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

Peter Gwyn taught history at Winchester College, where he was also the archivist from 1965 to 1976. He resigned in protest when the College decided to sell one of its most valuable and historic possessions – the Malory MS. He was elected Bowra Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford for 1981–2. His published writings include ‘Wolsey’s Foreign Policy: The Conferences at Calais and Bruges Reconsidered’,
Historical Journal
, 23 (1980); ‘The Tunding Row: George Ridding and the belief in Boy-government’ in
Winchester College: Six Centenary Essays
, ed. R. Custance (OUP 1982). He worked on this biography of Thomas Wolsey for 11 years.

I am very conscious that this book could not have been written without the support and encouragement of a large number of friends. In the first place I could not have survived financially for the twelve years that it has taken me to write it without the generosity of Romy and Richard Briant and my sister and brother-in-law Alison and David Kingsley. Much of it was written and researched in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian, and to the spirit of that beautiful room and those who worked in it during my time I owe a special debt: in particular I would like to thank Ian Archer, Mark Curthoys, Trevor Dean, Jeremy Gregory, Trevor Griffith, David Katz, Sarah Kochan, Simon Payling and Blair Worden; as also the staff of the Bodleian – especially Helen Rogers – whose willingness to help more than compensated for the vagaries of the library’s administration. To other friends, and relatives, in Oxford and elsewhere who were kind enough to put up with Wolsey for so long, a further debt is owed: in particular Catherine Bennett, Roland Dannreuther, Kathleen Davies, Eileen Gwyn, Catherine La Farge, Christl and Michael Lethbridge, Frances and Roger Little, Iain and Nigel McGilchrist, Paul Nabavi, Audrey Nevin, John Nightingale, Emma Rees Mogg, Robert Sackville-West, Lotte and Nicky Spice, Mark Stephenson, Kate and Bryan Ward-Perkins and Lucas Wilson.

As for libraries and archival repositories other than the Bodleian, I would like to thank the staff of the Guildhall Library, the Kent Record Office, the Lincoln Record Office, the Northumberland Record Office, the Westminster Abbey Muniments, the West Sussex County Record Office, the Wiltshire Record Office for kindly answering enquiries or allowing me to consult their records. I have found working in the Reading Room of the British Library positively harmful to research; not so its Manuscript Room, or the Public Record Office, whose staff have shown great patience in deciphering documents that have defeated me.

Susan Brigden, M.L. Bush, C. Dyer and Richard Hoyle very kindly read and commented on particular chapters, while M. Bowker, Christopher Brooke, Pierre Chaplais, C.R. Cheney, J.A. Guy, Peter Partner and J.A.F. Thomson have all been kind enough to answer enquiries, while Simon Thurley took a lot of trouble over possible illustrations. My inadequate linguistic skills have been buttressed by a number of people including Trevor Dean and Bryan Ward-Perkins already mentioned, Mrs A. Rainton, and above all Richard Roberts.

Throughout the enterprise Alistair Ricketts has acted as my unofficial editor and adviser on all literary matters. More recently my ‘official’ editor – though she would not approve of the inverted commas – Sue Phillpott has removed a large number of words to the great advantage of the reader and with the minimum of pain to myself.

It will quickly become apparent that on many aspects of the Tudor period Sir Geoffrey Elton and I do not agree. This has not prevented him from taking an interest in my work and on a number of occasions offering excellent advice. Steve Gunn, Steve Thompson and Greg Walker, all of whom began their research while
this book was in progress and with some justification could have taken a protectionist stance, have gone out of their way to share their knowledge and ideas to my great benefit. The contribution of three other Tudor historians has been immeasurable. It was Jack Scarisbrick’s treatment of Wolsey’s foreign policy in his
Henry
VIII
that provided its starting point, and though I have come to take a different view to his on many matters of detail, his approach to the writing of history remains a source of inspiration. Cliff Davies commented on my first piece of writing on Wolsey, has read much of this book in its various stages, and has throughout these twelve years been a most supportive critic. George Bernard may not have read every word of every draft, but everything in this book has been discussed with him – and occasionally fought over – so that in many ways it is as much his book as mine. Furthermore his practical help in all the minutiae of scholarly activity has helped to overcome the disadvantages of attempting to write this kind book while situated on the outer fringes of academe.

Finally I must acknowledge two longer-term debts. Paddy McGrath was my tutor at Bristol, and he and his extended family have remained close friends ever since. Those who have had the advantage of having been taught by him will readily understand how much I owe to that combination of scepticism and commitment that are to me his hallmark. My father was a teacher of history, and it was his bedtime stories that, for better or for worse, made the past for me such an exciting world to inhabit. Sadly he died before he could know that the teaching and writing of history would occupy so much of my time. He might have been surprised that I could write so many words. I hope he would have been pleased.

THIS BOOK IS AN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND AND EXPLAIN THE POLITICAL
career of Thomas Wolsey. There will be very little about his private life, not because it is thought to be of little interest, but because there is virtually no evidence for it. He had a mistress, or concubine, as clerical mistresses were called. Her name was ‘Mistress Lark’. She bore him two children, a girl, Dorothy, who was sent to Shaftesbury Abbey, a much favoured convent for the daughters of the wealthy, and a boy, Thomas Winter, whom Wolsey publicly acknowledged as his ‘nephew’.
¹
Having said that, one has said almost everything that is known about an aspect of his life that one would really like to know much more about, for it is not necessary to be too Freudian to acknowledge that emotional and sexual matters contribute to an understanding of a person’s character. There is hardly more information about what nowadays might be called Wolsey’s ‘leisure activities’! There is one reference to hunting, and that very late in his life.
²
He was to be a great builder, as parts of Hampton Court and Christ Church College, Oxford, still bear witness to. He possessed quantities of tapestries, jewels and plate, and may have had a particular liking for ‘Damascene carpets’, by which was presumably meant oriental carpets.
³
He kept a chapel choir, which in 1518 Henry considered to be so much better than his own that he insisted that some of Wolsey’s choirboys should be transferred to the royal choir
⁴
– and Henry did have rather a habit of insisting that anything he fancied should be his! Still, almost none of these things sheds much light on Wolsey’s personality because it is almost impossible to decide what represents a genuine personal taste, and what the style and preferences of any wealthy man of his time. As for what he read, or even the books that were on his shelves, here information of almost any kind is lacking: only four surviving books have been closely associated with him, two of which are merely liturgical, and there is no surviving catalogue of his libraries.
⁵
Given that one is anxious to penetrate the
workings of Wolsey’s mind, this is a grievous handicap.

Another is the suspicion, not to say hostility, with which Wolsey has been viewed. His first biographer and household servant, George Cavendish, declared that he had only decided to write a life of his master because ‘since his death I have heard divers sundry surmises and imagined tales made of his proceedings and doings which I myself have perfectly known to be untrue’ – and he made it clear that the ‘surmises’ had not been complimentary.
⁶
Some hundred and seventy years later, in 1724, an Oxford don and cleric, Richard Fiddes, explained that there were two reasons for his wanting to write a life of Wolsey. The first was by way of paying a debt that his university owed to Wolsey’s generous patronage. The second was out of a desire to do ‘justice to his injured memory’, for ‘it may be questioned whether in all the histories that are extant, a like instance can be found in any nation of so general a prejudice, as that under which his name has suffered’.
⁷
Not a lot has changed since then. It is true that in the late nineteenth century there was briefly something of a sea change. England was at the zenith of her Imperial power and ‘great statesmen’ were fashionable. Macmillan’s commissioned biographies of ‘Twelve English Statesmen’, and Wolsey was one of the twelve. The result was the appearance in 1891 of
Cardinal Wolsey
, an on the whole favourable biography by a leading historian of the time, Mandell Creighton. Since then, however, things have only got worse. Two doyens of Tudor history, A.F. Pollard and Sir Geoffrey Elton, have not taken a favourable view.
⁸