The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico)

by Gwyn, Peter

  All this is speculation. What is not is that there are some similarities between what both Wolsey and Starkey were proposing to do with the monasteries. This does not make Wolsey into a fully-fledged humanist reformer; there are just too many qualifications for that, including the almost total lack of evidence for the kind of personal involvement with classical literature, the early Fathers, or the new biblical scholarship that are the humanist’s hallmark. Moreover, the radical nature of Wolsey’s 1528-9 proposals has so far been deliberately exaggerated in order to raise questions that have been too frequently ignored. The 17 per cent reduction in monastic revenues that they could have resulted in was very much an optimum figure: it need not have been anywhere near as much. Even if he had been aiming so high, the assets of the religious orders would have remained considerable. All that Wolsey’s proposals would have resulted in, even at their most ambitious, was a slimmer and sounder version of the existing set-up – and this does seem a little different from the ‘certain monasteries and abbeys’ that Starkey wished to retain merely as a ‘great comfort to many feeble and weary souls which have been oppressed with worldly vanity’.55 That there were differences is not nearly so surprising as the fact that there were similarities. Wolsey was, after all, a considerably older man, whose formative years were free of the Erasmian influences that coloured Starkey’s views. More importantly, however much he may later have been attracted by such influences, Wolsey remained first and foremost a man of affairs who had to take reponsibility for the effects of any changes he might make, unlike Starkey, who at most only ever became a propagandist and backroom adviser. Responsibility encourages caution. The suggestion here would be that when he became legate in 1518 Wolsey had no blueprint for reform, whether of the religious orders or other areas of the Church. Rather, he was anxious to ensure that everything was functioning as well as possible; and, as we have seen, in a number of ways he worked to that end: new constitutions were drawn up, care was taken over appointments to religious houses, some unsatisfactory heads were removed and, above all, no religious house could hide behind its right to exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. It was a measured and by and large conservative approach, deliberately designed to minimize opposition. On the other hand, Wolsey was sufficiently influenced by humanist ideas to see the provision of education, in which the new studies were assigned a prominent part, rather than any dramatic revival of the religious orders, as the way forward. Or to put it more simply, it was on the fellows of Cardinal College rather than on the friars of Greenwich that Wolsey pinned his hopes. But in the late 1520s the pace quickened, as he contemplated redrawing the diocesan map of England, funding the changes from monastic wealth. The question is, why?

  It would be wrong to ignore the possibility that no more is required to explain the 1528-9 proposals than that Wolsey’s interventions in church affairs had built up a momentum of their own. Not only might Wolsey have needed time to assess what reforms were needed, but he also had to ensure that the legatine machinery was securely in place, and it should be remembered that, though Wolsey first acquired his legatine powers in 1518, it was not until 1524 that they were granted to him for life and that his compositions with the bishops were finally secured. Admittedly, there was then a three-year pause before the momentum picked up again, but it is not all that long a time, especially since the Church was by no means Wolsey’s only concern. Nevertheless, there is a further, and probably more compelling, explanation: the threat of Lutheranism, which, though present since 1521, was not a dominant concern until the arrival in England of William Tyndale’s New Testament in early 1526. In the fight against this new heresy the bishops would be expected to play a leading part, just as they had for many years in the fight against Lollardy.56 More often than not the early sixteenth-century bishop took personal control of any heresy trial within his diocese. He was also responsible for the detection and suppression of heretical literature. The larger the diocese, the more difficult it was for a bishop effectively to perform this role of defender of the Faith, something which was explicitly acknowledged by southern convocation in 1532 when it explained the necessity for bishops to appoint preachers to act as their pastoral representatives: ‘in these dangerous times’, it was vital that people heard the true word of God and the size of his diocese made it impossible for a bishop alone to bring it to them.57 Moreover, the greater the threat of heresy, the more anxious was the Church to forestall criticism, and perhaps royal intervention, by carrying out reform itself. Arguably, the many small monasteries were an easy target for such criticism and thus the pressure on Wolsey to do something about them.58 The reform proposals of 1528-9 are thus best understood in the context of a number of measures designed to counter the threat of Lutheranism. But for such an argument to carry conviction it is necessary to believe that Wolsey took the Lutheran threat seriously, and this most historians have been reluctant to do.

  There are many reasons for this. Some have been reluctant to believe that Wolsey could take seriously anything that was not directly related to his own self-interest and personal aggrandizement. On the other hand, some have taken the view that, unlike so many of contemporaries, Wolsey was far too sane and sensible to want to burn people, and, indeed, under his benign rule nobody was or so (wrongly) they have alleged.59 Since Wolsey’s supposed toleration of heresy is one of the few aspects of his character that called forth praise, it may seem perverse for a sympathetic biographer to cast doubt on it, but doubt there has to be, especially since the benign view is most frequently advanced to make a stick with which to beat Sir Thomas More, who, unlike Wolsey, was supposedly a fanatic.60 The fanatical More is a curious construct, designed to make it easier for the Protestant or secular mind to come to terms with the opposition by someone with as high a reputation as More to something they see as self-evidently better than what it sought to replace. It is a travesty of the truth, and should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Wolsey took the threat of Lutheranism extremely seriously.

  It was on 12 May 1521 that Wolsey publicly opened the campaign against Luther when he presided over a burning of Lutheran books in St Paul’s courtyard. But although it appears to have been carried out with due solemnity, even this episode has been taken as evidence for his lack of enthusiasm for defending Catholicism: it was too late, and anyway his main reason for holding it had everything to do with his foreign policy and very little with his hatred of heresy.61 Neither proposition will be accepted here.

  The first point to make is that it was not until Luther’s works were officially pronounced heretical that there was any reason, let alone obligation, for Wolsey to act at all; indeed until this was done it would have been hard for him to make any kind of assessment of the dangers inherent in Luther’s writings. Academics with new ideas – Jacques Lefèvre in France and Johann Reuchlin in Germany – would be contemporary examples, as perhaps also Colet, had always faced the threat of being labelled heretics by their conservative colleagues, but this in no way implied that the Church’s foundations were being threatened. No one in England could have immediately appreciated that Luther, who until at least 1517 was an unknown academic at one of the newer and less distinguished German universities, was a different proposition. Precisely when Wolsey first heard of Luther is not known. By early 1519 his works were on sale in England, and a letter from Erasmus to Wolsey written in the May of that year seems to assume that Wolsey was well acquainted with him. Erasmus’s intention was to distance himself a little from the new theologian, but this did not prevent him from offering some praise. Moreover, he presented Luther as but one of a number of controversial German academics, such as Reuchlin and Ulrich von Hutten, and as of posing no more of a threat than they did.62 By the following year this could no longer be anybody’s attitude. In May 1520, Silvestro Gigli reported to Wolsey from Rome that after long debate Luther had been declared a heretic; and on 15 June the famous bull, Exsurge Domine, was published.63 Forty-one of Luther’s ninety-five theses were condemned, and the faithful
were called upon to destroy his works. It is the fact that it took Wolsey almost a year from this date to organize the English Church’s response that underlies the suggestion that it lacked conviction.

  Some authorities did act more quickly. Bonfires of Luther’s works were lit at Louvain on 8 October 1520 and at Cologne on 12 November. On the other hand, it was on 15 April, only a month before Wolsey formally declared his hand, that in France the Sorbonne condemned them, and it was at about the same time that action was taken in Venice and Naples.64 Thus, if Wolsey was dilatory, he was in good company, but perhaps company that, like he himself, was concerned only to make diplomatic signals? It seems unlikely, and becomes even more so when it is realized that such responses as the lighting of bonfires required a good deal of preliminary work. This made them unsuitable instruments for conducting diplomacy, for by the time the bonfires had been lit, the situation was likely to have changed. Unfortunately it is difficult to establish precisely when Wolsey began the preparations for 12 May 1521. It rather looks as if Tunstall’s letter to him of 21 January provides the terminus a quo. Writing from the battleground of Worms, where on 18 April Luther had defied his emperor and pope by refusing to retract one jot of his teachings, Tunstall begged Wolsey to summon ‘the printers and booksellers and give them straight charge that they bring none of his [Luther’s] books into England nor that they translate none of them into English, lest thereby might ensue great trouble to the realm and Church of England, as is now here’.65 It does not look as if any steps had yet been taken in England, though as Tunstall had been out of the country since the previous September it could be that he was out of date.66 However, by the end of February rumours were circulating that Henry himself was contemplating a work against the heresiarch,67 and seven months later his defence of the seven sacraments, the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martin Lutherum was presented to the pope. On 16 March Leo x thanked Wolsey for forbidding the importation of Lutheran works, which puts the ban in late February at the latest, but also specifically suggested a burning of Luther’s works.68 Wolsey’s reaction was to wonder whether he possessed sufficient powers to do this, and though he was informed that his doubts were groundless, it looks as if further powers were sent.69 And whether groundless or not, there is no real reason to believe that his doubts were not genuine. Legal niceties were always a major concern, and the more important the matter, the more important it was to get them right.70 Moreover, even before the pope had written, preparations for some considerable response to the new heresy were under way. On 3 April Warham thanked Wolsey for sending various Lutheran and Lollard works, and promised to consult with him about them on his return to London on the 11th.71 On the 16th Henry was reported to be anxious to meet with theologians, already summoned to a conference to consider the orthodoxy of Luther’s works, so as to be able to discuss his own reply to Luther.72 On the 21st Oxford appointed four of their leading theologians to attend the conference, and Cambridge, at presumably about the same time, did likewise.73 The date it took place and precisely who attended it has proved difficult to establish, but for the moment the most relevant point is that the conference was being planned at least a month before the bonfire took place which makes it difficult to attach the diplomatic significance to the episode that some have wanted.

  What Wolsey is supposed to have intended in lighting a bonfire was to signal to the emperor and pope that in the armed conflict that had just broken out in Europe he was on their side. Given the large number of bonfires that were being lit at this time, it might be thought that amidst so much smoke any particular signal would be hard to pick up. Moreover, in giving such a signal it is important to know what the recipient wants. Charles v’s condemnation of Luther was not given until 19 April. It was not a foregone conclusion, so for Wolsey to have started upon elaborate arrangements for a message that the emperor might have found unwelcome would surely have been a curious way of conducting foreign policy. Of course, there was no doubting that a bonfire would please the pope, but pleasing the pope was never a major priority of Wolsey’s foreign policy. Moreover, in April 1521 it could not have been clear that in pleasing the pope he would have been pleasing the emperor, because it was not until 28 May that the two came to their unexpected agreement.74 But above all even by 12 May England was still trying to act the honest broker between the emperor and Francis I, and it was not until a month later that she made any significant move in the direction of the emperor.75 Thus, if by any any chance Charles saw the burning as a friendly signal, he would have been reading far too much into it!

  The notion that the ceremonies of 12 May 1521 were some kind of diplomatic signal has virtually nothing to commend it, and need not have been considered at all were it not indicative of just how pervasive has been the notion that Wolsey was soft on heresy. In fact diplomatic considerations played no part in the moves to condemn Luther. The reason why some states acted more quickly than others is that the papal condemnation of Luther in June 1520 had been hasty and ill-prepared, and that Luther had been given sixty days to admit his errors. As it happened, he did no such thing, but instead sat down to write three of his most influential works. The Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation appeared in August. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, the work that Henry set out to refute, followed a month later and finally in November appeared The Liberty of a Christian Man. It took this marvellous riposte for the extent to which he had moved into direct conflict with the Catholic Church and the seriousness of the threat that he posed to be widely appreciated. For those who did not read such works for themselves, it might have taken Luther’s public burning of the papal condemnation on 10 December and the coming into effect, on 3 January, of the sentence of excommunication against him to make the position absolutely clear and by the following month Henry was planning his counter-attack.

  In the light of this, it is difficult to argue that the English response to Luther was dilatory or unimpressive. One estimate puts the number of spectators at the ceremony as high as thirty thousand, but if this seems incredible – it would have meant that about half the population of London had turned up – the attendance was certainly good.76 Wolsey, processing under a canopy ‘as if’, according to the Venetian ambassador, ‘the pope in person had arrived’, was much in evidence, but then as cardinal and papal legate so he should have been. However, the centrepiece was a two hour sermon by John Fisher in which, lamenting ‘this most pernicious tempest of heresy that Martin Luther hath now stirred’, he sternly warned his audience of the terrible fate that would befall all those who would ‘give faith to Martin Luther, or any such heretic, rather than to Christ Jesu and unto the spirit of truth’.77 Fisher’s sermon was quickly published, and instructions were sent out to the bishops to promulgate in their dioceses the forty-two errors of Luther identified by the English theologians, while a fifteen-day amnesty was to be proclaimed to allow everyone time to hand in heretical literature without suffering any penalty.78 The English Church had been put on a red alert for the forthcoming battle with the Lutherans, although it is far from clear that in 1521 there were any Lutherans in England with whom to fight!

  The one notable absentee on 12 May was the king – an enforced absence because of illness. And in a sense he was very much present, for throughout the proceedings Wolsey clutched in his hands the as yet unfinished manuscript of the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a work which Fisher in his sermon declared would deliver them all ‘from the slanderous mouth and cruelty that Martin Luther hath set upon them’.79 There has been a tendency to be dismissive of Henry’s theological enterprise, though this has not prevented doubts being raised, both at the time and since, about its authorship, on the grounds that the work was too good to have been written by him.80 Any such doubts should be rejected. Letters written by his secretary, Richard Pace, provide clear evidence of Henry’s deep involvement in the project,81 while the interest in and grasp of theological matters that he showed throughout his life make it plain that he was quite c
apable of writing such a work.82 The doubts arise because of the assistance he received – from More and Fisher, from the Oxford and Cambridge theologians summoned to give their judgement on Luther, and perhaps even from Wolsey83 – but then any major polemical work by a reigning monarch could never have been a purely private matter. Far too much was at stake. Indeed, it needs to be stressed that the writing of the Assertio gave the fight against Luther a priority in government circles that could not be ignored by any of his councillors, whatever their private views. There was the kind of editorial work that many books require; and Thomas More insisted, when he described himself as ‘only a sorter out and placer of the principal matters’, that this was the only part he had ever played in the Assertio.84 There was what would now be called research assistance, presumably from the university theologians – but many much more professional writers than Henry have made use of such help. Then there were the publishing aspects of the book, to do with production and distribution. These included the preparation of the beautifully illuminated manuscript copy for Leo x presented to him by the English ambassador in Rome, John Clerk, on 2 October 1521 at a consistory specially summoned for the purpose. Apparently the ceremony was not quite as spectacular as Clerk would have wished, though his disgruntlement might have been the result of having to deliver the book, and an oration, while on his knees! Still, Leo was full of praise for Henry, declaring that in writing the book he had ‘rendered himself no less admirable to the whole world by the eloquence of his style than by his great wisdom’.85 He also conferred upon Henry the much coveted title of Defender of the Faith, thereby enabling him to keep company on equal terms with the Most Christian king of France and the Catholic king of Spain.86