Cardinal Wolsey

by M. Creighton

As he was thus ailing there arrived Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, with a guard of twenty-four soldiers; he had received a commission from the king to bring Wolsey as a prisoner to the Tower. It would seem from this that Agostino's confessions had been skilfully raised to fan the royal wrath, and Henry gave this sign that he was prepared to treat his former minister as a traitor. The Earl of Shrewsbury did his best to treat the coming of Kingston as a trivial incident, and sent Cavendish to break the news gently to his master. Cavendish gave the message as he was bidden. "Forsooth my lord of Shrewsbury, perceiving by your often communication that ye were always desirous to come before the king's Majesty, and now as your assured friend, hath travailed so with his letters unto the king, that the king hath sent for you by Master Kingston and twenty-four of the guard to conduct you to his Highness." Wolsey was not deceived. "Master Kingston," he repeated, and smote his thigh. When Cavendish made a further attempt to cheer him he cut him short by saying, "I perceive more than you can imagine or can know. Experience hath taught me." When Kingston was introduced and knelt before him, Wolsey said, "I pray you stand up, and leave your kneeling unto a very wretch replete with misery, not worthy to be esteemed, but for a vile object utterly cast away, without desert; and therefore, good Master Kingston, stand up, or I will myself kneel down by you." After some talk Wolsey thanked Kingston for his kind words. "Assure yourself that if I were as able and as lusty as I have been but of late, I would not fail to ride with you in post. But all these comfortable words which ye have spoken be but for a purpose to bring me to a fool's paradise; I know what is provided for me."

With a mind thus agitated the sufferings of the body increased. When Wolsey took his journey next day all regarded him as a dying man. The soldiers of the guard, "as soon as they espied their old master in such a lamentable estate, lamented him with weeping eyes. Whom my lord took by the hands, and divers times by the way as he rode he would talk with them, sometime with one and sometime with another." That night he reached Hardwick Hall, in Notts, a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the next day rode to Nottingham. On the way from thence to Leicester he was so feeble that he could scarcely sit upon his mule. It was dark on Saturday night when he reached Leicester Abbey, where the abbot greeted him by torchlight. "Father Abbot," he said, "I am come hither to leave my bones among you." Kingston had to carry him upstairs to his bed, which he never quitted again.

All Sunday his malady increased, and on Monday morning Cavendish, as he watched his face, thought him drawing fast to his end. "He perceiving my shadow upon the wall by his bedside asked who was there. 'Sir, I am here,' quoth I. 'What is it of the clock?' said he. 'Forsooth, sir,' said I, 'it is past eight of the clock in the morning.'—'Eight of the clock, eight of the clock,' said he, rehearsing divers times. 'Nay, nay, it cannot be eight of the clock; for by eight of the clock ye shall lose your master, for my time draweth near that I must depart out of this world.'"

But the dying man was not to depart without a reminder of the pitiless character of the master whom he had served so well. When Wolsey left Cawood the Earl of Northumberland remained behind to examine his papers; amongst them he found a record that Wolsey had in his possession £1500, but he reported to the king that he could not find the money. Such was Henry's keenness as his own minister of finance that he could not await Wolsey's arrival in London, but wrote off instantly to Kingston, bidding him examine Wolsey how he came by the money, and discover where it was. In obedience to the royal command Kingston reluctantly visited the dying man, who told him that he had borrowed the money of divers friends and dependants whom he did not wish to see defrauded; the money was in the keeping of an honest man, and he asked for a little time before disclosing where it was.

In the night he often swooned, but rallied in the morning and asked for food. Some chicken broth was brought him, but he remembered that it was a fast-day, being St. Andrew's Eve. "What though it be," said his confessor, "ye be excused by reason of your sickness."—"Yea," said he, "what though? I will eat no more." After this he made his confession, and about seven in the morning Kingston entered to ask further about the money. But seeing how ill Wolsey was, Kingston tried to comfort him. "Well, well," said Wolsey, "I see the matter against me how it is framed, but if I had served God so diligently as I have done the king, he would not have given me over in my gray hairs. Howbeit, this is the just reward that I must receive for my worldly diligence and pains that I had to do him service, only to satisfy his vain pleasure, not regarding my godly duty. Wherefore, I pray you, with all my heart, to have me most humbly commended unto his royal Majesty, beseeching him in my behalf to call to his most gracious remembrance all matters proceeding between him and me from the beginning of the world unto this day, and the progress of the same, and most chiefly in the weighty matter now depending (i.e. the divorce); then shall his conscience declare whether I have offended him or no. He is sure a prince of a royal courage, and hath a princely heart; and rather than he will either miss or want any part of his will or appetite he will put the loss of one-half of his realm in danger. For I assure you I have often kneeled before him in his privy chamber on my knees the space of an hour or two, to persuade him from his will and appetite; but I could never bring to pass to dissuade him therefrom. Therefore, Master Kingston, if it chance hereafter you to be one of his Privy Council, as for your wisdom and other qualities ye are meet to be, I warn you to be well advised and assured what matter ye put in his head, for ye shall never put it out again." He went on to bid him warn the king against the spread of the pernicious sect of Lutherans as harmful to the royal authority and destructive of the order of the realm. Then as his tongue failed him he gasped out, "Master Kingston, farewell. I can no more, but wish all things to have good success. My time draweth on fast. I may not tarry with you. And forget not, I pray you, what I have said and charged you withal, for when I am dead ye shall peradventure remember my words much better." His breath failed him and his eyes grew fixed. The abbot came to administer supreme unction, and as the clock struck eight Wolsey passed away. "And calling to our remembrance his words the day before, how he said that at eight of the clock we should lose our master, one of us looked upon another supposing that he prophesied of his departure."

Kingston sent a message to tell the king of Wolsey's death, and hastened the preparations for his funeral. His body was placed in a coffin of boards, vested in his archiepiscopal robes, with his mitre, cross, and ring. It lay in state till five in the afternoon, when it was carried into the church and was placed in the Lady Chapel, where it was watched all night. At four in the morning mass was sung, and by six the grave had closed over the remains of Wolsey.

It would be consoling to think that a pang of genuine sorrow was felt by Henry VIII. when he heard of the death of Wolsey; but unfortunately there is no ground for thinking so, and all that is on record shows us that Henry's chief care still was to get hold of the £1500, which was all that remained of Wolsey's fortune. Cavendish was taken by Kingston to Hampton Court, where he was summoned to the king, who was engaged in archery in the park. As Cavendish stood against a tree sadly musing Henry suddenly came behind him and slapped him on the back, saying, "I will make an end of my game, and then I will talk with you." Soon he finished his game and went into the garden, but kept Cavendish waiting for some time outside. The interview lasted more than an hour, "during which time he examined me of divers matters concerning my lord, wishing that liever than twenty thousand pounds that he had lived. Then he asked me for the fifteen hundred pounds which Master Kingston moved to my lord before his death." Cavendish told him what he knew about it, and said that it was deposited with a certain priest. "Well, then," said the king, "let me alone, and keep this gear secret between yourself and me, and let no man be privy thereof; for if I hear more of it, then I know by whom it is come to knowledge. Three may keep counsel if two be away; and if I thought that my cap knew my counsel I would cast it into the fire and burn it." Henry spoke freely, and these words disclose the secret of his strength. Every politician has a method of his own by which he hides his real character and assumes a personality which is best fitted for his designs. Henry VIII. beneath an air of frankness and geniality concealed a jealous and watchful temperament, full of crafty designs for immediate gain, resolute, avaricious, and profoundly self-seeking.

As we have been so much indebted to Cavendish for an account of Wolsey's private life, especially in his last days, it is worth while to follow Cavendish's fortunes. The king promised to take him into his own service, and to pay him his wages for the last year, amounting to £10. He bade him ask it of the Duke of Norfolk. As he left the king he met Kingston coming from the Council, whither Cavendish also was summoned. Kingston implored him to take heed what he said. The Council would examine him about Wolsey's last words; "and if you tell them the truth you shall undo yourself." He had denied that he heard anything, and warned Cavendish to do the same. So Cavendish answered the Duke of Norfolk that he was so busied in waiting on Wolsey that he paid little heed to what he said. "He spoke many idle words, as men in such extremities do, the which I cannot now remember." He referred them to Kingston's more accurate memory. It is a dismal picture of Court life which is here presented to us. On every side was intrigue, suspicion, and deceit. Wolsey's last words were consigned to oblivion; for the frankness that was begotten of a retrospect in one who had nothing more to hope or fear was dangerous in a place whence truth was banished.

When the Council was over Norfolk talked with Cavendish about his future. Cavendish had seen enough of public life, and had no heart to face its dangers. The figure of Wolsey rose before his eyes, and he preferred to carry away into solitude his memories of the vanity of man's ambition. His only request was for a cart and horse to carry away his own goods, which had been brought with Wolsey's to the Tower. The king was gracious, and allowed him to choose six cart-horses and a cart from Wolsey's stable. He gave him five marks for his expenses, paid him £10 for arrears of wages, and added £20 as a reward. "I received all these things accordingly, and then I returned into my country."

It says much for Wolsey that he chose as his personal attendant a man of the sweet, sensitive, retiring type of George Cavendish, though it was not till after his fall from power that he learned the value of such a friend. No less significant of the times is the profound impression which Wolsey's fate excited on the mind of Cavendish, who in the retirement of his own county of Suffolk lived with increasing sadness through the changes which befell England and destroyed many of the memories which were dearest to his heart. No one then cared to hear about Wolsey, nor was it safe to recall the thought of the great Cardinal of England to the minds of men who were busied in undoing his work. Not till the days of Mary did Cavendish gather together his notes and sketch the fortunes of one whose figure loomed forth from a distant past, mellowed by the mists of time, and hallowed by the pious resignation which was the only comfort that reflection could give to the helpless recluse. The calm of a poetic sadness is expressed in the pages of Cavendish's Memoir. Wolsey has become to him a type of the vanity of human endeavour, and points the moral of the superiority of a quiet life with God over the manifold activities of an aspiring ambition. But Cavendish did not live to see the time when such a sermon, preached on such a text, was likely to appeal to many hearers. His work remained in manuscript, of which copies circulated amongst a few. One such copy, it is clear, must have reached the hands of Shakespeare, who, with his usual quickness of perception, condensed as much as his public could understand into his portrait of Wolsey in the play of Henry VIII. When the Memoir was first printed in 1641 it was garbled for party purposes. The figure of Wolsey was long left to the portraiture of prejudice, and he was regarded only as the type of the arrogant ecclesiastic whom it was the great work of the Reformation to have rendered impossible in the future. Wolsey, the most patriotic of Englishmen, was branded as the minion of the Pope, and the upholder of a foreign despotism. When Fiddes, in 1724, attempted, on the strength of documents, to restore Wolsey to his due position amongst England's worthies, he was accused of Popery. Not till the mass of documents relating to the reign of Henry VIII. was published did it become possible for Dr. Brewer to show the significance of the schemes of the great cardinal, and to estimate his merits and his faults.