CHAP II Wolsey much misrepresented THE CHAPTER II WOLSEY'S INITIATION OF THE REFORMATION [A.D. 1514-1529] HE first effective impulse was given to the Reformation as an orderly ecclesiastical work by the great Cardinal Wolsey, whose services to the Church of England have been almost ignored by the ordinary historians, and whose acts were grossly misrepresented by most writers who had to deal with the events of his age, until the publication of the State Papers revealed their true character. We now know that it was Wolsey who broke up the medieval system and laid the broad foundations on which later statesmanship built up our national independence and greatness. And we know also that nearly every class of measures undertaken for the purpose of establishing the independence and re-settlement of the Church of England was initiated by this great statesman. When he fell, England received so great a shock in her domestic and foreign relations, that she did not recover from it until the time of Queen Elizabeth and it may be reasonably thought that if the Reformation had been fully developed under his continued guidance, many of the miserable divisions which ensued would have been avoided by his astute statesmanship, and the barbarities of each CHAP side checked by his humane policy. It is not necessary, for the purposes of this work, to give many particulars respecting the personal history of this unrivalled statesman. When it has been said that he was born at Ipswich, in March 1471, that he was the son of a poor gentleman,1 that he became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Master of Magdalen School, and Bursar of his College, nothing further need be told respecting his life previous to the year 1509. II rise to power When Henry VIII. came to the throne, he found Wolsey's Wolsey (who had already gained the good opinion of Henry VII. as a promising public man) Dean of Lincoln, he being then about forty years of age, and the King only eighteen. Six months afterwards Wolsey is heard of as Almoner, and his preferments henceforth all came from the Crown, until they culminated in the Archbishopric of York [1514], and the Chancellorship, to the latter of which offices he was appointed on December 22, 1515. He had been made Cardinal by the Pope about three months before the latter date; and long before that honour was conferred on him, he had risen from a confidential position, which was practically that of a Secretary of State, to the still higher position which is known in modern times as that of Prime Minister. The latter was his position from about the year 1513 to the year 1529. A shrewd observer who was ambassador from the 1 The tradition that he was the son of a butcher originated in a saying of Charles V., when told of the Duke of Buckingham's execution, that the best "Buck" in England had been slain by a "butcher's dog." But the Em- II CHAP republic of Venice while Wolsey was at the height of his power, has left us a description of him which enables us to form a good idea as to what kind of man he appeared to a foreigner well acquainted with the English court, and with the affairs of England :— Venetian ambassador's him "He is about forty-six years old, very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability, and indefatigable. He opinion of alone transacts the same business as that which occupies all the magistrates, offices and councils of Venice, both civil and criminal; and all state affairs likewise are managed by him, let their nature be what it may. He is pensive, and has the reputation of being extremely just. He favours the people exceedingly, and especially the poor, hearing their suits and seeking to despatch them instantly. He also makes the lawyers plead gratis for all paupers. He is in very great repute, seven times more so than if he were Pope. He is the person who rules both the King and the entire kingdom. On the ambassador's first arrival in England, he used to say, 'His Majesty will do so and so;' subsequently by degrees he went on forgetting himself, and commenced saying, 'We shall do so and so. At this present he has reached such a pitch that he says 'I shall do so and so.' This was written some years after Henry VIII. had become king, but it doubless applies equally to the earlier part of his reign, for Cavendish, Wolsey's own confidential attendant during all the time of his 2 Giustiniani's Despatches, ii. 314. Wolsey's policy, courage, and integrity, eventually won for him the respect and confidence of European sovereigns to an extent which has only found a parallel in the case of the Duke of Wellington. The Popes, Charles V., Francis I., the Doge of Venice, and Margaret of Savoy, followed his advice whenever he chose to give it. Charles V. even wrote letters at his dictation, and re-wrote them when not copied closely enough from Wolsey's minutes. [Brewer's Calend. St. Pap., iii. 1788, 1808. See also 1737, 1798, 1829, 1906, 2999, &c., &c.] That proud princess, Margaret of Savoy, actually wished Wolsey to call her mother because of the love she bore him, hoping, as she quaintly adds, that she shall one day be mother of her father, "that is, of our holy father." [Ibid, 1804.] II of Govern his hands high station and power, says that he rose to favour CHAP with the young king, and consequently to great eminence, almost immediately after the accession of the latter. "Such was his policy and wit, and so he Business brought all things to pass that who was now in high ment favour but Mr. Almoner? and who ruled all under thrown on the King but Mr. Almoner? . . . no man was of that estimation of the King as he was for his wisdom and other witty qualities." Thus when there was a great disinclination for public business on the part of all the great men of the time, it is not surprising that the principal weight of it should soon fall on the shoulders of one who was beginning to display a special competency for bearing the burden, and a ready willingness to accept the responsibility. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, were both of them glad to get rid of these burdens and responsibilities, and soon threw them nearly all, not by compulsion (as has been sometimes said) but of their own free choice, into Wolsey's hands. There had seldom been a greater position for an ambitious subject to occupy, and seldom so great a man to occupy it. nient to him The influence which Wolsey had with the king, was, however, far from being so paramount as has been commonly represented. In his early life, Conve Henry naturally disliked to burden himself with the the king details of government, and among all his servants he to trust found none whom he could so thoroughly trust for relieving him from them and carrying on the work of government successfully as Wolsey. At a later period, the king's personal feelings and interests were so much involved in the public business of the 3 Cavendish, in Wordsworth's Eccl. Biog., i. 335. CHAP country that he was as eager to take part in the II labours of state management as he had previously been anxious to avoid them. Wolsey had been in full power for ten years before the king was thirty years of age, and it was not until then that the latter began to take any special interest in public affairs : but from that time, and during the remaining eight years of Wolsey's government, Henry was gradually becoming more and more competent to take a full share in the practical oversight of the state; and as his abilities thus developed, so he became less willing to occupy the position of a pageant-king. Wolsey's influence with him in the preceding period had been that which naturally belonged to his position as the great working viceroy of the kingdom, and Henry seems to have had a feeling of private friendship towards him as well as of official dependency. But at thirty, the king's character began to undergo that great moral deterioration which makes so striking a contrast between his promising youth and his maturer years. As the force of his character strengthened, the baser elements of it developed themselves, and thus his strong will became associated with an intense and most selfish jealousy for his personal interests. From First signs this time we find evidence that his reliance upon of opposi Wolsey was much less confiding than formerly : part of the while Wolsey himself often shows signs of doubt as tion on the king to the king's support and co-operation. There are instances on record of Henry's vigorous opposition to the plans of his prime minister: and the state 4 The Cardinal's actual position may be best understood by imagining that of a modern prime min ister acting constitutionally for the Sovereign, but almost entirely free from the control of Parliament. |