by Gwyn, Peter
The fact is that by the summer of 1524 the situation was more favourable for an English invasion of France than it had been the previous year, and indeed there was some pretence at making such an invasion. On 25 May an agreement was made with Bourbon to that effect;135 on 2 September Wolsey reported to Norfolk, then still in the North, that on the strength of the good news of Bourbon’s successes in the south of France, a decision to invade had been taken; and on the 10th circular letters had been sent out to the relevant people instructing them to prepare for war.136 But even in the letter to Norfolk, Wolsey had made an important qualification: England would invade, but only in the event of ‘the matters prosperously succeeding’.137 As almost every letter that Wolsey wrote in 1524 on this subject made abundantly clear,138 the qualification was all-important, and nowhere does this emerge more clearly than in the letters he wrote to Pace.139
Like so many of his fellow English diplomats, Pace was pro-Imperialist. Furthermore, his was a very emotional, not to say unstable, nature. So it is not surprising that no sooner had he arrived at Bourbon’s camp than a hero-worship of the French king’s rebellious subject set in.140 Bourbon had, he reported, ‘so faithful and so steadfast mind without vacillation to help the king to his crown of France that if he be assuredly entertained, the king shall assuredly obtain his crown in France’, and even if he would not, Bourbon’s valiant army would get it for him.141 Wolsey had to put up with a good deal of such hyperbole, even being threatened at one point that if he refused to accept Pace’s advice, he would be held responsible by him for any failure to obtain the crown of France for their master – all of which Wolsey took in surprisingly good part.142
What he would not do was accept the advice, neither, indeed, as he pointed out to Pace, would the king or other members of the Council. Victories in Provence were all very well, but it was well known to be a very weakly defended area, and moreover the only two strongholds there, Arles and Marseilles, remained in French hands. There was little doubt that Francis’s decision not to engage with Bourbon was deliberate; he was merely allowing him to waste the allies’ money there so that in the end Bourbon would have to retreat without the French king having to lift a finger. Writing on 31 August, Wolsey showed himself to be not at all impressed with Bourbon’s achievement so far, nor was he especially amused to hear that in Provence the French were giving their allegiance to Bourbon and not to Henry, thereby undermining Henry’s claim to the French throne, which had been a matter of negotiation between Bourbon and the English from the start.143 On the other hand, Wolsey did make it clear that if Bourbon crossed the Rhone, marched on Lyons and then on into ‘the bowels of France’, achieving there ‘a notable victory with a general revolution’, Henry would be willing to invade. But even then further conditions would have to be met. Under the provisions of the May agreement, once England invaded, Charles had to take on the full burden of paying for Bourbon’s army, and it was vital, so Wolsey informed Pace, for Bourbon to confirm that this condition would be fulfilled by the emperor. He also thought it vital that the promised Imperial reinforcements for Bourbon should materialize before England committed herself. And if all this was not enough to dampen even Pace’s enthusiasm, Wolsey raised the suspicion that even if Bourbon successfully moved north, the duke’s intention would be to secure not some ‘notable revolution’ but rather his own lands in the Auvergne and Bourbonnais – which would hardly be to England’s advantage.144
What all this adds up to is that Wolsey had no intention of being taken for a ride by the Imperialists, as to some extent he had been the previous year. On the other hand – and this is important for the argument that follows – he could not afford to miss out on any notable Imperial success, for the obvious reason that in any settlement that followed he would have a very weak hand to play. But it looks as if in 1524 he had little faith in any such success, and he was indeed proved right; on 29 September Bourbon was forced to raise his siege and one month later Francis I was back again in Milan!145
But Wolsey’s reluctance in 1524 to take any military action to further the Great Enterprise is not the only curious feature of his conduct of policy at this time. Perhaps even more so, and especially to the Imperialists, was the appearance in London in April of a Genoese friar, one Jean-Joachim de Passano. Moreover, as it turned out, during the next eighteen months he was very rarely to be out of London.146 Ostensibly he had come on a business trip to a fellow Genoese settled in London, Antonio Bonvisi, but in fact he was Louise of Savoy’s maître d’hôtel, sent by her to England to begin negotiations for peace. Quite how serious these were lies at the heart of the interpretative problem that a study of Wolsey’s foreign policy during these years presents. For some it is crucial evidence of Wolsey bending yet again to the dictates of the papacy, for was not the new pope, Clement VII, at this very time working hard for a peace that might prevent Northern Italy from being a permanent battlefield between the French and Imperialists? Thus loyally taking his cue from his spirtual head, Wolsey too sought peace.147 And there was a more personal reason for this decision. Clement’s election to the papacy in November was a second rebuff in two years to Wolsey’s ambitions to obtain the papal tiara for himself. It was also sure proof of the emperor’s unwillingness to honour the promise he had made at Bruges in 1521 to support Wolsey’s candidature in any future papal elections. Thus, so it has been alleged, his determination to get his own back on the emperor by coming to terms with France.148 For yet others it demonstrates Wolsey’s lack of genuine commitment to the Great Enterprise from the start, deriving in part from an attachment to peace that supposedly was always threatening to separate him from his more bellicose master.149 More recently the negotiations have been seen as merely an insurance policy, to be activated only when it looked as if the French might be winning. Moreover, according to this view, in the weeks just before Pavia they were anyway in the process of breaking down. Thus, the dramatic Imperial victory there, far from disrupting Wolsey’s well-laid plans for a diplomatic revolution, was genuinely welcomed by him, the negotiations with the French being only reluctantly resumed when neither the emperor nor Henry’s subjects proved as co-operative as Wolsey had hoped.150
The fact that all these interpretations will be rejected here is not to say that there is not a good deal to be said in favour of all of them. It is the case that in the spring of 1524 Clement was actively working for peace and that by the end of the year he had entered into secret agreements with the French king, so that a Wolsey dedicated to peace might have been inclined to follow his lead. Moreover, as already stressed, at no time during 1524 did Wolsey show any enthusiasm for war against France. And as regards the ‘insurance policy’, it may well be true that in the weeks leading up to Pavia the Anglo-French negotiations were not on the verge of success. But there are serious objections to be made to all three interpretations – not least, of course, that if one is right, the others must be wrong.
The chief objections to the first two have in effect already been presented. The notion of Wolsey as a lackey of the papacy is unconvincing, in part because even the obvious link with it, his legatine authority, was obtained very much to further Henry’s policies, and in part because on close examination the necessary links between papal and English diplomatic initiatives are missing. Moreover, it was suggested earlier that, when Wolsey first put his name forward at a papal election in December 1521, he was prompted to do so out of concern for Henry’s prestige rather than any personal ambition; and this seems to have been equally true when in the late autumn of 1523 he stood again. True, in the October he had graciously responded to intimations that both Charles and Margaret of Austria were eager for him to become pope by agreeing that if they were willing to write on his behalf, he would put himself forward – and put himself forward he did. However in doing so he again stressed that it was Henry who desired him to obtain the dignity. Furthermore, the word from Rome was that it was Giulio de’ Medici who would be the successful candidate. If this indeed was the case,
the English envoys at Rome were not to put Wolsey’s name forward but instead were to make use of letters in support of de’ Medici, who was not only officially the cardinal-protector of England but was considered to be genuinely sympathetic towards her interests. Wolsey’s response, when informed of de’ Medici’s success, makes it difficult to believe that he had suffered any great disappointment at his own lack of success.151
As regards Wolsey’s commitment to peace, the essence of the rebuttal has been that no one who wished to dominate the European scene in the way that Wolsey did, could have afforded the luxury of truly pacifist sentiments.152 Neither have any serious divisions between him and his master in the conduct of foreign policy been discerned so far, nor is there much evidence for thinking there were any in 1524 or 1525. It is true that on 25 March 1524 Wolsey wrote to the English envoys in Rome that he would not refrain ‘to study, devise and set forth, as much as may stand with my duty to my Sovereign Lord and master, all such things [that] in my conceit may be thought upon or imagined for to conduce everything to the best purpose’, and by emphasizing the scruple about his duty to the king it is possible to see what follows in the letter as an attempt to distance himself from Henry’s views, especially in view of the ensuing references to the papal peace initiatives.153 For a number of reasons, however, such a reading must be rejected. To begin with, Wolsey gave his own ‘conceit’ because he had been asked to by the pope, so it cannot in itself provide evidence that he was embarking on an independent, not to say clandestine, policy. The main emphasis throughout the letter, even in that part which allegedly contained his real thoughts, was not on any new peace initiative but on the continuing need to maintain military pressure on the French. The problem, however, as Wolsey made clear to the envoys, was that it was becoming increasingly unlikely that such pressure could be maintained. The Imperialists had already let him down badly and the new pope was not nearly as opposed to the French as had been expected. It was all this, not any love of peace, that was forcing Wolsey to look for a new policy – something that emerges more clearly from the way he left it to the envoys to decide whether circumstances in Northern Italy made this the right moment to launch it.154
Wolsey’s willingness to give the envoys such a free rein hardly suggests that he was asking them to do something that he knew their king disapproved of, for surely the longer the delay in implementing it, the more likely that Henry would get wind of it? But in this instance there is no need to speculate. Henry did know about the pope’s desire for peace because back in February the pope had written to him about it; and, what is more, at the same time as Wolsey had presented his own ‘conceits’, Henry had made his favourable response.155 And at this stage it may be helpful to reiterate the general point that for Wolsey to have conducted a clandestine policy he would have needed to set up a private courier service, of which there is no evidence. As it was, almost all the diplomatic correspondence was either seen by the king or made known to him in digest form. He was extremely well briefed for his audiences with foreign ambassadors. When important decisions had to be made he usually contrived a meeting with Wolsey, and letters were daily passing between them.156 None of this means that Wolsey’s advice did not carry great weight. After all, advice was what he was paid to give and all the evidence is that for fifteen years or more Henry for the most part took it. But this in itself provides another reason for disbelieving that Wolsey was having to conduct a clandestine policy; the more Henry is thought to have trusted his judgement, the less need would there have been for any secrets.
It is almost certainly true that on occasions Wolsey may have been quicker to grasp the appropriate means by which to achieve his master’s ends. It is difficult to believe, given the recent fate of Suffolk’s expedition, that anyone in England in the first few months of 1524 could have been very enthusiastic for war or the Imperial alliance, and in March Henry’s favourable response to the papal feelers for peace underlines this. Admittedly, there is some evidence for a rather bellicose Henry, but there were good reasons why he should want to appear so. First there was the need to keep up diplomatic appearances. England was, after all, still formally committed to the Great Enterprise, and nothing was to be served by letting her ally think otherwise, especially not if she was thinking of deserting! Thus, Wolsey’s statements about how bellicose the king and Council were and Henry’s suitably warlike noises when he met the Imperial ambassador should not be taken as the truth.157 In addition, as has already been pointed out, Wolsey was very ready, in order to clinch a deal quickly and on the most favourable terms, to put pressure on any foreign power he was negotiating with by stressing that he was the only person in England on their side. Most commonly it was a ploy he used with the French, but when sometime in May or early June he instructed Clerk to inform Clement that he, Wolsey, had had to labour hard to persuade king and Council to listen to the papal pleas for peace, ‘they now being fixed upon matters of war’, it looks very much as if he was using it with the pope too, if only because Henry would almost certainly have known the contents of Wolsey’s letter.158
The difficulty in early 1524 was not in realizing that the Great Enterprise was going badly but in finding some attractive alternative. Merely to have given it up would have been an unthinkable admission of failure and would have anyway left England totally isolated. On the other hand, the alternative of a French alliance and the consequent imposition of a European settlement in which ‘all the glory and the incense’ would fall to Henry and Wolsey seemed a long way off.159 What seems to have happened is that Wolsey took advantage of, and indeed subtly encouraged, the new pope’s desire for peace in order to get into direct negotiations with the French without having himself to make the first approach. The vital evidence for this is provided by a letter from the English envoys in Rome of 21 March in which they reported that, as instructed, they had suggested to Clement that he should persuade the French to send someone to England with a view to furthering the peace process that he had already embarked upon, and for the success of which, it was to be stressed, Clement was to get all the honour – though in reality this was something that Wolsey would have had no intention of allowing.160 For the moment, however, the important thing was for the process to start, and it seems that Clement took the bait. When his envoy, the archbishop of Capua, arrived at the French court on 27 March he brought with him the very suggestion that Wolsey had put to Clement. Louise had responded favourably, and the result was that appearance in London already mentioned of a Genoese friar ostensibly on a business trip but really to begin negotiations with Wolsey for a peace with France.161 It is difficult not to admire the skill with which Wolsey had achieved this vital first step, and in particular the way in which he had minimized the risks. After all, he could not have known what the French response would be, and there was the very real possibility that any hint that England was willing to make a separate peace with them might have been exploited, by, for instance, their informing the emperor. But by making it a papal suggestion, Wolsey had more or less pre-empted such a manoeuvre because he could, and indeed would, always maintain that Joachim’s arrival had had nothing to do with him.162 As it was, all sorts of stratagems had to be used to allay the inevitable suspicions of, in particular, the Imperial ambassador in England, Louis de Praet, suspicions that inevitably increased the longer Joachim stayed.
The cheekiest of the stratagems used by Wolsey to try and throw his allies off the scent was the pretence that Joachim was a French spy,163 but none of them should encourage the notion that Wolsey was working behind Henry’s back. For one thing, there is direct documentary evidence that the king was well aware of Joachim’s presence in England and very interested in the negotiations that were taking place.164 What, of course, he could not do, in any public way at any rate, was take part in them. Whatever the actual state of play, the French in 1524 were still ostensibly the enemy whose territory Henry had committed himself to invade. It was just about all right for there to be suspicions that his leading mi
nister was involved in clandestine meetings with Genoese friars who might or might not be in the service of the French queen-mother – and, after all, not all the Imperialists’ negotiations were above suspicion – but it would not do at all for such suspicions to be attached to the person of the king. Indeed, it would have been very unseemly if, involved in the Great Enterprise against France, Henry had not appeared more bellicose than his minister. Still, none of this helps to answer the question how seriously these negotiations were taken.
At the very least, one has to assume some seriousness. After all, they had been difficult to set up and, given that any hint of them would undermine the alliance and place England in a very exposed position,165 it would have been foolish to embark on them just on the off chance that something good might come of it. Moreover, the mere fact that Joachim’s visit was so prolonged and that he was eventually joined by the chancellor of Alençon, Jean Brinon, must indicate that Wolsey was looking for something substantial.166 The question remains, what? If it was neither a papal blessing nor the sixteenth-century equivalent of the Nobel peace prize, could it have been that most recently favoured answer, some kind of insurance policy against the possibility of French success, which in the early months of 1524 and again the following winter, as Francis followed Bourbon’s retreating army back into Northern Italy, might have seemed a real possibility? For such an answer to carry conviction it would have to be shown that, as during early 1525 the prospects of French success in Northern Italy dwindled, so Wolsey took his negotiations with the French less and less seriously. And it would certainly make a nonsense of the view that an audience planned for the French envoys with Henry VIII on 9 March was intended to be the occasion for reaching some kind of Anglo-French agreement.167