"Nothing," wrote Giustinian of Wolsey in 1519, "pleases him more than to be called the arbiter of Christendom."[282] Continental statesmen were inclined to ridicule and resent the Cardinal's claim. But the title hardly exaggerates the part which the English minister was enabled to play during the next few years by the rivalry of Charles and Francis, and by the apparently even balance of their powers. The position which England held in the councils of Europe in 1519 was a marvellous advance upon that which it had occupied in 1509. The first ten years of Henry's reign had been a period of fluctuating, but continual, progress. The campaign of 1513 had vindicated England's military prowess, and had made it possible for Wolsey, at the peace of the following year, to place his country on a level with France and Spain and the Empire. Francis's conquest of Milan, and the haste with which Maximilian, Leo and Charles sought to make terms with the victor, caused a temporary isolation of England and a consequent decline in her influence. But the arrangements made between Charles and Francis contained, in themselves, as acute English diplomatists saw, the seeds of future disruption; and, in 1518, Wolsey was able so to play off these mutual jealousies as to reassert England's position. He imposed a general peace, or rather a truce, which raised England even higher than the treaties of 1514 had done, and made her appear as the conservator of the peace of Europe. England had almost usurped the place of the Pope as mediator between rival Christian princes.[283]
These brilliant results were achieved with the aid of very moderate military forces and an only respectable navy. They were due partly to the lavish expenditure of Henry's treasures, partly to the extravagant faith of other princes in the extent of England's wealth, but mainly to the genius for diplomacy displayed by the great English Cardinal. Wolsey had now reached the zenith of his power; and the growth of his sense of his own importance is graphically described by the Venetian ambassador. When Giustinian first arrived in England, Wolsey used to say, "His Majesty will do so and so". Subsequently, by degrees, forgetting himself, he commenced saying, "We shall do so and so". In 1519 he had reached such a pitch that he used to say, "I shall do so and so".[284] Fox had been called by Badoer "a second King," but Wolsey was now "the King himself".[285] "We have to deal," said Fox, "with the Cardinal, who is not Cardinal, but King; and no one in the realm dares attempt aught in opposition to his interests."[286] On another occasion Giustinian remarks: "This Cardinal is King, nor does His Majesty depart in the least from the opinion and counsel of his lordship".[287] Sir Thomas More, in describing the negotiations for the peace of 1518, reports that only after Wolsey had concluded a point did he tell the council, "so that even the King hardly knows in what state matters are".[288] A month or two later there was a curious dispute between the Earl of Worcester and West, Bishop of Ely, who were sent to convey the Treaty of London to Francis. Worcester, as a layman, was a partisan of the King, West of the Cardinal. Worcester insisted that their detailed letters should be addressed to Henry, and only general ones to Wolsey. West refused; the important letters, he thought, should go to the Cardinal, the formal ones to the King; and, eventually, identical despatches were sent to both.[289] In negotiations with England, Giustinian told his Government, "if it were necessary to neglect either King or Cardinal, it would be better to pass over the King; he would therefore make the proposal to both, but to the Cardinal first, lest he should resent the precedence conceded to the King".[290] The popular charge against Wolsey, repeated by Shakespeare, of having written Ego et rex meus, though true in fact,[291] is false in intention, because no Latin scholar could put the words in any other order; but the Cardinal's mental attitude is faithfully represented in the meaning which the familiar phrase was supposed to convey.
His arrogance does not rest merely on the testimony of personal enemies like the historian, Polydore Vergil, and the poet Skelton, or of chroniclers like Hall, who wrote when vilification of Wolsey pleased both king and people, but on the despatches of diplomatists with whom he had to deal, and on the reports of observers who narrowly watched his demeanour. "He is," wrote one, "the proudest prelate that ever breathed."[292] During the festivities of the Emperor's visit to England, in 1520, Wolsey alone sat down to dinner with the royal party, while peers, like the Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham, performed menial offices for the Cardinal, as well as for Emperor, King and Queen.[293] When he celebrated mass at the Field of Cloth of Gold, bishops invested him with his robes and put sandals on his feet, and "some of the chief noblemen in England" brought water to wash his hands.[294] A year later, at his meeting with Charles at Bruges, he treated the Emperor as an equal. He did not dismount from his mule, but merely doffed his cap, and embraced as a brother the temporal head of Christendom.[295] When, after a dispute with the Venetian ambassador, he wished to be friendly, he allowed Giustinian, with royal condescension, and as a special mark of favour, to kiss his hand.[296] He never granted audience either to English peers or foreign ambassadors until the third or fourth time of asking.[297] In 1515 it was the custom of ambassadors to dine with Wolsey before presentation at Court, but four years later they were never served until the viands had been removed from the Cardinal's table.[298] A Venetian, describing Wolsey's embassy to France in 1527, relates that his "attendants served cap in hand, and, when bringing the dishes, knelt before him in the act of presenting them. Those who waited on the Most Christian King, kept their caps on their heads, dispensing with such exaggerated ceremonies."[299]
Pretenders to royal honours seldom acquire the grace of genuine royalty, and the Cardinal pursued with vindictive ferocity those who offended his sensitive dignity. In 1515, Polydore Vergil said, in writing to his friend, Cardinal Hadrian, that Wolsey was so tyrannical towards all men that his influence could not last, and that all England abused him.[300] The letter was copied by Wolsey's secretary, Vergil was sent to the Tower,[301] and only released after many months at the repeated intercession of Leo X. His correspondent, Cardinal Hadrian, was visited with Wolsey's undying hatred. A pretext for his ruin was found in his alleged complicity in a plot to poison the Pope; the charge was trivial, and Leo forgave him.[302] Not so Wolsey, who procured Hadrian's deprivation of the Bishopric of Bath and Wells, appropriated the see for himself, and in 1518 kept Campeggio, the Pope's legate, chafing at Calais until he could bring with him the papal confirmation of these measures.[303] Venice had the temerity to intercede with Leo on Hadrian's behalf; Wolsey thereupon overwhelmed Giustinian with "rabid and insolent language"; ordered him not to put anything in his despatches without his consent; and revoked the privileges of Venetian merchants in England.[304] In these outbursts of fury, he paid little respect to the sacrosanct character of ambassadors. He heard that the papal nuncio, Chieregati, was sending to France unfavourable reports of his conduct. The nuncio "was sent for by Wolsey, who took him into a private chamber, laid rude hands upon him, fiercely demanding what he had written to the King of France, and what intercourse he had held with Giustinian and his son, adding that he should not quit the spot until he had confessed everything, and, if fair means were not sufficient, he should be put upon the rack".[305] Nine years later, Wolsey nearly precipitated war between England and the Emperor by a similar outburst against Charles's ambassador, De Praet. He intercepted De Praet's correspondence, and confined him to his house. It was a flagrant breach of international law. Tampering with diplomatic correspondence was usually considered a sufficient cause for war; on this occasion war did not suit Charles's purpose, but it was no fault of Wolsey's that his fury at an alleged personal slight did not provoke hostilities with the most powerful prince in Christendom.[306]
Englishmen fared no better than others at Wolsey's hands. He used the coercive power of the State to revenge his private wrongs as well as to secure the peace of the realm. In July, 1517, Sir Robert Sheffield,[307] who had been Speaker in two Parliaments, was sent to the Tower for complaining of Wolsey, and to point the moral of Fox's assertion, that none durst do ought in opposition to the Cardinal's interests.[308] Again, the idea reflected by Shakespeare, that Wolsey was jealous of Pace, has been described as absurd; but it is difficult to draw any other inference from the relations between them after 1521. While Wolsey was absent at Calais, he accused Pace, without ground, of misrepresenting his letters to Henry, and of obtaining Henry's favour on behalf of a canon of York;[309] he complained that foreign powers were trusting to another influence than his over the King; and, when he returned, he took care that Pace should henceforth be employed, not as secretary to Henry, but on almost continuous missions to Italy. In 1525, when the Venetian ambassador was to thank Henry for making a treaty with Venice, which Pace had concluded, he was instructed not to praise him so highly, if the Cardinal were present, as if the oration were made to Henry alone;[310] and, four years later, Wolsey found an occasion for sending Pace to the Tower—treatment which eventually caused Pace's mind to become unhinged.[311]
Wolsey's pride in himself, and his jealousy of others, were not more conspicuous than his thirst after riches. His fees as Chancellor were reckoned by Giustinian at five thousand ducats a year. He made thrice that sum by New Year's presents, "which he receives like the King".[312] His demand for the Bishopric of Bath and Wells, coupled with the fact that it was he who petitioned for Hadrian's deprivation, amazed even the Court at Rome, and, "to avoid murmurs,"[313] compliance was deferred for a time. But these scruples were allowed no more than ecclesiastical law to stand in the way of Wolsey's preferment. One of the small reforms decreed by the Lateran Council was that no bishoprics should be held in commendam; the ink was scarcely dry when Wolsey asked in commendam for the see of the recently conquered Tournay.[314] Tournay was restored to France in 1518, but the Cardinal took care that he should not be the loser. A sine qua non of the peace was that Francis should pay him an annual pension of twelve thousand livres as compensation for the loss of a bishopric of which he had never obtained possession.[315] He drew other pensions for political services, from both Francis and Charles; and, from the Duke of Milan, he obtained the promise of ten thousand ducats a year before Pace set out to recover the duchy.[316] It is scarcely a matter for wonder that foreign diplomatists, and Englishmen, too, should have accused Wolsey of spending the King's money for his own profit, and have thought that the surest way of winning his favour was by means of a bribe.[317] When England, in 1521, sided with Charles against Francis, the Emperor bound himself to make good to Wolsey all the sums he would lose by a breach with France; and from that year onwards Charles paid—or owed—Wolsey eighteen thousand livres a year.[318] It was nine times the pensions considered sufficient for the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk; and even so it does not include the revenue Wolsey derived from two Spanish bishoprics. These were not bribes in the sense that they affected Wolsey's policy; they were well enough known to the King; to spoil the Egyptians was considered fair game, and Henry was generous enough not to keep all the perquisites of peace or war for himself.
Two years after the agreement with Charles, Ruthal, Bishop of Durham, died, and Wolsey exchanged Bath and Wells for the richer see formerly held by his political ally and friend. But Winchester was richer even than Durham; so when Fox followed Ruthal to the grave, in 1528, Wolsey exchanged the northern for the southern see, and begged that Durham might go to his natural son, a youth of eighteen.[319] All these were held in commendam with the Archbishopric of York, but they did not satisfy Wolsey; and, in 1521, he obtained the grant of St. Albans, the greatest abbey in England. His palaces outshone in splendour those of Henry himself, and few monarchs have been able to display such wealth of plate as loaded the Cardinal's table. Wolsey is supposed to have conceived vast schemes of ecclesiastical reform, which time and opportunity failed him to effect.[320] If he had ever seriously set about the work, the first thing to be reformed would have been his own ecclesiastical practice. He personified in himself most of the clerical abuses of his age. Not merely an "unpreaching prelate," he rarely said mass; his commendams and absenteeism were alike violations of canon law. Three of the bishoprics he held he never visited at all; York, which he had obtained fifteen years before, he did not visit till the year of his death, and then through no wish of his own. He was equally negligent of the vow of chastity; he cohabited with the daughter of "one Lark," a relative of the Lark who is mentioned in the correspondence of the time as "omnipotent" with the Cardinal, and as resident in his household.[321] By her he left two children, a son,[322] for whom he obtained a deanery, four archdeaconries, five prebends, and a chancellorship, and sought the Bishopric of Durham, and a daughter who became a nun. The accusation brought against him by the Duke of Buckingham and others, of procuring objects for Henry's sensual appetite, is a scandal, to which no credence would have been attached but for Wolsey's own moral laxity, and the fact that the governor of Charles V. performed a similar office.[323]
Repellent as was Wolsey's character in many respects, he was yet the greatest, as he was the last, of the ecclesiastical statesmen who have governed England. As a diplomatist, pure and simple, he has never been surpassed, and as an administrator he has had few equals. "He is," says Giustinian, "very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability and indefatigable. He alone transacts the same business as that which occupies all the magistracies, offices, and councils of Venice, both civil and criminal; and all State affairs are managed by him, let their nature be what it may. He is thoughtful, and has the reputation of being extremely just; he favours the people exceedingly, and especially the poor, hearing their suits and seeking to despatch them instantly. He also makes the lawyers plead gratis for all poor suitors. He is in very great repute, seven times more so than if he were Pope."[324] His sympathy with the poor was no idle sentiment, and his commission of 1517, and decree against enclosures in the following year, were the only steps taken in Henry's reign to mitigate that curse of the agricultural population.
The Evil May Day riots of 1517 alone disturbed the peace of Wolsey's internal administration; and they were due merely to anti-foreign prejudice, and to the idea that strangers within the gates monopolised the commerce of England and diverted its profits to their own advantage. "Never," wrote Wolsey to a bishop at Rome in 1518, "was the kingdom in greater harmony and repose than now; such is the effect of my administration of justice and equity."[325] To Henry his strain was less arrogant. "And for your realm," he says, "our Lord be thanked, it was never in such peace nor tranquillity; for all this summer I have had neither of riot, felony, nor forcible entry, but that your laws be in every place indifferently ministered without leaning of any manner. Albeit, there hath lately been a fray betwixt Pygot, your Serjeant, and Sir Andrew Windsor's servants for the seisin of a ward, whereto they both pretend titles; in the which one man was slain. I trust the next term to learn them the law of the Star Chamber that they shall ware how from henceforth they shall redress their matter with their hands. They be both learned in the temporal law, and I doubt not good example shall ensue to see them learn the new law of the Star Chamber, which, God willing, they shall have indifferently administered to them, according to their deserts."[326]
Wolsey's "new law of the Star Chamber," his stern enforcement of the statutes against livery and maintenance, and his spasmodic attempt to redress the evils of enclosures,[327] probably contributed as much as his arrogance and ostentation to the ill-favour in which he stood with the nobility and landed gentry. From the beginning there were frequent rumours of plots to depose him, and his enemies abroad often talked of the universal hatred which he inspired in England. The classes which benefited by his justice complained bitterly of the impositions required to support his spirited foreign policy. Clerics who regarded him as a bulwark on the one hand against heresy, and, on the other, against the extreme view which Henry held from the first of his authority over the Church, were alienated by the despotism Wolsey wielded by means of his legatine powers. Even the mild and aged Warham felt his lash, and was threatened with Præmunire for having wounded Wolsey's legatine authority by calling a council at Lambeth.[328] Peers, spiritual no less than temporal, regarded him as "the great tyrant". Parliament he feared and distrusted; he had urged the speedy dissolution of that of 1515; only one sat during the fourteen years of his supremacy, and with that the Cardinal quarrelled. He possessed no hold over the nation, but only over the King, in whom alone he put his trust.