CARDINAL WOLSEY
I
APPRECIATIONS
He was a man
Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking
Himself with princes; one that by suggestion
Tied all the kingdom: simony was fair-play:
His own opinion was his law: i’ the presence
He would say untruths and be ever double,
Both in his words and meaning. He was never,
But when he meant to ruin, pitiful:
His promises were, as he then was, mighty:
But his performance, as he is now, nothing.
In these words, Shakespeare or another has summed up the character of the great Cardinal as it presented itself to his enemies. As Katharine painted him, posterity has for the most part regarded him. Men who have risen from the ranks, and in their prosperity assume the state and splendour appropriate to hereditary position, are rarely popular. When they are so, it is because they have identified their names in some sort with popular causes. Of all the statesmen who for a long term of years controlled or seemed to control the destinies of England, not one perhaps has found apologists so few as Thomas Wolsey.
Of recent years, however, there has been a change. It has hardly yet made its way into popular accounts; but the attitude of serious historians has been at least largely modified by the publication of the State Papers under the editorship of the late Dr. Brewer, and of his Introductions to those volumes. The doctrine used to be that Wolsey was a man of exceeding arrogance who acquired a pernicious mastery over the mind of Henry VIII., and whose political achievement consisted mainly in a miserably fruitless meddling with foreign affairs in which England had no concern, dictated by an insatiable ambition for the Papal crown. Whereas Dr. Brewer and Bishop Creighton after him have laid it down that Wolsey raised England from the position of a third or fourth-rate Power to an equality with the greatest nations in Europe.
During the years of his power, it is at least clear that Wolsey did achieve for England such a position among the nations as she had not held, at any rate since the days of Henry V.; and that he did this, not, like Henry V., by aggressive militarism, but by diplomatic skill: that he sought to be, and to a great extent succeeded in being, the pacificator of Europe as well as the aggrandiser of England. In his aim and method, however, he followed in the footsteps of Henry VII., and his policy was a natural development, though a vast extension, of that laid down by that astute monarch. And in the second aspect of his policy, he was again developing that of the old king, in striving to make the power of the Crown independent alike of the old nobility and of Parliament.
CARDINAL WOLSEY
From a Painting by Holbein in the collection at Christ Church, Oxford
But a recent biographer[A] has ventured so far as to declare that “Wolsey stands out as the greatest statesman England has ever produced; and it is not going beyond what records reveal if we say his was the master-mind of his age”—the age of Erasmus and Luther.
[A] Taunton, “Thomas Wolsey, Legate and Reformer,” p. 3.
That is unfortunately a species of criticism which excites the spirit of hostility. Wolsey was of that type of politicians, rare in England, who have made foreign affairs their first interest: also he was, what probably no other Englishman ever has been, beyond all comparison the ablest diplomatist among his contemporaries. Diplomacy is a field in which the reputation of England does not stand high. But one asks at once—What in fact did his diplomacy achieve? And, diplomacy apart, the great upheaval which issued in the Reformation was in full activity when Wolsey was at the height of his power and influence. The master-mind of his age therefore could hardly have failed to leave his mark on the Reformation. What did Wolsey accomplish—nay, what did he even attempt to accomplish—in that connexion?
II
CARDINALIS PACIFICATOR
Thomas Wolsey was born probably in 1471. His father was a citizen of Norwich—a grazier. The popular voice calls him a butcher. The boy was sent very young to Oxford, taking his degree when he was only fourteen years old, and otherwise achieving high distinction. At Magdalen he remained, fulfilling various college functions till the end of 1499. Before that date, John Colet, five years his senior, had commenced his famous course of lectures, introducing a new style of scholarship and a new type of biblical criticism. Thomas More, seven years his junior, had finished his University career. Erasmus had paid Oxford a flying visit. There is no trace of any personal association between Wolsey and these lights of the new school: yet there is no doubt whatever that as an educationist he was in close sympathy with them. The facts are therefore the more significant of some incompatibility of temperament: for we should naturally have expected scholars, agreed upon an innovating theory, to have been drawn together.
Acting at this time in a tutorial capacity to the sons of the Marquess of Dorset, Wolsey was rewarded by a living at Limington: and the ex-bursar of Magdalen was in a very short time a quite notable pluralist, and in close personal relations with various important personages, culminating in his appointment as Chaplain to Henry VII. in 1506. The king, whose only living rival in diplomatic astuteness was Ferdinand of Spain, was prompt to discern the kindred abilities of his new servant, who within a year or two was successfully employed to carry through important negotiations both in Flanders and in Scotland.
In April 1509 the old king died. His successor was hailed with acclamation on all hands. Of splendid physique, and glowing with martial ardour as was natural in a healthy boy of eighteen, the military section of society saw in him promise of a revival of the glories of Agincourt. The scholars too claimed their part in him, as he joyously claimed fellowship with them. The populace shouted applause when the detested Empson and Dudley were sent to the block. The veterans who occupied the chief thrones of Europe dreamed that the innocent youth would be to them as clay in the hands of the potter. Every one was satisfied.
For a little while all went merrily. The English nobles thirsted for war with France: Ferdinand and Maximilian had no difficulty in persuading the young monarch that in alliance with them he might achieve the laurels for which he hankered. He was to begin the fighting, they were to play at supporting him, and if by good luck something more substantial than laurels should be achieved, that of course would go to his partners.
Wolsey’s old pupil the Marquess of Dorset was sent to Spain in command of the expedition which was to begin the war, with the conquest of Guienne in view. Dorset’s army wanted beer: they could only get wine, which they considered thin. In effect they went on strike, and insisted on coming home again. The marquess brought them back ignominiously, without so much as a laurel-leaf.
Fox, Bishop of Winchester, perhaps the best of the old king’s surviving ministers, had been pressed into the background by the warlike nobles; but he had succeeded in introducing into the Council the man who was to sweep the nobles themselves into the background. Wolsey was nobody in particular, but he was a very clever man with immense organising ability and an infinite capacity for detail and for hard work. The fiasco was not repeated. In 1513, the army of invasion went to its proper field, Picardy. It was not a haphazard picnic party, and it captured Terouenne and Tournai. In the meantime, Surrey was shattering the Scots army at Flodden. A few months later, Henry had discovered that Ferdinand and Maximilian were using him as a cat’s-paw. Again a few months passed, and Wolsey had beaten them at their own game. France and England were in alliance. Then the uncontrollable changed the face of things. King Louis died: Francis I. succeeded. But the brief dream of the old kings had been finally dissipated: Henry was going to be nobody’s cats-paw. He had found a minister more than worthy to follow in his father’s footsteps.
In 1515 Wolsey was fully established not as the king’s chief adviser, but in effect as his sole minister. In 1513 he was not yet guiding the king’s policy: his work was mainly administrative. In 1514 the distinctive principle of his policy comes into full play. The anti-Gallic theory is discarded. Thenceforth, the hand of England is not against any Power in particular. As Foreign Minister, Wolsey’s business is to see that the balance of power is maintained; that no one prince shall be too far aggrandised; that each of them shall be a check on the aggression of others; that all shall maintain a habitual attitude of concession to England for the sake of her support; and that this is to be effected without involving England in actual warfare. Ferdinand dies in 1516; Maximilian in 1519. Charles V. succeeds both to Spain and to the Empire. In the latter year, the destinies of Europe are in the hands of three monarchs not one of whom is thirty years old. Wolsey during the following years remains in effect the arbiter of Europe till his hand is forced by Henry, and he finds himself compelled to overt hostility with France. After the disaster of Pavia, the blunder becomes manifest; his own policy is again allowed free play, and the old domination is all but recovered when the affair of the divorce wipes all other questions out of the field. The king’s will must be carried out at all costs. Failing therein, the Cardinal falls—irretrievably.
Two leading facts emerge. First: so long as Wolsey is allowed a free hand to carry out his own policy, he does it with complete success. Second: if the king elects to lay down a different policy, the Cardinal has to carry that policy through as best he may. The idea that he ruled the king is entirely fallacious. For some years, the king had the wisdom to recognise that his minister’s views were sound. Then his anti-Gallic leanings dominated him. Then he perceived his error, and reverted to his minister’s policy; till again a purely personal motive intervened, and policy again went to the winds. Since the personal motive could not be satisfied without a revolution, Henry conducted the revolution himself. The rôle the king required of his minister was one demanding other abilities than those of the Cardinal, and the Cardinal was thrown to the wolves.
Effectively then it is true to say that while Wolsey held sway in England, he was the arbiter of Europe. Whether it was for the good of England that she should concern herself with being the arbiter of Europe is another matter. It may be argued that the less she has to do with Europe the better for her. But the theory of splendid isolation for Great Britain is not the same thing as that theory applied to England when Scotland was an independent nation in habitual alliance with France, and always ready for hostilities. Even after Flodden the menace on the Northern Border had to be taken into perpetual count. Moreover, the advocates of that doctrine must still recognise that the opposite view is legitimately maintainable; and it follows that the statesman who, acting on the opposite view, successfully upheld English predominance without plunging the country into sanguinary wars, is entitled to a very high meed of praise.
Yet this does not express the whole of Wolsey’s achievement: for, when he began to guide England’s policy, he had to win position for her, not merely to maintain a position already held—a hard enough task in itself. To say that she was no more than a third or fourth-rate Power is an exaggeration. It was true in 1485: it had ceased to be true in 1500. Long before the close of his reign, the first Tudor had made himself a person of very considerable importance, whom none of the continental Powers dreamed of ignoring, and with whom they treated on something very like equal terms. This, however, was in no small degree a matter of personal prestige. Henry’s reputation for astuteness stood so high, not to speak of his credit for accumulated wealth, that the Courts of the continent paid England’s king an amount of respect which they would not have rendered to the power of England. With the removal of his personality, England dropped to a lower plane, but certainly did not become a negligeable quantity. If there was a brief disposition to regard her not as negligeable but as futile, that was due merely to the hastily formed conclusion that the young king was a tender innocent. The old Henry’s position was recovered the moment that Wolsey’s abilities were recognised. The marriage of the young princess Mary to the old King of France in 1514, was precisely the kind of stroke which Henry VII. would have made. It marked the fact that in any leagues or combinations which foreign princes might contemplate, an England thoroughly alive to her own interests, and thoroughly capable of safe-guarding them, must be reckoned with. In producing this result, Wolsey’s administrative ability as well as his diplomatic skill had played no small part; since to that was owing, in a great degree, the successes which attended the English arms in 1513; successes which were effective reminders that what English troops had done before they might learn to do again.
So far, however, what Wolsey had done was little if at all more than to restore the position of 1508; though this was accompanied by a suggestion that English interference in Continental affairs might be of a less purely defensive order than it had been under the late king. The suggestion was very soon to be turned into fact; and for some years kings and emperors and popes were to find that, whatever designs they might have in hand, they would have no chance of carrying them out beyond the point which Wolsey might be induced to sanction. The distinguishing feature of Wolsey’s method was his reliance on purely diplomatic action, to which end he had the aid of a particularly capable subordinate in Richard Pace. The Cardinal habitually posed as an arbitrator, composing the differences of Christendom and maintaining that general peace which it was theoretically the special function of the Roman Pontiff to secure.
For Ferdinand of Aragon, the leading idea was always to find an ally who could be inveigled into doing his fighting for him without any return. For Maximilian, the leading idea was to find an ally who would subsidise him to do the fighting while he could evade his own part of the bargain. Wolsey, by his alliance with Louis XII., turned the tables on both of them. The alliance itself was practically terminated by the accession of Francis in January 1515. France reaped the immediate profit, for neither Spain nor the emperor would risk a course which depended for success on a mutual fulfilment of obligations. Ferdinand became friendly to Francis, but without any intention of giving him effective support. When the latter’s progress in Italy seemed likely to be too rapid, Wolsey entered into relations with Maximilian which served as a check on Francis without filling the emperor’s purse. When Ferdinand died, Charles, his successor, was only sixteen, and though his counsellors were well disposed to France, being mainly Flemings, there was no present prospect of vigorous intervention on his behalf. Active hostility on the part of England would be dangerous, and when Maximilian in turn died, both Charles and Francis were suitors for the favour of the supreme minister in England. The turn of the wheel had made them inevitable rivals. The imperial election went in favour of Charles, that being less dangerous than the success of Francis would have been, and it was now Wolsey’s policy to hold the balance between the two. An era of universal peace was inaugurated; Charles and Francis did not join in formal alliance, but England united with each of them.
III
WOLSEY AND THE FRENCH WAR
The inauguration of an era of universal peace is usually the prelude to a war. A year after the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Charles and Francis were on the verge of hostilities. Wolsey negotiated with both, ostensibly to bring about an accord. But in fact, England was committed to support Charles: and the responsibility was with the Cardinal.
The conclusion to which the circumstances point is that the pressure was too great for him to resist. Popular sentiment in England was opposed to the French alliance. The queen was a warm adherent of her young kinsman. The king was personally jealous of the achievements of Francis, and had visions of the French crown or at least of the recovery of Guienne. Wolsey probably felt that if he tried to maintain his own policy he would alienate Henry, and if he alienated Henry—who had just annihilated Buckingham—he would meet Buckingham’s fate amid universal applause, and the anti-French policy would triumph in any case. He elected to carry out the anti-French policy and remain at the helm. Hostile critics would suggest that he was actuated by the desire of obtaining the support of the emperor when the Papacy should become vacant. Charles failed to keep his promise when Leo died, and gave his support to another candidate; but neither then nor in the following year when Clement VII. was elected—again with the support of Charles—did Wolsey show any sign of changing his policy in consequence.
The English people had wanted the war; when they got it they paid for it at first cheerfully. But no advantage accrued, not even appreciable glory, and they tired of it. After Pavia, Henry thought the opportunity had come to strike for the French crown; but such an effort demanded more money. The business of getting it of course devolved on the Cardinal. There was no hope of obtaining it legitimately from a Parliament; Wolsey tried illegitimate methods—and failed. There was no alternative but to drop the war policy. Wolsey made an advantageous peace, and Charles promptly found himself obliged to come to terms with Francis. But it is clear that from this moment Wolsey’s position with his master became painfully uncertain.
Here then is the practical termination of Wolsey’s great period. After this, the king is absorbed by the divorce, and the minister, willy-nilly, must devote himself to that object—his own ruin being the alternative. His diplomatic labours achieved no permanent result, because the position won for England could only be maintained by continuity of diplomatic effort and diplomatic skill. After her own very different fashion, Elizabeth fifty years later was balancing continental forces, and manipulating them to her own ends, in a manner much less impressive and often indeed singularly undignified, but certainly not less successful. And with her, the result was that the England which Philip of Spain had hoped to make an appanage of his own established herself as the indisputable mistress of the seas. The change in the relative position of England between 1558 and 1588 was far greater than between 1508 and 1528.
But Elizabeth worked with a perfectly free hand. Wolsey worked for a master, who was quite capable of wrecking the minister’s schemes for a purely personal end. He had to persuade that master to sanction a policy which he never adopted with enthusiasm. He had to carry it through in spite of the hostility of the governing classes, the ill-will of the queen—who was still on terms of accord with her husband—and his own extreme unpopularity with the mob. That is, he had to work single-handed amidst extremely adverse conditions; and all the circumstances being taken together, it may fairly be said that he displayed a diplomatic genius unique among English statesmen.
IV
DOMESTIC POLICY
In the field of foreign affairs Wolsey’s policy and his methods were both derived from Henry VII.: or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he applied the same methods to a development of the same policy. The invaluable make-weight was converted into the inevitable arbiter: the means, a process of peaceful bargain-driving. The bargains were usually in both cases profitable for England. Incidentally, they generally contained unwritten clauses which were profitable also to the Cardinal. There is no reason to suppose that any case occurred in which Wolsey permitted essentials to be in the slightest degree affected by considerations of his own gain. But he himself would never have thought of disputing that he accumulated great profits out of his diplomatic transactions.
The first objective then of Wolsey’s policy was the establishment of England not merely as an important factor but as the dominant factor in European politics: therein going beyond anything that Henry VII. had contemplated, but still acting on lines laid down by him. In his second objective, he was still a disciple of the old king. This was the establishment of the Crown as a practical autocracy.
The primary condition of an absolutist government was a full treasury; and here Wolsey had the immense advantage of the great hoards accumulated during the last reign. In spite of the heavy expenditure involved in ministering to the king’s pleasures, and on such pageantry as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, government in Wolsey’s hands was economically conducted. The great revenues which fell into his own hands not merely from the numerous preferments he held in England, but also from foreign sources, enabled him to defray the magnificence of his own establishment, public as well as private: and there were indirect methods of throwing much of the cost of the Court upon private persons. It was not till 1523 that the Cardinal found himself forced to look to the country for supplies by the necessities of a war budget. For very nearly ten years he had carried on the government without calling Parliament, although it had hardly been summoned during the preceding decade; under a continuance of the same régime, England might have become accustomed to doing almost without Parliament.
The second principle in establishing absolutism was the further depression of the nobility, who—again, as in the days of Henry VII.—were steadily kept from offices of State. Even the Howards exercised no control; and the most powerful of all, the Duke of Buckingham, was suddenly brought to the block. In that, as in everything the king did that was unpopular, the minister was charged with being the moving spirit, and his determination to destroy all rivals was accounted the moving cause. As a matter of fact, the duke’s execution fitted in with the Cardinal’s policy: but there is no direct ground for supposing that he had any active share in the matter. On the whole, there is no evidence that he was particularly vindictive. Still, personal ambition apart, since none of the nobles would willingly have been associated with him as a colleague it was necessary to the carrying out of his policy that his rivals should have their talons pared as far as possible; and also of course that there should be none powerful enough to form a disaffected party. Wolsey knew that, except for one or two ecclesiastics who had already in effect retired from the political arena, he stood practically alone. He had to make himself necessary to the king, and, since he could not be loved by the nobles, it undoubtedly suited him that they should fear him. In the result he succeeded so completely in destroying all possibility of opposition to Henry’s will that there was no man in the kingdom whom the king could not destroy if he chose merely to raise a finger.
Successful as he was in building up the power of the Crown, he was still apparently at the height of his own influence when he learnt that the power of the purse still lay elsewhere; and the king learnt a very important lesson at the same time—a lesson which he was to turn to account before very long—the importance of conciliating popular sentiment. Money was needed for the French war. Wolsey would have treated the Parliament, called to provide it, as a mere passive instrument for carrying out the royal behest. Had the House of Commons in 1523 suffered itself to be brow-beaten, it would have virtually surrendered its place in the Constitution. The House refused to be brow-beaten: it refused point-blank to discuss or to vote in the Cardinal’s presence. When he retired in wrath, a substantial sum was voted, but as a free grant to the king, not obligatory. Two years later, more money was wanted. Wolsey did not dare to ask a Parliament for it. He resorted to Benevolences, and found the citizens of London obstinate in their assertion that Benevolences were illegal. However willing Parliaments or burgesses might be to leave measures to the king and his minister, they were absolutely determined to provide nothing out of their own pockets unless their own consent had first been obtained through strictly constitutional channels.
In this thing Henry was quick to prove himself shrewder than the Cardinal. Like his daughter after him, he had an intuitive perception of the national temper, and lost no time in repudiating the idea of coercion. His personal popularity was doubled, and all the odium for the attempt fell upon the minister. But the scheme towards which he was strongly predisposed had been foiled, and Wolsey, though the result favoured his own views, knew that it would be fatal to him if he failed a second time to give effect to the king’s desires.
Therefore the Cardinal now gave himself up to the effort to meet his master’s demands in the matter on which he had set his heart, the separation from Katharine. But in this one matter, success for him was sufficiently improbable from the outset, and as time went on events which he was wholly unable to control made it a sheer impossibility. He failed, and the failure spelt his ruin. Giving himself utterly to the king’s service, his compliance did not save him. Hitherto he had been a statesman, pursuing ends which certainly magnified both his country and his sovereign with extraordinary ability and amazing success, by methods certainly not more unscrupulous than were sanctioned by the universal practice of the time. Now he devoted himself to an object wholly unworthy, which he must have felt to be utterly unrighteous. The king for whom he degraded himself served him—characteristically. Did the fallen man feel that his punishment was just, even while the hand that dealt it was supremely unjust? It would seem so. The sentiment, if not the words, which Shakespeare put in his mouth is authentic:
O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
V
THE DIVORCE
The whole story of the divorce is an ugly one; no amount of sophistry will ever make it anything else. Mr. Froude succeeded in persuading himself that pure unsullied patriotism was Henry’s ruling motive: and brings himself, apparently with some difficulty, to grant a qualified pardon to Katharine for her resistance, on the ground that after all she was a woman, and weak. If Henry had acted as some others have done, and had taken up definitely the position that by hook or by crook the legalisation of a new marriage for him was a national necessity, in order that a male heir to the throne might be born, the issue would have been a plain one. If bigamy could be justified on the grounds of national expediency, there was a decently good case for authorising a bigamous union. To provide a technical trick for evading the form of bigamy would no doubt have made the process easier, not affecting the ethics of it one way or other. But it followed logically that national interests alone were first to be taken into consideration in the selection of the new spouse. The fact that in that choice Henry was guided by passion and no other consideration whatever is sufficient proof that the actuating motive with him was not salus populi suprema lex. The grotesque nemesis by which later on Henry found himself with three acknowledged children of his body of whom two were born in what was supposed to be wedlock, both in virtue of marriages which the Courts had subsequently declared void, while the third, a boy, had no pretensions to legitimate birth—that nemesis is really a reductio ad absurdum of the whole position.
If on the other hand the awakening of Henry’s conscientious scruples had not coincided with a violent passion for another woman it would have been easier to believe that they were genuine, and that all he really wanted—as he frequently affirmed—was to have those scruples allayed. A genuine doubt would assuredly have demanded an authoritative pronouncement. Unfortunately, he made it perfectly clear that no authority could allay the scruples; he was absolutely determined that the Pope and the Cardinal between them must see to it that the doubts should be confirmed.
The precise stage at which Henry discovered that the weal of his people required a male heir of his body at any cost; at which his conscience began to question the validity of the dispensation under which he had married Katharine; at which he determined that Anne Boleyn should supplant the queen: all these are matter of some doubt. It is fairly clear that in 1526—certainly in 1527—if not before, Wolsey had been made aware that the king was desirous of exchanging Katharine for Anne; that Wolsey on his knees entreated the king to think better of it; that he found the king obdurate. There is no sign at all that the ethics of the divorce troubled Wolsey in any way; on the other hand no one has ever questioned that the Boleyn marriage was a thing hateful to him from every point of view. But he had to choose between lending himself to the king’s desire and rushing on his own ruin. Perhaps there are not many men who would have dared to take the nobler course; Wolsey, deteriora secutus, none the less fell.
It would seem that Wolsey first set himself to discover some legal expedient for nullifying the marriage, hit upon the idea that the dispensation granted by Julius was invalid, and tried more than one scheme with a view to its being pronounced invalid—hoping, it may be, that the law’s delays would give the king time to get over his infatuation for Anne, and that when—if ever—he should be legally free to take a new wife, the new wife would be a more fitting person.
First of all then, Wolsey, as Papal Legate, took steps for holding a Legatine Court in England before which the issue should be tried. But this plan contained a material flaw. Katharine might appeal to the Pope against the decision of the Legatine Court, and Wolsey, in the event of such appeal, would become a mere party in the suit instead of a judge. The Pope therefore must be induced either to give a favourable pronouncement on his own account, or to appoint a Legatine Court ad hoc—a Court whose judgment would be final. A very difficult matter; for precisely at this time the recent misfortunes of France were bearing their fruit: the emperor became entirely predominant in Italy, and obtained complete control of Clement—and the emperor was Katharine’s most affectionate nephew. So the hapless Pope, who was very anxious to keep friends with Henry but was naturally even more anxious not to offend Charles, desired above everything to evade giving a decision himself. On the other hand, Wolsey felt that there must be no pretext for subsequently questioning the legality of the process by which the dispensation was to be quashed, and therefore it was imperative that in form that process should convey the Papal sanction. Besides this, he had a very powerful personal reason for insisting on it. In England the Boleyn connection, who knew perfectly well what were Wolsey’s views about Anne, were working hard and not without success to destroy the king’s trust in the Cardinal, who saw his influence tottering. Failure to procure the divorce would certainly mean for him destruction; success, followed by the Boleyn marriage, would place more power in the hands of the most hostile faction, and he would be left absolutely alone to bear the whole obloquy of an extremely unpopular measure, unless the ultimate responsibility could be forced on the reluctant Pope.
As far as Wolsey was concerned, Clement won the game after apparently yielding. A Legatine Commission was appointed, but Campeggio was associated with Wolsey as judge: he managed to spend the best part of a year in reaching England; it was in fact fifteen months after the appointment that the Court began its sittings. A few weeks later, the Pope revoked the case to Rome. For all practical purposes, the revocation sealed the Cardinal’s fate.
For two years past Wolsey’s position, for all that it seemed to the world so assured, had been extremely precarious. The king had sent one agent to Rome behind his minister’s back. The agent’s mission failed ignominiously, but the thing was significant. Wolsey had gone to France on a diplomatic errand; on his return, instead of being summoned to a confidential meeting with the king, he found Anne Boleyn in the presence. He had been soundly rated by the king because, in appointing an abbess to Wilton, he had rejected a most unsuitable protégée of the Boleyns. He knew the stake for which he was playing: he can hardly have doubted, from the beginning of what was called “The King’s Affair,” that his fate was bound up with success or failure. The illusion that he ruled the king was one from which it does not appear that he ever suffered himself. All he did was to rule England and English policy precisely so long as he retained the personal favour of the king, and his policy did not clash with any of the royal predilections.
In this matter of the “divorce,” Wolsey has found an earnest apologist in Father Taunton. In his view, it would seem that the Cardinal was justified, because he believed that there really was a technical flaw in the form of the dispensation as granted by Pope Julius: if there was such a flaw, the king was entitled to the benefit of it: and its existence would enable the Pope to quash the dispensation, without so much as raising the question whether the granting of it at all was ultra vires for any Pope. Now the ingenuity of the lawyer who wins his client’s case on a technical quibble may be admired—in a way: the ingenuity of the ecclesiastic, who would have provided the Pope with a golden bridge for evading an awkward question, is also to be admired. But in presenting these grounds for admiration, the last possibility of a moral defence is given away. Persons honestly believing that the relation between Henry and Katharine was by the moral law incestuous, and could not be otherwise, despite any possible Papal dispensation, were entitled to urge the dissolution of their union. But if that relation was not inherently immoral, and was capable of being made legal as well, then the barest sense of justice demanded, that no dubious point of law should be brought in, in order to engineer a dissolution.
The whole case for Wolsey, according to Father Taunton, rests precisely on this very dubious point of law. The dispensation was formally drawn to make the marriage between Henry and Katharine lawful even if affinity had been contracted. But in the ordinary course, as the law stood, a woman being not married but fully betrothed to a man might not—although no actual marriage had taken place—marry that man’s brother, her doing so being against “public honesty.” Since the greater includes the less, and the whole includes the part, it would seem obvious that a dispensation covering the actual marriage ipso facto covered the pre-contract. Yet the apologist would have it that the Cardinal was satisfied to rest the whole case for nullifying the marriage on the position that the dispensation was technically invalid because it did not specifically refer to “public honesty” as well as to affinity. Such was the contemptible quibble by which the “master-mind of his age” was prepared to procure a pronouncement that Katharine was no wife—so that the Papacy might escape an awkward dilemma.
It is at least intelligible to maintain that circumstances may arise under which, for the public safety, flagrant injustice towards an individual may be and ought to be committed. That is undoubtedly the feeling at the bottom of Mr. Froude’s argument. Possibly also it was at the back of Father Taunton’s mind; but he does not put it forward. If the doctrine itself be admitted, a loyal son of the Roman Church is perhaps entitled to hold that it was right to sacrifice Katharine in order to avoid raising a question extremely inconvenient to the Papacy. Perhaps also that view is the excuse least derogatory to Wolsey which can be offered. A review, however, of the entire context of the documents which Father Taunton cites in part points rather to the conclusion that the Cardinal did mean to argue that—dispensation or no dispensation—affinity was an absolute bar; and intended to fall back on the quibble only as a last desperate resort if the contraction of affinity were disproved; that he at least wished to find the moral ground for nullity maintained, but, if that should prove impossible, was prepared to surrender the extreme Papal claim.
The view of the whole business resulting from a consideration of all the facts so far as they can be certainly ascertained is entirely consistent with the rest of the Cardinal’s career. Ambition made him desire power; like other men of great intellect and strong will, he knew himself fitted to hold it; like many other statesmen, and with a good deal more reason than some, he imagined himself the only safe guide for the State; and he knew that if he once fell there would be for him no recovery. About 1526, when for a dozen years he had been the greatest figure in the eyes of the Western world, he found himself presented with a dilemma. He must execute the king’s will in a particular matter—or fall.
The king’s will would at least serve the State well in one respect if it issued in providing a male heir to the throne. Also, if the marriage were really contrary to the moral law and outside the dispensing power, it would be in the interest of public morals that the fact should be declared. So far, no one could possibly be blamed for maintaining the king’s case. That was the line subsequently taken by Cranmer. But for Wolsey the situation was much more difficult than for Cranmer, because for Wolsey it was a sine qua non that the Pope’s official authority should be maintained. He could not, therefore, adopt any course which ignored that authority even so far as by not requiring its open sanction: much less could he, like Cranmer, defy it. Whether, for the sake of preserving that authority the more rigidly, he intended to ignore the one moral defence for the desired measure and content himself with pleading a legal quibble, is a question that can be argued; but it is quite clear that he was prepared to do so in the last resort. In short, if the only way to avoid his own downfall was by sacrificing an innocent victim, the innocence of the victim should not save her. He would have preferred, no doubt, that the sacrifice should not be made, but, under the circumstances, he did not hesitate. His moral plane was too conventionally low for the alternative course. More or Fisher would have acted otherwise. But the successful statesman who is ready to commit political suicide rather than actively participate in an unrighteous deed which he cannot prevent, is not often to be met with. And Wolsey had the further excuse that he hoped to save the Church, as he conceived it, from the disastrous results which he foresaw if the matter fell into other hands.
VI
WOLSEY AND THE REFORMATION
From the attitude of Wolsey to the Papacy in the matter of the divorce, we are naturally led to a consideration of his whole position in matters ecclesiastical and religious.
The great revolution which we call the Reformation had two main aspects. Employing the term “the Church” as representing not the whole body of professing Christians but the clerical organisation: the Reformation in the first place changed everywhere, though in varying degrees, the relation of the secular governments to the Church within their borders; in the second place it changed the relations of the various geographical sections of the Church to the whole Catholic body of which they were members. Thus the State in England assumed a new attitude to the Church in England, and the Church in England as well as the State was placed in a new relation to the Roman pontificate. These changes were essentially political.
In its second aspect, the Reformation was a religious revolution; a revision of ethical standards; a revival of that ardour of sentiment and of conviction whereof martyrs are born; a spiritual movement, accompanied by a doctrinal upheaval. That portion of Christendom which adhered to the Roman pontificate, confining its doctrinal modifications within the limits set by the Council of Trent, arrogated to itself the title of Catholic. The rest arrogated to themselves the title of the Reformed Churches, accepting the general label of Protestants originally appropriate only to the Lutheran section. Like all political labels, all three of these terms were incorrect, “Protestant” being improperly extended, while the “Reformed” Churches might be Catholic, and the “Catholic” Church was itself reformed. Perhaps it would be of advantage rather to treat the doctrinal Reformation as a third aspect, and to distinguish the great actors by the parts they played in the political, the religious, and the doctrinal Reformations respectively, whether in restraining or in promoting change. Thus, religion did not enter into the programme of Henry VIII.; as to doctrine he certainly was not a reformer; politically, he emerged as a revolutionary. Men like More and Colet were ardent reformers of religion; in theology and on the political side, they were conservative. Luther, Calvin and Knox were of the advanced party in each case. But it must be definitely laid down that of the three aspects of the Reformation the most vital was the religious, not the political or the theological; and the men who, whether Catholic or Protestant, were the religious leaders, are on a higher plane of greatness than the rest; it is amongst them that we must look for the “master-minds” of the age.
Now it does not appear that in any single one of these three aspects Wolsey as a matter of fact influenced the great movement, already fairly under weigh, in any appreciable degree. Had he, instead of Clement, occupied the Papal throne, the political power of the Papacy would indubitably have been for the time greatly advanced. Had his own power in England survived the divorce business, the secular onslaught on the ecclesiastical body conducted by Cromwell would not have taken place. It is conceivable that under modified circumstances he might have evolved a modus vivendi for Church and State more favourable to the Church than that which emerged from the thirty tempestuous years which followed his death. But in fact the whole manner of the Cardinal’s life, his immersion in secular politics, the magnificence of his household, his many benefices, his vast accumulation of wealth, the arrogance of his demeanour, typified and flaunted before the public eye precisely those shortcomings of the clergy at large on which the anti-clerical spirit of the laity was battening. The Cardinal might have strengthened the Church’s power of resistance; he certainly was in no small degree the cause of the animosity of her assailants. In the eyes of the whole world, he was essentially a man of the world, worldly; and in worldliness, far more than in the temptations of the Flesh or the Devil, the best of the reformers found the Church’s besetting sin.
No political skill, no state-craft, no loyalty to his order, could have gone to the root of the matter by removing the moral grounds of hostility to the ecclesiastical organisation. A moral enthusiasm of which—to put it mildly—no hint whatever is to be found in the great minister, was absolutely essential for any man who was either to renovate the prestige of the clergy so that the people should follow them or so to inspire the people that the clergy should follow the popular movement. In England there arose no prophet, but for that much-needed rôle Wolsey was about as little fitted as any imaginable leader.
Nevertheless, something he did and more he was willing to do. There were specific grievances which up to a certain point he sought to remedy. Without surrendering any of the privileges of his order, he made in his own Legatine Courts a vast improvement on the practice of the ordinary Ecclesiastical Courts. He did away with a considerable number of small religious Houses whose condition was more or less of a scandal. His visitations brought about improved discipline in many of the larger Houses; some of his appointments, as to the Abbey at Glastonbury, were notably admirable; in rejecting an unworthy abbess for Wilton he braved the anger of the king at a time when he ran an exceptionally heavy risk in doing so. Above all, he was fully alive to the necessity of educating a new generation of clergy up to a high standard; and to that end he created his great foundations of Ipswich and Cardinal College (Christ Church), Oxford, carrying out on a much more extensive scale what Dean Colet and Bishop Fox had set themselves to do before him. His college was crippled and his school was wrecked when he fell; but in this at least he deserves to be honoured by the side of William of Wickham. Yet the name of William is hardly to be coupled with those of Luther or Loyola. Wolsey was a real and sincere patron of education; he had a sufficiently keen sense of order and public decency to be a just judge and something of a disciplinarian; but much more than this would have been required to make him a potent moral force; and without being that he could not, even had he become Pope, have affected the Reformation in a permanent manner, though he might have modified its political course. He was the consummation of the old school of political ecclesiastics. Probably he was never so much as conscious that a moral revolution was in progress. What he did know was that the political position of the Holy See, and of the whole ecclesiastical system, was threatened, and his legatine and Papal ambitions may fairly be attributed as much to a belief in his own fitness to pilot the ship as to selfishly personal motives. But the mere fact that, with the powers he did acquire and the vast abilities he possessed, he yet accomplished practically nothing either as a reformer or as a bulwark of the old order, is fairly conclusive proof that he was neither the “greatest of English statesmen” nor “the master-mind of his age.”
VII
WOLSEY’S FALL AND CHARACTER
The Legatine Court was suspended, and the question of the divorce advoked to Rome, in July 1529. The signs of Wolsey’s doom were quick to gather. His master practically ceased to hold personal communication with him. It was evident, when writs for a Parliament were issued in September, that the Cardinal was no longer directing the king: for he had consistently aimed so far as possible at the suppression of the functions of Parliament. Campeggio was hardly out of the country when his colleague was indicted under the Statute of Præmunire for having exercised the legatine office contrary to the law. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk deprived him of the Great Seal which he held as Chancellor. Ill and despairing, he retired to his house at Esher, shorn of all his offices. He was attainted in the House of Peers, and the Bill was passed. In the Commons, however, the vigorous opposition to it made by Cromwell, and a feeling that the king was not unfavourable to its rejection, resulted in its being thrown out.
Probably Henry had not yet thoroughly made up his mind as to his course of action, and wished to preserve a possibility of recalling his minister to his counsels. He was told that he might be permitted to discharge some of his pastoral functions, and was allowed to retire in the spring to York, to take up the duties of the Archbishopric; and in spite of the immense fines imposed on him, he was by no means stripped bare of this world’s goods. York was fixed on as being more remote from the neighbourhood both of Henry and of the Continent than Winchester. He threw himself into the unaccustomed rôle with apparent zest, and seemed on the verge of achieving an unexpected reputation for pastoral piety and devotion, when a fresh blow fell. He was summoned to London on a charge of treason. He had been unwise enough to write to Francis I and pray for his intercession with Henry; he was also accused, though groundlessly, of having made really treasonous proposals to the Pope. Already ill when he started, he became rapidly worse on his journey south, and having reached the Abbey of Leicester, was unable again to rise from his bed. There he passed away, pathetically forlorn; but at least spared the last undeserved ignominy of a traitor’s doom.
On the high road to success and in the height of his power, Wolsey extorts an admiration which is still somewhat reluctant. His figure cannot be called attractive. Over the business of the divorce it is difficult not to feel him positively repellent. But in his fall he rose to moral heights of which his previous career gives no warning. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Here, it would seem, was one who—not voluntarily surrendering but forcibly bereft of the world, when he had gained it—found thereby his soul’s salvation. Through tears and tribulation, pain of the worn-out body, anguish of the spirit, he won it. In the day of his triumph, his countrymen hated him while they could not but admire; hated him with a rare bitterness which made even Thomas More ungenerous; save some few of his own household, none felt a touch of sympathy, unless perhaps the king, who condescended to send him one or two kindly messages to salve his own royal conscience while he was stripping his most loyal servant of everything he possessed. Yet in the months of his retirement, while, in his diocese of York, he devoted himself to the care of his spiritual flock, the fallen Cardinal won on all hands a passionate affection bestowed only upon men and women who can forget themselves in their thought for others. At bottom there must have been in the man an essential sweetness and loveableness repressed—dried up in the fires of ambition, parched in the sunshine of prosperity, welling forth in the shadow of adversity. Gone was the power that swayed the politics of a continent; gone the gorgeous pomp, the insolent state, that stirred the impotent malice of the lesser men he had overshadowed. But with their loss, the hidden best that was in the fallen minister found free play.
Wolsey’s chroniclers have been against him. Those who wished to magnify the king pointed to the Cardinal as the evil genius who had prompted every ill-judged deed. The nobility hated him as an insolent and upstart foe to their order. Katharine’s party hated him, because he was credited not only with anti-Spanish policy but with being the prime mover of the divorce. The Boleyn party hated him, because they knew that he loathed the Boleyn marriage. He had no sympathy from the Protestants, since he stood for the old ecclesiastical order; none from the later Catholics, since his attitude to the Papacy was misunderstood; none from the populace, because he embodied the most unpopular characteristics of ecclesiasticism. Even Cavendish, who admired him, is careful in his record to point the moral that pride goeth before a fall, lest his praise of the Cardinal’s demeanour in his last year of life should be regarded as unduly laudatory. From Skelton to Fox the martyrologist, every man had some motive for throwing a stone at him.
But if Shakespeare—or another—has summed up for us the libels of his enemies, the same hand has shaped the far truer eulogium pronounced by the “honest chronicler” Griffith in the same play. By his own talents he had made himself great: in his high station, if in some respects he abused his power, yet in the main he worked for the glory of England. It is inconceivable that when he fell, when the world slipped from the grasp of one who had been the very type of worldliness, he should have kissed the rod with perfect resignation, and found no taste of bitterness in the cup allotted to him. Yet there was at least a solid proportion of truth in the pious words of Griffith:
His overthrow heaped happiness upon him;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little;
And, to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.
No amount of historical inquiry will ever suffice to displace in the public mind a portrait bearing Shakespeare’s signature. The Wolsey of the play is not easy to reconcile with the Wolsey Griffith described after his disappearance from the stage: but these words are still a part of the Shakespearean portrait.