Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

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.