The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (135 page)

Just as Henry’s
Assertio
has been too often ignored or belittled, so also has the English contribution to Catholic apologetics. That same English Protestant tradition that has been so unkind to Wolsey and ambivalent to Thomas More – and its treatment of More is of great relevance here – is largely responsible for this. The impression has been created that More was somehow the only person in England who was in the least bit worried by Luther, and, in most recent interpretations, only because he was mad or sexually disturbed. One result of this is that scant justice has been done to the bishop of Rochester, whose three most important works in defence of the Catholic Church (to the two already mentioned should be added
De veritate corporis et sanguinis in Eucharistia … adversus Johannem Oecolampedium
of 1527) together with his two show sermons against Luther of 1521 and 1526, published in English as well as Latin, were a massive contribution to that cause. They were well known on the continent and, like Henry’s
Assertio
, some or parts of them were translated into German, some indication that they were considered as vital weapons in the battle against the new heresy.
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They were also the works that the early English Protestants, especially William Tyndale in his
The Parable of the Wicked Mammon
and
The Obedience of a Christian Man
, felt they must refute. With the exception of his defence of Henry’s Assertio, virtually all More’s polemical works appeared after Wolsey’s downfall, and, thus, another effect of the over-concentration on More has been to create the impression that under Wolsey’s leadership no defence of Catholicism was launched. The result has been to ignore not only Fisher’s outstanding contribution and the work of those university theologians specifically commissioned to write against Luther, but above all the king’s. In fact, it is difficult to see what greater efforts could have been made, and though, as we have seen already, Henry’s direct participation meant that inevitably the whole machinery of government was brought to bear, Wolsey’s role as leading royal councillor and cardinal legate had to be of central importance.

Wolsey himself wrote no books, but according to Henry it was he who had ‘moved and led’ him to write the
Assertio
. He therefore deserved to be the ‘partner of all honour and glory he hath obtained by that act’, a suggestion which Wolsey did not reject!
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It is difficult to get behind this exercise in mutual flattery; my guess would be that Wolsey’s role in initiating the project was small and incidental. But his involvement in the publishing and marketing of the book was considerable. He had first to find someone to produce the beautiful manuscript copy for the pope, and then to provide Henry with a choice of verses to be placed at the front of it.
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He sent copious instructions to John Clerk at Rome concerning its presentation,
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as well as on the distribution of other copies ‘to the regions, universities and other countries as they were to you addressed and ordered’.
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How far he was directly responsible for the planning of the English response to Luther’s reply to Henry cannot be discovered,
but since it involved a good deal of diplomatic activity, such as corresponding with the Saxon princes, he could hardly have escaped being drawn in, and my guess would be that he was in charge of the whole operation. What is certain is that the English diplomats kept him fully informed about the polemical warfare that was raging on the continent and sent him copies of the latest works.
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When in 1526 Henry came to consider his reply to a letter from Luther, which though full of contrition for any offence he might have caused the king in the past, was very rude about his leading councillor, calling him ‘that pernicious plague and desolation of your majesty’s kingdom’, he received the benefit of Wolsey’s advice: no reply should be sent without a copy of the original letter being attached, ‘for that Luther, who is full of subtlety and craft, hereafter might perchance deny that any such letter hath been sent by him … as that the said answer, not having the said copy adjoined should be, for want thereof, to the readers and hearers thereof somewhat obscure’.
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The advice is a good example of the trouble Wolsey took to get things right. It also serves to underline the point already made that Henry’s personal involvement in the polemical battle made it a matter of major public concern, for the king’s honour was just as much at stake here as, say, at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Wolsey’s role, therefore, had to be of the greatest importance, as Henry’s reply to Luther made clear when he went out of his way to stress that one of the reasons why Wolsey was so much in royal favour was that ‘according to my commandment, [Wolsey] studiously purgeth my realm from that pestilent contagion of your factious heresies’.
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Of course, it could be argued that it was only because of the royal involvement that Wolsey showed any interest in the fight against heresy, and certainly he does not appear to have concerned himself nearly so much with arguably more vital but less conspicuous tasks such as, for instance, grappling with England’s indigenous heretics, the Lollards. However, this is not as significant an indication of a lack of genuine concern for heresy as might at first appear. The ground-rules for combating Lollardy had been established by Archbishop Arundel about a hundred years earlier, and if Wolsey’s episcopal colleagues could be trusted (and there is every reason for thinking that they could) there was no need for him to intervene, or to make use of his legatine powers. Luther and his followers were quite another matter. Here there were very few ground-rules: hence Wolsey’s rapid and very public intervention in the spring of 1521. Admittedly, after the opening shots on the home front there was something of a lull, but this was not because Wolsey had become bored with the problem, but because for the next two or three years there was no problem. No Lutherans could be found, for the good reason that very few, if any, existed.

Two events changed all this. The Peasants’ Revolt in Germany in 1524-5 provided proof positive that heresy and insurrection went hand in hand, and thus fears about Lutheranism dramatically increased.
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And in the same year that the revolt was put down William Tyndale completed his translation into English of the
New Testament, though the disruption of its printing in Cologne and Tyndale’s flight to Worms delayed its appearance in England until 1526.
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But as soon as Wolsey received news of its imminent arrival, he went into action. With Henry’s approval he decided to institute a ‘secret search’ for all Lutheran literature, but especially Tyndale’s
New Testament
, to be followed by a burning of books like that of May 1521. And as in 1521, he ordered an amnesty for all those who would surrender heretical literature within a set period, insisting, in addition, that all printers and likely merchants should take out recognizances binding them not to import such literature.
¹⁰³
In other words, he had decided upon a major government initiative, and one that led directly on 26 and 27 January 1526 to the famous raid on the Steelyard, the London home of the Hanse merchants, and to that ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral on 11 February, presided over by Wolsey, at which Robert Barnes, and probably five Hanse merchants abjured and did public penance, and where heretical works were burnt and Fisher delivered the second of his great sermons against Luther.
¹⁰⁴
The battle had been reopened in earnest, and this time there were people and books to battle with, but even now not very many. Indeed, it has been suggested that there was great difficulty in finding enough books to burn and almost certainly no copies of the one that had stirred Wolsey into action, Tyndale’s
New Testament
.
¹⁰⁵
However, by the autumn these were arriving in such numbers that in October Tunstall, as bishop of London, was able to light a bonfire of his own, taking the opportunity to warn the London book trade against importing any copies.
¹⁰⁶
At the same time heretical works by other English authors who, like Tyndale, were having to live and publish on the continent, were being smuggled in, despite all the English authorities’ efforts to prevent them. And not only were there English Lutherans to be found abroad, but some were now discovered living in England.

Because it has become an interpretative crux, before we proceed, it must be stressed again that the Steelyard raid was not, as it is so often portrayed,
¹⁰⁷
a private initiative of the heresy-hunter Thomas More, but a government initiative organized by Wolsey, with Henry’s knowledge and consent. True, More did take part in it, but on both days he was accompanied by a number of other royal councillors and church officials.
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The suspects were then interrogated by a commission of leading churchmen, set up by virtue of Wolsey’s legatine authority, and on which, on at least one occasion he himself sat
¹⁰⁹
– this providing the pattern for most subsequent heresy proceedings. In using his legatine powers in this way, Wolsey was usurping episcopal jurisdiction, and there is evidence that Cuthbert Tunstall, in whose diocese of London most of the heretics were to be found, was unhappy with this. At
any rate on 21 November 1527, the opening day of probably the most famous of these early heresy trials, that of ‘Little Bilney’ and Thomas Arthur, after Wolsey had made a formal declaration of his legatine jurisdiction over heresy Tunstall objected that, as bishop of the diocese in which the heretical activity was alleged to have taken place, he already possessed sufficient authority to try the defendants. Wolsey’s immediate reaction is not known, but, when the trial resumed on 1 December, it was not at Westminster where it had begun, but at the London home of the bishop of Norwich, where the presiding judges were Tunstall, Fisher and West of Ely. The record does not state whether they were acting as Wolsey’s commissaries, suggesting that they were not. When, however, the two defendants came to abjure, they did so to Tunstall as Wolsey’s commissary but also as their ‘ordinary and diocesan’, while Tunstall’s fellow judges are referred to as legatine commissaries.
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It seems, therefore, that if initially Wolsey had been insensitive to episcopal
amour-propre
, he had quickly recovered his touch. By admitting Tunstall as bishop to a share in the jurisdiction, he had successfully asserted his own legatine authority, without apparently seriously offending the bishop. Shortly after the trial a distressing interest in Lutheranism was discovered amongst some Oxford undergraduates, especially at Cardinal College. Along with Longland, in whose diocese of Lincoln Oxford lay, it was Tunstall who shouldered the main burden of the investigations, because of the involvement of a London curate in the distribution of heretical literature at Oxford, one Thomas Garrard.
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That Wolsey’s pride and joy had been found to be infected with heresy, made this a particularly sensitive matter and one which brought him and Tunstall into close contact. If Turnstall had borne Wolsey a serious grudge about what had happened over Bilney and Arthur, one might expect some evidence of it in the surviving correspondence, but on the contrary both men appear to be wholly concerned with how best to deal with the matter in hand.
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Moreover, Garrard’s eventual trial was conducted under the same arrangements as had finally prevailed at Bilney’s and Arthur’s, as were Geoffrey Lome’s and John Tewkesbury’s: Tunstall took part both as Garrard’s bishop and as Wolsey’s commissary, while the other judges were there solely as his commissaries.
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Something else which suggests that Tunstall’s remonstrations at the Bilney and Arthur trial were only a hiccup is the co-operation between Wolsey and the bishops which became such a feature of the fight against Lutheranism during 1520s. It is impossible to arrive at exact figures for the turn out of bishops at the two famous book-burnings of 1521 and 1526, but one description of the earlier one states that ‘the most part’ were there, while one of 1526 has it that thirty-six bishops and abbots attended.
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Certainly, at least nine bishops, Warham, Tunstall, Fisher, Clerk, Longland, Veysey, Standish, West and Kite took part in heresy trials as Wolsey’s commissaries. Moreover, though Fisher’s great sermons against Luther are rightly well known, those which Tunstall and Longland delivered are not. Tunstall’s, as we
have seen, was delivered in October 1526 at a specifically London book-burning ceremony. Longland’s was given at a meeting of bishops on 27 November 1527, which coincided with the opening of the Bilney and Arthur trial.
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And there may have been a meeting earlier in the year specifically to work out a response to the threat posed by the imminent arrival of Tyndale’s
New Testament
. Unfortunately, the only reference to this appears in a satirical poem, the principal purpose of which was to pour scorn on the bishops’ reaction to that work, so it is hardly a reliable source
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. On the other hand Tunstall’s chaplain, Robert Ridley, mentioned in February 1527 that Tyndale’s Bible had been ‘accursed and damned by the consent of the prelates and learned men and commanded to be burnt’.
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This could well be a reference to such a meeting, and at least points to joint episcopal action. Further evidence is provided by the instructions sent out to the bishops of the southern province to take action against heretical works,
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and not just by the instructions themselves, for one imagines that any list of such works would have had to be drawn up by a committee of bishops and other experts, as had happened in 1521 just before the first book-burning. Moreover, as early as October 1524, if not before, the task of vetting all imported books for their heretical views had been assigned not only to Wolsey but also to Warham, Tunstall and Fisher.
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