Unconscious of the selfishness of his ally, Henry VIII. prepared for war in the winter of 1512. In these preparations the capacity of Thomas Wolsey first made itself felt, and the course of the war that followed placed Wolsey foremost in the confidence of the English king.
CHAPTER II
THE FRENCH ALLIANCE
1512-1515
Thomas Wolsey was born at Ipswich, probably in March 1471. He was the son of Robert Wolsey and Joan his wife. Contemporary slander, wishing to make his fortunes more remarkable or his presumption more intolerable, represented his father as a man of mean estate, a butcher by trade. However, Robert Wolsey's will shows that he was a man of good position, probably a grazier and wool merchant, with relatives who were also well-to-do. Thomas seems to have been the eldest of his family, and his father's desire was that he should enter the priesthood. He showed quickness in study; so much so that he went to Oxford at the early age of eleven, and became Bachelor of Arts when he was fifteen. His studies do not seem to have led him in the direction of the new learning; he was well versed in the theology of the schools, and is said to have been a devoted adherent to the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. But it was not by the life of a student or the principles of a philosopher that Wolsey rose to eminence. If he learned anything in his University career he learned a knowledge of men and of their motives.
In due course he became a Fellow of Magdalen, and master of the grammar school attached to the College. Soon afterwards, in 1498, he was bursar; and tradition has connected with him the building of the graceful tower which is one of the chief architectural ornaments of Oxford. Unfortunately the tower was finished in the year in which Wolsey became bursar, and all that he can have done was the prosaic duty of paying the bills for its erection. He continued his work of schoolmaster till in 1500 the Marquis of Dorset, whose sons Wolsey had taught, gave him the living of Lymington in Somerset.
So Wolsey abandoned academic life for the quietness of a country living, which, however, did not prove to be entirely free from troubles. For some reason which is not clear, a neighbouring squire, Sir Amyas Paulet, used his power as justice of peace to set Wolsey in the stocks, an affront which Wolsey did not forgive, but in the days of his power punished by confining Sir Amyas to his London house, where he lived for some years in disgrace. If this story be true, it is certainly not to Wolsey's discredit, who can have been moved by nothing but a sense of injustice in thus reviving the remembrance of his own past history. Moreover, Wolsey's character certainly did not suffer at the time, as in 1501 he was made chaplain to Dean, Archbishop of Canterbury. After Dean's death in 1503, his capacity for business was so far established that he was employed by Sir Richard Nanfan, Deputy-Lieutenant of Calais, to help him in the duties of a post which advancing years made somewhat onerous. When Nanfan, a few years afterwards, retired from public life, he recommended Wolsey to the king, and Wolsey entered the royal service as chaplain probably in 1506.
At Court Wolsey allied himself with Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Lord Privy Seal, and at first seems to have acted as one of his secretaries.
Fox was a well-trained and careful official, who had been in Henry VII.'s employment all through his reign. Cold and cautious by nature, Henry VII. had to pick his way through many difficulties, and took no man unreservedly into his confidence. He was his own minister, and chose to be served by men of distinguished position who were content to do his bidding faithfully, and were free from personal ambition. For this purpose ecclesiastics were best adapted, and Henry VII. did much to secularise the Church by throwing the weight of public business into the hands of men like Morton and Fox, whom he rewarded by the highest ecclesiastical offices. In such a school Wolsey was trained as a statesman. He regarded it as natural that the King should choose his ministers for their readiness to serve his purposes, and should reward them by ecclesiastical preferments. The State might gain by such a plan, but the Church undoubtedly lost; and in following the career of Wolsey there is little to remind us of the ecclesiastic, however much we may admire the statesman.
It was well for England that Wolsey was trained in the traditions of the policy of Henry VII., which he never forgot. Henry VII. aimed, in the first place, at securing his throne and restoring quiet and order in his kingdom by developing trade and commerce. For this purpose he strove to turn his foreign neighbours into allies without adventuring into any military enterprises. He did not aspire to make England great, but he tried to make her secure and prosperous. Wolsey gained so much insight into the means which he employed for that end that he never forgot their utility; and though he tried to pass beyond the aim of Henry VII., he preferred to extend rather than abandon the means which Henry VII. had carefully devised. Nor was Wolsey merely a spectator of Henry VII.'s diplomacy; he was soon employed as one of its agents. In the spring of 1508 he was sent to Scotland to keep King James IV. true to his alliance with England, and explain misunderstandings that had arisen. In the autumn of the same year he was sent to Mechlin to win over the powerful minister of Maximilian, the Bishop of Gurk, to a project of marriage between Henry VII. and Maximilian's daughter Margaret, by which Henry hoped that he would get control of the Low Countries. Here Wolsey learned his first practical lesson of diplomatic methods, and uttered the complaint, which in later years he gave so much reason to others to pour forth, "There is here so much inconstancy, mutability, and little regard of promises and causes, that in their appointments there is little trust or surety; for things surely determined to be done one day are changed and altered the next."
Nothing came of Wolsey's embassy, nor can we be sure that Henry VII. was much in earnest in his marriage schemes. However, he died in April next year, and was succeeded by a son whose matrimonial hesitations were destined to give Wolsey more trouble than those of his father. Before his death he laid the foundation of Wolsey's clerical fortunes by bestowing on him the rich deanery of Lincoln.