The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (41 page)

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Authors: Peter Gwyn

¹Rymer, xiii, pp.529-30. The great seal was given to him on 22 Dec. and he took the oath on the 24th.

²Just how much of either is not clear. Many chancery appointments were in the gift of the master of the rolls, but the chancellor did appoint the eleven masters of chancery. He received £419 15s.
Od
. for diet, £40 for clothes and £200 for sitting in Star Chamber, but his real income was considerably more; see Maxwell-Lyte, pp.1-19; W.J. Jones, pp.86ff.

³Referred to frequently as Star Chamber, despite all the problems surrounding the dating of its emergence as a separate body from the king’s Council.

⁴For Chancery see Metzger, ‘
Das Englische Kanzleigericht
’, and his own English summary in ‘
Medieval Chancery
’. For Star Chamber see Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
and
More
, pp.37-93. Despite some disagreements, I would like to acknowledge J.A. Guy’s help in the legal aspects of Wolsey’s career. The extent to which I am indebted to his labours will emerge from the footnotes that follow.

⁵Cavendish, p.24.

⁶Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, pp.127-8.

⁷Ibid, p.71.

⁸Cf. ‘The chancellor gloried in his presidency of the council, drew suits unto himself especially those involving his conciliar colleagues and pompously demonstrated his political power and personal intelligence in star chamber.’ (Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.34). See also A.F. Pollard, pp.74, 80.

⁹Metzger. ‘Medieval Chancery’, p.80, n.5.

¹⁰Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.51. The records for Star Chamber are far less complete than those for Chancery. They are also mainly undated, so there are great difficulties in assigning a case to a particular chancellor.

¹¹Averages given by Ives in
TRHS
, 5 ser, xviii, p.166, but other figures are to be found. Pronay’s are considerably higher: 605 a year for 1500-15, and 770 a year for 1515-29; see Pronay, pp.88-9. See also Guy,
More
, p.50.

¹²Ibid, p.38; Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.15.

¹³This is the main burden of Guy’s work.

¹⁴Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, pp.51-71 for this and all the categories that follow. They are based on the study of the 473 cases for which there is sufficient evidence to make some categorization possible, though the fact that the second largest category is a miscellaneous one indicates how difficult the exercise is and suggests that one should not set too much store by it.

¹⁵Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, p.84. Life for the ‘layman’ is made more difficult by the fact that while Guy made use of Metzger’s work, he reworked the categories, thereby producing different figures; see Guy,
More
, p.39.

¹⁶This is Guy’s estimate; see
More
, p.39.

¹⁷Guy, ‘Equitable jurisdiction’, pp.84.

¹⁸An archivally significant date is 1387 when petitions to the chancellor first began to be calendared separately; see Pronay, p.88. See also Baldwin, pp.236-61, and, for an excellent survey for a non-scholarly audience, Underhill, pp.1-96.

¹⁹Select Cases in the Council of Henry
VII
, p.xxxiii
.

²⁰The most obvious being the English bill of complaint with which a plaintiff began his suit.

²¹Select Cases in the Council of Henry
VII
, passim, is essential reading.

²²Apart from the works by Guy and Metzger already cited, Ives,
TRHS
, 5 ser, xviii, pp.165ff. and Blatcher should be consulted.

²³Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.54.

²⁴Guy, ‘Equitable jurisdiction’, p.84.

²⁵Metzger,
Das Englische Kanzleigericht
, p.152.

²⁶Blatcher, pp.10-63. During the 1530s business in Common Pleas picked up quite dramatically, while that in King’s Bench continued to fall.

²⁷Blatcher, pp.64-5.

²⁸Ibid, p.65; Bellamy,
Crime and Public Order
, p.158; Hastings, pp.175-83.

²⁹Blatcher, p.73.

³⁰Ibid, pp.65-81.

³¹Ibid, pp.71ff.; Bellamy,
Crime and Public Order
, pp.91-3; Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, pp.82-5.

³²Blatcher, p.68. Baker compares them to gas and electricity bills; see Baker, ii, p.90.

³³And was thought to be so at the time; see Sir John Fortescue’s comment that it was better that twenty guilty men escaped than a single innocent man escaped, quoted in Bellamy,
Crime and Public Order
, p.156.

³⁴Inter alia
, Baker, ii, pp.
70ff
; Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, pp.79ff.; W.J. Jones, pp.177ff.

³⁵Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, pp.86-7.

³⁶Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.108.

³⁷Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.89.

³⁸This a central criticism of Guy’s work; see ibid, 119ff. But see also Baker, ii, pp.
77-80
; Blatcher, pp.27-9.

³⁹Pronay, p.92.

⁴⁰W.J.Jones, pp.100ff.

⁴¹Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
pp.28-9 for a list of attenders.

⁴²Cavendish, p.24.

⁴³Baker, ii, p.318.

⁴⁴See especially Guy,
Journal of the Society of Archivists
, v (1975).

⁴⁵Quoted in Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.14.

⁴⁶Ibid, pp.23-50 for what follows.

⁴⁷A controversial subject because of Elton’s belief that Cromwell instituted a privy council, and that this had great constitutional and political significance; for which see
inter alia
Elton,
Tudor Revolution
, pp.316 ff., and Guy, ‘The privy council’. For my own part, I am yet to be convinced that anything significant happened to the king’s Council in the 1530s; for which see pp.202 ff. below.

⁴⁸LP
, iv, 5666; the legatine court opened on 18 June.

⁴⁹Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, p.48.

⁵⁰Ibid, pp.30-1. The information for all these Star Chamber set pieces is derived from Huntingdon Library California, Ellesmere MS, 2654, fos.22-5; 2655, fos.10, 15.

⁵¹Ibid, pp.31-2.

⁵²Ibid, p.32.

⁵³PRO STAC 2/19/372.

⁵⁴Ibid;
LP
, iii, 1923. For a comprehensive treatment of these disputes see Coward, p.116.

⁵⁵LP
, iii, 1923 (i).

⁵⁶PRO E 315/313 A, quoted in Wolfe, pp.192-3.

⁵⁷Coward, pp.147-8.

⁵⁸LP
, iii, 1923 (i).

⁵⁹Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, pp.60-1, 99.

⁶⁰Ibid, p.31; PRO STAC 2/19/372 for Sir Edward Guildford’s report on Bergavenny’s retaining; for more on Bergavenny see pp.185-7 below.

⁶¹LP
, iv, 3926.

⁶²See James,
Past and Present
, 48, for an extended treatment, though some of the detail is wrong; for instance Suffolk obtained the wardship in 1527 rather than, as he states, 1529. See also Gunn,
Charles Brandon
, pp.95-6.

⁶³PRO STAC 2/2/279; STAC 2/20/400;
LP
, iv, 3997, vii, 223.

⁶⁴Guy,
More
, pp.59-60, though Guy is surely a little too optimistic about More’s achievement.

⁶⁵Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, pp.68-9;
Select Cases in the Council of Henry
VII
, p.clxi.

⁶⁶In autumn 1517, on his pilgrimage to St Mary of Walsingham. An eighteenth-century history of Norwich mentions a visit in the company of Catherine of Aragon on 2 March 1520, Blomefield, iii, p.194, but I have not been able to confirm this.

⁶⁷Norwich, the Records
, i, pp.cx, 43-4; ii, pp.cxxxvii-ix, 369-71.

⁶⁸I owe the information about Hull to Dr P. Heath. For Bishop’s Lynn see Garrett-Goodyear, pp.251-3.

⁶⁹Though not according to John Palsgrave, who in his polemic against Wolsey wrote: ‘As for one thing I must needs mislike, that his grace, being chancellor, should take up in manner all the great matters depending in suit in England, … and would suffer no way to take effect that had been driven by other men. And hereof to show thee one example, call to mind the matter between the prior of Norwich and the city.’ (
LP
, iv, p.2562).