The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (43 page)

¹⁶⁷
Cf. the greater number of charges against Empson and Dudley (Public Records, app.ii, p.228; also Harrison,
EHR
, lxxxvii).

¹⁶⁸
LP
, xiii, 519.

¹⁶⁹
Ives, ‘Crime, sanctuary and royal authority’, pp.318-9.

¹⁷⁰
Especially in the various under courts set up by Wolsey; see Guy,
Cardinal’s Court
, pp.38-9, 42.

¹⁷¹
Ibid, p.53.

¹⁷²
See Ives, ‘Agaynst taking awaye of Women’, p.25 for the suggestion that the Abduction Act of 1487 was not the result of an increase in the number of women being abducted. See also pp.447 below for further comments on early sixteenth-century language.

¹⁷³
LP
, ii, app.38, this the same letter in which he told Henry of his intention of teaching Thomas Pygot and Sir Andrew Windsor the ‘law of Star Chamber’.

¹⁷⁴
The new breed of historians of crime are more cautious and by and large take a far less gloomy view of the prevalence of serious crime; see Sharpe,
Social History
, 7.

¹⁷⁵
Bellamy,
Crime and Public Order
, pp.156-8; Blatcher, pp.50-1, 63-5.

¹⁷⁶
Blatcher, pp.65-8.

¹⁷⁷
Ibid, pp.50-3.

¹⁷⁸
See Stone, pp.199-270 for a classic ‘whig’ view of a gradual diminishing of aristocratic violence; also C.S.L.Davies,
Peace, Print and Protestantism
, p.51. I would agree with Sharp that ‘the system provided well enough for the needs of a rural and small town society’. (
Social History
, 7, p.192).

¹⁷⁹
For Henry
VII
being more grudging or more controlled about restoration than Edward
IV
see Lander,
Crown and Community
, pp.353-4.

¹⁸⁰
LP, ii
, app.38.

¹⁸¹
For the original controversy see Cooper,
HJ
, 2, pp.103-29; Elton,
Studies
, pp.45-99. But see also Condon,
passim
; Lander,
Crown and Nobility
, pp.267 ff. for this and what follows.

¹⁸²
Chrimes, p.185 ff.

¹⁸³
See n.1 above, also Somerville, passim.

¹⁸⁴
Cavendish, p.117.

ON 2 AUGUST 1521 WOLSEY ARRIVED AT CALAIS TO PRESIDE OVER A
conference the ostensible purpose of which was to put an end to fighting that had broken out earlier in the year between French and Imperial forces. When, nearly four months later, the conference broke up, the fighting still continued. Clearly Wolsey had been unsuccessful in bringing about peace, but he did not return to England empty-handed. On 24 November a treaty had been signed with the emperor committing England to a Great Enterprise against France. What had happened to turn the erstwhile architect of that universal peace treaty, signed with so much pomp and ceremony in October 1518, into the iron cardinal determined to turn Europe into a battlefield in order to win back for his master the throne of France? It is the purpose of this chapter to find out, and in the process a central question about Wolsey’s approach to foreign policy – his attitude to peace – will have to be answered.
¹

In some ways, of course, the matter has been prejudged. In chapter 3 it was shown how fortuitous, in many ways, that universal peace treaty had been. For differing reasons, both Henry’s great rivals, Francis and Charles, had been anxious for peace in 1518, as had the pope. Indeed, it was Leo
X
’s plans for peace that Wolsey had upstaged by his more effective performance in London. Furthermore despite appearances, peace had not been Wolsey’s central aim in 1518. Instead, what he had sought and finally achieved was a sufficient hold on the French to make them accept an alliance in which England would be the dominant partner. Or at the very least, his hope had been that he could use this alliance to dominate the affairs of Europe – and hence a map of Europe drawn up by him and the French to suit their particular interests, the maintenance of which was to be guaranteed by those elaborate provisions to maintain peace that were outlined earlier.
²
If this view is correct, it would not be possible to accept Wolsey’s commitment to peace as being genuinely motivated by Christian beliefs, or as in anyway disinterested – but this interpretation of Wolsey has been strongly defended by some historians, and, moreover, it is his conduct at the Calais conference that supposedly provides the vital evidence.
³

As it happens, the maintenance of the French alliance, so central to the Treaty of London for reasons of state, would have to become even more so to any policy that had peace as its central objective. There are two reasons for this. The first is the paradoxical one that France was England’s natural enemy, and had been from time
immemorial. If Englishmen wanted to win honour and glory they fought the French, and to this general rule Henry
VIII
was no exception. Furthermore, as was shown earlier, the English Crown considered it had a rightful claim to the French throne, while at a more mundane level an invasion of France was the most practical campaign that the English could embark on. Thus in order to maintain peace, a French alliance had to be made attractive enough to resist the ever-present temptation of an Imperial alliance and a war against France.

The second reason arises from the general European situation. In the early 1520s Charles v was much more likely than Francis
I
to disturb the peace of Europe, despite the fact that in 1521 it was Francis who started the war. At the Treaty of Noyon in 1516, Charles, in order to facilitate his journey to Spain to establish his claim to the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, had been compelled to make concessions to the French, the most important of which was his acceptance of the French occupation of the duchy of Milan.
⁴
This occupation gave the French a stranglehold on communications between the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe and, thus, a position of great power. This the Treaty of London confirmed. In January 1519 Maximilian died. Charles succeeded to his grandfather’s possessions in Germany and Eastern Europe, and by the end of June had defeated Francis in the election for the Imperial title. Charles was now, potentially at least, very strong, and at the same time the question of who was in control of Milan was now a vital concern to him. Sooner or later Charles would have to challenge the French position in Northern Italy.
⁵

Looking at what Wolsey was doing in the time between the Treaty of London and his arrival in Calais in August 1521, it soon becomes apparent that the French alliance was of some importance to him. If it was not, the expenditure and effort that he lavished on the famous meeting between Henry and Francis in 1520 at the Field of Cloth of Gold are totally inexplicable. To remove the prejudices built up over at least two hundred years of enmity, something out of the ordinary was necessary; something that could, as it were, outshine even Agincourt. Despite the scepticism of some historians, the Field of Cloth of Gold remains the most convincing evidence that Wolsey genuinely desired peace.
⁶
And there is other evidence. Certainly, both he and Henry were constantly talking about it.
⁷
Certainly, they were constantly informing both the French and the Imperialists that they would consider any invasion of each other’s territory as an infringement of the Treaty of London; and if that occurred, they both declared their intention to come to the aid of the injured party.
⁸
Furthermore, though the Field of Cloth of Gold was the centrepiece of English diplomatic activity, it was immediately preceded and followed by meetings between Henry and the emperor. Every effort appears to have been made to keep both sides happy and to prevent the inevitable suspicion that these summit meetings caused.
⁹
All in all, England’s behaviour appears scrupulously correct, never more so than in March 1521: the emperor’s offer of a marriage
between himself and the Princess Mary, together with an offensive alliance against France, was turned down, and Cuthbert Tunstall, Henry’s special envoy to the emperor, was recalled. As Wolsey explained to Henry, ‘in this controversy betwixt these two princes it shall be a marvellous great praise and honour to your grace so by your high wisdom and authority to pass between and stay them both, that you be not by their contention and variance brought in to the war’.
¹⁰

The evidence that, at least until March 1521, England was determined to maintain the peace of Europe does seem convincing – that is, until the negotiations prior to Tunstall’s recall are looked at more closely. To begin with, it is a little surprising that there were any negotiations for a marriage at all, for was not Mary, by the Treaty of London, betrothed to the dauphin? It becomes even more surprising when it is discovered that the negotiations were begun at Henry’s meeting with Charles at Canterbury in May 1520, just before the Field of Cloth of Gold, and were continued at Gravelines and Calais in July immediately after. It is true that this marriage proposal, along with the plan to mount a joint invasion of France, was at once disclosed by Henry to Francis. Henry also made comforting noises about having persuaded Charles and his advisers to give up their evil designs.
¹¹
These might be convincing if the negotiations had ended there and then, but they did not. Instead, Tunstall was sent to the emperor in an effort to bring them to a conclusion. This did not happen, but it is important to decide just how serious the negotiations were.

It looks as if both sides were quite serious, but in the end not serious enough.
¹²
That the Imperialists were anxious for them to succeed is not surprising. As has been argued already, it was they who had most to gain from the disruption of the status quo established by the Treaty of London. This could best be done by removing the linchpin of that treaty, the Anglo-French alliance – and they were in some hurry. In Rome a race had been taking place between the emperor and the French to see who could first secure a papal alliance, and early in 1521 it looked as if the French might win. If the emperor could secure immediate English support, this might convince the pope that Charles was strong enough to provide effective protection against the French, and thus remove one of the chief obstacles to a papal alliance with him.
¹³
Charles was also anxious to obtain help in putting down a serious revolt that had broken out during his absence in Germany – the so-called revolt of the
comuneros
. Thus he was insisting on a package deal with the English: a defensive alliance with the pope, an offensive alliance with the Swiss, aid against the rebels, and a new meeting between himself and Henry.

If the Imperial attitude is easy to appreciate, the English one is not because, as Henry and Wolsey made clear to the emperor, they felt no immediate pressures.
¹⁴
They therefore had no need, and very little intention, of being rushed into any
grandiose schemes; hence their insistence on a marriage alliance first, discussion about other matters later. But did they want even a marriage alliance, and, if so, why? The essential point about the proposed marriage terms is that Charles was to be free to marry whom he liked until Mary came of age, which would not be until February 1528. Such a generous time allowance hardly suggests great eagerness on England’s part, but it might be that the marriage was merely a means of keeping in with the Imperialists so as to influence their actions in the direction of peace. On the other hand, would this require Tunstall to spend two months with the emperor involved, on the face of it, in hard bargaining? At one stage he was instructed by Henry, if things were going badly, to bypass Charles’s leading councillors, Chièvres and Sauvage’s successor as chancellor, Mercurino Gattinara, considered to be ill-disposed towards the English, and to seek a private interview with the emperor. He was, then, to press on Charles the great disadvantage of Mary’s marriage to the dauphin, especially if as a result the dauphin succeeded to the throne of England. With the sealing off of the Channel and the French possession of Milan, Charles’s lands would be effectively cut in two. This was a threat, albeit a distant one, and there seems no reason for it unless some sort of alliance with the emperor was really wanted.
¹⁵