Cardinal Wolsey

by M. Creighton

At the same time he dealt an equal measure of rebuff to France. Before the conference at Guisnes Francis had done some work towards rebuilding the ruined walls of Ardres on the French frontier. After the conference the work was continued till England resented it as an unfriendly act. Francis was obliged to give way, and order the building to be stopped. Neither Francis nor Charles were allowed to presume on the complacency of England, nor use their alliance with her to further their own purposes.

The general aspect of affairs was so dubious that it was necessary for England to be prepared for any emergency, and first of all Scotland must be secured as far as possible. Since the fall of James IV. at Flodden Field, Scotland had been internally unquiet. Queen Margaret gave birth to a son a few months after her husband's death, and, to secure her position, took the unwise step of marrying the Earl of Angus. The enemies of Angus and the national party in Scotland joined together to demand that the Regency should be placed in firmer hands, and they summoned from France the Duke of Albany, a son of the second son of James III., who had been born in exile, and was French in all the traditions of his education. When Albany came to Scotland as Regent, Queen Margaret and Angus were so assailed that Margaret had to flee to England for refuge in 1515, leaving her son in Albany's care. She stayed in England till the middle of 1517, when she was allowed to return to Scotland on condition that she took no part in public affairs. About the same time Albany returned to France, somewhat weary of his Scottish charge. By his alliance with Francis Henry contrived that Albany should not return to Scotland; but he could not contrive to give his sister Margaret the political wisdom which was needed to draw England and Scotland nearer together. Margaret quarrelled with her husband Angus, and only added another element of discord to those which previously existed. The safest way for England to keep Scotland helpless was to encourage forays on the Border. The Warden of the Western Marches, Lord Dacre of Naworth, was admirably adapted to work with Wolsey for this purpose. Without breaking the formal peace which existed between the two nations, he developed a savage and systematic warfare, waged in the shape of Border raids, which was purposely meant to devastate the Scottish frontier, so as to prevent a serious invasion from the Scottish side. Still Henry VIII. was most desirous to keep Scotland separate from France; but the truce with Scotland expired in November 1520. Wolsey would gladly have turned the truce into a perpetual peace; but Scotland still clung to its French alliance, and all that Wolsey could achieve was a prolongation of the truce till 1522. He did so, however, with the air of one who would have preferred war; and Francis I. was induced to urge the Scots to sue for peace, and accept as a favour what England was only too glad to grant.

At the same time an event occurred in England which showed in an unmistakable way the determination of Henry to go his own way and allow no man to question it. In April 1520 the Duke of Buckingham, one of the wealthiest of the English nobles, was imprisoned on an accusation of high treason. In May he was brought to trial before his peers, was found guilty, and was executed. The charges against him were trivial if true; the witnesses were members of his household who bore him a grudge. But the king heard their testimony in his Council, and committed the duke to the Tower. None of the nobles of England dared differ from their imperious master. If the king thought fit that Buckingham should die, they would not run the risk of putting any obstacle in the way of the royal will. Trials for treason under Henry VIII. were mere formal acts of registration of a decision already formed.

The Duke of Buckingham, no doubt, was a weak and foolish man, and may have done and said many foolish things. He was in some sense justified in regarding himself as the nearest heir to the English throne if Henry left no children to succeed him. Henry had been married for many years, and as yet there was no surviving child save the Princess Mary. It was unwise to talk about the succession to the Crown after Henry's death; it was criminal to disturb the minds of Englishmen who had only so lately won the blessings of internal peace. If the Duke of Buckingham had really done so, he would not be undeserving of punishment; but the evidence against him was slight, and its source was suspicious. No doubt Buckingham was incautious, and made himself a mouthpiece of the discontent felt by the nobles at the French alliance and their own exclusion from affairs. No doubt he denounced Wolsey, who sent him a message that he might say what he liked against himself, but warned him to beware what he said against the king. It does not seem that Wolsey took any active part in the proceedings against the Duke, but he did not do anything to save him. The matter was the king's matter, and as such it was regarded by all. The nobles, who probably agreed with Buckingham's opinions, were unanimous in pronouncing his guilt; and the Duke of Norfolk, with tears streaming down his cheeks, condemned him to his doom. The mass of the people were indifferent to his fate, and were willing that the king should be sole judge of the precautions necessary for his safety, with which the internal peace and outward glory of England was entirely identified. Charles and Francis stood aghast at Henry's strong measures, and were surprised that he could do things in such a high-handed manner with impunity. If Henry intended to let the statesmen of Europe know that he was not to be diverted from his course by fear of causing disorders at home he thoroughly succeeded. The death of Buckingham was a warning that those who crossed the king's path and hoped to thwart his plans by petulant opposition were playing a game which would only end in their own ruin.

Free from any fear of opposition at home, Wolsey could now give his attention to his difficult task abroad. Charles V. had been crowned at Aachen, and talked of an expedition to Rome to receive the imperial crown. Francis I. was preparing for a campaign to assert the French claims on Milan. Meanwhile he wished to hamper Charles without openly breaking the peace. He stirred up a band of discontented barons to attack Luxembourg, and aided the claimant to the crown of Navarre to enter his inheritance. War seemed now inevitable; but Wolsey remained true to his principles, and urged upon both kings that they should submit their differences to the mediation of England. Charles was busied with the revolt of the Spanish towns, and was not unwilling to gain time. After a show of reluctance he submitted to the English proposals; but Francis, rejoicing in the prospect of success in Luxembourg and Navarre, refused on the ground that Charles was not in earnest. Still Francis was afraid of incurring England's hostility, and quailed before Wolsey's threat that if France refused mediation, England would be driven to side with the Emperor. In June 1521 he reluctantly assented to a conference to be held at Calais, over which Wolsey should preside, and decide between the pleas urged by representatives of the two hostile monarchs.

If Wolsey triumphed at having reached his goal, his triumph was of short duration. He might display himself as a mediator seeking to establish peace, but he knew that peace was well-nigh impossible. While the negotiations were in progress for the conference which was to resolve differences, events were tending to make war inevitable. When Wolsey began to broach his project, Francis was desirous of war and Charles was anxious to defer it; but Charles met with some success in obtaining promises of help from Germany in the Diet of Worms, and when that was over, he heard welcome news which reached him gradually from all sides. The revolt of the Spanish towns was dying away; the aggressors in Luxembourg had been repulsed; the troops of Spain had won signal successes in Navarre. His embarrassments were certainly disappearing on all sides. More than this, Pope Leo X., after long wavering, made up his mind to take a definite course. No doubt he was sorely vexed to find that the position which he hankered after was occupied by England; and if he were to step back into the politics of Europe, he could not defer a decision much longer. He had wavered between an alliance with France and Venice on the one side, or with the Emperor on the other. The movement of Luther in Germany had been one of the questions for settlement in the Diet of Worms, and Luther had been silenced for a time. Leo awoke in some degree to the gravity of the situation, and saw the advantage of making common cause with Charles, whose help in Germany was needful. Accordingly he made a secret treaty with the Emperor for mutual defence, and was anxious to draw England to the same side. The religious question was beginning to be of importance, and Francis I. was regarded as a favourer of heretics, whereas Henry VIII. was strictly orthodox, was busy in suppressing Lutheran opinions at home, and was preparing his book which should confute Luther for ever.

Another circumstance also greatly affected the attitude of Charles, the death of his minister Chièvres, who had been his tutor in his youth, and continued to exercise great influence over his actions. Charles was cold, reserved, and ill-adapted to make friends. It was natural that one whom he had trusted from his boyhood should sway his policy at the first. Chièvres was a Burgundian, whose life had been spent in saving Burgundy from French aggression, and the continuance of this watchful care was his chief object till the last. His first thought was for Burgundy, and to protect that he wished for peace with France and opposed an adventurous policy. On his death in May 1521 Charles V. entered on a new course of action. He felt himself for the first time his own master, and took his responsibilities upon himself. He seems to have admitted to himself that the advice of Chièvres had not always been wise, and he never allowed another minister to gain the influence Chièvres had possessed. He contented himself with officials who might each represent some part of his dominions, and whose advice he used in turns, but none of whom could claim to direct his policy as a whole.

Chief of these officials was a Savoyard, Mercurino della Gattinara, whose diplomatic skill was now of great service to the Emperor. Gattinara was a man devoted to his master's interests, and equal to Wolsey in resoluteness and pertinacity. Hitherto Wolsey had had the strongest will amongst the statesmen of Europe, and had reaped all the advantages of his strength. In Gattinara he met with an opponent who was in many ways his match. It is true that Gattinara had not Wolsey's genius, and was not capable of Wolsey's far-reaching schemes; but he had a keen eye to the interests of the moment, and could neither be baffled by finesse nor overborne by menaces. His was the hand that first checked Wolsey's victorious career.

So it was that through a combination of causes the prospects of peace suddenly darkened just as Wolsey was preparing to stand forward as the mediator of Europe. Doubtless he hoped, when first he put forward the project of a conference, that it might be the means of restoring his original design of 1518, a European peace under the guarantee of England. Since that had broken down he had been striving to maintain England's influence by separate alliances; he hoped in the conference to use this position in the interests of peace. But first of all the alliance with the Emperor must be made closer, and the Emperor showed signs of demanding that this closer alliance should be purchased by a breach with France. If war was inevitable, England had most to gain by an alliance with Charles, to whom its friendship could offer substantial advantages, as England, in case of war, could secure to Charles the means of communicating between the Netherlands and Spain, which would be cut off if France were hostile and the Channel were barred by English ships. Moreover the prospect of a marriage between Charles and the Princess Mary was naturally gratifying to Henry; while English industry would suffer from any breach of trading relations with the Netherlands, and the notion of war with France was still popular with the English.

So Wolsey started for Calais at the beginning of August with the intention of strengthening England's alliance with the Emperor, that thereby England's influence might be more powerful. Charles on the other hand was resolved on war; he did not wish for peace by England's mediation, but he wished to draw England definitely into the league between himself and the Pope against France. Wolsey knew that much depended on his own cleverness, and nerved himself for the greatest caution, as Francis was beginning to be suspicious of the preparations of Charles, and the attitude of affairs was not promising for a pacific mediation.