The King's Commoner: The rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey (The Tudor Saga Series Book 2)

by David Field

  Charles smiled. ‘I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.’

  Thomas assumed that he was expected to chuckle, so he did, before continuing in what he hoped was a suitably humble vein. ‘And English?’

  ‘I speak English to men of God who come to me with heartening news that my beloved aunt has persuaded her all-powerful husband to support me against the Valois threat to my various lands.’

  ‘I certainly bring that hope, Your Majesty. But you must be advised that there are those in the King’s Council who oppose such an alliance. My visit here is intended to reassure you that it is Henry’s dearest wish that in the fullness of time our nations will be united, and that your dear aunt will be welcoming your presence in the country of her marriage.’

  ‘And what of you, my lord Archbishop? What is your dearest wish?’

  ‘To see his Holiness the Pope no longer threatened by the heathen French who have granted sanctuary to those who preach heresies against our dear Mother Church.’

  ‘Are those views shared by others in high positions within your Church?’

  It was the perfect opening, and Thomas thanked God for this unique opportunity.

  ‘There is only one above me in the English Church, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury, who to my considerable regret and consternation still advises King Henry against armed intervention in Italy, where of course you have lands in Naples, Sicily and Sardinia that also require protection.’

  ‘Is there some way in which I could assist you to rise above this man of Canterbury, in order to have a louder voice in the King’s Council?’

  It was like taking bread from a blind beggar, and Thomas used his other favourite facial expression — the ‘veil of humility’ as he called it — in order to suppress his rising exaltation at the way in which the conversation was heading. ‘The only person who could override Canterbury would be a Papal Cardinal, but at present there are none such in England.’

  Charles smiled triumphantly. ‘I believe we understand each other at last, my Lord Archbishop. In return for bringing Henry and his soldiers to my side, you wish his Holiness to make you a Cardinal, yes? My grandfather was not mistaken about your ambition. Do you also wish to be the next Pope, perhaps?’

  Thomas cursed his underestimation of this ugly young man’s insight regarding matters of diplomacy, and kept his eyes on the floor. ‘You understand that my wish to wear the Cardinal’s hat is solely in order to further my King’s ambition to assist you? You are, after all, his nephew by marriage.’

  ‘Leave it with me, Archbishop Wolsey. The Pope sees me as his main hope of surviving the gradual encroachment of Francis of Valois into Italy, and eventually his capture of Rome. A word from me, and the gift of a red hat will be a small price to pay, particularly if I can advise his Holiness that alongside my armies will be the full military might of the greatest warrior king in Europe.’

  ‘His Majesty will be both gratified and flattered to hear you speak of him in those terms. To watch his face light up with joy when I relay your kind words back to him will make the gift of a red hat a very minor matter indeed.’

  Thomas lost no time in returning to Henry with the good news, and was more than happy to keep the outcome of his ‘pilgrimage’ secret from others, as Henry requested. It was reassuring to be the only man in the realm entrusted with such a vital initiative, and tempting though it was to let Queen Katherine know that he had established cordial contact with the ‘beloved’ nephew she had never met, he kept his own counsel on the matter, not that Katherine seemed any longer to desire his company. She and her Ladies were permanently at Richmond, regardless of where the Court might be convened, whereas Henry seemed to prefer to live his life travelling between his own suite of rooms in Westminster and a special wing of York Place set aside for him, to which he could travel unchallenged for clandestine meetings with Bessie Blount.

  However, any thoughts that Thomas might have entertained along the lines that Henry and Katherine were estranged were hastily suppressed by the news that the Queen was again with child, and would be likely to deliver in February of the following year. Given her history of miscarriages, stillbirths and infant mortality, there were few at Court, amid the customary congratulations and expressions of joy, who expected a live outcome, and the news was also to a certain extent diluted by tidings of another birth anticipated at the same time, to the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk.

  Early in September, Thomas’s endeavours in Spain bore their first fruit. Word came that Thomas had been appointed as Cardinal of St. Cecilia, and that his red hat of office was on its way from Rome to Dover, along with various Papal Bulls confirming his authority.

  On 18th November, the skull-like features of Archbishop Warham shrank into a rictus grimace as he placed the red hat of Thomas’s dreams officially on his head for the first time. Its feel upon his head was by then a familiar one, since he had spent many an hour before the glass in his private chambers, admiring himself from every angle. Thomas smiled graciously as the Blessing was pronounced above his head, then turned to join the procession that led him out of Westminster Abbey to be hailed by the crowd that had gathered outside to watch. Thomas pronounced a blessing of his own on the assembled multitude, and said a silent prayer of thanks to the God who had raised him so far in His service.

  He was also shortly to rise in the service of another important power, this time the earthly one that he served. Warham was so disgusted with Thomas’s rise within the Church that he advised Henry that he no longer wished to serve on a Council that had among its number ‘the son of a butcher of animals who has become a shepherd of God’s flock by his deviousness, his oily tongue and his slippery conscience.’ Henry took the man at his word, and relieved him of the burden of the office of Chancellor that he had been administering of late with lacklustre and a growing inattention to detail.

  On the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1515, Thomas sought audience with Henry. Henry did not, as usual, offer him a seat, and Thomas remembered enough Courtly protocol to stop himself from simply taking his customary seat in the window alcove of the Presence Chamber without invitation. Henry smiled across at him as he filled two wine goblets and handed one to Thomas.

  ‘I have not invited you to be seated because the adjoining seat is reserved for the Chancellor of England.’

  Thomas bowed his head in deference. ‘I do not expect his Grace of Canterbury to join us for this meeting.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Henry smiled even more broadly, ‘since he is no longer the Chancellor of England. I am now able to keep a long unfulfilled promise to you, Thomas. You may be seated only if you will accept the office.’

  Thomas wasted no time in making full use of the new power that had been granted to him over those who still sneered behind his back at his humble origins. As Lord Chancellor of England and Keeper of the Great Seal, Archbishop of York, and Cardinal of the Church of Rome, he now had a power that all but rivalled the King himself, and the mutterings of the Howard faction grew both more audible and more bitter. A butcher’s son now ruled their lives both spiritual and temporal, and the son of Robert Wulcy was not the sort who either forgot or forgave old slights.

  To all outward appearances, however, the new Chancellor of England was the fount of all justice, the righter of legal wrongs, and the champion of the truth above the machinations and corruption of the wealthy. He presided four days a week over the already infamous Court of Star Chamber, as part of his more formal duties in the Court of Chancery, the ‘court of conscience’ that had been established to administer royal justice when the old common law proved inadequate. Out of this grew something called the ‘Court of Requests’, with which Thomas’s name would always be associated as a man of God who was always ready to hear the petitions of all men, rich or poor, for justice in their cause.

  The wide power that this handed to the incumbent would have blinded and corrupted men with purer souls than that of Thomas Wolsey, and he was not tardy i
n settling old scores, and lining his pockets with fees for early listings of matters that were bribes in all but name.

  One of the first to regret having crossed him in his early years was the West Country magnate Sir Amyas Paulet, who had once taken great delight in placing a somewhat portly and over-weaning parish priest in the stocks at the local Harvest Fair. Star Chamber had the authority to haul even those of high nobility before it in order to answer to actual, or imagined, charges of disorder that threatened the peace and stability of the realm, and it was on one such warrant that Sir Amyas was summoned to Westminster. A triumphant Thomas ordered Sir Amyas into virtual house arrest inside his lodgings in the Middle Temple, of which he was now the Treasurer.

  Queen Katherine, meanwhile, was escorted to her latest childbed in mid February 1516, in her favoured Greenwich Palace where, on the eighteenth of that month, she succeeded in delivering a healthy child. But she was a girl, christened Mary, and Katherine herself was now thirty-one years of age. Henry welcomed a nephew a month later, when his sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, gave birth to a boy who was named Henry, in honour of his bitterly disappointed uncle.

  This disappointment was not hidden from Thomas during his many audiences with his protector, as they constantly monitored events across the Channel. Henry’s affair with Bess Blount was now an open secret throughout the Court. Bess had long since been dismissed from Katherine’s service, and Katherine spent her time praying for the male heir that would return her beloved Henry’s attentions to her on a fulltime basis. At the same time, Katherine was bitterly disappointed that the man she had trusted so innocently, and who was now enjoying Henry’s total trust and confidence in his new role of Chancellor of All England, had acquired such royal patronage by making a suite of rooms available at York Place for Henry to meet almost daily with his pliant — and no doubt fertile — mistress.

  For Thomas, while the rewards had been great, the stress and tension of being Henry’s chief confidante were beginning to take their toll. In the Autumn of 1517, he met with Henry in his Presence Chamber at Westminster Palace.

  ‘Is it possible, say you,’ Henry enquired imperiously, ‘that two people may endure a curse intended for only one?’

  When Thomas feigned non-comprehension, Henry tutted in exasperation.

  ‘Do not seek to evade my question with that well-practised air of ignorance, Thomas,’ Hal responded curtly in a tone that Thomas had learned to be wary of. ‘I refer to the Queen’s failure to produce an heir. God has clearly cursed her womb, but is it his intention to damn the entire nation in the process?’

  ‘It grieves me so to hear you refer to Queen Katherine in that fashion. She sets an example to the entire Court with her piety and her grace...’

  Henry’s left fist came down on the arm of his chair, causing wine to spill from the goblet in his right hand. ‘Enough, Thomas! Your loyalty to the Queen is well known, and in one regard it does you great credit. But she was bedded first by my brother Arthur, and for her unchastity she has been cursed with a womb empty of male children.’

  There was no placating Henry when in one of these moods, and Thomas had gained the high favour that he currently enjoyed by being able to sniff the wind. It was time for a reassuring response tinged with diplomacy. ‘It seems to me that the curse of which you speak — should it be such — is only intended for she who has sinned, but that since your hopes and aspirations are so closely bound with hers it is impossible for you not to be affected by it. If I might draw an analogy, those who stand too close in the front line of battle to a person for whom enemy arrows are intended are more likely to be felled than those tending sheep in a nearby field.’

  ‘Say you, then, that were I to rid myself of her and marry elsewhere, I might have male issue?’

  Thomas’s stomach lurched a warning. Whatever his reply, even in confidence, it could blow up in his face like a badly maintained piece of battle ordinance. ‘Hal, I say merely that if — and I must press upon you the “if” — God has chosen to curse Katherine, then surely she is in more need of the love and protection of a man such as yourself, who is so well regarded in God’s eyes?’

  ‘Do you think so, Thomas? Do you really think so?’

  ‘I have not the slightest doubt, Hal. Never has England been blessed with such a period of sustained peace, in which men may turn their eyes up to God, rather than behind their backs for a dagger blow. Surely God will wish to preserve such lasting peace by granting you a male heir who may continue the Tudor line that so nobly preserves the prosperity of England.’

  Unexpectedly, Henry burst out laughing and clapped a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘Never was shit spoken so beguilingly, my dear friend. So what did you have to report to me on how our interests fare abroad?’

  Since it was now safe to smile, Thomas did so. ‘I have the ears of the Ambassadors of both Spain and France, and since each of them fears to be seen in the company of the other, I have been able to parley with them both without fear of being reported. Charles of Spain seeks our alliance to unleash his forces against Francis of Valois, while the French king seeks our assurance that we will do no such thing. England has become a wholesaler of peace, it would seem, and we might use this to our advantage with the Pope.’

  ‘Your advantage with the Pope, Thomas,’ Henry chuckled in reply. ‘Were I his Holiness, I would fear for the continued presence of my mitre on my head with such a diplomat as yourself loose among the princes of Europe. So how say you that we make best use of this new position of influence?’

  Thomas allowed himself a pause. ‘Given our financial state at present, Hal, it would not be a propitious time to engage our army for either of the two young hounds who strain at the leash to be at each other’s throats. And indeed, it would be against our best interests to side with either, thereby invoking the wrath of the other. Charles cannot, at this time, be assured of the Imperial crown upon the death of his grandfather Ferdinand, and yet we must ensure his continued friendship in order to preserve our trading interests in Flanders. Francis has the greater army, and is like to break down the walls of Rome itself ere long, thereby having Pope Leo at his mercy. We would therefore be best advised to retain his friendship, lest his mighty and triumphant forces be turned against us when, and if, he proves victorious in Italy.’

  ‘And your suggested policy, Thomas?’

  ‘A perpetual peace between all the nations of Europe. The Pope is known to be anxious to promote another Crusade, this time against the Turks who dominate access to the Holy Land. If we are to attempt to broker a peace between these warmongering young hotheads across the Channel, it were best done in the name of the Holy Father. That way, we conceal our true motivation, and show no weakness or favour to either Francis or Charles until such time as we may conclude which of them is the stronger, and therefore the safer of the two with whom to seek an alliance.’

  ‘I assume that as usual I may rely on you to ensure that no detail is overlooked, once the Council approves of your suggestion?’

  Thomas smiled back as reassuringly as he could. ‘There are, as you know, some who serve on your Council who favour ongoing war in Europe, ruinous though it may prove to the nation’s coffers at a time when our subjects are sorely pressed to place beef on their tables. I refer of course to Norfolk and his faction. Would it not be better to deal privily with Charles and Francis in separate parleys, then seek the blessing of the Pope, then present Council with a ready-made scheme that they would not dare gainsay, should you speak out in favour of it?’

  ‘Do it, Thomas, and do it on my authority, and with my blessing.’

  XII

  Three weeks later, one sullen November night as the freezing fog turned the torches at the York Place entrance into pale and shimmering yellow ghosts, three men heavily wrapped in cloaks were met at a side door by a liveried steward and hurriedly and deferentially led up a staircase to the Great Hall, where Thomas sat awaiting their arrival.

  As the first of them threw off his heavy
cloak and hurried towards him, Thomas threw his arms around the visitor. ‘Bienvenido, Charles. May I order some wine? Or some food?’

  ‘Later, perhaps,’ Charles replied. ‘I assume that this meeting is with the knowledge and blessing of my uncle the King?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Thomas assured him, ‘since I do nothing without his blessing.’

  ‘And he wishes to send troops to my cause, the quicker to relieve his Holiness of the threat posed by the French dog?’

  ‘He wishes his Holiness to be free of any threat from Francis, certainly,’ Thomas assured him, ‘but he wishes to do so in such a way as to save you money and men. Put shortly, he wishes to be the means by which you and Francis swear an oath of peace.’

  ‘Never!’ Charles spat defiantly.

  ‘Consider it this way,’ Thomas urged him, ‘you wish his Holiness, and the Holy See in which he resides, to be forever free of the threat of invasion by France, and yet you still have uprisings of your own to fully suppress, do you not?’

  ‘You are well informed, it would seem.’ Just then, one of the two men who had accompanied Charles pulled at his sleeve and drew him to a corner of the room, where they conversed urgently but in whispers until Charles walked back over.

  ‘I am advised that what you suggest would be in Spain’s best interests at this time, but how can we be sure that the treacherous French eel will keep to his promise?’

  ‘Because you will not be alone in incurring the blessing of his Holiness himself for walking down the path of peace. A double blessing for each of you should you pledge yourselves to the crusade against the Turks.’

  ‘And my uncle Henry? He will also join with us?’

  ‘Perhaps not on crusade, but certainly in any peace treaty.’

  ‘Who else?’