by Gwyn, Peter
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’ party43 – 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.
Writing from ‘Windsor the last day of September [1511], with the rude hand of your true and humble priest’, Wolsey ventured to remark that Surrey
at his last coming to the king … had such manner and countenance showed on him that on the morrow he departed home again, and yet is not returned to court. With a little help now he might be utterly, as touching lodging in the same, excluded: whereof in my poor judgement no little good should ensue … Mr Howard [Edward] marvelously incenseth the king against the Scots; by whose wanton means his grace spendeth much money, and is more disposed to war than peace. Your presence shall be very necessary to repress this appetite.51
Here surely is incontrovertible evidence that Fox and Surrey were in conflict, that Wolsey sided with the former, and indeed saw him as his patron – proof, in other words, that Vergil has got it right? Moreover, it would appear that Fox was rather in favour of peace and the Howards in favour of war.
In fact the letter supports none of these points – or, at least, not to the extent that a first reading might suggest. Perhaps the first thing to emphasize is not just that it is the sole piece of documentary evidence that bears directly on the matter, but its chronological isolation. It happens to be the earliest letter to have survived between Wolsey and Fox; the next is not until almost a year later. And it is not until May of the following year that there is anything like a sequence. Moreover, it is not as if there are letters between other people that might throw additional light on the political groupings at court. It must, therefore, be wrong to attach too much significance to remarks about the Howards that may represent very temporary feelings. And that they were temporary is suggested by a letter from Sir Edward Howard to Wolsey in November 1512, thanking him for his kindness towards him in his absence, which he had only just learnt about from Brandon, and also for the ‘great reward’ which the king had sent him, as he put it, at Wolsey’s instance.52 In 1513 letters from Edward’s elder brother, Thomas, to Wolsey are friendly enough in tone.53 It will, in fact, be a theme of this study that one of Wolsey’s gifts was an ability to get on with people, and that, for instance, fa
r from antagonizing the nobility of England, he always strove to be conciliatory. What this does not have to mean, however, is that he was a close friend of all of them, or that he was in all circumstances unwilling to criticize them – and, indeed, the notion of getting on may imply some measure of insincerity. Moreover, there is always a problem in interpreting letters between ‘establishment’ figures, for they are written in a coded insincerity always difficult to decipher, but especially if it comes from a different era. So I am not claiming that these letters are proof of a genuine friendship, only that they indicate that Wolsey and the Howards were perfectly capable of getting on with one another. In other words, they had just the sort of good working relationship one would expect to find amongst leading courtiers and royal councillors when there was firm direction from the top.54
What else can one learn from Wolsey’s letter to Fox? He did indeed talk of peace, but very much in the context of Anglo-Scottish relations. It is an important qualification, for even as Wolsey wrote Henry was moving towards war on a number of fronts. In May 1511 Lord Darcy had been allowed to take a small force to Spain in order to aid Ferdinand of Aragon in a ‘crusade’ against the Moors, while a small English force was aiding Margaret of Austria against the incursions of the duke of Gelders. Six weeks later England, together with Ferdinand, the Swiss and the Venetians, had joined a Holy League in defence of Pope Julius II against the ‘schismatic’ Louis XII. Thus, English foreign policy was moving strongly and fairly swiftly in the direction of conflict with France, so that if Fox was at the head of a ‘peace faction’ he had definitely lost the argument – and there is not much hint of this in the letter. It is possible that Wolsey was merely stringing Fox along, and had already secretly joined the winning ‘war faction’ – or, as some people would have it, that Wolsey and Henry alone constituted the ‘war faction’ against all the former king’s councillors who were frightened by the aggressive stance adopted by the new king.55 But there is no hint of that either, and there is another, simpler, explanation. What Wolsey, and it is implied Fox, disliked about conflict with Scotland – and indeed about something else Wolsey mentioned, Darcy’s ‘crusade’, on which the king had spent £1,000 – was that ‘the king’s money goeth away in every corner’. And why was this so worrying? Because they were all too aware that in any major conflict with France very large sums of money would be needed. This is, of course, to go beyond the actual wording of the letter, but it makes more sense of it, especially given the fact that for the next two years both Wolsey and Fox were going to be up to their necks in organizing England’s war effort. If this interpretation is correct, then Wolsey’s criticisms of the Howards should be taken not as evidence of a deep-seated hatred of his political patron’s greatest rivals, nor of a fundamental disagreement over foreign policy, but rather as a reflection of his annoyance that Howard incompetence was not helping the conduct of the king’s affairs. In other words, what one is witnessing is not factional intrigue, but the normal ups and downs of men working under considerable pressure.
It may seem that we have moved a long way from Vergil’s ‘conspiracy theory’, but if the conclusion reached so far is correct, Vergil’s explanation for Wolsey’s rise is seriously undermined. If there was no major conflict between Fox and Surrey, then there was no need for Fox to push his protégé in the king’s direction in order to further the struggle. Moreover, it is beginning to look as if Henry’s role in affairs was rather greater than the ‘conspiracy theory’ or, indeed, any factional view of his reign allows. And, of course, the greater Henry’s role and the stronger his personality, the less likely is it that he would fall victim to anybody’s seductive powers, even Wolsey’s. But before Henry’s personality is looked at in more detail, it may be helpful to take a little further the relationship between Wolsey and Fox. For one thing, some evidence of it has survived, and there is hardly enough evidence of any kind for this early period for it to be ignored. For another, it will help further to establish the way in which politics worked and to stake out the chronology of Wolsey’s increasing influence.
Probably the only point that should be retained from Vergil’s account of Wolsey’s rise is that he and Fox did have a close relationship, and that, naturally enough in its early stages, the vastly experienced and by all accounts highly astute Fox was the dominant partner. Cavendish confirms this, while adding another patron, Sir Thomas Lovell, ‘a very sage counsellor and witty, being master of the king’s wards and constable of the Tower’.56 In fact, Wolsey’s letter to Fox of September 1511 provides the only piece of documentary evidence of any special relationship with Lovell, for in it Wolsey mentioned that Lovell, referred to as ‘Mr Treasurer’ (that is treasurer of the household), was the one person to whom he might disclose the chief concern of Fox’s letters, and his reply – for the comments about the Howards and foreign policy had merely provided a coda. This was which candidate Henry should support in what was thought to be, as it turned out wrongly, an imminent papal election. Fox’s and Wolsey’s preferred candidate, ironically, was Polydore Vergil’s patron, Cardinal Castellessi, who by 1515 was to be completely out of favour with Wolsey. What is more relevant here is the tone Wolsey adopted towards Fox. He told the bishop of Winchester that he had spoken to the king about Castellessi and had found him
very conformable and agreeable to my saying. Howbeit I durst not further wade with his grace as touching your letters of recommendation, as well for the ‘renouelyng’ of your letters and the dates of the same, as also we have no sure knowledge of the pope’s death otherwise than is before said. Your lordship, I trust, is no thing miscontent with that I presumed to break your instructions; for assuredly … I am half afraid that you be displeased for as much as I have received no writing from you this long season. I trust you will take my doing (which proceded of good will, thinking that it was for the best) in good part.57
It is the letter of one who saw himself as the junior partner but who was prepared to take the initiative, not because he was desperately anxious to supplant his senior, but because his senior was not around to make the decisions for himself. If he had been, it was Wolsey’s view that
this matter would be soon brought to your purposes. And my lord, for divers urgent causes it is thought very expedient that you should repair to the king; for all his great matters be deferred on to your coming: which is daily looked for and desired of all those that would the king’s causes should proceed in good train.58
For those who would see Fox as the ambitious leader of a faction, his absence from court at what was apparently a critical time needs some explanation, and for those who see Wolsey as entirely consumed with ambition it may come as a surprise to see him begging Fox to come to court in order to take up what was assumed by Wolsey to be his natural role, not as the head of a faction but as a leading royal councillor. A year later Wolsey was still writing with ‘a rude hand’ and was still deferring to a senior, who was not as in touch with the day-to-day events at court as he was.59 By 1513 a change had taken place but one foreshadowed in the earlier letters. War with France had by then become a reality, and preparations for various expeditions, including one led by the king himself, were very much under way. In May Fox was instructed to take charge of the victualling of the various fleets and armies assembling at Southampton and Portsmouth, and in this connection seven letters from him to Wolsey have survived,60 all written ‘with the shaking hand of your loving brother’, presumably shaking because of Fox’s health and age, of which more shortly. There is no doubt that Fox now saw himself in a subordinate role to Wolsey, as an executor rather than as a maker of policy. On the other hand, the letters convey no sense that Fox felt that he had been deliberately demoted or pushed aside by his former protégé. The feeling is rather of a man reluctantly being dragged back into the political arena because in the special circumstances he could hardly avoid it. As bishop of Winchester and lord privy seal, he was by far and away the most important royal councillor in the area of the assembling forces,
and his experience in the conduct of war, including Henry VII’s expedition to France in 1492, had to be invaluable. Thus his letters were peppered with advice. Much of it had to do with the details of victualling: Wolsey must instruct the lord admiral, Thomas Howard, to see that the victuallers return immediately; he must see that escorts were provided to protect the victualling ships; he must send down Edward Radcliffe, the second clerk of the kitchen, to inspect some casked beef before it went bad. Other advice touched on major policy matters such as Maximilian’s probable reaction to the recently made truce between Ferdinand and Louis XII, and James IV of Scotland’s likely reaction to England’s invasion of France. And with each letter Fox became increasingly anxious to be kept informed, though well aware that Wolsey might not himself have time to write. Then, when no replies came, he got upset, especially since, as he did not hesitate to point out, ‘some part of them were matter of charge’.61 Nevertheless, the tone throughout remained warm, the overall impression very much that of a man anxious to be as helpful as possible, partly because he knew only too well the enormous strain that Wolsey was under; indeed at one point he commented that if Wolsey was not soon delivered of his ‘outrageous charge and labour’, he ‘shall have a cold stomach, little sleep, pale image and a thin belly cum rara egestione: all which and as deaf as a stock, I had when in your case’.62