Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

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.