The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico)
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76 BL Lansdowne 639, fos.46v, 47v, 48v, 54v. Thomas Palys, Thomas Leke, John Caunton and William Gibbs respectively.
77 For Guy the moment (April 1529) when ‘disillusionment probably hit its peak’. (Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.125-6).
78 For Elyot’s comments on the dorse of Joan Staunton’s bill of complaint see PRO STAC 10/4 pt.2/355.
79 BL Lansdowne 639, fo.16v.
80 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.63-4.
81 Hall, p.585.
82 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.40-5.
83 Ibid, p.154, n.110.
84 Ibid, p.109.
85 Ibid, p.154, n.103.
86 Ibid, p.109.
87 191 out of 245.
88 BL. Vitellius C i, fos.13v, 16, summarized in Skeel, pp.49-51.
89 Rawdon Brown, ii, p.314 (LP, iii, 402).
90 Baldwin, pp.276-7.
91 11 Henry VII c.12.
92 BL Lansdowne 639, fos.52v-3.
93 Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, p.81; Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.113; and for scepticism about the claim that More was able to clear the enormous backlog of cases that had built up under Wolsey, see Guy, More, p.92.
94 Such a view underlies Pollard’s treatment of Wolsey’s legal work (A.F. Pollard, pp.59-98), but see inter alia, Baker, ii, pp.77-80. It really derives from Maitland’s argument that the existence of the common law was at this time under serious threat from Roman law and equity; for a discussion of which, see ibid, ii, pp.24ff.
95 For what follows see Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.29, 65, 131; More, pp.40-9; Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, pp.83-9.
96 Baker, ii, pp.53ff.
97 Art. 21 (LP, iv, 6075).
98 Guy, More, pp.86-9.
99LP, iii, 2393 Sir Richard Wingfield to Wolsey, 17 July 1522.
100 Wolsey’s treatment of Fitzherbert comprised art.31 of the accusations brought against him in 1529 (LP, iv, 6075).
101 Quoted in Boersma, p.6.
102 Boersma, p.8.
103 See especially his ‘A Little Treatise concerning Writs of Subpoena’ in Hargrave, pp.332 ff.
104 See Guy, Christopher St German, pp.81, 94; also Guy, More, pp.42-9; Baker, ii, pp.24ff., St German, Doctor and Student.
105 Metzger, ‘Medieval Chancery’, pp.83ff.
106 Hargrave, p.325.
107 If the ‘sergeant’ was an unsuccessful lawyer, his attack could be attributed to sour grapes, but recently the future lord chancellor Thomas Audley has been suggested; see Baker, ii, 198-200.
108 Art.10 (LP, iv, 6075).
109 PRO E 315/313 A, fo.43v, transcribed in Wolfe, p.192.
110 Blatcher, pp.4-5.
111 Ibid, pp.111-37; Baker, ii, pp.51-61, 220-98.
112 Baker, ii, pp.184-7.
113 A rather topical subject, but see Cromwell’s unsuccessful attempt to introduce land registration in the 1530s (Elton, Reform and Renewal, pp.144-9).
114LP, iv, 4937 a letter of Nov. 1528 in which Rich expressed a wish to present his own ideas on legal reform.
115 One of the chief justices being Fitzherbert. More was one of the common lawyers on the commission, for a complete list of which, see Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.45.
116 BL Lansdowne 639, fo.56v.
117 Cavendish, p.117.
118 Pronay, pp.97-99.
119 See inter alia Henry’s concern to to appoint a successor to Compton as sheriff of Worcestershire in 1528 (LP, iv, 4476); for his close interest in the commissioners for the general proscription see Goring, EHR, lxxxvi, p.685.
120 For all these appearances see Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.30-5, 72-8, 121-3.
121LP, ii, app.38.
122 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.72-8.
123 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.30.
124Lancashire and Cheshire Cases in Star Chamber, p.20.
125 Ibid, p.23.
126 Ibid, p.121.
127 Ibid, p.21.
128 Ibid, p.22.
129 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.116.
130 For Brereton’s career see Ives, Trans of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxxiii, and Ives (ed.), Letters and Accounts of William Brereton.
131 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.33.
132 BL. Lansdowne 639, fo.54v.
133 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.33.
134 Ibid, pp.32-3; LP, ii, 2579.
135 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.120.
136 Ibid.
137 For instance, Sir John Savage’s appointment as sheriff of Worcestershire for life.
138Inter alia Bellamy, Crime and Public Order, pp.13-4, 91-2; Blatcher, pp.63-89.
139 Ives, ‘Crime, sanctuary, and royal authority’, pp.296 ff.
140 BL Lansdowne 639, fo.57v undated, but c.1523-4.
141 Guy, Cardinal’s Court, p.73.
142 PRO STAC 2/26/395.
143 In 1537 to be executed for his ambiguous role in the Lincolnshire rebellion of the previous year.
144 BL Lansdowne 639, fo.47v.
145 Ibid.
146 I think that it is not too naïve to suppose that many complaints against officials, both then and now, are unjustified and, of course, the evidence that there was some investigation may not have survived.
147 Implicit in much of what Guy has argued; see his Cardinal’s Court, pp.34, 76-8.
148 Ibid, pp.76-8; A.F.Pollard, pp.45, 52; Roskell, pp.311 ff.
149 PRO SP l/16/fo.130 (LP, ii, 3951) for the contemporary accusation.
150LP, ii, 4616.
151LP, ii, 3487, 3951.
152 PRO SP l/16/fo.143 (LP, ii, 3951); PRO STAC 10/4 pt.2/127-32; these two accounts of Sheffield’s examinations are virtually identical.
153LP, ii, 3487 Thomas Allen to Shrewsbury 27 July 1517.
154 BL Lansdowne 639, fo.49.
155LP, ii, 3487.
156 BL. Lansdowne, 637, fo.47. Lucas’s quarrel with Wolsey may have had something to do with his running battle with Buckingham in which for the most part he seems to have been the loser and he was not a man to mince his words; for which see Baker, pp.77, 108-9, 244-5.
157 Hall, p.719; A.F.Pollard, p.220,n.3 for Warham believing that Wolsey had over-reacted; see also LP, iv, 2854.
158 PRO E/38/216/fo.176, though the document gives no reason for the fine. But it is most unlikely that it could have had anything to to with a verbal attack on Wolsey, and from the evidence of his examination the verbal attack was merely an aggravating factor (PRO STAC 10/4 pt.2/127-32).
159 PRO C/66/627, m.17 (LP, ii, 2537). The question of whether or not the pardon prevented further action did become an issue in Feb. 1518; Wolsey gave Sheffield considerable time to consider with his counsel whether to stand by it, though indicating that he did not himself think such a course of action was in Sheffield’s best interests (PRO STAC 10/4 pt.2/129). On the subject of pardons generally see Blatcher, pp.53 ff, 81-7.
160 It seems to have derive from A.F. Pollard, p.52 and was followed by Guy in Cardinal’s Court, p.78.
161 PRO PROB 11/19/fo.15.
162 A.F. Pollard, p.52, n.2.
163 Cf. Sir John Savage’s fine of 5,600 marks to the Crown and an additional 1,000 marks to the widow and children of the murdered man.
164 See pp.218-20, 291.
165LP, iv, 6075.
166 Entry into a religious order in later life by devout laymen who were previously married is a much under-researched subject, but was not uncommon and the evidence of Stanley’s will suggests that his reasons for entering Westminster had nothing to do with Wolsey’s alleged treatment of him. In drawing up art.38 it may have helped that Stanley had died the previous year; see B. Harvey, p.387, n.7.
167 Cf. the greater number of charges against Empson and Dudley (Public Records, app.ii, p.228; also Harrison, EHR, lxxxvii).
168LP, xiii, 519.
169 Ives, ‘Crime, sanctuary and royal authority’, pp.318-9.
170 Especially in the various under courts set up by Wolsey; see Guy, Cardinal’s Court, pp.38-9, 42.
&
nbsp; 171 Ibid, p.53.
172 See Ives, ‘Agaynst taking awaye of Women’, p.25 for the suggestion that the Abduction Act of 1487 was not the result of an increase in the number of women being abducted. See also pp.447 below for further comments on early sixteenth-century language.
173LP, ii, app.38, this the same letter in which he told Henry of his intention of teaching Thomas Pygot and Sir Andrew Windsor the ‘law of Star Chamber’.
174 The new breed of historians of crime are more cautious and by and large take a far less gloomy view of the prevalence of serious crime; see Sharpe, Social History, 7.
175 Bellamy, Crime and Public Order, pp.156-8; Blatcher, pp.50-1, 63-5.
176 Blatcher, pp.65-8.
177 Ibid, pp.50-3.
178 See Stone, pp.199-270 for a classic ‘whig’ view of a gradual diminishing of aristocratic violence; also C.S.L.Davies, Peace, Print and Protestantism, p.51. I would agree with Sharp that ‘the system provided well enough for the needs of a rural and small town society’. (Social History, 7, p.192).
179 For Henry VII being more grudging or more controlled about restoration than Edward IV see Lander, Crown and Community, pp.353-4.
180LP, ii, app.38.
181 For the original controversy see Cooper, HJ, 2, pp.103-29; Elton, Studies, pp.45-99. But see also Condon, passim; Lander, Crown and Nobility, pp.267 ff. for this and what follows.
182 Chrimes, p.185 ff.
183 See n.1 above, also Somerville, passim.
184 Cavendish, p.117.
CHAPTER FIVE
PEACE OR WAR: THE CALAIS CONFERENCE OF 1521
ON 2 AUGUST 1521 WOLSEY ARRIVED AT CALAIS TO PRESIDE OVER A conference the ostensible purpose of which was to put an end to fighting that had broken out earlier in the year between French and Imperial forces. When, nearly four months later, the conference broke up, the fighting still continued. Clearly Wolsey had been unsuccessful in bringing about peace, but he did not return to England empty-handed. On 24 November a treaty had been signed with the emperor committing England to a Great Enterprise against France. What had happened to turn the erstwhile architect of that universal peace treaty, signed with so much pomp and ceremony in October 1518, into the iron cardinal determined to turn Europe into a battlefield in order to win back for his master the throne of France? It is the purpose of this chapter to find out, and in the process a central question about Wolsey’s approach to foreign policy – his attitude to peace – will have to be answered.1
In some ways, of course, the matter has been prejudged. In chapter 3 it was shown how fortuitous, in many ways, that universal peace treaty had been. For differing reasons, both Henry’s great rivals, Francis and Charles, had been anxious for peace in 1518, as had the pope. Indeed, it was Leo X’s plans for peace that Wolsey had upstaged by his more effective performance in London. Furthermore despite appearances, peace had not been Wolsey’s central aim in 1518. Instead, what he had sought and finally achieved was a sufficient hold on the French to make them accept an alliance in which England would be the dominant partner. Or at the very least, his hope had been that he could use this alliance to dominate the affairs of Europe – and hence a map of Europe drawn up by him and the French to suit their particular interests, the maintenance of which was to be guaranteed by those elaborate provisions to maintain peace that were outlined earlier.2 If this view is correct, it would not be possible to accept Wolsey’s commitment to peace as being genuinely motivated by Christian beliefs, or as in anyway disinterested – but this interpretation of Wolsey has been strongly defended by some historians, and, moreover, it is his conduct at the Calais conference that supposedly provides the vital evidence.3
As it happens, the maintenance of the French alliance, so central to the Treaty of London for reasons of state, would have to become even more so to any policy that had peace as its central objective. There are two reasons for this. The first is the paradoxical one that France was England’s natural enemy, and had been from time immemorial. If Englishmen wanted to win honour and glory they fought the French, and to this general rule Henry VIII was no exception. Furthermore, as was shown earlier, the English Crown considered it had a rightful claim to the French throne, while at a more mundane level an invasion of France was the most practical campaign that the English could embark on. Thus in order to maintain peace, a French alliance had to be made attractive enough to resist the ever-present temptation of an Imperial alliance and a war against France.
The second reason arises from the general European situation. In the early 1520s Charles v was much more likely than Francis I to disturb the peace of Europe, despite the fact that in 1521 it was Francis who started the war. At the Treaty of Noyon in 1516, Charles, in order to facilitate his journey to Spain to establish his claim to the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, had been compelled to make concessions to the French, the most important of which was his acceptance of the French occupation of the duchy of Milan.4 This occupation gave the French a stranglehold on communications between the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe and, thus, a position of great power. This the Treaty of London confirmed. In January 1519 Maximilian died. Charles succeeded to his grandfather’s possessions in Germany and Eastern Europe, and by the end of June had defeated Francis in the election for the Imperial title. Charles was now, potentially at least, very strong, and at the same time the question of who was in control of Milan was now a vital concern to him. Sooner or later Charles would have to challenge the French position in Northern Italy.5
Looking at what Wolsey was doing in the time between the Treaty of London and his arrival in Calais in August 1521, it soon becomes apparent that the French alliance was of some importance to him. If it was not, the expenditure and effort that he lavished on the famous meeting between Henry and Francis in 1520 at the Field of Cloth of Gold are totally inexplicable. To remove the prejudices built up over at least two hundred years of enmity, something out of the ordinary was necessary; something that could, as it were, outshine even Agincourt. Despite the scepticism of some historians, the Field of Cloth of Gold remains the most convincing evidence that Wolsey genuinely desired peace.6 And there is other evidence. Certainly, both he and Henry were constantly talking about it.7 Certainly, they were constantly informing both the French and the Imperialists that they would consider any invasion of each other’s territory as an infringement of the Treaty of London; and if that occurred, they both declared their intention to come to the aid of the injured party.8 Furthermore, though the Field of Cloth of Gold was the centrepiece of English diplomatic activity, it was immediately preceded and followed by meetings between Henry and the emperor. Every effort appears to have been made to keep both sides happy and to prevent the inevitable suspicion that these summit meetings caused.9 All in all, England’s behaviour appears scrupulously correct, never more so than in March 1521: the emperor’s offer of a marriage between himself and the Princess Mary, together with an offensive alliance against France, was turned down, and Cuthbert Tunstall, Henry’s special envoy to the emperor, was recalled. As Wolsey explained to Henry, ‘in this controversy betwixt these two princes it shall be a marvellous great praise and honour to your grace so by your high wisdom and authority to pass between and stay them both, that you be not by their contention and variance brought in to the war’.10
The evidence that, at least until March 1521, England was determined to maintain the peace of Europe does seem convincing – that is, until the negotiations prior to Tunstall’s recall are looked at more closely. To begin with, it is a little surprising that there were any negotiations for a marriage at all, for was not Mary, by the Treaty of London, betrothed to the dauphin? It becomes even more surprising when it is discovered that the negotiations were begun at Henry’s meeting with Charles at Canterbury in May 1520, just before the Field of Cloth of Gold, and were continued at Gravelines and Calais in July immediately after. It is true that this marriage proposal, along with the plan to mount a joint invasion of France, was at once disclosed by Henry t
o Francis. Henry also made comforting noises about having persuaded Charles and his advisers to give up their evil designs.11 These might be convincing if the negotiations had ended there and then, but they did not. Instead, Tunstall was sent to the emperor in an effort to bring them to a conclusion. This did not happen, but it is important to decide just how serious the negotiations were.
It looks as if both sides were quite serious, but in the end not serious enough.12 That the Imperialists were anxious for them to succeed is not surprising. As has been argued already, it was they who had most to gain from the disruption of the status quo established by the Treaty of London. This could best be done by removing the linchpin of that treaty, the Anglo-French alliance – and they were in some hurry. In Rome a race had been taking place between the emperor and the French to see who could first secure a papal alliance, and early in 1521 it looked as if the French might win. If the emperor could secure immediate English support, this might convince the pope that Charles was strong enough to provide effective protection against the French, and thus remove one of the chief obstacles to a papal alliance with him.13 Charles was also anxious to obtain help in putting down a serious revolt that had broken out during his absence in Germany – the so-called revolt of the comuneros. Thus he was insisting on a package deal with the English: a defensive alliance with the pope, an offensive alliance with the Swiss, aid against the rebels, and a new meeting between himself and Henry.