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

by Gwyn, Peter

  When Campeggio had set off for England towards the end of July 1528, the death of Lautrec and the other disasters to befall the league were still in the future, but some at least could have been predicted. At any rate, Clement’s native caution served him in good stead. Ostensibly Campeggio would be doing the king of England’s bidding, or, more correctly, he was to act as Wolsey’s fellow judge in the ‘great matter’. In fact, as we noted earlier, his instructions were first of all to persuade Henry to change his mind, and, failing that, to persuade Catherine to take religious vows. Only if both moves were unsuccessful was he to exercise his commission and, with Wolsey, to proceed to a trial. Underlying these instructions was the need to play for time for, as he was informed in September, ‘every day stronger reasons are discovered which compel the Pope to remind you that you are to act cautiously’.135 By December, with the virtual disappearance of the league, the situation had become much clearer, and it did not encourage Clement to look favourably upon Henry’s cause. No wonder that he was driven to distraction, perhaps even to illness,136 by Wolsey’s pestering to be allowed to make more use of the decretal commission.137 Now Clement deeply regretted that he had granted it even in limited form.138 He need not have worried. Campeggio had allowed Henry and Wolsey one glimpse of the document, had read it out to them once, but that was all.139 In January 1529 the pope’s chamberlain, Campano, arrived in England with orders for Campeggio to destroy the document, which he duly did. He also brought instructions for Campeggio on no account to proceed to a judgment, or so Clement maintained. In June Campeggio was to deny that he had ever received them, but by then he was under such pressure from Henry and Wolsey to decide in the king’s favour that he was doubtful of being able to avoid doing so, whatever Clement desired.140 What is not in doubt is that by the end of 1528, perhaps even as early as August,141 Clement had decided to make terms with the emperor – and part of the price he would have to pay would almost certainly be a settlement in Catherine’s favour, however much it would offend his erstwhile Defender of the Faith.

  It is important to stress that Clement came to this decision not so much out of fear of the emperor, but because he had come to the conclusion that it was the emperor who had the most to offer him. The sack of Rome and the resulting collapse of papal authority had inevitably led to chaos in the Papal States, and there were plenty of people around to take advantage of this. Amongst them were the Venetians who had moved in when in June and July 1527 the cities of Ravenna and Cervia were disrupted by factional fighting stirred up by Imperial intrigue, and had in effect claimed both cities for their own.142 As for many years they had belonged to the Venetians and had only been lost to the papacy in 1509, it could be argued that they were merely reclaiming their own, but this did not prevent their action from being a bitter blow to Clement. Perhaps as bitter to him had been the decision in November 1527 of his great rival, the duke of Ferrara, to join the league, but at a price – and the price that he had demanded was the surrender of all papal rights to Modena, Reggio and Rubiera.143 However, the bitterest blow of all concerned Florence which ever since Giovanni de’ Medici had become Pope Leo x in 1513, had been virtually part of the Papal States. There on 17 May 1527, as an almost direct result of the sack of Rome, the Medici family had been requested to leave, and the last Florentine republic was established.144

  For Clement, who for so long had been virtual ruler of a Florence that had been in effect his family’s patrimony for a hundred years, all this had been almost harder to bear than the horrendous happenings in Rome. Thus, the recovery of Florence was at the top of his shopping list. And by the autumn of 1528 it had become apparent to him that the best way of obtaining most of what he wanted was to seek Imperial aid, which strange to say, he was in quite a good position to obtain. Since Charles was so heavily committed in a number of areas, there would be great advantages for him in arranging the affairs of Italy as quickly as possible, even if this meant making concessions to its leading states, including the papacy. Moreover, Charles’s aims of being crowned emperor could only be achieved with any dignity if he and Clement were on good terms. And there were other useful things that Clement as head of the Church could do for him. Most importantly, he could grant him a cruzada, which would enable him to raise a considerable amount of much needed money. So, one way and another Clement had quite a few good cards to play, and Charles might well be willing to pay quite a lot for them. He would be sorry if any deal with Charles meant that he would have to deny Henry what he wanted, and thereby, perhaps, precipitate England’s withdrawal from the Catholic Church, but it would hardly be his fault, given that what Henry wanted was both unreasonable and unnecessary.145 That, at least, was how things must have looked to Clement when he made his decision to side with Charles, and by the Treaty of Barcelona of 29 June 1529 he gained most of what he wanted.146 Charles, it is true, was to renege on his promise to force the duke of Ferrara to return Modena and Reggio, but an Imperial army did restore Medici rule in Florence and got Venice to return Ravenna and Cervia. As a result, Clement emerged from one of the most disastrous episodes in papal history with the Papal States virtually intact, if greatly impoverished, and the interests of his own family well served. It was a remarkable performance, but one that helped Wolsey not at all.

  Of course, the danger that Clement and Charles would come to some agreement was not unperceived by Wolsey. In particular, he appreciated the damage that was being done to his chances of success by his failure to obtain the restoration to Clement of Ravenna and Cervia. Indeed, ‘this blessed matter’, as du Bellay called it on one occasion,147 was one of Wolsey’s chief preoccupations throughout his negotiations for the divorce: special embassies to Venice such as Gardiner’s in July 1528,148 pressure on France to lean on Venice,149 stormy interviews with the Venetian ambassador,150 and promises to the pope,151 all were tried, but to no avail. Venice would not budge, and this was to cost Wolsey dear. On the other hand, it is hard to see what more he could have done. The league needed Venice’s military and financial help; her contribution in both men and money was probably greater than France’s, and certainly greater than England’s.152 So she had a perfect right to seek some reward, and she did have some claim to Ravenna and Cervia, while Clement’s very ambiguous policy towards the league offered her little incentive to return them. For Henry and Wolsey, however, the consequences of her refusal were very damaging. Clement was determined to get them back. If his supposed friends and allies could not bring this about, then he was willing to turn to his supposed enemy, Charles V.153

  Wolsey’s response to the increasing likelihood of agreement between Clement and Charles was to return to those plans for a European peace settlement which had been central to his strategy before the divorce had arisen. When that divorce made Clement the focus of his attention, the priority had to be to free him from Imperial control. However, ideally Wolsey had always wanted at the very least to secure Charles’s acquiescence to Henry’s divorce, and it needs to be stressed that at no time during these years, despite his heavy involvement in the French invasion of Italy, did his negotiations with the emperor cease. True, in January 1528 the English ambassadors in Spain had been manouvred by their French colleagues into making a formal declaration of war against the emperor.154 But they received no thanks from Wolsey, such is the lot of ambassadors, and he was very quick to try to minimize the consequences of their actions.155 By April he had drawn up new peace proposals, and in May he sent to Spain Sylvester Darius, an Italian who had made a career for himself in England, to obtain Charles’s agreement.156 He also began to negotiate with Margaret of Savoy in order to minimize any possible disruption to England’s vital trade with the Low Countries, and a truce was signed on 15 June.157 No such success attended Darius, for Charles, already involved in serious negotiations with Clement, was in no mood to be dictated to by Wolsey.158 And it was the possibility that these negotiations might prove successful that in December forced Wolsey to unfurl yet another plan for European peace.
As a first step, the pope was to declare a general truce. There was then to be a meeting of representatives of the leading European states, probably at either Nice or Avignon, where it would be possible for both Charles and Francis to keep in close touch with the proceedings. Wolsey’s hope was that there would be enough in any such meeting to tempt everyone to attend. Charles might obtain his Imperial coronation at the hands of the pope, though not necessarily in Italy; he might also be assured of receiving the ransom money from France in return for releasing the French princes. It would be his sons’ return that would be the chief attraction of such a conference for Francis. Milan might be restored to Francesco Sforza, probably the solution that offended the fewest people. Other Italian states might be guaranteed their territorial independence in return for handing back territory that did not belong to them, which would mean that Clement would recover his beloved Ravenna and Cervia. In fact, it would be a settlement with Clement very much in mind. To him, rather than to Wolsey, would go all the honour of calling and presiding over the meeting: evidence of how far the divorce had weakened Wolsey’s position. The prospect of the emperor setting foot in Italy was something that Clement, like most Italian rulers, greatly feared, and this was now ruled out. Wolsey also proposed that Clement should receive the protection of a ‘presidiary’, of two thousand men, to be paid for by England and France. Finally, it was to be made clear to Charles that if he refused to agree to the meeting, or in any other way behaved unreasonably, then England and France would mount a major invasion of Spain.159

  In this way Wolsey hoped, even at the last moment, to tempt Clement away from the Imperial embrace. At the same time he was intensifying the arguments that had been his stock-in-trade ever since the search for the divorce began. The well-being of Henry’s kingdom as well as his personal salvation depended upon it being granted, he told Clement. If it was not, Henry would be forced to act independently of the pope, with disastrous consequences for the Catholic Church at a time when the Lutheran heresy was gaining ground. Moreover, it would do the Church no good in England if his papal legate was shown to be powerless to bring about his temporal master’s wishes, especially if his failure led to his dismissal from the king’s service. And, anyway, Clement was under a particular obligation to Henry for his famous book denouncing Luther’s heresies, the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum.160 And if all these arguments, and variations on them, were the constant refrain, in late 1528 Wolsey was adding all the new ones he could think of in order to work upon Clement’s natural suspicions of the emperor. In particular, the English envoys were instructed to make as much as possible of a prophecy apparently circulating in Rome, that Clement would be succeeded by a pope named Angelo. This, they were to say, could only be a reference to the general of the Franciscan order, the Spaniard Francisco Quinoñes, otherwise called de los Angeles.161 It will be remembered that he had been used by Charles back in the autumn of 1527 to notify Clement of his opposition to the divorce, and he was to figure in most of the subsequent negotiations between the two men, a fact that lent some weight to Wolsey’s interpretation of the prophecy that had Charles deposing Clement and putting the Spaniard in his place. Not very surprisingly it does not appear to have impressed Clement very much. But by this stage almost any argument was worth trying. The league’s position in Italy had collapsed and the incentives for Clement to throw in his lot with the emperor were multiplying daily. Meanwhile, it had become apparent that Campeggio’s arrival in England at the beginning of October was not going to lead to any speedy legal solution to the divorce question; Clement’s instructions to him had seen to that. Then, early the following month, Catherine had produced her bombshell, the Spanish brief, and, since Clement was the only person who could diffuse this, it put him in a strong position. But then a satisfactory solution to Henry’s ‘great matter’ could only ever have been found with Clement’s active support; and by the late autumn of 1528 that was looking increasingly unlikely.

  It is difficult not to admire the energy, courage and skill with which Wolsey faced up to this worsening situation; and before concluding it is worth dwelling on that skill for just a little longer. The central plank of the new initiatives presented to the pope during the winter of 1528-9 was undoubtedly the plan for a settlement of all outstanding European problems. Its attractions for Clement have just been outlined, but what should not be forgotten is that if he had adopted the role allotted him, which included acceding to Henry’s rather than Charles’s wishes as regards the divorce, he would have had to offend the man whose armies were most in a position to do him harm. Wolsey’s task was to persuade him that what he had to offer was worth risking that man’s wrath. He needed both to emphasize the threat to papal and Medici power of any increase in Imperial influence in Italy and promise immediate military aid. Admittedly, two thousand men would be of little help if fighting on any scale were to break out again, but, of course, the intention was that the peace settlement would prevent this. Meanwhile, even a small force could provide Clement with useful protection from the marauding bands of unpaid and undisciplined Imperial troops which now constituted the main threat to his safety. It would also be symbolic of a genuine commitment to him by England and France, which, if Charles proved intransigent and the peace negotiations broke down, was in theory to be translated into a massive military strike against the emperor. In fact, neither England nor France was in much of a position to make such a strike, but the fact that no one knew better than Clement of Henry’s single-mindedness in his search for a divorce made it difficult for him entirely to discount the possibility that Wolsey would feel obliged somehow or other to provide the much larger force that an invasion of Spain necessitated. There was also the possible damage to the Catholic Church and to his own spiritual authority, if his siding with the emperor resulted in Henry doing what Wolsey threatened: namely, to take the English Church into schism. This was a price that Clement proved to be willing to pay, but it was a very high price, and it must have given him pause for thought which was exactly what Wolsey wanted. The loss of England – and might not England’s ally, France, who after all was no stranger to schism, follow her example? – would not only have religious consequences, but would make the papacy worryingly dependent upon the emperor. Rather than let this happen, would it not be worth taking up Wolsey’s initiatives, at the same time making it clear to the emperor that he was not going to be his lackey, by granting Henry what he could make out to Charles was only the English king’s legal due, judgment in his favour? During the winter of 1528-9 Wolsey was harping on the difficulties of the choices facing Clement, while at the same time offering him an attractive alternative. It was pressure diplomacy of a high order. In the end it did not succeed. Did it ever stand a realistic chance?

  The answer is probably yes, though it was always a slim one. One thing that suggests this is that, whatever the strength of Clement’s commitment to the emperor, it in no way prevented him from behaving very generously towards Henry and Wolsey. Between 2 November 1528 and 4 June 1529 he issued, at their request, at least five important bulls.162 Now it can be argued, with some justification, that it was precisely because he was unwilling to grant Henry the one thing he really wanted that he was prepared to be so compliant about other matters. Nevertheless, these bulls are evidence that at this time Clement had in no sense broken with England, was still anxious to please, and was hoping to keep his options open for as long as possible. He showed a good deal of interest in Wolsey’s plans for a general European settlement – in fact, far too much for the peace of mind of the various Imperial representatives in Rome.163 Moreover, Charles came to Wolsey’s aid by being dilatory in responding to Clement’s proposals to him, and when at length, in December, he did, his answers were not very satisfactory.164 Three months later the Imperialist party in Rome was still worried that the various efforts (for Venetian and French envoys were at work as well) to prevent Clement from joining with Charles might be successful.165 Indeed, it was probably not until April 1529 that Clem
ent finally decided to take the plunge. Although the Medici had been driven out of Florence in May 1527, the new ruling faction, led by Niccolo Capponi, had opened up negotiations with Clement, so that by the winter of 1528-9 there was some possibility of compromise. On 17 April any such chance ended when a new group, deeply antagonistic to Medici interests, seized power.166 The only way back for the Medici was now by force, and this could only be provided effectively by the Imperialists. On 9 May Clement sent a special envoy to Charles with instructions to reach an agreement with him. The result was that Treaty of Barcelona already referred to, and the end of Wolsey’s hopes. But the point is that it did take Clement some time to come to a final decision. Obviously his long illness was one explanation, but so also was Wolsey’s diplomatic activity. If only Venice could have been persuaded to hand back Ravenna and Cervia, or if the coup in Florence had not occurred, then Clement’s decision might have been different.

  What of Charles? Was it ever likely that he would accept Wolsey’s European settlement, and in doing so abandon his aunt? As we have seen, in January 1529 Wolsey told Campeggio that he did not believe that Charles would allow his concern for Catherine to stand in the way of achieving other more vital ends. On 20 February he repeated his view in a letter to the English envoys at Rome,167 and on 6 April he explained to them why he thought that Charles would in the end be willing to fall in with his proposals: events had gone so well for him in Italy that a peace that would confirm his main achievement, the expulsion of the French from the peninsula, would be sufficiently attractive to outweigh some of the less appealing aspects of the proposals.168 With the advantage of hindsight it is easy to say that Wolsey’s assessment was over-optimistic. But given that Henry demanded a solution, there was no point in him being anything else. The various treaties that Charles made in 1529 show that he was in the mood to make concessions, both to the French and to the Italian states, in order to clear the decks for a settlement of his affairs in Germany. Still, whether or not Wolsey really believed in his own assessment, it showed a serious underestimate of the cards that Charles would be able to play in the spring of 1529.