Henry VIII.

by A. F. Pollard

The conference at Calais was in fact a monument of perfidy worthy of Ferdinand the Catholic. The plan was Wolsey's, but Henry had expressed full approval. As early as July the King was full of his secret design for destroying the navy of France, though he did not propose to proceed with the enterprise till Wolsey had completed the arrangements with Charles.[406] The subterfuge about Charles refusing his powers and the Cardinal's journey to Bruges had been arranged between Henry, Wolsey and Charles before Wolsey left England. The object of that visit, so far from being to facilitate an agreement, was to conclude an offensive and defensive alliance against one of the two parties between whom Wolsey was pretending to mediate. "Henry agrees," wrote Charles's ambassador on 6th July, "with Wolsey's plan that he should be sent to Calais under colour of hearing the grievances of both parties: and when he cannot arrange them, he should withdraw to the Emperor to treat of the matters aforesaid".[407] The treaty was concluded at Bruges on 25th August[408] before he returned to Calais; the Emperor promised Wolsey the Papacy;[409] the details of a joint invasion were settled. Charles was to marry Mary; and the Pope was to dispense the two from the disability of their kinship, and from engagements with others which both had contracted. The Cardinal might be profuse in his protestations of friendship for France, of devotion to peace, and of his determination to do justice to the parties before him. But all his painted words could not long conceal the fact that behind the mask of the judge were hidden the features of a conspirator. It was an unpleasant time for Fitzwilliam, the English ambassador at the French Court. The King's sister, Marguerite de Valois, taxed Fitzwilliam with Wolsey's proceedings, hinting that deceit was being practised on Francis. The ambassador grew hot, vowed Henry was not a dissembler, and that he would prove it on any gentleman who dared to maintain that he was.[410] But he knew nothing of Wolsey's intrigues; nor was the Cardinal, to whom Fitzwilliam denounced the insinuation, likely to blush, though he knew that the charge was true.

Wolsey returned from Calais at the end of November, having failed to establish the truce to which the negotiations had latterly been in appearance directed. But the French half-yearly pensions were paid, and England had the winter in which to prepare for war. No attempt had been made to examine impartially the mutual charges of aggression urged by the litigants, though a determination of that point could alone justify England's intervention. The dispute was complicated enough. If, as Charles contended, the Treaty of London guaranteed the status quo, Francis, by invading Navarre, was undoubtedly the offender. But the French King pleaded the Treaty of Noyon, by which Charles had bound himself to do justice to the exiled King of Navarre, to marry the French King's daughter, and to pay tribute for Naples. That treaty was not abrogated by the one concluded in London, yet Charles had fulfilled none of his promises. Moreover, the Emperor himself had, long before the invasion of Navarre, been planning a war with France, and negotiating with Leo to expel the French from Milan, and to destroy the predominant French faction in Genoa.[411] His ministers were making little secret of Charles's warlike intentions, when the Spanish revolt placed irresistible temptation in Francis's way, and provoked that attack on Navarre, which enabled Charles to plead, with some colour, that he was not the aggressor. This was the ground alleged by Henry for siding with Charles, but it was not his real reason for going to war. Nearly a year before Navarre was invaded, he had discussed the rupture of Mary's engagement with the Dauphin and the transference of her hand to the Emperor.

The real motives of England's policy do not appear on the surface. "The aim of the King of England," said Clement VII. in 1524,[412] "is as incomprehensible as the causes by which he is moved are futile. He may, perhaps, wish to revenge himself for the slights he has received from the King of France and from the Scots, or to punish the King of France for his disparaging language; or, seduced by the flattery of the Emperor, he may have nothing else in view than to help the Emperor; or he may, perhaps, really wish to preserve peace in Italy, and therefore declares himself an enemy of any one who disturbs it. It is even not impossible that the King of England expects to be rewarded by the Emperor after the victory, and hopes, perhaps, to get Normandy." Clement three years before, when Cardinal de Medici, had admitted that he knew little of English politics;[413] and his ignorance may explain his inability to give a more satisfactory reason for Henry's conduct than these tentative and far-fetched suggestions. But after the publication of Henry's State papers, it is not easy to arrive at any more definite conclusion. The only motive Wolsey alleges, besides the ex post facto excuses of Francis's conduct, is the recovery of Henry's rights to the crown of France; and if this were the real object, it reduces both King and Cardinal to the level of political charlatans. To conquer France was a madcap scheme, when Henry himself was admitting the impossibility of raising 30,000 foot or 10,000 horse, without hired contingents from Charles's domains;[414] when, according to Giustinian, it would have been hard to levy 100 men-at-arms or 1000 light cavalry in the whole island;[415] when the only respectable military force was the archers, already an obsolete arm. Invading hosts could never be victualled for more than three months, or stand a winter campaign; English troops were ploughmen by profession and soldiers only by chance; Henry VII.'s treasure was exhausted, and efforts to raise money for fitful and futile inroads nearly produced a revolt. Henry VIII. himself was writing that to provide for these inroads would prevent him keeping an army in Ireland; and Wolsey was declaring that for the same reason English interests in Scotland must take care of themselves, that border warfare must be confined to the strictest defensive, and that a "cheap" deputy must be found for Ireland, who would rule it, like Kildare, without English aid.[416] It is usual to lay the folly of the pretence to the crown of France at Henry's door. But it is a curious fact that when Wolsey was gone, and Henry was his own prime minister, this spirited foreign policy took a very subordinate place, and Henry turned his attention to the cultivation of his own garden instead of seeking to annex his neighbour's. It is possible that he was better employed in wasting his people's blood and treasure in the futile devastation of France, than in placing his heel on the Church and sending Fisher and More to the scaffold; but his attempts to reduce Ireland to order, and to unite England and Scotland, violent though his methods may have been, were at least more sane than the quest for the crown of France, or even for the possession of Normandy.[417]

Yet if these were not Wolsey's aims, what were his motives? The essential thing for England was the maintenance of a fairly even balance between Francis and Charles; and if Wolsey thought that would best be secured by throwing the whole of England's weight into the Emperor's scale, he must have strangely misread the political situation. He could not foresee, it may be said, the French debacle. If so, it was from no lack of omens. Even supposing he was ignorant, or unable to estimate the effects, of the moral corruption of Francis, the peculations of his mother Louise of Savoy, the hatred of the war, universal among the French lower classes, there were definite warnings from more careful observers.[418] As early as 1517 there were bitter complaints in France of the gabelle and other taxes, and a Cordelier denounced the French King as worse than Nero.[419] In 1519 an anonymous Frenchman wrote that Francis had destroyed his own people, emptied his kingdom of money, and that the Emperor or some other would soon have a cheap bargain of the kingdom, for he was more unsteady on his throne than people thought.[420] Even the treason of Bourbon, which contributed so much to the French King's fall, was rumoured three years before it occurred, and in 1520 he was known to be "playing the malcontent".[421] At the Field of Cloth of Gold Henry is said to have told Francis that, had he a subject like Bourbon, he would not long leave his head on his shoulders.[422] All these details were reported to the English Government and placed among English archives; and, indeed, at the English Court the general anticipation, justified by the event, was that Charles would carry the day.

No possible advantage could accrue to England from such a destruction of the balance of power; her position as mediator was only tenable so long as neither Francis nor Charles had the complete mastery. War on the Emperor was, no doubt, out of the question, but that was no reason for war on France. Prudence counselled England to make herself strong, to develop her resources, and to hold her strength in reserve, while the two rivals weakened each other by war. She would then be in a far better position to make her voice heard in the settlement, and would probably have been able to extract from it all the benefits she could with reason or justice demand. So obvious was the advantage of this policy that for some time acute French statesmen refused to credit Wolsey with any other. They said, reported an English envoy to the Cardinal, "that your grace would make your profit with them and the Emperor both, and proceed between them so that they might continue in war, and that the one destroy the other, and the King's highness may remain and be their arbiter and superior".[423] If it is urged that Henry was bent on the war, and that Wolsey must satisfy the King or forfeit his power, even the latter would have been the better alternative. His fall would have been less complete and more honourable than it actually was. Wolsey's failure to follow this course suggests that, by involving Henry in dazzling schemes of a foreign conquest, he was seeking to divert his attention from urgent matters at home; that he had seen a vision of impending ruin; and that his actions were the frantic efforts of a man to turn a steed, over which he has imperfect control, from the gulf he sees yawning ahead. The only other explanation is that Wolsey sacrificed England's interests in the hope of securing from Charles the gift of the papal tiara.[424]

However that may be, it was not for Clement VII. to deride England's conduct. The keen-sighted Pace had remarked in 1521 that, in the event of Charles's victory, the Pope would have to look to his affairs in time.[425] The Emperor's triumph was, indeed, as fatal to the Papacy as it was to Wolsey. Yet Clement VII., on whom the full force of the blow was to fall, had, as Cardinal de Medici, been one of the chief promoters of the war. In August, 1521, the Venetian, Contarini, reports Charles as saying that Leo rejected both the peace and the truce speciously urged by Wolsey, and adds, on his own account, that he believes it the truth.[426] In 1522 Francis asserted that Cardinal de Medici "was the cause of all this war";[427] and in 1527 Clement VII. sought to curry favour with Charles by declaring that as Cardinal de Medici he had in 1521 caused Leo X. to side against France.[428] In 1525 Charles declared that he had been mainly induced to enter on the war by the persuasions of Leo,[429] over whom his cousin, the Cardinal, then wielded supreme influence. So complete was his sway over Leo, that, on Leo's death, a cardinal in the conclave remarked that they wanted a new Pope, not one who had already been Pope for years; and the gibe turned the scale against the future Clement VII. Medici both, Leo and the Cardinal regarded the Papacy mainly as a means for family aggrandisement. In 1518 Leo had fulminated against Francis Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, as "the son of iniquity and child of perdition,"[430] because he desired to bestow the duchy on his nephew Lorenzo. In the family interest he was withholding Modena and Reggio from Alfonso d'Este, and casting envious eyes on Ferrara. In March, 1521, the French marched to seize some Milanese exiles, who were harboured at Reggio.[431] Leo took the opportunity to form an alliance with Charles for the expulsion of Francis from Italy. It was signed at Worms on the 8th of May, the day on which Luther was outlawed;[432] and a war broke out in Italy, the effects of which were little foreseen by its principal authors. A veritable Nemesis attended this policy conceived in perfidy and greed. The battle of Pavia made Charles more nearly dictator of Europe than any ruler has since been, except Napoleon Bonaparte. It led to the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement VII. by Charles's troops. The dependence of the Pope on the Emperor made it impossible for Clement to grant Henry's petition for divorce, and his failure to obtain the divorce precipitated Wolsey's fall.

Leo, meanwhile, had gone to his account on the night of 1st-2nd December, 1521, singing "Nunc dimittis" for the expulsion of the French from Milan;[433] and amid the clangour of war the cardinals met to choose his successor. Their spirit belied their holy profession. "All here," wrote Manuel, Charles's representative, "is founded on avarice and lies;"[434] and again "there cannot be so much hatred and so many devils in hell as among these cardinals". "The Papacy is in great decay" echoed the English envoy Clerk, "the cardinals brawl and scold; their malicious, unfaithful and uncharitable demeanour against each other increases every day."[435] Feeling between the French and imperial factions ran high, and the only question was whether an adherent of Francis or Charles would secure election. Francis had promised Wolsey fourteen French votes; but after the conference of Calais he would have been forgiving indeed had he wielded his influence on behalf of the English candidate. Wolsey built more upon the promise of Charles at Bruges;[436] but, if he really hoped for Charles's assistance, his sagacity was greatly to seek. The Emperor at no time made any effort on Wolsey's behalf; he did him the justice to think that, were Wolsey elected, he would be devoted more to English than to imperial interests; and he preferred a Pope who would be undividedly imperialist at heart. Pace was sent to join Clerk at Rome in urging Wolsey's suit, and they did their best; but English influence at the Court of Rome was infinitesimal. In spite of Campeggio's flattering assurance that Wolsey's name appeared in every scrutiny, and that sometimes he had eight or nine votes, and Clerk's statement that he had nine at one time, twelve at another, and nineteen at a third,[437] Wolsey's name only appears in one of the eleven scrutinies, and then he received but seven out of eighty-one votes.[438] The election was long and keenly contested. The conclave commenced on the 28th of December, and it was not till the 9th of January, 1522, that the cardinals, conscious of each other's defects, agreed to elect an absentee, about whom they knew little. Their choice fell on Adrian, Cardinal of Tortosa; and it is significant of the extent of Charles's influence, that the new Pope had been his tutor, and was proposed as a candidate by the imperial ambassador on the day that the conclave opened.[439]

Neither the expulsion of the French from Milan, nor the election of Charles's tutor as Pope, opened Wolsey's eyes to the danger of further increasing the Emperor's power.[440] He seems rather to have thrown himself into the not very chivalrous design of completing the ruin of the weaker side, and picking up what he could from the spoils. During the winter of 1521-22 he was busily preparing for war, while endeavouring to delay the actual breach till his plans were complete. Francis, convinced of England's hostile intentions, let Albany loose upon Scotland and refused to pay the pensions to Henry and Wolsey. They made these grievances the excuse for a war on which they had long been determined. In March Henry announced that he had taken upon himself the protection of the Netherlands during Charles's impending visit to Spain. Francis asserted that this was a plain declaration of war, and seized the English wine-ships at Bordeaux. But he was determined not to take the formal offensive, and, in May, Clarencieux herald proceeded to France to bid him defiance.[441] In the following month Charles passed through England on his way to the south, and fresh treaties were signed for the invasion of France, for the marriage of Mary and for the extirpation of heresy. At Windsor[442] Wolsey constituted his legatine court to bind the contracting parties by oaths enforced by ecclesiastical censures. He arrogated to himself a function usually reserved for the Pope, and undertook to arbitrate between Charles and Henry if disputes arose about the observance of their engagements. But he obviously found difficulty in raising either money or men; and one of the suggestions at Windsor was that a "dissembled peace" or a two years' truce should be made with France, to give England time for more preparations for war.

Nothing came of this last nefarious suggestion. In July Surrey captured and burnt Morlaix;[443] but, as he wrote from on board the Mary Rose, Fitzwilliam's ships were without flesh or fish, and Surrey himself had only beer for twelve days. Want of victuals prevented further naval successes, and, in September, Surrey was sent into Artois, where the same lack of organisation was equally fatal. It did not, however, prevent him from burning farms and towns wherever he went; and his conduct evoked from the French commander a just rebuke of his "foul warfare".[444] Henry himself was responsible; for Wolsey wrote on his behalf urging the destruction of Dourlens and the adjacent towns.[445] If Henry really sought to make these territories his own, it was an odd method of winning the affections and developing the wealth of the subjects he hoped to acquire. Nothing was really accomplished except devastation in France. Even this useless warfare exhausted English energies, and left the Borders defenceless against one of the largest armies ever collected in Scotland. Wolsey and Henry were only saved, from what might have been a most serious invasion, by Dacre's dexterity and Albany's cowardice. Dacre, the warden of the marches, signed a truce without waiting for instructions, and before it expired the Scots army disbanded. Henry and Wolsey might reprimand Dacre for acting on his own responsibility, but they knew well enough that Dacre had done them magnificent service.[446]

The results of the war from the English point of view had as yet been contemptible, but great things were hoped for the following year. Bourbon, Constable of France, and the most powerful peer in the kingdom, intent on the betrayal of Francis, was negotiating with Henry and Charles the price of his treason.[447] The commons in France, worn to misery by the taxes of Francis and the ravages of his enemies, were eager for anything that might promise some alleviation of their lot. They would even, it appears, welcome a change of dynasty; everywhere, Henry was told, they cried "Vive le roi d'Angleterre!"[448] Never, said Wolsey, would there be a better opportunity for recovering the King's right to the French crown; and Henry exclaimed that he trusted to treat Francis as his father did Richard III. "I pray God," wrote Sir Thomas More to Wolsey, "if it be good for his grace and for this realm, that then it may prove so, and else in the stead thereof, I pray God send his grace an honourable and profitable peace."[449] He could scarcely go further in hinting his preference for peace to the fantastic design which now occupied the minds of his masters. Probably his opinion of the war was not far from that of old Bishop Fox, who declared: "I have determined, and, betwixt God and me, utterly renounced the meddling with worldly matters, specially concerning war or anything to it appertaining (whereof, for the many intolerable enormities that I have seen ensue by the said war in time past, I have no little remorse in my conscience), thinking that if I did continual penance for it all the days of my life, though I should live twenty years longer than I may do, I could not yet make sufficient recompense therefor. And now, my good lord, to be called to fortifications of towns and places of war, or to any matter concerning the war, being of the age of seventy years and above, and looking daily to die, the which if I did, being in any such meddling of the war, I think I should die in despair."[450] Protests like this and hints like More's were little likely to move the militant Cardinal, who hoped to see the final ruin of France in 1523. Bourbon was to raise the standard of revolt, Charles was to invade from Spain and Suffolk from Calais. In Italy French influence seemed irretrievably ruined. The Genoese revolution, planned before the war, was effected; and the persuasions of Pace and the threats of Charles at last detached Venice and Ferrara from the alliance of France.[451]