The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (138 page)

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Authors: Peter Gwyn

In fact, despite the endemic anticlericalism, the nation seems to have been in no hurry to follow its prince’s lead. Instead, it took a good deal of bullying and bribery to bring about the so-called Henrician Reformation, and not before substantial resistance had been offered. For some, such as the thousands of ‘pilgrims’
in 1536, this meant out-and-out rebellion, for others martyrdom, and for yet others merely the writing of letters or the hiding of their parish church’s furnishings and plate.
¹⁶²What would Wolsey have done? The usual answer has been that he was not of the stuff of martyrs, and his death-bed admission that he had all his life served his king more diligently than his God tends to confirm this. However, if, as has been argued here, he had devoted so much of his time and energy to the reform and defence of the English Church, then at least a moment’s hesitation is in order. Moreover, it does not follow that because he worked so hard to secure the divorce that he should be thought of as some kind of proto-protestant. There was nothing heretical about making the request, just as long as in the end the pope’s decision was accepted – and that decision did not come until after Wolsey’s death. Wolsey had frequently warned Clement of the consequences of refusing to give Henry what he wanted, schism and the English conversion to Lutheranism, but there is not the slightest indication that he welcomed such a prospect, either for the country or for himself. On his death-bed his major concern had been to warn Henry of the horrors of heresy, while his personal beliefs seem to have been of a very traditional kind.

Nevertheless, after due pause, the conclusion must be that probably Wolsey would have followed his monarch into schism but he would have hated doing so. This is not because he would have missed dressing up in red, or any of the perks that went with being a cardinal. After all Henry was going to be quite happy to put a layman, Thomas Cromwell, in charge of the Church; and if Wolsey had retained the king’s confidence, he might have had to acquire a new title, but his position would have remained effectively the same. In trying to understand not only Wolsey’s reaction to ‘the break with Rome’, but that of all those who were close to the court, including such as Thomas More, we must bear in mind the strength of the bonds that attached them, both emotionally and intellectually, to the figure of the king. It is not just that it was Henry, or his predecessors, who had granted them office, lands, honours, and so on. In all aspects of their life they were programmed to serve him; and one of the most powerful forces behind this programming was the Church, which was constantly expounding the virtues of loyalty and obedience. So it is not all that surprising that, when Church and king found themselves in a fight to the death, the majority of the political nation, however reluctantly, sided with the king. The suggestion, therefore, that Wolsey would have done so too in no way contradicts the argument that he was devoted to the best interests of the English Church and had fought hard to ward off the threat from Martin Luther. There was always an element of ambiguity in his dual role as both the king’s and the Church’s leading servant – an ambiguity that has applied to countless other churchmen both before and since. Wolsey himself was lucky to have died just before he would have had to choose where his allegiance lay, but his own downfall was intimately involved with the battle between king and pope that was to force that decision upon the English nation – a battle that was to destroy all the work that he had done for the English Church during the 1520s. Thus, if not a martyr, Wolsey has a claim to be considered the first important victim of the Henrician Reformation.

¹See pp.343 ff. above.

²Rymer, xiv, p.239; Wilkins, iii, p.713. Both place it in 1528, but suggest uncertainty about the date. I prefer 1529 because of what I take to be a reference to it in a letter from Gardiner to Henry of 4 May 1529; see
LP
, iv, 5318.

³See p.53 above.

⁴Rymer, xiv, pp.273-4.

⁵Ibid, pp.291-4 for the bull, which is, however, chiefly concerned with providing legal limits for Wolsey’s actions.

⁶Almost the only serious treatment of them is in Gasquet,
Henry
VIII
and the English Monasteries
, pp.29 ff.

⁷Rymer, xiv, p.273;
LP
, iv, 4900.

⁸LP
, iv, 5226, 5638-9.

⁹LP
, iv, 5639.

¹⁰Rymer, xiv, p.293. To the original clause was added: ‘unless it seems to you after mature and diligent consideration necessary to do otherwise’.

¹¹LP
, iv, 5638 for their worries.

¹²LP
, iv, 5235.

¹³Rymer, iv, p.294.

¹⁴It may be that I have not understood all of them, despite generous help from Dr P. Chaplais.

¹⁵Southern, p.186.

¹⁶Goring,
Sussex Archaeological Collections,
CXVI
.

¹⁷Hughes, p.33 for the size of English dioceses.

¹⁸Lupton, p.299 from Colet’s convocation sermon.

¹⁹Richard Fox, pp.153-4; Surtz,
Works and Days
, pp.54 ff; S. Thompson, ‘Bishop in his diocese’, pp.69-70.

²⁰Bowker,
Henrician Reformation
.

²¹But Longland’s predecessor, Atwater, made a good attempt, helped by the fact that, unlike Longland, he was free of court commitments; see Bowker,
Secular Clergy
, pp.85-154.

²²For Fisher at Rochester see S. Thompson, ‘Bishop in diocese’; for Sherburne see S.J. Lander, ‘Diocese of Chichester’.

²³Transcripts and some facsimiles of the 1539 plans are to be found in Cole; see also
LP
, xiv (2), 428, 430. There are considerable variations; hence the difficulty in arriving at a final total.

²⁴Rymer, xiv, pp.272-3.

²⁵Ibid, p.345; for the badgering see
LP
, iv, 5607, 5639.

²⁶My own rough calculation based on Knowles and Hadcock.

²⁷Visitations of Norwich
, pp.113-22.

²⁸Ibid, pp.112-13.

²⁹Durham
, but much of it in Knowles,
Religious Orders
, iii, pp.129-37.

³⁰Knowles,
Religious Orders
, ii, p.259.

³¹VCH
, Norfolk, ii, 405,
Visitation of Norwich
, p.123-4.

³²Oakley, pp.307-8.

³³Jedin, i, pp.129-30.

³⁴Ibid, i, pp.424-6.

³⁵See p.275 ff. above.

³⁶Knowles,
Religious Orders
, iii, pp.212-21. Curiously Knowles made no mention of Whitford’s
The Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection
.

³⁷Knowles,
Religious Orders
, pp.182-91, 206-11.

³⁸Ibid, pp.28-38.

³⁹This my own interpretation of these episodes, which unfortunately space has not allowed me to develop; but for a different view see Elton,
JEH
, 7.

⁴⁰Paul,
BIHR
, xxxiii, pp.115-19.

⁴¹The
locus classicus
for all this is Renaudet; and for opposition to d’Amboise see ibid, pp.326 ff. For a useful introduction to the Windesheim canons see Oakley, pp.102 ff.

⁴²Elliott, pp.33 ff. and Oakley, pp.247-51.

⁴³ECW
, 6, pp.86-90.

⁴⁴My assessment is based on Bowker,
Henrician Reformation
, pp.13-28.

⁴⁵Thomas More,
Selected Letters
, p.137, but the whole letter needs to be read. For the identification of the monk see Knowles,
Religious Orders
, p.469.

⁴⁶Roper, p.76.

⁴⁷For such a view see Marius, p.465, in my opinion an almost perverse interpretation of More’s life.

⁴⁸Knowles,
Religious Orders
, p.157. For Wolsey’s involvement in Fisher’s suppressions see
LP
, iii, 1690.

⁴⁹Surtz,
Works and Days
, pp.180-93.

⁵⁰See p.323 above.

⁵¹Quoted in Mumford, p.108.

⁵²See pp.340-6 above.

⁵³In arriving at this figure I have assumed that all the new cathedrals would have been staffed by secular canons and that all 25 houses mentioned in the 1539 proposals would have been used.

⁵⁴Thomas Starkey, p.140; Herrtage, pp.1iii ff.

⁵⁵Thomas Starkey, p.140.

⁵⁶S. Thompson, ‘English and Welsh bishops’, pp.121-44.

⁵⁷M.J. Kelly,
TRHS
, 5 ser, xv, p.100.

⁵⁸Ibid, pp.208 ff. for the relationship between heresy and reform in southern convocation in the early 1530s. It is also possible that convocation would have been prepared to hand over the smaller monasteries to the Crown but for an intervention by Fisher; see Ortory, pp.342-4; Surtz,
Works and Days
, p.87.

⁵⁹Guy,
More
, pp.104-5, A.F. Pollard, p.208, and for the contrast between the tolerant Wolsey and fanatical More see Marius, pp.336-8; Ridley,
The Statesman and the Fanatic
, pp.163-5. A little depends on how you assign responsibility. No heretics were burnt in a Wolsey diocese because none were found but heretics were burnt during his chancellorship, including at least four in 1521-2 in the Lincoln diocese; see Dickens, p.27; S. Thompson, ‘English and Welsh bishops’, p.125. The confusion has been caused by the fact that none of those burnt in the 1520s were Lutheran.