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

by Gwyn, Peter

  If quantity of evidence alone was the criterion, probably the first view would prevail. It also has going for it, or against, it the fact that it was the official line as, for instance, expounded in correspondence between Henry and his ambassador at the French court, Sir Francis Bryan.1 According to the king, Wolsey’s plot was as follows. First, the French were to encourage England to engage in a war with both emperor and pope. War against the former would result in the collapse of English foreign trade, against the latter in Henry’s excommunication and an interdict whereby almost any kind of hostile action against the English Crown would receive the Church’s blessing. The French would thereby be discharged of the need to repay their debts to England, and they would also be provided with a justification for invading the pale of Calais, while the Scots would be enabled to march into Northern England. Both these things, according to Henry, Wolsey had countenanced; but that was only the beginning of it. To counter these invasions the English people would be asked to provide both men and money in great amounts. Henry would then be faced with large-scale unrest, not to say insurrection, on the part of his own subjects. In desperation he would turn against the advisers who had got him into such a mess, and would recall the fallen minister. And as if all this were not enough, something even more miraculous would happen. At an instant Henry’s enemies would cease causing him trouble, and peace and prosperity would reign again. However, just in case the plot did not quite work out, Wolsey would at the same time have been establishing a fall-back position whereby foreign powers, but especially the papacy and France, would put subtler pressure upon Henry to secure his restoration. What precisely was meant by this is not clear, but at least Wolsey’s full enjoyment of his rights as bishop of Winchester and abbot of St Albans, which he had been forced to surrender when he had accepted that he was guilty of praemunire.

  This, then, was what Henry alleged Wolsey was plotting, and the main evidence was apparently provided by members of Wolsey’s own household, especially his Venetian doctor, Agostino Agostini.2 How much of the evidence can be believed will be considered shortly, but there is no doubt that Agostini was extremely active on Wolsey’s behalf at this time, and was in personal contact with the French ambassador, Joachim, and the Imperial ambassador, Chapuys. Moreover, if Agostini’s evidence is to be believed, then the case for a conspiratorial Wolsey must prevail. It is certainly supported by Joachim’s and Chapuys’s dispatches as well as those of the Venetian and Milanese ambassadors. What is interesting, though, is that reports of Wolsey’s plotting were circulating, and in government circles, a long time before he was arrested. Thus, in July Norfolk informed Chapuys that all Wolsey’s machinations were known to the government, having apparently been revealed by the three men in whom Wolsey had most confidence, though Chapuys mentioned no names.3 And even if one were inclined to take Norfolk’s statement with a pinch of salt, it is harder to dismiss Chapuys’s account in the previous month of Wolsey’s advice, as conveyed to him by Agostini, that now was the moment to take the strongest possible action on Catherine’s behalf.4 On the face of it, Chapuys’s evidence alone would provide incontrovertible proof of a plot, but it is not alone. When in November Henry informed Sir Francis Bryan of Wolsey’s arrest he sent also, as proof of the cardinal’s mendacity, a copy of an extract from a letter that Agostini would have written on his master’s behalf to the French ambassador in England if he had not had the great sense to perceive that it was ‘maliciously contrived’, and had therefore, without telling Wolsey, not sent it.5 Agostini’s confession, which included his total recall of the letter, was and remains at the heart of the case against Wolsey. If its validity could be undermined, then the rest of the evidence might not be quite as incontrovertible as at first it appears.

  Agostini was arrested at the same time and place as Wolsey, but unlike his master he was hurried back to London for questioning, where he quickly turned king’s evidence – if indeed he had not always been a mole, acting on the Crown’s behalf while posing as a loyal servant of the cardinal. The reason for supposing that Agostini was not quite what he seemed to be is the treatment that he received once he got to London. On 13 November Chapuys reported that the doctor had been sent to the Tower on a charge of treason,6 but on the 27th the picture he presented was very different: ‘The said physician, ever since the second day of his coming here, has been, and still is, treated as a prince in the house of the duke of Norfolk, which clearly shows that he has been singing to the right tune.’7 Writing just a few days later the Milanese ambassador gave a similar account; only he reported that Agostini ‘immediately, from the very first, … found great favour’.8 It was ‘undeniable’, he added, that a few days before his arrest letters of Agostini’s, probably to the French ambassador, had been intercepted, and that these had contained some lines in cipher.

  The Crown’s treatment of one supposedly guilty of treasonable activity, if only on another’s behalf, is a little curious. True, its kindness may have produced a lot of useful information, but if Agostini had indeed been involved in even half the activities he said he had, is it probable that he would have been treated quite so well? After all, merely the threat of a conviction for high treason was enough to make most people quite talkative. But even more curious is the recognizance that Agostini signed on 22 December, in which he promised on pain of a £100 fine never to disclose to anyone the ‘matter as is mentioned in a book written with his own hand concerning the late cardinal of York’.9 Why hide anything about what Wolsey had been up to? After all, he was already a disgraced minister, and really the more that was broadcast about his wicked activities the more convincing would have been the Crown’s justification for having him arrested. And when he died, all the Crown could manage was a short press release, largely for foreign consumption, giving a brief explanation and justification for Wolsey’s arrest. To have missed such a golden opportunity for berating not only Wolsey but all those people he had allegedly been in treasonable negotiations with, could suggest some difficulty in making out a convincing case for treason.

  And what none of this does is help to confirm that the aspects of the plot that the Crown did choose to release had very much to do with the truth. It is also worrying that the one bit of hard evidence it produced was a letter supposedly written on Wolsey’s behalf but never sent. Whatever the reason – and one might think that a conspiracy on the alleged scale and complexity of this one might have generated a little more evidence and of a kind less easily undermined – the fact that the letter was stored only in Agostini’s mind must make it easier for it to have been invented. And what of Norfolk’s three-month delay in acting on the information from sources close to Wolsey that he was up to no good? A possible explanation might be that the Crown deliberately stayed its hand to allow Wolsey to dig an ever deeper pit for himself, but if so, this must make Agostini into a mole, working for the Crown while posing as the close confidant of the Cardinal. Now, of course, what moles say is not necessarily untrue, but there must be a temptation for them to report what they think their real masters want to hear; and it could well be that this particular mole was instructed to put the worst possible construction on what Wolsey was up to.

  Agostini’s evidence is flawed; there can be no doubt about that. The only question is to what extent. In support of its essential veracity, that is that there was some kind of conspiracy afoot, is the fact that before accompanying Wolsey north in early April Agostini did visit both Chapuys and Joachim and did ask for favours of their respective sovereigns on his master’s behalf.10 Then in the second week of June he wrote Chapuys that letter already referred to, in which he apparently conveyed Wolsey’s advice that now was the moment to intensify the campaign on Catherine’s behalf, to the extent even of calling upon the ‘secular arm, since so little nerve is shown on the other side’, which is to say Henry’s.11 It has to be assumed that Agostini did write the letter, since Chapuys reported receiving it and summarized its content. He did, however, admit that the advice had been written �
��assez obscurément’, which no doubt was as annoying to him as it is to the historian.12 It was not, however, the only advice that Chapuys received from Wolsey. On 20 August he informed Charles that he was receiving daily communications from Wolsey.13 It is also clear that the French were being similarly bombarded, and just before Wolsey left for York, Joachim spent a few days with him at Richmond.14 Not quite so certainly – because, as will be shown shortly, there is no hard evidence for it – he was in communication with the pope. If all the evidence for Wolsey’s contacts with foreign powers is pooled, some kind of pattern does emerge, but one that is not quite so damning as regards conspiratorial activity as might at first appear.

  To take first Agostini’s letter and its reference to ‘the secular arm’. It may be remembered that one of the last tasks that Wolsey performed for Henry was to minimize the effects of the advocation of the divorce to Rome: the substantive gain had been to secure a delay to the opening of legal proceedings at Rome, and delay was to remain a principal aim of English policy through 1530-1. A sub-plot to this was to prevent the summons to Rome being formally served upon Henry in the first place, but also to nullify any consequences of that summons, should it be served, the worry being that failure to comply would result in Henry’s excommunication, ‘incurring into contempt, vel cum invocatione bracchi secularis aut penis pecuniaris’.15 Wolsey’s reference to ‘the secular arm’ had thus to do with this last point. It was the practice of the secular courts to lend aid to the Church in cases concerning excommunication,16 and this is what Wolsey was apparently suggesting should happen on this occasion. At any rate, according to Chapuys, he was pushing for the legal proceedings to go ahead with the greatest speed and stringency, declaring himself in favour of a papal prohibition against Anne’s, or indeed any woman’s, cohabitation with Henry while the divorce proceedings were in train.17 All this was music to the Imperial ambassador’s ears, for it was precisely such a measure, though not always with Catherine’s full approval, that he was after.18 And no doubt it was precisely because it was such sweet music that Wolsey was playing it. This is not mere surmise. On 23 April Chapuys recorded the first of Agostini’s visits to him on Wolsey’s behalf. The ambassador’s reaction was cool: before he could really advise his master to put in a good word for Wolsey with the king he wanted proof of his genuine desire to help Charles.19 Then, lo and behold, Wolsey started to give lots of advice about how Catherine should go about thwarting Henry’s plans. That the one followed the other so immediately is instructive; but before we follow this up, we need to examine more closely Wolsey’s advice to Chapuys, for the light it sheds on the whole notion of a conspiracy.

  The important point to make is that it was not treasonable. As we have seen, the Crown went to considerable lengths to give at least the appearance of legality and fairness to the divorce proceedings. Catherine had been allowed the best possible legal advice, and she was still receiving it long after the second legatine trial had come to an end, and by a council which included such eminent people as the bishop of Bath and Wells, John Clerk.20 In August 1530 a chaplain of Catherine’s, almost certainly Thomas Abel, was hauled before the royal Council for having publicly stated that all those who favoured Henry in the divorce were wicked; but he was then released, even though on being interviewed he had called most of the royal councillors present ‘traitors’.21 On a number of later occasions Abel was to be banished to the Tower and was eventually to die there; but then, as the events that make up the ‘break with Rome’ unfolded, to defend Catherine or the Catholic Church was made a treasonable offence by act of parliament. Before then, to what must have been Henry’s absolute fury, Fisher was able to write treatise after treatise on her behalf. Considerable pressure was brought to bear upon him to shut up, but in fact it was for his connection with the Nun of Kent, attainted and then executed in February 1534, that he was first accused of treasonable activity. And his execution the following year, like More’s, resulted from a refusal to take the oath attached to the Act of Succession of 1534, such refusal having been made a treasonable offence, under a further Act of that year.

  In 1530 to give advice about the conduct of Catherine’s case was not treasonable. It may nonetheless be considered strange coming from someone who had played such a leading part in trying to destroy her marriage, and who on 16 June 1530 had signed a letter to the pope virtually demanding that the marriage be declared null and void.22 If much of the evidence of conspiracy on Wolsey’s part is suspect, it must be stressed that some of his actions at this time were far from straightforward. Still, if to be for Catherine was not to be a traitor, neither was it treasonable for Wolsey to ask foreign powers to put in a good word for him with Henry, as, through Chapuys, he had asked Charles to do. Even more so did he appeal to Francis. Wolsey’s tendency to side with the French had not endeared him to the majority of his fellow countrymen, and it is easy to see why he might have thought that the French owed him something. On the French side, du Bellay, at least, always saw Wolsey as important for the promotion of a mutually satisfactory relationship between the two countries. It also looks as if he came to respect, and perhaps even to like, Wolsey, and was even in a sense taken in by him.23 This was never true of Francis himself: his rather ambiguous role in Wolsey’s initial fall was to continue after it. He had always thought, Francis remarked, when Bryan broke the news of Wolsey’s arrest to him, that ‘so pompous and ambitious a heart, sprung out of so vile a stock, would once show forth the baseness of his nature’. By his ‘outrageous behaviour’ Wolsey ‘had well merited either a life worse than death, or else of all deaths the most cruel’.24 This might well seem unnecessarily harsh; but if Wolsey had appeared to Englishmen to be over-fond of the French, to the French, as he squeezed them for all they were worth, it would have looked very different. And there was no reason at all for Francis to shed tears over the English king’s fallen minister when his main concern was to secure favourable terms from that king. Indeed, it rather looks as if his ambassador, Joachim, had informed Henry of Wolsey’s communications with him,25 thereby winning favour with Henry and strengthening the French position in the current negotiations, without giving anything away. Moreover, it may be that well before Wolsey’s arrest Joachim was getting annoyed with the cardinal; at any rate this was the view of the papal nuncio to England, Antonio Borgho, who had apparently been instructed by Clement to be guided by Joachim concerning his own relations with Wolsey.26 Of course, Joachim may have been deliberately misleading the nuncio; he may, as Chapuys usually suspected, have been working closely with Wolsey, had then realized that Wolsey’s plotting was about to be uncovered, thought he had better get in on the act and so had told Henry something of Wolsey’s negotiations with him. All this is perfectly possible, and it has to be stressed that what was actually going on between Wolsey and the French, or indeed anyone else, will always remain obscure. Such a view, however, does not seem best to fit all the facts.

  What may help to clarify the picture is a brief account of the state of Anglo-French relations at this time. The governing factors were Henry’s desire for French support for his divorce, and Francis’s determination to reassert French power and influence after the crippling setback of Pavia, and of his own and his sons’ captivity. For both kings there were great advantages in good relations. The question, as always, was at what price, complicated in this instance by the Treaty of Cambrai, whereby Francis had decided that a temporary peace with the emperor was worth the immediate return of his sons. The English had had little option but to follow in Francis’s wake, and the peace did offer Henry a glimmer of hope that in order to cement it Charles might waive his objections to the English king’s abandonment of his aunt.27 All this introduced a good deal of fluidity into European relations. Everyone was jockeying for pole position, but within the framework imposed by Henry’s and Francis’s major concerns. Francis got his sons back – and a Habsburg wife – in July 1530, but Henry was still no nearer getting a divorce. This placed Francis in a stronger posit
ion, though Henry’s desperation to be free of Catherine had given the French king the upper hand for some time. With his immediate needs satisfied, here was the opportunity to claw back some of the money that, as a result of the Treaty of the More and the subsequent alterations to it, he owed the English king: of course Francis would help his dear brother obtain satisfaction from Rome and bring pressure on the University of Paris to come out in favour of Henry, but in return it was only fair that Henry should be lenient about the payment of the French pension. The day-to-day negotiations between the two monarchs were, thus, largely concerned with money, with the French enjoying yet another advantage in that it is always easier to withold payment than to obtain it.28 And there was always the opportunity to haggle over the marriage contract between Princess Mary and Francis’s second son, the duke of Orléans. It is not clear that either side was desperate for the marriage to take place, but it was something further to bargain about; and yet again, because Mary might at any moment be declared illegitimate, the French were at an advantage.

  In deciding what effect these negotiations had on Wolsey’s position, it is important to realize that despite the relations being generally good between the two kingdoms, there were moments when they were bad. One such seems to have occurred in the autumn of 1530, obviously an interesting period in view of Wolsey’s arrest. Given that there was no reason why the French should lose much sleep over his fate – unless that is, there was some very concrete advantage to be derived either from his return to favour or from his final destruction – for Joachim, informing on Wolsey was but another ploy in his rather sticky negotiations with Henry. What may also have been the case is that Henry was making use of Wolsey in order to resist French pressure.

  When Joachim had visited Wolsey in March the main topic of conversation was apparently the cardinal’s French pension, which was in arrears. As, however, under the terms of Henry’s agreement with Wolsey made the previous month, this pension would now go to the Crown, it has been quite plausibly suggested that during this visit Wolsey was negotiating on Henry’s behalf, not his own. The suggestion is supported by the fact that the visit was allowed to take place at all; a meeting between an accredited French ambassador and a fallen minister could hardly have taken place without the king’s knowledge.29 And if Henry had been willing to make use of Wolsey in March in order to get as much money out of the French as possible, might he not also have been trying to do so in October and November when negotiations with the French were at a critical stage and when he had few cards to play? This time, however, the tactics were to be a little different. Instead of Wolsey’s close relationship with the French being a plus, it was to be presented as something treasonable, the aim being to thereby embarrass the French and make them more compliant. It is all very speculative, but at least it may serve to alert us not to take Henry’s account of Wolsey’s treasonable contacts with the French entirely at its face value.