The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (130 page)

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LP
, iv, 4018, 4107, 4147, app.156; Hall, p.736.

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LP
, iv, 4310.

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LP
, iv, 4414.

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PRO SP l/4/5/fo.193 (
LP
, iv, 3663).

DURING 1528 AND THE FIRST HALF OF 1529 CLEMENT VII APPEARS TO HAVE
been willing to give Wolsey more or less anything that he asked for – except, that is, what he wanted above all else, his consent to Henry’s divorce from Catherine. Over twenty papal grants of one sort or another were made during this period. Many had to do with Wolsey’s two colleges at Oxford and at Ipswich; others concerned his translation as bishop from Durham to Winchester. All these might be considered personal concerns of Wolsey, though it was argued earlier that his colleges were very much part of his plans for reform.
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Definitely of public concern was a bull dated 12 May 1529 which made it easier to degrade those in holy orders who had committed serious crimes, so that they could be tried in the secular courts.
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The background and purpose of this measure has already been discussed,
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but it provides important evidence for that combination of persistence and political tact – in this case a determination to meet the criticisms of the Crown lawyers concerning the abuse of ‘benefit of clergy’ without offending too much the susceptibilities of the clergy themselves – already singled out as typical of Wolsey’s approach to reform of the Church. However, at the centre of this reform were four bulls intended to tackle two major areas much in need of attention – the size and composition of English dioceses and the multiplicity and general health of monastic institutions. And it was concern for the latter that had been one of the stated reasons for Wolsey’s original acquisition of legatine powers.

These two matters were closely connected, as a brief summary of the bulls concerning the creation of new dioceses makes clear. The first, dated 12 November 1528, empowered Wolsey to inquire into the expediency of suppressing certain monasteries in order that their buildings and revenues might be used to create new cathedrals and dioceses.
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The second, obtained the following May, gave him the executive powers to proceed. It is particularly unfortunate that many of the details of the bulls have not survived,
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as I believe they would have provided vital evidence of Wolsey’s serious commitment to the welfare of the English Church. All, however, is not lost, and the first thing to do is to see how much of his plans can be recovered.
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What is known is that they received a mixed reception at Rome. Clement did show some interest; at any rate, he asked a number of questions, including the most relevant, which was whether there was any need for new dioceses.
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But at least some of his cardinals and curial officials took a more partial view, fearing that in one way or another the proposals would be detrimental to both their honour and their pocket. There was more justification for their worries about Wolsey’s insistence on the deletion of a clause stating that it was necessary to obtain the agreement of all those with a rightful interest in any of the institutions concerned.
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Moreover, curial suspicion of Wolsey’s intentions was not surprising. At the very least, he was out to secure the best possible financial bargain – which meant from the Curia’s point of view the worst – and to be given the freest possible hand.

By and large Wolsey seems to have got what he was after. As regards the offending clause, he explained that he wanted it deleted, not so that he could ride rough-shod over other people’s interests, but in order to prevent factious and malicious opposition to his well intentioned plans.
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This the Curia accepted and the clause, though not removed, was so qualified as to become meaningless.
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No limits were imposed on the number of monastic institutions that could be affected by the scheme, and none to the number of dioceses to be created. Indeed, there was no reference to numbers at all, even though the cardinals had expressed worries on this point.
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The organization of the new dioceses was placed entirely in Wolsey’s hands. The major decision facing him was whether their presiding cathedrals should be left as essentially monastic institutions, as so many English cathedrals, such as Benedictine Winchester and Augustinian Carlisle, already were. Alternatively, he could go for the compromise of allowing both secular and religious canons, as was already the case at Bath and Wells and at Coventry, or make them entirely secular on the model of Lincoln and London. The obvious advantage of retaining some monastic or ‘religious’ features is that any changes would meet with less opposition, but clearly Wolsey was prepared to be ruthless. He was permitted to appoint the heads of the existing monastic institutions as the new bishops, but he did not have to; indeed, in the first instance he was specifically empowered to appoint as bishop anyone Henry chose, only subsequent appointments having to be made in the normal way, by papal provision.

What was involved here was almost certainly not the
de facto
rights of English kings to choose their own bishops, for this had not been challenged for over a century, but finance. If bishops were not ‘provided’, no annates, or more correctly ‘common services’, would be due to the pope and Curia. On the face of it, then, it looks as if Wolsey had secured an important financial concession, which no doubt would have also helped him to sell the idea politically at home. In fact, the opposition of the cardinals was successful, to the extent that at one stage in the negotiations for the bulls Wolsey had felt compelled to promise that nothing that he intended would result in financial loss to the papacy.
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In the final bull, it was laid
down that the apostolic camera was to be informed of the annual revenues of the new dioceses as soon as possible so that the necessary calculations could be made, and the figure proved to be owing was to be paid within six months of the new bishop being appointed, or everything to do with the creation of the new diocese would be declared of ‘no force or moment’.
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None of these technicalities, nor the arguments they resulted in, are of great moment in themselves.
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But they help to make the point that the reforms Wolsey was contemplating constituted a minefield which was liable to erupt at any moment. A lot of people, and not just greedy curial officials and cardinals – and there were, it should be said, altruistic reasons for not wanting papal revenues to fall – were likely to have strong objections to the changes that Wolsey was proposing. Existing English bishops would lose part of their revenues – not, it is true, from land, because the dioceses were to be funded out of former monastic land, but from the loss of large areas over which they had had jurisdiction and had therefore drawn fees of various kinds. And there was more than money involved. One of the strongest traditions of the English episcopacy had to do with the intense loyalty of its members to the dioceses over which they presided. Anselm’s
cri de coeur
at the end of the eleventh century, that he ‘would not dare to appear before the judgment seat of God with the rights of [his] see diminished’ expresses an attitude that was very much alive in early sixteenth-century England.
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Whether this was ‘well’ depends on one’s point of view, but it was certainly central to the serious quarrels discussed earlier between both Morton and Warham as archbishops of Canterbury and their suffragans.

So for one reason or another, some opposition could be expected from the existing bishops. The position of the monastic institutions to be affected was more complicated. If they were to close down altogether, then serious objections, perhaps even physical resistance, might be forthcoming. When in the summer of 1525 the Premonstratensian monastery of Bayham in Sussex was suppressed in order that its revenues might form part of the endowments of Cardinal College, some of the monks staged a forcible reoccupation of their former home. Admittedly it only lasted for a week, but if it could happen at a comparatively small house such as Bayham, what might not result if more powerful houses were to come under the axe? Moreover, a feature of ‘the riot of Bayham’ was the close involvement of local laymen, in particular the head of a leading local family, that controversial figure, Lord Bergavenny.
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This may serve as a reminder of the close connection between religious houses and local inhabitants at every level. Apart from any spiritual pull that they may have exercised, the religious houses provided employment and were a source of loans and gifts of charity. Many leading families had a long tradition of involvement with a particular house: perhaps an ancestor had founded it, or at any rate there was a family tradition to be buried there. Families like the Nevilles at Bayham would have expected to act as protectors to the house they were associated with, so that anyone with designs on a monastic house was not just taking on a
small, isolated group of unworldly individuals, but a whole nexus of vested interests which might include some of the most powerful in the land. And it is worth recalling that the most serious rebellion that the Tudors ever faced, the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536-7, had a lot to do with the suppression of monasteries.

What Wolsey was proposing to do was fraught with difficulty, both politically and legally. A modern parallel would be the public inquiries set up in response to government schemes for building major roads or airports, at which every conceivable kind of objection is raised, almost all of them partial. And in the end, whatever the modifications or concessions made as a result, for the scheme to be implemented some of the objections have to be ignored or overridden. Faced with this kind of situation, Wolsey would have had no illusions about the difficulties. Hence his concern to exclude the clause in the bull which insisted on the agreement of all those with a rightful interest – a clause which in effect would have prevented any changes taking place. Although it is not known what constitutions he intended for the new cathedrals, by allowing for the possibility that they might retain a monastic character he was in a position not only to threaten but also to bribe. It was one thing for a monastery to be suppressed, but quite another for it to be turned into a cathedral presided over by the former abbot as bishop with the monks as canons.

It may be felt that this interpretation of Wolsey’s negotiations with the Curia and of the resulting bulls has been much too favourable to him. One could just as easily cite these same things as evidence of the megalomaniacal Wolsey determined to trample upon other people’s rights. Powerful figures attract such conflicting opinions that probably no amount of evidence can resolve them because value judgements are so much involved. For some people any degree of arbitrariness is unacceptable, but in doing so they preclude almost any achievement. Most are prepared to put up with some, and reserve most concern for the ends in view, which in this case brings us back to the question that Clement himself raised, whether or not there was any need for the major reorganization of diocesan boundaries that Wolsey was proposing.

The answer can only be guess-work. None of the surviving evidence throws any light on the matter. Indeed, there appears to be no pre-history to Wolsey’s plans: no previous discussions in convocation or any other clerical assembly, and no reference by anyone to the need for such an increase. This is both frustrating and surprising. Many English bishoprics were large, those of York and Lincoln especially so.
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The larger the diocese, the more difficult it was for the bishop to make a personal impact and to be, as Colet wanted, ‘living unto us’.
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One who seems to have shared Colet’s views was John Fisher. In a dedicatory letter to his fellow bishop, Richard Fox, he wrote that he did not envy his colleagues their wealthier sees – and Fox was the occupant of the wealthiest. Fisher was quite happy with his poor see of Rochester because it permitted him to exercise a close personal supervision; and since he stayed at Rochester for so long he probably meant what he wrote.
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What he never seems to have done was to draw any general conclusions from this and advocate the
kind of diocesan reform that Wolsey envisaged. That Longland, bishop of Lincoln, did not do so is less of a surprise, for any reform would have resulted in just that diminution in the wealth and privileges of his diocese that bishops saw it as their duty to resist. Nevertheless, it was almost certainly the very size of his huge diocese of Lincoln, with its 1,736 parishes and 111 religious houses, extending from the Thames to the Humber, that forced him to limit his personal role in diocesan life. At any rate, he seems to have confined his personal interventions to the religious houses in his diocese and to the cathedral itself. Yet Longland took his episcopal office seriously, and he must have had some inkling that he could have been a much better bishop if his diocese had been smaller, as indeed in the 1540s it was to become.
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