the king’s government, while still maintaining that Henry was the dominant force. And if he was, then much else falls into place. With the king in command and perfectly accessible to the upper reaches of the political nation, it was always likely that the nobility would be happy to co-operate with a man such as Wolsey, so obviously a master of all the political skills. What also follows is that it is unlikely that Wolsey ever felt seriously threatened by other members of the political elite. This was not an environment in which faction flourished. Many people have thought otherwise, and in particular it has been commonly supposed that Wolsey was brought low by a group of noblemen seizing upon the opportunity to do him damage presented by the king’s wish for a new wife. But more of that when the question of why Wolsey was dismissed from office in October 1529 is discussed.

¹
L.B. Smith,
Journal of the History of Ideas
, xv.

²
Ven. Cal
., iii, 213; see also Hall, pp.622-4. Since I wrote this Barbara Harris has published her
Edward Stafford
. My debt to her important article (
AJLH
, xx) will emerge in the subsequent footnotes.

³
Rawcliffe, p.43; Kennedy, pp.210-11.

⁴
LP
, iii, 1245, 1268, 1293. For Charles’s less mischievous regrets see
LP
, 1328.

⁵
For the classic case against Wolsey see Mattingly,
Catherine of Aragon
, pp.160-1, but see
inter alia
Davies,
Peace, Print and Protestantism
, pp.165-6, Elton,
Reform and Renewal
, pp.81-2. Against the tide, neither Scarisbrick (
Henry
VIII
, pp.120-2) nor Bernard (
Power of the Early Nobility
, pp.199-20) has seen Wolsey as the ‘culprit’. See also Fiddes, p.275.

⁶
Vergil, pp.263, 265, 279.

⁷
LP
, iii, 1293, 1556.

⁸
Quinn, pp.334-5.

⁹
Hall, p.623;
Ven. Cal
., iii, 209. Wolsey was to deny to Francis that their arrests had anything to do with Buckingham’s (
LP
, iii, 1293), but this seems unlikely.

¹⁰
For the charges and evidence brought against Buckingham see
LP
, iii, 1284, much expanded upon, with transcripts of related documents, in J.S. Brewer’s introduction; see
LP
, iii, pp.cxxix-xxxi. See also
Public Records
, app.ii, pp.230-4.

¹¹
LP
, iii, 1284 (ii).

¹²
He had married a Percy, while his three daughters had married respectively George Neville Lord Bergavenny, Ralph Neville earl of Westmorland and Thomas Howard earl of Surrey; see Rawcliffe, pp.22-3.

¹³
See especially Bellamy,
Law of Treason
, though, unlike most other commentators, he takes the view that the important 1352 Act of treason did not insist on ‘overt acts’; see ibid, p.122, n.7. For an excellent summary of the legal position on the eve of the trial see Harris,
AJLH
, 20, pp.21-3. My interpretation of the trial relies very heavily on her account.