The Life of Cardinal Wolsey

by George Cavendish

Authorities in his favour,

The learned editor of the ‘Ecclesiastical Biography’ has mentioned several names as supporters of Sir William’s claim. And indeed, if names might carry the day, Kennet and Collins, Birch and Morant, are in themselves a host. But who is there accustomed to close and minute investigation, that has not discovered for himself, of how little moment is simple authority in any question? It is, especially, of little weight in historical and antiquarian discussion. The most laborious may sometimes overlook evidence which is afterwards accidentally discovered to another of far inferior pretensions: the most accurate may mistake: the most faithful may be bribed into inattention by supposititious facts, which give a roundness and compactness to what, without them, forms but an imperfect narration. The case before us may possibly come under the latter head. Take away the attendance upon Wolsey, and we have several years unaccounted for in the life of Sir William Cavendish; and lose what the mind perceives to be a step by which a private gentleman, as he was, might advance himself into the councils of princes, and the possession of important offices of state. There is in this what might lay a general biographer, who was a very Argus, asleep. But these authorities, it must also be |all modern.| observed, are all moderns: they lived a century and a half after both the Cavendishes had been gathered to their fathers; and earlier biographers, who have made mention of this founder of two ducal houses, have said nothing of any attendance upon the Cardinal, never ascribed the flourishing state of his fortunes to any recommendation of him to the king from his old master, nor taken any notice of what is so much to his honour, that he adhered faithfully to Wolsey in his fall, and produced this beautiful tribute to his memory. Negative evidence of this kind, it may be said, is of no great weight. It will be allowed, however, to be of some, when it is recollected who they are that have omitted these leading particulars in Sir William Cavendish’s history. They are no other than the author |Dugdale and the Duchess of Newcastle do not ascribe it to him.| of ‘The Baronage of England,’ and Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, who has given a laboured genealogy of the ancestors and kindred of her lord, a grandson of Sir William Cavendish, annexed to the very entertaining memoirs which she left of his life. The omissions of two such writers, living at the time when this work was first made public, and whose duty as well as inclination it would have been to have mentioned the fact, had it been so, will at least serve to weigh against the positive but unsupported testimonies of the abovementioned respectable writers, all of whom lived much too late to be supposed to have received any information by private tradition.

The original MS. said to be in the hands of the Pierrepoint family.

But the original manuscript was in the hands of the Pierrepoint family, and into that family Sir William Cavendish’s daughter was married. Possibly; but were it even so, it is obvious that this lays but a very insufficient foundation for believing that Sir William was the author. Why might it not have been given to Frances Cavendish by George Cavendish her uncle? But Doctor Kennet, upon whose authority this statement has been made, has not informed us by what criterion he was guided in assigning that priority to the Pierrepoint manuscript which this statement assumes. There are so many manuscripts of this work abroad, that it must, I presume, be exceedingly difficult to decide which has the best claim to be the author’s autograph, if indeed that autograph be in existence[15]. Scarcely any work of this magnitude, composed after the invention of printing, has been so often transcribed. There |Manuscripts;| is a copy in the cathedral library at York which once belonged to Archbishop Matthew; another very valuable one in the library of the College of Arms, presented to that learned society by Henry Duke of Norfolk; another in Mr. Douce’s collection; another in the public library at Cambridge; another in the Bodleian. There are two in Mr. Heber’s library; two at Lambeth; two in the British Museum[16]. |reason for their multiplication.| The reason of this multiplication of copies by the laborious process of transcription seems to have been this: the work was composed in the days of Queen Mary by a zealous catholic, but not committed to the press during her short reign. It contained a very favourable representation of the conduct of a man who was held in but little esteem in the days of her successor, and whom it was then almost treason to praise. The conduct of several persons was reflected on who were flourishing themselves, or in their immediate posterity, in the court of Queen Elizabeth: and it contained also the freest censures of the Reformation, and very strong remarks upon the conduct and character of Anne Boleyn, the Cardinal’s great enemy. It is probable that no printer could be found who had so little fear of the Star-Chamber before his eyes as to venture the publication of a work so obnoxious: while such was the gratification which all persons of taste and reading would find in it, from its fidelity, its curious minuteness, its lively details, and above all, from that unaffected air of sweet natural eloquence in which it is composed, that many among them must have been desirous of possessing it. Can we wonder then that so many copies should have been taken between the time when it was written and the year 1641, when it was first sent to the press: or that one of these copies should have found its way into the library of Henry Pierrepoint, Marquis of Dorchester, who was an author, and a man of some taste and learning[17]? It cannot surely be difficult to divine how it came into his possession, without supposing that it was brought into his family by Sir William’s daughter, his grandmother, Frances Cavendish.

Trifling as it appears, we have now had nearly all that has ever been alleged as rendering it |No evidence in his favour from the MSS.| probable that Sir William Cavendish was the author of this work. We have no evidence in his favour from any early catalogue of writers in English history: nor any testimony in inscription or title upon any of the manuscripts, except a modern one by Dr. Birch, upon one of the Museum copies. But in appropriating any literary composition to its author, that evidence is the most conclusive which is derived from the work itself. This is the kind of proof to which it is proposed to bring the claims of the two competitors. It is contended that there are passages in the work, and self-notices, which are absolutely inconsistent with the supposition that it was the production of the person to whom it has usually been ascribed. Let us attend to these.

Time when the work was written.

It will be of some importance to us to have clearly ascertained the period at which this work was composed. We have information sufficient for this purpose. At page 350[18] of Dr. Wordsworth’s impression, we read that the Cardinal “was sent twice on an embassage unto the Emperor Charles the Fifth that now reigneth, and father unto King Philip, now our soveraign lord.” Mary queen of England was married to Philip of Spain on the 25th of July, 1554. Again, at page 401, we hear of "Mr. Ratcliffe, who was sonne and heire to the Lord Fitzwalter, and nowe[19] Earle of Sussex." The Earl of Sussex of Queen Mary’s reign, who had been son and heir to a Lord Fitzwalter in the days of King Henry VIII., could be no other than Henry Radcliffe, the second earl of that name, who died on the 17th of February, 1557[20]. Without incurring any risk by following older authorities, when so much misconception is abroad, we may set down as fairly proved that the Life of Wolsey was composed about the middle of the reign of Queen Mary[21].

The author a neglected man.

Now we may collect that the author, whoever he was, thought himself a neglected man at the time of writing. He tells us that he engaged in the work to vindicate the memory of his master from “diverse sondrie surmises and imagined tales, made of his proceedings and doings,” which he himself had “perfectly knowen to be most untrue.” We cannot however but discover, that he was also stimulated by the desire of attracting attention to himself, the old and faithful domestic of a great man whose character was then beginning to retrieve itself in the eyes of an abused nation, and whose misfortunes had prevented him from advancing his servants in a manner accordant to his own wishes, and to the dignity of his service. He dwells with manifest complacency upon the words of commendation he received on different occasions from his master; and relates towards the conclusion how kindly he had been received by the king after the death of Wolsey, and what promises had been made to him both by Henry and the Duke of Norfolk, who yet suffered him to depart into his own country. But what shows most strikingly that he was an unsatisfied man, and thought that he had by no means had the reward due to his faithful services, is a remark he makes after having related the sudden elevation of Wolsey to the deanery of Lincoln. “Here,” says he, “may all men note the chaunces of fortune that followethe some whome she intendeth to promote, and to some her favor is cleane contrary, though they travaille never so much, with all the painfull diligence that they can devise or imagine: whereof for my part I have tasted of the experience.” p. 332[22].