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

by Gwyn, Peter

  such time as you supposed, celerity being used, sentence might have been given … Howbeit, to show unto you in great and secret counsel, and to be in any wise reserved to yourselves without disclosing thereof to the pope or any other person, such discrepant contrareity of opinions hath here ensued in the said cause, that no manner of hope in the same opinions can be in any brief time groundly trutinate, weighed, and every part to the point pondered, but that it must require more long demur and tract of time for the profound digesting of the same. So, as no certain time being known how long it shall be before the said opinion shall now be well resolved, remembering furthermore that now within one week the days judicial shall expire wherein it is by law used and appointed to proceed in such causes, and so the course of the process must needs of force cease for two months or thereabouts, it is here taken for a thing not feasible so long to protract and put over the signature of the said advocation.106

  Wolsey then instructed the envoys to act on the assumption that the advocation would go ahead, whether or not it had been signed by the time they received this letter. The adjournment, which Wolsey does not even associate with Campeggio, let alone blame him for, was thus merely an addendum to Wolsey’s main point: that it had proved impossible to come to any speedy conclusion to the trial. There seems to have been no good reason for Wolsey to make this point unless it was the truth; he seems merely to have wanted to put the envoys in the picture, while naturally being anxious that the difficulties should not too quickly become common knowledge at Rome. And, of course, the picture that Wolsey presented here fits well with the delays and difficulties that have been shown to have existed.

  If Wolsey was speaking the truth and there really was ‘no manner of hope’ that the trial would be quickly concluded, and by that must be understood concluded in Henry’s favour, then it is most unlikely that Campeggio’s adjournment would have been unexpected, or indeed unwelcome. This view receives some confirmation from a letter which the French ambassador wrote on 22 July, just a day before the adjournment was announced. His assessment was that, while on the 19th, when all the documents had been finally presented to the legates, the king’s supporters had been hopeful of success, already by the 22nd the situation had changed and they were now worried that Campeggio would not do as they wished.107 The ambassador’s explanation for this turn of events was that Campeggio was so anxious to profit from Imperial favour now that Charles v was the virtual master of Italy, that he would do nothing to disappoint him. There could be something in this, although his loyalty to the pope was probably more significant. Both explanations, however, obscure an aspect that is of great relevance. To secure an adjournment Campeggio would have needed to secure the agreement of his fellow judge. Furthermore, his fellow judge was probably aware of the dates of curial holidays and, as his letter of 27 July proves, did know that these dates were not binding in the case of special commissions such as he and Campeggio were acting under.108 To assume otherwise is to assume that Wolsey had been grossly negligent in his preparation, and this is so unlike him as to be inconceivable, and Englishmen had been dealing with the Roman courts from time out of mind. No, the only credible scenario is that Campeggio adjourned the court with Wolsey’s agreement and Henry’s prior knowledge. The question then arises of how that agreement was obtained.

  The answer has more or less been given already. On the evidence presented it would have been quite easy for Campeggio to show that sentence could not be given in Henry’s favour, or at the very least that there were so many difficulties that a speedy decision was not possible. But time was not on Wolsey’s side, for by the end of July the advocation, which Clement had agreed to on the 13th,109 was expected any minute.110 In these circumstances it was vital for Wolsey not to allow knowledge of the true state of the legal position to become public, let alone to allow a sentence in favour of the marriage, legally the most correct outcome of the trial, to be passed. Far better to create the impression that all would have been well if only Campeggio had not intervened. And why would Campeggio have been prepared to shoulder the blame? Because it averted the more difficult alternative of having to pass a sentence that would have infuriated his hosts, and at the same time it enabled him to carry out the only specific instruction that he had from Rome, which was to prevent any sentence being passed. The adjournment was a compromise that gave just enough to all sides for it to be acceptable.

  But what, then, becomes of the duke of Suffolk’s one moment of fame? It may be remembered that when Campeggio had announced the adjournment, so great apparently was his fury that the duke had shouted out what, according to most accounts, all Henry’s loyal subjects were thinking at this time: that ‘it was never merry in England whilst we had cardinals amongst us’.111 There is no reason to doubt that Suffolk made the remark, but if it should be thought a little too theatrical and apposite to ring completely true, there is an explanation. According to Cavendish, Suffolk’s declaration was made at the king’s command and, although there are problems about Cavendish as a source, in this instance he probably got it right: there is nothing else in Suffolk’s career to suggest that he was capable of taking a political initiative, and the alternative interpretation, that he merely lost his temper, is undermined by the argument put forward here that the adjournment could not have come as a surprise to Henry and his leading councillors, of whom Suffolk was one.112 Thus, Suffolk’s outburst was probably entirely premeditated: an official protest made for propaganda effect, and one entirely compatible with the kind of compromise that it has been suggested was arrived at, with the king’s full knowledge, between Campeggio and Wolsey. Moreover, though the failure of the legatine court was a setback – and following the optimism of the previous September, one severe enough to convince Henry that the time had come to disgrace his cardinal legate – Wolsey did not see it as the end of the road. He was to spend the next two months conducting a skilful damage limitation exercise, the aim of which was to persuade the pope to take the matter into his own hands and give a personal judgment in Henry’s favour.113 It was the continuation of the existing policy in another guise, and, as before, it meant that somehow the pope would have to be fixed, but in a way that could not be proved, for appearances were almost more important than reality. The best solution had been the decretal commission, and with its failure the prospects for any kind of success greatly diminished. But because, as Wolsey put it, the king’s cause suffered no negative,114 the search for a solution had to go on. And if there was a solution, it had probably far less to do with the complexities of the canon law than with the equally complex issues of foreign policy.

  The task that Henry set Wolsey in the spring of 1527 was the hardest he had ever asked his cardinal legate to perform. Insofar as the pope held the key, it meant that it was Italian politics that Wolsey would have to try and dominate, and one does not have to be too influenced by Burckhardt to appreciate that the Italian peninsula was something of a quicksand in which even the best laid plans could quickly disappear without trace. Moreover, for England, as has been pointed out before, for what were essentially logistic reasons, it was probably the most difficult area of Europe on which to exert pressure. But the alternative was to rely on allies, and after fifteen years of involvement in foreign affairs Wolsey did not need to read Machiavelli to appreciate that allies were unreliable and at best a crude instrument with which to achieve one’s ends. Admittedly, he did not have to look for lasting success in Italy. All that was needed was to apply a half-nelson for just long enough to persuade Clement that it was worth his while to agree to Henry’s request. It would be entirely a question of timing, and, given that in the late 1520s Clement was much in need of help, it might just be possible to pull it off.

  One thing in Wolsey’s favour was that, as a result of the Imperial victory over the French at Pavia in February 1525, the rulers of Italy were extremely suspicious of Charles’s intentions. King of Naples and effective ruler of both Genoa and Milan, and for the moment without the French to act as
a restraining influence, Charles did seem to be in a strong position to establish some kind of sovereignty over the whole peninsula, although the assumption that he wanted to was probably a mistake. Threatened from within by the spread of Lutheranism and from without by the army of Suleiman the Magnificent, his hold over the Holy Roman Empire, never strong, was increasingly precarious. All he wanted in Italy was a settlement which safeguarded his position sufficiently to allow him to turn his attention to overcoming these threats. But if Charles saw his policy towards Italy as essentially defensive, her rulers, given the opportunities that Pavia had created, may be excused for not sharing his view. For them the immediate task was to resist further Imperial advancement, and to that end they were very much in the market for allies, even one who could give as little help as England. This underlying point needs to be borne in mind as the complex story of Wolsey’s negotiations with the papacy is unravelled. It was this that gave him his chance to exert some influence on Italian affairs and thus to obtain the divorce; for, of course, one of the most important of the Italian states was presided over by Clement VII, the only person able to grant it.

  When, however, the news of Pavia had first reached Wolsey, the divorce had not yet been thought of. Instead he had to contend with the more general problem of deciding how this Imperial victory, and the unusual circumstances that resulted from the capture of the French king, affected England’s chances of continuing in the dominant role in European affairs that both he and his master considered rightfully hers. At first sight Pavia might have appeared to confirm the wisdom of the Imperial alliance and the Great Enterprise against France decided upon at Bruges way back in 1521. In fact, as we saw earlier, Wolsey had begun to have serious doubts about the alliance sometime before Pavia, and these were soon confirmed when it became clear that Charles had no intention of seizing the opportunity to launch an all-out attack on France. The result was the volte-face described in a previous chapter and the signing, on 30 August, of the Treaty of the More.115

  The most obvious purpose of this was to secure Francis’s release from captivity in Spain on reasonable terms. In return for English help, his mother, Louise of Savoy, was prepared, albeit reluctantly, to pay quite a high price: in money terms about £20,000, and she was also at last to come to some satisfactory financial settlement of what was owing to Henry’s sister, Mary, as dowager queen of France, and to settle yet another long-standing grievance by forbidding Albany to return to Scotland. In making this treaty, Wolsey had no intention of allowing England to become involved in a full-scale war with the emperor, but to achieve a position somewhat similar to the one he had secured in 1518 by the Treaty of London: a European peace presided over by Henry and himself, and underpinned and dominated by the Anglo-French alliance of which England was to be the senior partner.116 The difficulty, even before the king’s ‘great matter’ complicated everything, was that this time neither Francis nor Charles was especially anxious for peace. Once Francis had been released in March 1526, he was determined to re-establish himself as a leading figure in Europe, while at the same time attempting to recover the two sons whom he had had to surrender to Charles as a guarantee of his good behaviour. Both these ambitions meant intervening in Italian affairs. Charles’s position, although arguably more defensive, did have a curious tendency to end in war-like behaviour. Moreover, though he may not have been anxious for further gains in Italy, he was faced with some difficult decisions there which were always likely to provoke opposition. First, there was what to do about Milan whose puppet duke, Francesco Sforza, and his adviser, Girolamo Morone, had proved to be less compliant to his wishes than he had hoped. He was also most anxious to be crowned emperor by the pope, which would necessitate a personal visit to Italy, and this could only arouse the gravest suspicions about his long-term intentions. The Venetians and Clement – if his chief advisers at the time, Gian Giberti bishop of Verona and Francesco Guicciardini, could persuade him to make any decision – were likely to resist even Charles’s modest plans for Italy. All in all, the prospects for peace in 1525 and 1526 were not good, but especially not for one arranged by Wolsey, since one undoubted consequence of Pavia was that Charles was in no mood to be dictated to. Somehow or other, Wolsey would have to prove to the emperor that England was a force to be reckoned with, and this was not going to be easy.

  Francis’s release was accomplished in March 1526, but it has to be admitted that the part played by Wolsey was not all that great, for it was Charles’s priorities in Italy and Germany and thus his desire to conciliate France that applied the pressure. Still, insofar as Wolsey had promised to obtain the French king’s freedom, it was an auspicious start, but no more than that. France was weak in 1526, and though up to a point this suited Wolsey it would not do if she was so weak that even the combined strength of England and France could pose no threat to the emperor. Further allies would have to be sought, and the obvious place to look was among the Italian states anxious to resist further Imperial encroachments. The result was that in May 1526 the League of Cognac was formed, consisting of France, the papacy, Venice, Florence and the duke of Milan, who was being besieged at the time by Imperial forces in the castle of Milan, and was in effect a duke without a duchy.117 For the Italians it was his restoration that was the major purpose of the league, for this was the most practical way of limiting Imperial power. For Wolsey, however, Milan was but a small brick in a much larger edifice. Although he was much involved in bringing the league into existence, it did not suit his purpose to be too obviously connected with it. Henry was to be given the deliberately shadowy title of ‘protector’, but for the moment that was all. The actual fighting was to be left to the members of the League, especially to the Venetians, for to begin with Francis was almost as reluctant to fight as Wolsey was, and anyway, what with the setbacks of the last year and a half, including the payment of a large ransom to Charles, he was hardly in a position to do so. However, some fighting was essential to Wolsey’s plans. What Wolsey hoped was that Charles would become so embroiled in fighting the league that he would be only too willing to take up Wolsey’s offer to act as honest broker. Once he could get Charles to the conference table, then he was confident that he could engineer a settlement of Europe’s problems acceptable to all, but most of all to England: a subordinate France paying England a large annual sum for the privilege of being number two; a contained Charles, content to surrender more dangerous ambitions so as to concentrate on what was, after all, the task of a Holy Roman Emperor, the defence of Christendom from the Infidel; and a grateful Italy freed from the threat of the rapacious Imperialists. The plan has all the hallmarks of its author: a mix of bluff and real pressure, of stick and carrot, a combination that had served him well in the past. It was ambitious, but with a little luck and his usual good judgement it might not be impossible to bring it off.

  One characteristic feature of the plan was that it required only the minimum use of England’s own military and financial resources. This had the disadvantage that the more the fighting was left to his allies, the more difficult it would be for Wolsey to prevent them from dictating the terms of any peace settlement that might emerge. The advantage was that, when the right moment occurred, England’s non-involvement in the fighting would lend credibility to Wolsey’s claim to the role of honest broker and it was this that was central to his strategy of dominating any general European settlement. Moreover, there was the important further consideration that money to finance any major contribution to a war against the emperor was lacking. Whatever Henry and Wolsey’s real intentions as regards the Amicable Grant, the undoubted resistance to it was a warning that the country was in no mood to accept further heavy financial demands; a mood which could not have been improved now that the enemy was no longer to be the French but the more popular Imperialists. It is possible to make too much of this shortage of money: it was, after all, a weakness shared by every European power, yet it very rarely prevented them from engaging in war. But it was a further complication
for Wolsey in what was already a very complicated scenario.

  Just how complicated it was, and how difficult it was going to be for Wolsey to achieve success, was already apparent before Henry’s ‘great matter’ doubled his difficulties. The trouble was that during 1526 the new league had not had much success in Italy; indeed, one member, Clement, had had to endure the indignity of being besieged in his castle of St Angelo in Rome by a small force organized, with Imperial help, by his arch-rival Cardinal Pompeo Colonna. And in early 1527 a large force of German and Spanish troops, commanded by the duke of Bourbon, had moved into Northern Italy and was posing a real threat to the continued existence of the league. It was obvious that, if it was to survive, much more would have to be done by England and France, and the result was a series of diplomatic initiatives culminating in Wolsey’s famous mission to Amiens and Compiègne in the summer of 1527. By the Treaty of Amiens, signed on 18 August, England agreed to make a monthly financial contribution to support a French army led by Odet de Foix, sieur de Lautrec, which had, in fact, already left for Italy.118 As Wolsey explained to Henry, it was now necessary for there to be ‘a real and actual prosecution of the war’,119 but it is important to realize that for Wolsey this was something of a setback. The evidence lies in the otherwise curious fact that while negotiating an offensive alliance against the emperor, Wolsey spent much of his time at Amiens trying to persuade Francis to modify the terms that were to be put to Charles, so that there was some prospect of them being acceptable.120