by David Field
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York, was in his time the most influential figure in early Tudor England. His rise to power was dramatic, and his fall from royal preferment even more dramatic, and yet he remains a shadowy figure in traditional accounts of the Courts of Henry VII and his son Henry VIII.
I was very fortunate to have access to Thomas Wolsey — his life and death, written by George Cavendish, Wolsey’s former and loyal gentleman usher, who gives us a first-hand account of the final years of his master’s life. During his middle years, in quiet conversations around the board, Wolsey told Cavendish something of his early life, but even then left out enough for an historical novelist like me to colour in the outlines. I admit to artistic licence in making Wolsey and Thomas Howard schoolboy enemies, but it is not implausible, since they were the same age, and grew up in the same county of East Anglia. And how else to explain the obvious mutual dislike other than in terms of the fact that Wolsey was a greatly gifted commoner thrust into high office that the likes of Norfolk regarded as theirs solely by right of birth?
As for Wolsey’s death, it is even more obscure in its precise cause, even though Cavendish was there to witness it. But his somewhat prudish pen spared us the gory detail, and we know only that in his declining days Wolsey was reaping the consequences of his former rich lifestyle, and in particular his love of fine food and wine, in the form of some sort of stomach ailment. Again I plead guilty to adding the detail that seemed to me both appropriate and realistic.
Finally, the matter of Wolsey’s relationship with his Secretary, Thomas Cromwell. I am not the first historical speculator to ascribe Cromwell’s dedication to the downfall of Anne Boleyn to his anger and pain at the humiliating end inflicted on his mentor. Cromwell was another lowly-born man of outstanding ability who owed everything to the man who had raised him up, in his case from the gutters of Putney, and the England of Henry VIII was a prime location for the settling of old scores by underhand means.
But the central character in what I have written remains the butcher’s boy from Ipswich who broke through the class ceiling and demonstrated that ability by itself could secure a man a comfortable lifestyle. As a former educator myself, I can only read in awe of how ‘Tom Wulcy’, as he then was, graduated from Oxford at the age of fifteen, even allowing for the somewhat lax academic rigour of those times. His grasp of most of languages of Europe leaves me with a profound belief that in Thomas Wolsey, the comparatively unlettered Henry VIII was blessed to have such a talented envoy at his command at a time when England was seeking to assert its influence on the European stage.
But let’s not forget the man’s failings as well. Venality was as much his style as piety, and it’s a matter of historical record that Wolsey sired two children on his resident mistress. His sins of gluttony were only exceeded by the sin of pride, of which Thomas Wolsey was guilty to an astonishing degree. No doubt scarred by noble ‘put-downs’ regarding his origins, he over-reacted by amassing wealth to a degree that almost exceeded that of Henry himself, and his extravagance in the conversion of York Place into York Palace, and the creation of Hampton Court, gave his enemies at Court an obvious cheap shot.
All in all, a worthy subject for an historical novel, and I sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. So much so that I was tempted back into print to speculate on how Cromwell sought his revenge for a man long dead by the time that Anne Boleyn’s head left the block and landed in the blood-splattered mud of Tower Green.
As ever, I look forward to receiving feedback from you, whether in the form of a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Or, of course, you can try the more personal approach on my website, and my Facebook page: DavidFieldAuthor.
Happy reading!
David
davidfieldauthor.com
MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD
The Tudor Saga Series:
Tudor Dawn
Justice For The Cardinal
Esther & Jack Enright Series:
The Gaslight Stalker
The Night Caller
The Prodigal Sister
The Slum Reaper
The Posing Playwright
The Mercy Killings
The Jubilee Plot
The Lost Boys
Published by Sapere Books.
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Copyright © David Field, 2019
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 9781913028848