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

by Gwyn, Peter

  One thing that Leo very much approved of was the decision to give the book as wide a circulation as possible. The princes of Europe were to receive special copies, and in addition at least three editions were produced in 1522 and two more the following year.87 Two German editions were prepared by leading Catholic polemicists, Thomas Murner and Jerome Emser.88 All this testifies to the work’s popularity, but this should come as no surprise, for the entry of a reigning monarch into the polemical lists was bound to cause a stir. It was also bound to generate a great deal of anxiety among the monarch’s councillors, especially since it was almost inevitable that Luther would reply, as sure enough he did. In his Antwort deutsch of August 1522 – a Latin version, Contra Henricum, appeared the following month – he made no concessions to royal authorship, of which anyway he chose to be sceptical. According to him, Henry’s work only proved the old adage that there were no greater fools than kings and princes – and Henry was also an ass, a pig, a drunkard, a dreamer, a mad and most ignorant monster, and much else besides!89

  Such a reply would have to be answered, though in what manner would require a good deal of thought. For the king of England to get involved in a protracted slanging match with a heretical ex-monk and university lecturer would have been altogether too undignified. Moreover, it so happened that the ex-monk in question was one of the most brilliant polemicists that Europe had ever seen, and it would not have done at all for the king to be worsted in a theological and literary battle. The solution was to call in Sir Thomas More, as the most distinguished writer, and John Fisher, as the most distinguished theologian in England, to write the replies. Henry could then confine himself to composing a dignified letter to the two princes of Saxony, the Elector Frederick and Duke George, calling upon them to eradicate the poison of Lutheranism in their territories before it got out of hand. He also took the opportunity to inform them, and the rest of Europe, that he had no intention of personally answering what he referred to as the ravings of a madman, not least because there was nothing in Luther’s reply that had not been sufficiently dealt with in the royal book.90

  The complex story of More’s and Fisher’s replies to Luther need not delay us long.91 More was to write two versions of his Responsio ad Lutherum, the first appearing early in 1523 under the pseudonym Ferdinand Baravellus, the second, written in the autumn but probably not appearing until early in 1524, under the better known pseudonym, William Ross. Fisher’s Defensio regie assertionis contra Babylonicam captivitatem did not appear until June 1525, long after his Assertionis Lutheranae confutatio, a refutation of Luther’s Assertio omnium articulorum of early 1521, his defence against the papal condemnation of his works. As such, Fisher’s work had nothing directly to do with the government’s response to Luther’s attack on Henry, but the preface contained much praise of Henry’s Assertio, and its publication in January 1523 could hardly have been better timed. It also happened to be probably the most important defence of the Catholic faith to appear anywhere at this time. It was not, however, the only one to be written in England, for the good reason that the government was very anxious to encourage such works. Not all the details of these have survived. Catholic apologetics were not likely to last long in Protestant England but they included work by Edward Powell, a leading Oxford theologian and one of those chosen by the university in April 1521 to consider Luther’s teachings, and Alphonso de Villa Sancta, one of Catherine of Aragon’s confessors.92

  Just as Henry’s Assertio has been too often ignored or belittled, so also has the English contribution to Catholic apologetics. That same English Protestant tradition that has been so unkind to Wolsey and ambivalent to Thomas More – and its treatment of More is of great relevance here – is largely responsible for this. The impression has been created that More was somehow the only person in England who was in the least bit worried by Luther, and, in most recent interpretations, only because he was mad or sexually disturbed. One result of this is that scant justice has been done to the bishop of Rochester, whose three most important works in defence of the Catholic Church (to the two already mentioned should be added De veritate corporis et sanguinis in Eucharistia … adversus Johannem Oecolampedium of 1527) together with his two show sermons against Luther of 1521 and 1526, published in English as well as Latin, were a massive contribution to that cause. They were well known on the continent and, like Henry’s Assertio, some or parts of them were translated into German, some indication that they were considered as vital weapons in the battle against the new heresy.93 They were also the works that the early English Protestants, especially William Tyndale in his The Parable of the Wicked Mammon and The Obedience of a Christian Man, felt they must refute. With the exception of his defence of Henry’s Assertio, virtually all More’s polemical works appeared after Wolsey’s downfall, and, thus, another effect of the over-concentration on More has been to create the impression that under Wolsey’s leadership no defence of Catholicism was launched. The result has been to ignore not only Fisher’s outstanding contribution and the work of those university theologians specifically commissioned to write against Luther, but above all the king’s. In fact, it is difficult to see what greater efforts could have been made, and though, as we have seen already, Henry’s direct participation meant that inevitably the whole machinery of government was brought to bear, Wolsey’s role as leading royal councillor and cardinal legate had to be of central importance.

  Wolsey himself wrote no books, but according to Henry it was he who had ‘moved and led’ him to write the Assertio. He therefore deserved to be the ‘partner of all honour and glory he hath obtained by that act’, a suggestion which Wolsey did not reject!94 It is difficult to get behind this exercise in mutual flattery; my guess would be that Wolsey’s role in initiating the project was small and incidental. But his involvement in the publishing and marketing of the book was considerable. He had first to find someone to produce the beautiful manuscript copy for the pope, and then to provide Henry with a choice of verses to be placed at the front of it.95 He sent copious instructions to John Clerk at Rome concerning its presentation,96 as well as on the distribution of other copies ‘to the regions, universities and other countries as they were to you addressed and ordered’.97 How far he was directly responsible for the planning of the English response to Luther’s reply to Henry cannot be discovered, but since it involved a good deal of diplomatic activity, such as corresponding with the Saxon princes, he could hardly have escaped being drawn in, and my guess would be that he was in charge of the whole operation. What is certain is that the English diplomats kept him fully informed about the polemical warfare that was raging on the continent and sent him copies of the latest works.98 When in 1526 Henry came to consider his reply to a letter from Luther, which though full of contrition for any offence he might have caused the king in the past, was very rude about his leading councillor, calling him ‘that pernicious plague and desolation of your majesty’s kingdom’, he received the benefit of Wolsey’s advice: no reply should be sent without a copy of the original letter being attached, ‘for that Luther, who is full of subtlety and craft, hereafter might perchance deny that any such letter hath been sent by him … as that the said answer, not having the said copy adjoined should be, for want thereof, to the readers and hearers thereof somewhat obscure’.99 The advice is a good example of the trouble Wolsey took to get things right. It also serves to underline the point already made that Henry’s personal involvement in the polemical battle made it a matter of major public concern, for the king’s honour was just as much at stake here as, say, at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Wolsey’s role, therefore, had to be of the greatest importance, as Henry’s reply to Luther made clear when he went out of his way to stress that one of the reasons why Wolsey was so much in royal favour was that ‘according to my commandment, [Wolsey] studiously purgeth my realm from that pestilent contagion of your factious heresies’.100

  Of course, it could be argued that it was only because of the royal involvement that Wolsey s
howed any interest in the fight against heresy, and certainly he does not appear to have concerned himself nearly so much with arguably more vital but less conspicuous tasks such as, for instance, grappling with England’s indigenous heretics, the Lollards. However, this is not as significant an indication of a lack of genuine concern for heresy as might at first appear. The ground-rules for combating Lollardy had been established by Archbishop Arundel about a hundred years earlier, and if Wolsey’s episcopal colleagues could be trusted (and there is every reason for thinking that they could) there was no need for him to intervene, or to make use of his legatine powers. Luther and his followers were quite another matter. Here there were very few ground-rules: hence Wolsey’s rapid and very public intervention in the spring of 1521. Admittedly, after the opening shots on the home front there was something of a lull, but this was not because Wolsey had become bored with the problem, but because for the next two or three years there was no problem. No Lutherans could be found, for the good reason that very few, if any, existed.

  Two events changed all this. The Peasants’ Revolt in Germany in 1524-5 provided proof positive that heresy and insurrection went hand in hand, and thus fears about Lutheranism dramatically increased.101 And in the same year that the revolt was put down William Tyndale completed his translation into English of the New Testament, though the disruption of its printing in Cologne and Tyndale’s flight to Worms delayed its appearance in England until 1526.102 But as soon as Wolsey received news of its imminent arrival, he went into action. With Henry’s approval he decided to institute a ‘secret search’ for all Lutheran literature, but especially Tyndale’s New Testament, to be followed by a burning of books like that of May 1521. And as in 1521, he ordered an amnesty for all those who would surrender heretical literature within a set period, insisting, in addition, that all printers and likely merchants should take out recognizances binding them not to import such literature.103 In other words, he had decided upon a major government initiative, and one that led directly on 26 and 27 January 1526 to the famous raid on the Steelyard, the London home of the Hanse merchants, and to that ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral on 11 February, presided over by Wolsey, at which Robert Barnes, and probably five Hanse merchants abjured and did public penance, and where heretical works were burnt and Fisher delivered the second of his great sermons against Luther.104 The battle had been reopened in earnest, and this time there were people and books to battle with, but even now not very many. Indeed, it has been suggested that there was great difficulty in finding enough books to burn and almost certainly no copies of the one that had stirred Wolsey into action, Tyndale’s New Testament.105 However, by the autumn these were arriving in such numbers that in October Tunstall, as bishop of London, was able to light a bonfire of his own, taking the opportunity to warn the London book trade against importing any copies.106 At the same time heretical works by other English authors who, like Tyndale, were having to live and publish on the continent, were being smuggled in, despite all the English authorities’ efforts to prevent them. And not only were there English Lutherans to be found abroad, but some were now discovered living in England.

  Because it has become an interpretative crux, before we proceed, it must be stressed again that the Steelyard raid was not, as it is so often portrayed,107 a private initiative of the heresy-hunter Thomas More, but a government initiative organized by Wolsey, with Henry’s knowledge and consent. True, More did take part in it, but on both days he was accompanied by a number of other royal councillors and church officials.108 The suspects were then interrogated by a commission of leading churchmen, set up by virtue of Wolsey’s legatine authority, and on which, on at least one occasion he himself sat109 – this providing the pattern for most subsequent heresy proceedings. In using his legatine powers in this way, Wolsey was usurping episcopal jurisdiction, and there is evidence that Cuthbert Tunstall, in whose diocese of London most of the heretics were to be found, was unhappy with this. At any rate on 21 November 1527, the opening day of probably the most famous of these early heresy trials, that of ‘Little Bilney’ and Thomas Arthur, after Wolsey had made a formal declaration of his legatine jurisdiction over heresy Tunstall objected that, as bishop of the diocese in which the heretical activity was alleged to have taken place, he already possessed sufficient authority to try the defendants. Wolsey’s immediate reaction is not known, but, when the trial resumed on 1 December, it was not at Westminster where it had begun, but at the London home of the bishop of Norwich, where the presiding judges were Tunstall, Fisher and West of Ely. The record does not state whether they were acting as Wolsey’s commissaries, suggesting that they were not. When, however, the two defendants came to abjure, they did so to Tunstall as Wolsey’s commissary but also as their ‘ordinary and diocesan’, while Tunstall’s fellow judges are referred to as legatine commissaries.110

  It seems, therefore, that if initially Wolsey had been insensitive to episcopal amour-propre, he had quickly recovered his touch. By admitting Tunstall as bishop to a share in the jurisdiction, he had successfully asserted his own legatine authority, without apparently seriously offending the bishop. Shortly after the trial a distressing interest in Lutheranism was discovered amongst some Oxford undergraduates, especially at Cardinal College. Along with Longland, in whose diocese of Lincoln Oxford lay, it was Tunstall who shouldered the main burden of the investigations, because of the involvement of a London curate in the distribution of heretical literature at Oxford, one Thomas Garrard.111 That Wolsey’s pride and joy had been found to be infected with heresy, made this a particularly sensitive matter and one which brought him and Tunstall into close contact. If Turnstall had borne Wolsey a serious grudge about what had happened over Bilney and Arthur, one might expect some evidence of it in the surviving correspondence, but on the contrary both men appear to be wholly concerned with how best to deal with the matter in hand.112 Moreover, Garrard’s eventual trial was conducted under the same arrangements as had finally prevailed at Bilney’s and Arthur’s, as were Geoffrey Lome’s and John Tewkesbury’s: Tunstall took part both as Garrard’s bishop and as Wolsey’s commissary, while the other judges were there solely as his commissaries.113

  Something else which suggests that Tunstall’s remonstrations at the Bilney and Arthur trial were only a hiccup is the co-operation between Wolsey and the bishops which became such a feature of the fight against Lutheranism during 1520s. It is impossible to arrive at exact figures for the turn out of bishops at the two famous book-burnings of 1521 and 1526, but one description of the earlier one states that ‘the most part’ were there, while one of 1526 has it that thirty-six bishops and abbots attended.114 Certainly, at least nine bishops, Warham, Tunstall, Fisher, Clerk, Longland, Veysey, Standish, West and Kite took part in heresy trials as Wolsey’s commissaries. Moreover, though Fisher’s great sermons against Luther are rightly well known, those which Tunstall and Longland delivered are not. Tunstall’s, as we have seen, was delivered in October 1526 at a specifically London book-burning ceremony. Longland’s was given at a meeting of bishops on 27 November 1527, which coincided with the opening of the Bilney and Arthur trial.115 And there may have been a meeting earlier in the year specifically to work out a response to the threat posed by the imminent arrival of Tyndale’s New Testament. Unfortunately, the only reference to this appears in a satirical poem, the principal purpose of which was to pour scorn on the bishops’ reaction to that work, so it is hardly a reliable source116. On the other hand Tunstall’s chaplain, Robert Ridley, mentioned in February 1527 that Tyndale’s Bible had been ‘accursed and damned by the consent of the prelates and learned men and commanded to be burnt’.117 This could well be a reference to such a meeting, and at least points to joint episcopal action. Further evidence is provided by the instructions sent out to the bishops of the southern province to take action against heretical works,118 and not just by the instructions themselves, for one imagines that any list of such works would have had to be drawn up by a committee of bishops and ot
her experts, as had happened in 1521 just before the first book-burning. Moreover, as early as October 1524, if not before, the task of vetting all imported books for their heretical views had been assigned not only to Wolsey but also to Warham, Tunstall and Fisher.119

  One of Lord Darcy’s accusations against Wolsey in 1529 was that ‘he and other bishops have counselled together, often secretly’.120 He did not say whether they did so in order to promote the fight against heresy, but there is no doubt that the defence of the Church against the onslaught of Luther and his English followers frequently resulted in precisely that. Such co-operation will come here as no surprise, for the notion of a legatine ‘despotism’ has already been rejected. What should also be rejected is the notion of a beleaguered Thomas More battling almost alone to stem the heretical tide, for, as we have seen, it was the full apparatus of Church and state that was quickly mobilized to that end. Moreover, it is unlikely that More’s horror of heresy was significantly stronger than anyone else’s, for it was a horror that was widely shared – at least until the divorce and ‘break with Rome’ greatly muddied the waters. What was special about More, as Tunstall implied when licensing him to read Lutheran works in order to write against them, was that he could ‘play the Demosthenes in our native tongue just as well as in Latin’ and was therefore well qualified to put forth ‘some writings in English which will reveal to the simple and uneducated the crafty malice of the heretics’.121 In other words, it was not More’s fervour but his literary skills that Tunstall wished to mobilize though whether Tunstall was the prime mover is another matter. When More had first been asked to take up his pen in the Catholic cause, in 1523, the initiative had almost certainly been Henry’s. It may have been his in 1528 also, or perhaps, More himself asked to do so. But it is most likely that the request came from Wolsey, perhaps after consultation with his fellow bishops, including Tunstall. What is most unlikely is the scenario of the two old chums, More and Tunstall, getting together to do something off their own bat, because they felt no one else was making an effort. Apart from anything else, it would have been incredibly foolish to have embarked upon a private crusade; and there is no reason why they should even have contemplated doing so, for both would have been well aware of how much was already being done to combat Lutheranism, not least by the king and his cardinal legate.