House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty (9 page)

Wolsey now became wary of Norfolk’s machinations at court. While on a diplomatic mission to France during the summer of 1527, the Cardinal asked one of his allies, Sir William Fitzwilliam, now Treasurer of the Household, to discover who Henry was keeping company with during Wolsey’s prolonged absence abroad. Worryingly, he was informed that the king ‘usually supped in his privy chamber with . . . the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquis of Exeter and the Lord of Rochford’.
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All were far from being his friends. Wolsey hurried back to London in September, writing to Henry from Compiègne that he was continuing his journey ‘towards your highness with such diligence, as my old and [cracked] body may endure for there was never lover more desirous of the sight of his lady, than I am of your most noble and royal person’.
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Behind his sly sycophancy beat a heart of steel. On his return, he arranged for Norfolk’s immediate departure to East Anglia to oversee a series of menial administrative tasks - among them the examination of grain production and North Sea trade - and ensured that the third duke’s pleas to return to court were always refused. Even when Norfolk fell ill in early 1528, he was denied access to his London doctors.
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Probably based on what her sister told her of her lover’s character and proclivities, Anne adamantly refused to become Henry’s mistress and played a clever psychological game with the king’s emotions. She quickly realised that the way to capturing Henry’s heart was simple: the more unattainable she became, the more he wanted her. How much, in her feminine guile, she was counselled by her family, particularly her uncle Norfolk, must remain a matter of conjecture. He and Boleyn were greedy for the preferment, power and property that would be granted by a happy, contented sovereign to the Howard clan and its allies. However, both made a show of righteous disapproval over the relationship, if only for the sake of appearances.

The king’s desire for Anne drove him to pen a series of love letters in French - a measure of how much he had fallen for her, as he made no secret of finding writing, in normal circumstances, ‘somewhat tedious and painful’.

When Anne adamantly refused to answer his notes, or come to court, Henry became quite distraught:

Then desperate:

Pathetic, lovesick Henry! In another billet-doux he complained that the short time since parting from her seemed like ‘a whole fortnight’, and that his letter was shorter than usual ‘because of pain in my head’. He ended his cloying missive: ‘Wishing myself specially an evening in my sweetheart’s arms, whose pretty dubbys [breasts] I trust shortly to cusse [kiss].’
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In the late summer of 1527, the king, urged on by Norfolk and the Boleyns, decided that decisive action to end his unwanted marriage was now essential. Ignoring Wolsey’s advice, he sent the experienced diplomat William Knight to Rome to achieve three very secret objectives. Firstly, he was to seek papal annulment of the marriage to Catherine and, secondly, absolution of the king’s mortal sin (according to Leviticus) in living with her as husband and wife for eighteen years. The third objective was both controversial and damning: Henry was implicitly admitting his adultery and his desire to marry his mistress. In this there was an ironic obstacle. Knight had to acquire papal dispensation for the king to marry Anne Boleyn - ‘a woman related to himself in the first degree of affinity’, as the sister of his former bedmate in illicit wedlock, Mary. No wonder the contents of the letter that Knight was to deliver to Clement VII were kept confidential ‘which no man doth know but they . . . will never disclose it to any man living for any craft the Cardinal or any other can find’.
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After much diplomatic activity, the desperately prevaricating Vatican could only limply propose a legatine commission to examine the validity of Henry’s current marriage. It was all too frustrating.

Henry’s chief minister was tasked to gather evidence to support the king’s case for an annulment. Wolsey despatched officials to test the fading and feeble memory of the eighty-year-old Bishop of Winchester, Richard Fox, on whether Catherine and Arthur’s marriage had ever been consummated - or if, indeed, Henry had been coerced by his father into wedding his brother’s widow. Another group badgered more ageing veterans of Henry VII ’s court. Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, widow of the second duke, was closely questioned at Thetford Priory, and Mary, the wife of Henry Bourchier, second Earl of Essex, at Stanstead, Essex. They both produced depositions about the intimate secrets of Catherine’s first marital bed.
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The Cardinal promised to deliver an annulment on a golden plate to his master but Vatican officialdom continued to grind exceeding slow. Eventually, the legatine court met in the great hall of the Dominican monastery at Blackfriars in London, presided over by Wolsey and the gouty Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio. Beginning on 31 May 1529, Henry’s lawyers triumphantly produced reams of prurient evidence that Arthur had ‘carnal conversation’ with his blushing bride, but a shamed and humiliated Catherine, in a
coup de théâtre
, closely attended by four supportive bishops, eloquently appealed for her case to be heard by a higher jurisdiction.

Some weeks later, the case, still unresolved, was referred to Rome and the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the
Curia
. An incredulous Henry heard Campeggio’s announcement of an adjournment on 23 July from the gallery above, and left the precincts for the nearby Bridewell Palace, his face black with anger. Suffolk, down in the hall, slammed his fist on a table and cried out: ‘By the Mass! Now I see that the old saying is true! It was never merry in England while we had cardinals amongst us!’

Norfolk and Suffolk, both jealous of Wolsey’s power and wealth, now sought ways and means to topple him. His failure to fulfil his pledge of success to Henry provided them with a weapon with which to cut him down. His departure from the corridors of power would also allow them to achieve another of their objectives: the reform of England’s huge clerical estate.
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For a few weeks more, the Lord Chancellor continued to shuffle moodily through his piles of paper at the centre of Henry’s government, as significantly, perhaps, the king enjoyed himself killing deer with Norfolk and Suffolk in the fresh air of Oxfordshire.

But Eustace Chapuys, the new Spanish ambassador in London,
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perceptively reported at the end of August that the Cardinal’s power was ebbing. And there were more straws of disaster for the minister blowing in the wind: foreign envoys were being denied access to him and increasing volumes of state business were now decided by Norfolk, Suffolk, and Rochford, Anne Boleyn’s father.
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At the end of August, Henry’s new secretary Stephen Gardiner - formerly the Cardinal’s own assistant - wrote to him, refusing to allow him to wait upon the king at Woodstock, and instructing him to put down on paper the issues he wanted to discuss.
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Just over two weeks after this rebuff, Wolsey managed to arrive at court, which had moved on to Grafton in Northamptonshire, bringing with him his brother papal legate, the duplicitous Campeggio, who wished to offer up a formal farewell to the king on his departure for Rome. It was a poor pretext for a visit: when Campeggio limped in, he must have felt as welcome as the sweating sickness itself in Henry’s presence chamber. The minister talked vigorously with his monarch for several hours before being peremptorily dismissed to spend the night at nearby Easton Neston, while his enemies busied themselves ‘stirring the coals’ of conspiracy at court.

The following day, the malice against Wolsey was palpable. Henry left Grafton with Anne Boleyn on a hunting trip she had hastily planned and, before riding off, roughly told the two cardinals there was no time for further talk.

He also instructed them to leave.
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Wolsey was a broken man, his face devoid of animation.
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Back in London, he told the French ambassador Jean du Bellay that ‘he did not desire . . . power [and that] he was ready to give up everything, [down] to his shirt, and live in a hermitage, if the king would not keep him in his displeasure’.
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But it was too late for any grand gestures, or uncharacteristic humility.

On 17 October, Henry, now ensconced at Windsor Castle, sent an exultant Norfolk and Suffolk to Wolsey’s opulent London home, York Place, to insist on his immediate surrender of the Great Seal of England, held by him as Lord Chancellor. The Cardinal refused, having demanded to see their warrant. They had come without it and, despite their angry blustering, they were forced to return empty-handed to Windsor to fetch the royal authorisation. This only postponed the denouement of the drama. The two dukes were back the next day with the correct paperwork and told Wolsey he had to retire to his manor at Esher, in Surrey. His goods, huge wealth and possessions were confiscated by the crown.

He finally handed over the Seal to the triumphant dukes at six o’clock in the evening in the gallery of his house
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and later departed by boat down the Thames into exile, smarting from ‘the sharp sword of the king’s [displeasure] that had so penetrated his heart’. The French ambassador suspected a greater conspiracy: that ‘these lords intend, after he is dead or ruined, to impeach the state of the church and take all their goods’.

In the days following Wolsey’s downfall, there was inevitably much speculation about who would replace him as the king’s minister. But, shrewdly, Henry was in no hurry to create another great panjandrum. Du Bellay reported on 22 October that Norfolk had been appointed President of the king’s Council, with Suffolk deputising for him in his absence. ‘It is not yet known who [will] have the [Great] Seal. I expect that priests will never have it again and that in Parliament, they will have terrible alarms,’ he added.
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The successful conspirators in the Cardinal’s disgrace then turned on each other. Norfolk, always jealous of another’s status and influence, objected strongly to the proposed appointment of Suffolk as Lord Chancellor, and, three days later, after much indecorous haggling, a reluctant Sir Thomas More finally agreed to take on this unwanted, onerous and perilous duty. The Great Seal was delivered to him by the king in his chamber at Greenwich Palace and the next day, 26 October, he took the oath of fidelity in Westminster Hall. Norfolk and Suffolk escorted him to his seat in the Court of Chancery and by ‘special command’ of the king, Norfolk declared:

He added that, for all this, he personally had ‘great cause to rejoice’.
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Small wonder that Norfolk was happy. His comments had a double meaning. His presence there, and his public annointment of the new Lord Chancellor, were a clear signal that the old aristocracy had won back their power and clout in England. Indeed, in the days to come, Norfolk worked diligently to ensure that happened, building a caucus of ‘old money’ nobles around him to exercise authority on behalf of the crown. Even responsibility for the custody and education of the king’s bastard, Henry Fitzroy, was transferred from Wolsey to Norfolk.

The duke, in his new role, received Chapuys with ‘great distinction’, and laughingly told him: ‘How glad the Emperor [Charles V] will be to hear of the fall of the Cardinal and his loss of office!’ The ambassador reported Norfolk ‘highly pleased’ with himself as he politely repeated his family’s long-standing goodwill towards the Spanish crown:

Henry, however, still had not got his annulment nor Anne Boleyn’s hand in marriage - and she was becoming impatient. She suddenly turned on Norfolk, complaining that she was ‘wasting her time and youth to no purpose’ and he frequently suffered the unpleasant effects of the full force of his niece’s fractious, petulant temper. Later, walking and talking with More in the new Lord Chancellor’s Thames-side garden at Chelsea, Norfolk warned him, in his ‘rough but friendly manner’, of the great personal dangers posed by Henry’s love for Anne Boleyn: