The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (5 page)

…
sorsery

Or such other loselry

As wychecraft or charmyng
;
³¹

As for one of the most important non-literary sources for Wolsey’s early years as leading royal councillor, the reports of Sebastian Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador – and incidentally one of the shrewdest of all Wolsey-watchers – they are disappointing on this subject; but then, arriving in England in April 1515, when Wolsey’s influence with the king was obvious to everybody, Giustinian can be excused for seeing it as already a fact of English political life.
³²

It is Polydore Vergil who produced the first full account of the Machiavellian young cleric twisting the tail not only of an even younger monarch but of all that
monarch’s councillors, and in the process knifing in the back the person who had, in his account, done most to promote his career, the bishop of Winchester, Richard Fox.
³³
And in developing his account, Vergil presents a political scenario for the first years of Henry
VIII
’s reign which has very much centre stage the rivalry between Fox and Thomas Howard earl of Surrey for the heart and mind of the new king. Both these men had been of great importance in the previous reign. Fox had come over with Henry Tudor in 1485, was immediately appointed royal secretary, and then in 1487 keeper of the privy seal, at the same time obtaining his first bishopric, that of Exeter.
³⁴
Others followed quickly: Bath and Wells in 1492, Durham in 1494, and Winchester, the wealthiest see in England, in 1501. Though none was held
in commendam
, as in Wolsey’s case, these promotions are evidence of Henry
VII
’s confidence in him. He never seems, however, to have quite succeeded to the pre-eminent position that Cardinal Morton maintained in that king’s affairs until his death in September 1500; nor, for instance, did he succeed Morton as archbishop of Canterbury. Nevertheless, an area in which Fox always seems to have played a particularly important role was in the conduct of foreign affairs.
³⁵
He was chief English negotiator for the Treaty of Etaples with France in 1492, and for the Magnus Intercursus, an important commercial treaty with the Low Countries, in 1496. He was also much involved in the protracted negotiations with Scotland which had culminated in the marriage of Henry’s eldest daughter, Margaret, to James
IV
in 1503, and in the equally protracted negotiations which had led to Catherine of Aragon’s marriage, first to Prince Arthur in 1501, and second to Prince Henry in June 1509, by which time the prince had become Henry
VIII
.

Along with his father, the first Howard duke of Norfolk, the earl of Surrey had had the misfortune to choose the losing side in 1485.
³⁶
The father had paid for the mistake with his life on the field of Bosworth. The son was attainted, but four years later was restored to his earldom, and sent north as lieutenant-general of the Scottish marches under Prince Arthur. This in effect made him the king’s leading representative in the area. As such he had put down the Yorkshire rising of 1489, and in the autumn of 1496 had successfully resisted a Scottish invasion. In 1501 he had been appointed lord treasurer, and by this time had also recovered much of the Howard property lost at the attainder; and for the rest it was mostly a question of waiting for the relevant people to die.
³⁷
Thus, long before Henry
VII
’s death, though still without his dukedom, Surrey had re-established himself as a leading magnate and royal councillor. This meant he had had to work alongside Richard Fox, and there is no evidence from Henry
VII
’s reign that they had not worked well together.
³⁸
Nevertheless, according to Vergil, the new reign saw them fighting for supremacy, and in that fight, again according to Vergil, Wolsey saw his opportunity.

Vergil states that Fox, realizing that he could not counter the Howard influence alone, picked on Wolsey as an effective ally, took every opportunity to promote him in the eyes of the new king, and, to cut a long story short, succeeded only too well. More even than Cavendish, Vergil describes the complete seduction of the young Henry by a Wolsey prepared to turn his own house into ‘a temple of all pleasures’, the better to distract the king from affairs of state. And in that temple Wolsey set about convincing the king ‘that the governing of the kingdom was safer in the hands of one than of several, and that it was right for it to be committed to someone other than Henry himself until such time as he had reached maturity – and thus he put Wolsey in charge of affairs’. However, Fox was then to find, along with all Wolsey’s old friends, that his friendship was no longer valued. Vergil does not in fact state that Wolsey engineered Fox’s resignation in May 1516, or indeed Archbishop Warham’s as lord chancellor in the previous December – though this has not prevented subsequent historians from suggesting it
³⁹
– but he comes fairly close to doing so. According to him, Wolsey had by this time already become ‘so proud that he considered himself the peer of kings’, so that by his arrogance and ambition he had ‘raised against himself the hatred of the whole people and, in his hostility towards nobles and common folk, procured their great irritation at his vainglory’. At the beginning, admittedly, Wolsey’s rule may have had ‘a shadowy appearance of justice’ but ‘because it was only a shadow’ this quickly disappeared, ‘Wolsey conducting all business at his own pleasure … It was certainly as a result of this that several leading councillors … withdrew gradually from court. Canterbury and Winchester were among the first to leave.’
⁴⁰

Vergil’s message is clear. Fox had been hoist by his own petard, the petard in question being his own protégé, Thomas Wolsey. Is it right? A lot depends on the answer, much more than merely an account of the early years of Henry
VIII
’s reign – though Vergil’s happens to be the only coherent interpretation of those years. What it has done is provide subsequent historians with a framework which has an upstart Wolsey dominating if not a weak, at least a youthful and inexperienced king to the exclusion of the rest of the political nation, until by the end of the 1520s king and political nation had had enough, and Wolsey was thrown out. Obviously, if Vergil got the early scenario wrong, then the rest of the framework is seriously undermined. If he got it right, then most of what follows here is wrong! It is, therefore, important to look at the matter in some detail. Did the rivalry between Fox and Surrey dominate the first years of Henry’s reign? What was Wolsey’s relationship to Fox? How did it affect his relationship with Henry? And, perhaps most important of all, is it possible to decide which view of Henry is correct, because, as has already been indicated, on that depends an interpretation of Wolsey’s career? It is with these sorts of questions, arising out of Polydore Vergil’s ‘conspiracy theory’, that the rest of this chapter will concern itself.

One of the problems in trying to arrive at some answers is the severe shortage of evidence for the early years of Henry’s reign. To take first the question of Fox’s
rivalry with Surrey, there are only a handful of documents that throw any light on the matter, and over half of these are rather generalized references to Fox being in a position of great influence.
⁴¹
This leaves only two documents of any significance – and it has to be admitted that on first reading they may appear to confirm Vergil’s account. The first in chronological order is a letter of Lord Darcy to Fox in about August 1509.
⁴²
In it he reported back London gossip brought north by merchants to the effect that

the Lord Privy Seal [Fox] seeing of his own craft and policy he cannot bring himself to rule the king’s grace and put out of favour the earl of Surrey, the earl of Shrewsbury, the bishop of Durham, Mr Marney, Mr Brandon and Lord Darcy, now he will prove another way, which is to bring in and bolster himself to rule all with the duke of Buckingham and the earl of Northumberland. And doubtless, fast they curse and speak evil of my Lord Privy Seal
.

What this letter does not confirm are some of the later elaborations of the Vergil thesis, for there is no hint that Fox was at the head of a clerical ‘peace’ party, and Surrey an aristocratic ‘war’ party
⁴³
– and of course there is no mention of Wolsey, but then it is very early. Still, as regards the central issue, the rivalry between Fox and Surrey, it could hardly be more convincing – until one reads on. ‘My Lord,’ Darcy continued, ‘good it is to have a good eye, though much be but sayings. As I hear, I will warn you, my lord of Durham and Mr Marney whilst I live. And further show this as you think seems good to the king’s grace, or otherwise’.
⁴⁴
The picture immediately alters. If, as alleged, Darcy had been part of the Surrey faction, he would hardly have written to Fox about it, nor would he have wanted to inform him of the names of other members of it. Moreover, he would not have suggested that Fox inform the king of such gossip if he seriously believed that Fox was involved in a battle for the heart and mind of the young Henry with his rival Surrey. Indeed, it was precisely because he did not believe it to be true that he thought Fox, and perhaps the king, should know about it, for all such idle gossip was dangerous.

Darcy’s comment that ‘much be but sayings’ provides a suitable warning as regards any discussion of faction in the early Tudor period, and his letter serves as a reminder, if one is ever needed, that gossip is not always true! What is required is to submit such evidence to various tests: where has it come from and why? And is it probable? Why, for instance, should two men who seem to have got on perfectly well under Henry
VII
have suddenly fallen out? The answer is that supposedly they each saw themselves as a ‘king-maker’, but in fact nothing that is known about either of them suggests that this is at all likely. Fox appears to have been the very model of a loyal and most conscientious servant of the Tudor state. Admittedly, Surrey had made the mistake of fighting for Richard
III
at Bosworth, but given how much his family owed the Yorkists, this may not have been held so much against him for it suggested a capacity for loyalty that could be harnessed to the new regime, which seems to have been what happened. His initial mistake certainly inclined the
earl to extreme caution and a determination not to repeat it – and attempting to be a ‘king-maker’ had to be a risky business. Nor does Surrey really look to have been a man anxious to head a ‘war faction’. His experience was almost entirely bound up with the defence of England’s boundary with Scotland,
⁴⁵
which is why, when war with France came in 1513, he was left behind, thereby being given the opportunity of becoming the great victor of Flodden. But, if defence of the northern boundary was your major concern, the last thing you would have wanted is a war with Scotland’s traditional ally, France, and thus one suspects that as regards foreign policy as well Surrey would have been all caution.

Much more likely candidates for a ‘war faction’ are the young companions with whom Henry surrounded himself on becoming king. Inevitably it was something of a magic circle, the brightest and the best of England’s youth, or at least of those who were closely connected with the Tudor regime. On the hunting ground, in the tiltyard, at the elaborate court entertainments and other royal diversions such as gambling, the likes of Edward and Henry Guildford, Charles Brandon the future duke of Suffolk, Thomas Knyvet, but above all Edward Howard, a younger son of the earl of Surrey, were constantly at Henry’s side. These men probably did see war as an opportunity to win fame and fortune, and certainly when the fighting broke out they were immediately in the thick of it; so much so that by April 1513 Knyvet and Howard were both dead, killed in glorious, if rather futile, naval engagements with the French.
⁴⁶

But if this group constituted a ‘war faction’, it almost certainly lacked Surrey as its head, despite the fact that he was the father of its most prominent member. Unfitted by temperament and policy for such a role, he also seems not to have got on with his son. The evidence for this is provided by Charles Brandon, himself a leading member of this magic circle, and Edward Howard’s closest friend and executor.
⁴⁷
In October 1514 Brandon made it clear to Wolsey that he viewed the Howard family with the gravest suspicion.
⁴⁸
To have been such a friend of one member of a family and so suspicious of all the others would have been difficult if that friend had been especially close to his family, and the fact that Edward made none of his relatives an executor also points to an uneasy relationship.
⁴⁹
He was also temperamentally different from his father, and indeed from his eldest brother Thomas, the future 3rd duke of Norfolk.
⁵⁰
What, however, Brandon’s comments do suggest is a certain confidence that Wolsey would be sympathetic to critical comments about the Howards. And there is a much earlier letter of Wolsey’s in which he himself was critical, and to none other than Richard Fox – and this letter provides the second piece of evidence directly relating to rivalry between Fox and Surrey, and the only one to give any real indication as to where Wolsey stood.