The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (6 page)

Writing from ‘Windsor the last day of September [1511], with the rude hand of
your true and humble priest’, Wolsey ventured to remark that Surrey

at his last coming to the king … had such manner and countenance showed on him that on the morrow he departed home again, and yet is not returned to court. With a little help now he might be utterly, as touching lodging in the same, excluded: whereof in my poor judgement no little good should ensue … Mr Howard [Edward] marvelously incenseth the king against the Scots; by whose wanton means his grace spendeth much money, and is more disposed to war than peace. Your presence shall be very necessary to repress this appetite
.
⁵¹

Here surely is incontrovertible evidence that Fox and Surrey were in conflict, that Wolsey sided with the former, and indeed saw him as his patron – proof, in other words, that Vergil has got it right? Moreover, it would appear that Fox was rather in favour of peace and the Howards in favour of war.

In fact the letter supports none of these points – or, at least, not to the extent that a first reading might suggest. Perhaps the first thing to emphasize is not just that it is the sole piece of documentary evidence that bears directly on the matter, but its chronological isolation. It happens to be the earliest letter to have survived between Wolsey and Fox; the next is not until almost a year later. And it is not until May of the following year that there is anything like a sequence. Moreover, it is not as if there are letters between other people that might throw additional light on the political groupings at court. It must, therefore, be wrong to attach too much significance to remarks about the Howards that may represent very temporary feelings. And that they were temporary is suggested by a letter from Sir Edward Howard to Wolsey in November 1512, thanking him for his kindness towards him in his absence, which he had only just learnt about from Brandon, and also for the ‘great reward’ which the king had sent him, as he put it, at Wolsey’s instance.
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In 1513 letters from Edward’s elder brother, Thomas, to Wolsey are friendly enough in tone.
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It will, in fact, be a theme of this study that one of Wolsey’s gifts was an ability to get on with people, and that, for instance, far from antagonizing the nobility of England, he always strove to be conciliatory. What this does not have to mean, however, is that he was a close friend of all of them, or that he was in all circumstances unwilling to criticize them – and, indeed, the notion of getting on may imply some measure of insincerity. Moreover, there is always a problem in interpreting letters between ‘establishment’ figures, for they are written in a coded insincerity always difficult to decipher, but especially if it comes from a different era. So I am not claiming that these letters are proof of a genuine friendship, only that they indicate that Wolsey and the Howards were perfectly capable of getting on with one another. In other words, they had just the sort of good working relationship one would expect to find amongst leading courtiers and royal councillors when there was firm direction from the top.
⁵⁴

What else can one learn from Wolsey’s letter to Fox? He did indeed talk of peace, but very much in the context of Anglo-Scottish relations. It is an important qualification, for even as Wolsey wrote Henry was moving towards war on a number
of fronts. In May 1511 Lord Darcy had been allowed to take a small force to Spain in order to aid Ferdinand of Aragon in a ‘crusade’ against the Moors, while a small English force was aiding Margaret of Austria against the incursions of the duke of Gelders. Six weeks later England, together with Ferdinand, the Swiss and the Venetians, had joined a Holy League in defence of Pope Julius
II
against the ‘schismatic’ Louis
XII
. Thus, English foreign policy was moving strongly and fairly swiftly in the direction of conflict with France, so that if Fox was at the head of a ‘peace faction’ he had definitely lost the argument – and there is not much hint of this in the letter. It is possible that Wolsey was merely stringing Fox along, and had already secretly joined the winning ‘war faction’ – or, as some people would have it, that Wolsey and Henry alone constituted the ‘war faction’ against all the former king’s councillors who were frightened by the aggressive stance adopted by the new king.
⁵⁵
But there is no hint of that either, and there is another, simpler, explanation. What Wolsey, and it is implied Fox, disliked about conflict with Scotland – and indeed about something else Wolsey mentioned, Darcy’s ‘crusade’, on which the king had spent £1,000 – was that ‘the king’s money goeth away in every corner’. And why was this so worrying? Because they were all too aware that in any major conflict with France very large sums of money would be needed. This is, of course, to go beyond the actual wording of the letter, but it makes more sense of it, especially given the fact that for the next two years both Wolsey and Fox were going to be up to their necks in organizing England’s war effort. If this interpretation is correct, then Wolsey’s criticisms of the Howards should be taken not as evidence of a deep-seated hatred of his political patron’s greatest rivals, nor of a fundamental disagreement over foreign policy, but rather as a reflection of his annoyance that Howard incompetence was not helping the conduct of the king’s affairs. In other words, what one is witnessing is not factional intrigue, but the normal ups and downs of men working under considerable pressure.

It may seem that we have moved a long way from Vergil’s ‘conspiracy theory’, but if the conclusion reached so far is correct, Vergil’s explanation for Wolsey’s rise is seriously undermined. If there was no major conflict between Fox and Surrey, then there was no need for Fox to push his protégé in the king’s direction in order to further the struggle. Moreover, it is beginning to look as if Henry’s role in affairs was rather greater than the ‘conspiracy theory’ or, indeed, any factional view of his reign allows. And, of course, the greater Henry’s role and the stronger his personality, the less likely is it that he would fall victim to anybody’s seductive powers, even Wolsey’s. But before Henry’s personality is looked at in more detail, it may be helpful to take a little further the relationship between Wolsey and Fox. For one thing, some evidence of it has survived, and there is hardly enough evidence of any kind for this early period for it to be ignored. For another, it will help further to establish the way in which politics worked and to stake out the chronology of Wolsey’s increasing influence.

Probably the only point that should be retained from Vergil’s account of Wolsey’s rise is that he and Fox did have a close relationship, and that, naturally enough in its early stages, the vastly experienced and by all accounts highly astute Fox was the dominant partner. Cavendish confirms this, while adding another
patron, Sir Thomas Lovell, ‘a very sage counsellor and witty, being master of the king’s wards and constable of the Tower’.
⁵⁶
In fact, Wolsey’s letter to Fox of September 1511 provides the only piece of documentary evidence of any special relationship with Lovell, for in it Wolsey mentioned that Lovell, referred to as ‘Mr Treasurer’ (that is treasurer of the household), was the one person to whom he might disclose the chief concern of Fox’s letters, and his reply – for the comments about the Howards and foreign policy had merely provided a coda. This was which candidate Henry should support in what was thought to be, as it turned out wrongly, an imminent papal election. Fox’s and Wolsey’s preferred candidate, ironically, was Polydore Vergil’s patron, Cardinal Castellessi, who by 1515 was to be completely out of favour with Wolsey. What is more relevant here is the tone Wolsey adopted towards Fox. He told the bishop of Winchester that he had spoken to the king about Castellessi and had found him

very conformable and agreeable to my saying. Howbeit I durst not further wade with his grace as touching your letters of recommendation, as well for the ‘renouelyng’ of your letters and the dates of the same, as also we have no sure knowledge of the pope’s death otherwise than is before said. Your lordship, I trust, is no thing miscontent with that I presumed to break your instructions; for assuredly … I am half afraid that you be displeased for as much as I have received no writing from you this long season. I trust you will take my doing (which proceded of good will, thinking that it was for the best) in good part
.
⁵⁷

It is the letter of one who saw himself as the junior partner but who was prepared to take the initiative, not because he was desperately anxious to supplant his senior, but because his senior was not around to make the decisions for himself. If he had been, it was Wolsey’s view that

this matter would be soon brought to your purposes. And my lord, for divers urgent causes it is thought very expedient that you should repair to the king; for all his great matters be deferred on to your coming: which is daily looked for and desired of all those that would the king’s causes should proceed in good train
.
⁵⁸

For those who would see Fox as the ambitious leader of a faction, his absence from court at what was apparently a critical time needs some explanation, and for those who see Wolsey as entirely consumed with ambition it may come as a surprise to see him begging Fox to come to court in order to take up what was assumed by Wolsey to be his natural role, not as the head of a faction but as a leading royal councillor. A year later Wolsey was still writing with ‘a rude hand’ and was still deferring to a senior, who was not as in touch with the day-to-day events at court as he was.
⁵⁹
By 1513 a change had taken place but one foreshadowed in the earlier letters. War with France had by then become a reality, and preparations for various expeditions, including one led by the king himself, were very much under way. In May Fox was instructed to take charge of the victualling of the various fleets and
armies assembling at Southampton and Portsmouth, and in this connection seven letters from him to Wolsey have survived,
⁶⁰
all written ‘with the shaking hand of your loving brother’, presumably shaking because of Fox’s health and age, of which more shortly. There is no doubt that Fox now saw himself in a subordinate role to Wolsey, as an executor rather than as a maker of policy. On the other hand, the letters convey no sense that Fox felt that he had been deliberately demoted or pushed aside by his former protégé. The feeling is rather of a man reluctantly being dragged back into the political arena because in the special circumstances he could hardly avoid it. As bishop of Winchester and lord privy seal, he was by far and away the most important royal councillor in the area of the assembling forces, and his experience in the conduct of war, including Henry
VII
’s expedition to France in 1492, had to be invaluable. Thus his letters were peppered with advice. Much of it had to do with the details of victualling: Wolsey must instruct the lord admiral, Thomas Howard, to see that the victuallers return immediately; he must see that escorts were provided to protect the victualling ships; he must send down Edward Radcliffe, the second clerk of the kitchen, to inspect some casked beef before it went bad. Other advice touched on major policy matters such as Maximilian’s probable reaction to the recently made truce between Ferdinand and Louis
XII
, and James
IV
of Scotland’s likely reaction to England’s invasion of France. And with each letter Fox became increasingly anxious to be kept informed, though well aware that Wolsey might not himself have time to write. Then, when no replies came, he got upset, especially since, as he did not hesitate to point out, ‘some part of them were matter of charge’.
⁶¹
Nevertheless, the tone throughout remained warm, the overall impression very much that of a man anxious to be as helpful as possible, partly because he knew only too well the enormous strain that Wolsey was under; indeed at one point he commented that if Wolsey was not soon delivered of his ‘outrageous charge and labour’, he ‘shall have a cold stomach, little sleep, pale image and a thin belly
cum rara egestione
: all which and as deaf as a stock, I had when in your case’.
⁶²

What emerges from this spate of correspondence is that, despite the fact that Fox no longer saw himself as Wolsey’s senior in royal government, he bore no resentment. It is also clear that he saw Wolsey as occupying a central position in that government. Does that mean that by May 1513 Wolsey had reached the top, and that, for instance, one can definitely begin to talk about Wolsey’s foreign policy? Many distinguished historians have thought so, and some indeed would put it even earlier, associating the English decision to join the Holy League in the autumn of 1511 with Wolsey’s increasing ascendancy, despite the fact that such a view rather conflicts with the idea of Wolsey as a subordinate in Fox’s ‘peace faction’.
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In this account a note of caution will be sounded. It is not that Wolsey’s
importance by this time is denied, because everything points to it; but what it also points to is that, with the increased activity in foreign affairs brought about by war with France, Fox too resumed a more active role. Despite his age and infirmity, he accompanied Henry and Wolsey on the expedition to France, even suffering, if not quite a war wound, at least a nasty kick from a horse, so that ‘for some days he could neither sit nor stand’.
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This did not, however, prevent him from playing a major part in decision-making, so that when, at a vital stage in the siege of Tournai, a delegation from the city met Henry and Maximilian, it was Fox, not Wolsey, who summarized the earlier negotiations.
⁶⁵
When a little later Maximilian’s behaviour caused offence to the English, it was with Fox as well as Wolsey that Margaret of Austria met to try and put things to rights.
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And in the following year Fox’s involvement was to continue.