by Gwyn, Peter
The main difficulty, however, in accepting Henry’s version is that it made no sense at all for the French to become involved in a war with the English, which was, according to him, what Wolsey was proposing. If Anglo-French relations were not all sweetness and light at this time, the two countries had many more shared interests than opposing ones. Moreover, the French had good relations with the Boleyns, the father having been a resident ambassador in France, and Anne herself having been in part educated at the French court. So if they had lost a friendly, though always formidable, royal servant, they had gained a royal mistress, an exchange that cannot have been too much to their disadvantage. Furthermore, since they were in such a strong position vis-à-vis the English, there was no incentive for them to destroy this by going to war. And although the possibility that Wolsey suggested a conspiracy cannot be ruled out, one has to continue to work on the assumption that Wolsey’s intelligence had not completely deserted him, unless, that is, his fall had unhinged him in some way. If it had not, he would have appreciated, just as much as we do, if not more, that the French were not about to embark on some hare-brained scheme to put him back in power. What he might reasonably have expected was that they put in a good word for him, and in suggesting this he might well have promised that if he were restored to favour, he would be even more francophile than he was alleged to have been hitherto. Such promises could have been misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, by both the French and Henry, and hence the talk of conspiracy. But that the French were involved in anything like a conspiracy, or that Wolsey suggested one, is the least likely of the many possible hypotheses.
It will be remembered that in the official version of Wolsey’s conspiracy the French had a very positive role to play; and, indeed a letter intended for Joachim, though in fact only stored in Agostini’s head, had been the main, if not the only, exhibit in the case against Wolsey. If a conspiracy with the French was unlikely, then the case for a conspiracy of any kind is seriously undermined. Arguably, however, the person most likely to have been interested in conspiring with Wolsey was the emperor, in order to make life as difficult as possible for the man who was behaving so dishonourably towards his aunt. But it has already been suggested that his attachment to his aunt was largely a calculated one, which he did not allow to stand in the way of other more pressing interests. In 1530 Charles did have such interests, in Germany and elsewhere, and though quite prepared to cause a little trouble for England in order to prevent her causing mischief, in particular with France, it is difficult to see how a full-scale conspiracy could have been of much help to him. Moreover, not only does nothing Chapuys reported give any indication that the emperor was interested in such a conspiracy, but if the mention of bringing in ‘the secular arm’ is interpreted as it has been here, there is not even any suggestion that Wolsey ever proposed one. Admittedly, Wolsey’s and Agostini’s arrests must have alarmed Chapuys momentarily because he had been in frequent communication with both. However, when on 27 November he wrote to Charles that even should Agostini ‘repeat every word that has passed between him and me, he could say nothing for which I should be liable to be impugned or calumniated’,30 there is no reason to suppose that he was not telling the truth; neither did Henry ever try to contradict Chapuys on this point. The significance of his clean bill of health is worth underlining. It is only from Chapuys’s detailed reports that we have any inside information of Wolsey’s dealings with foreign powers at this time. The French evidence is far less complete; there is Joachim’s account of his stay with Wolsey, but it lends no support to any conspiratorial theory.31 If, therefore, a search of Chapuys’s reports draws a blank, then again the case for a conspiracy by Wolsey is considerably undermined.
But it was the pope, not the French, who was given the leading role in the official account of the plotting, for according to Henry’s first letter to Bryan on the subject, ‘the particularities [of the plot] most specially concern sinister practices made and set forth to the court of Rome’.32 There were obvious tactical advantages for Henry in stressing the papal connection, for Clement was hardly a favourite with him. However, these advantages would operate whether there had been any ‘sinister practices’ or not, so that Clement’s star billing does not help much to unravel the truth. Moreover, as with both Francis and Charles, it is difficult to see what advantages such plotting would have had for Clement. It was argued in a previous chapter that during the winter of 1528-9 he had come to the conclusion that there was more to be gained from co-operating with Charles than not. Such co-operation of necessity entailed some resistance to Henry’s anyway rather importunate demands for a divorce; that said, Clement had no wish to become merely the emperor’s puppet, and, as the whole history of the divorce shows, he bent over backwards to be as amenable to Henry as possible. What Clement would have loved most of all was for the problem to go away, and conspiring with Wolsey, who had done precious little for him, was not going to bring that about. So there was no strong reason for him to be receptive to feelers from Wolsey concerning any serious conspiracy. And there is virtually no evidence of it. The Venetian ambassador in Rome stated on 6 December that some people there were reporting the discovery of letters from Wolsey to the pope in which, according to some accounts, he had asked to be reappointed legate, while according to others he had been making proposals about the divorce.33 Rumours of this kind do not really add up to much, while the assertion sometimes made that Henry had asked his envoys at Rome to search for any incriminating evidence against Wolsey does not stand up to close scrutiny.34 It depends upon a passage from a letter of one of the English envoys, William Benet, to Henry on 27 October 1530 in which he declared that ‘as concerning those things that your Highness in your last letter commanded to Dr Carne and to me to search for, we shall not by God’s grace omit no labours nor diligence for the searching thereof. And such things as we shall find with all diligence we shall advertise your Highness thereof.’35 Henry’s command has not survived, but nowhere in this nor in Benet’s subsequent letter is there any reference to Wolsey. On the other hand, the English envoys were constantly being asked to chase up various matters to do with the divorce, and it seems likely that it was some such matter that this particular command had to do with.36
Positive evidence for any plotting by Wolsey with the pope is, then, negligible; foreign ambassadors in London might say otherwise, but as they were merely reporting gossip or information fed to them by the Crown, what they had to say is hardly more convincing than the Rome rumours. Moreover, that there was no plotting nor even much communication of any kind between Wolsey and the pope is strongly suggested by some negative evidence. When in the late summer of 1530 the papal nuncio, Antonio de Pulleo baron de Burgho, was sent to London, ostensibly to discuss proposals for a defence of Christendom against the infidel Turk but inevitably with divorce matters on his agenda, he was instructed to be guided in his conduct towards Wolsey by Joachim.37 Since he found that the French ambassador and Wolsey were not on good terms, this was not very helpful, but more to the point, it hardly suggests that Clement had any plans for secret negotiations with Wolsey. Neither does the fact that Wolsey was apparently desperately anxious to discover from Chapuys whether the nuncio had brought any instructions about him.38 And in a long letter that the nuncio wrote on 16 September he made no mention of Wolsey whatsoever.39 In some ways all this is curious. It might be thought that Clement would have shown more concern about the fate of a papal legate, an attack on whom – which was, it has been argued, what Henry intended it to be – was an attack on himself, and more generally on the liberties of the Church. In fact, Wolsey’s fate seems to have been a very low priority for the pope, his difficult relations with Henry being of much more importance. No doubt he was approached in some way by Wolsey, but quite how is not known. Almost certainly, any approach would have had to do with Wolsey’s restoration not so much to royal favour but to a full enjoyment of his rights as bishop of Winchester and abbot of St Albans. Perhaps, also, his hel
p was sought in connection with Wolsey’s strenuous efforts to save his colleges, though it is more likely that Wolsey would have realized that in the circumstances papal help would have been counterproductive. Again, in the complete absence of any real evidence all this has to be speculation. Nevertheless, the strong probability is that, as with both Francis and Charles, there was nothing between cardinal and pope that deserves to be called a conspiracy.
It is beginning to look as if the first possibility mentioned at the start of this chapter does not stand up to close scrutiny, and what may deliver the coup de grâce is an aspect of Wolsey’s arrest not so far mentioned. It will be remembered that it took place at Cawood on 4 November and that Wolsey died three and a half weeks later, by which time he and the accompanying entourage had got as far as Leicester, about half way between Cawood and London. The journey up had taken Walter Walsh, the groom of the privy chamber sent to arrest him, four days,40 so that Wolsey’s progress south was by any standards slow. Admittedly, he was increasingly ill, but even the concern shown for his health tells against the view of Wolsey as a dangerous threat to Henry’s security. Cavendish reports, though one cannot be too certain about his accuracy, that on this last journey Wolsey was accompanied by people ‘weeping and lamenting … crying “God save your grace, God save your grace, my good Lord Cardinal.”41 This is really not the kind of reception that the king would have liked to see given to a traitor, and the slow, almost stately, progress of the cavalcade bringing Wolsey to the Tower, which included eighteen days at Sheffield Park, a home of the earl of Shrewsbury, seems almost calculated to make it easy for anyone involved in a conspiracy to co-ordinate their plans. In fact, nobody stirred, probably for the very good reason that there was nobody to stir. In fact, there is not one piece of evidence that connects anyone in England, outside Wolsey’s household, with a plot of any kind.
There was no conspiracy. Moreover, the Crown’s handling of Wolsey’s arrest hardly suggests that it really believed in one, which may in turn cast the first doubt on what was referred to at the beginning of this chapter as the ‘sensible view’: that there was in truth no conspiracy, but that the Crown had reasonable grounds for believing that Wolsey was up to no good. Given this scenario, its actions do make some kind of sense. The slow journey south is explained by the fact that Henry and his councillors were quite happy to take their time in deciding whether or not there was a conspiracy, and to pronounce on Wolsey’s future accordingly. It has to be said that this was not how Henry presented the matter to Bryan, but then there was no particular reason why, when instructing one of his ambassadors, Henry should have concerned himself with the truth, which is unfortunately not always helpful in the successful conduct of affairs. More interestingly, and this is where the first doubts creep in, the slowness of journey south makes even more sense if Henry’s intention was to continue to use Wolsey as a weapon in his attack on the Church, even if this meant inventing a conspiracy, this, of course, being precisely what the second possibility suggested earlier entailed. Still, the ‘sensible view’ is nevertheless attractive, partly just because it avoids a conspiratorial view of life. Much has to be muddle and misunderstanding. Henry had created a most difficult situation for himself in which anxiety, if not paranoia, could well have come to dominate his judgement, fuelled, as it is known to have been, by reports of Wolsey’s increasing popularity in the North and his never ending complaints about shortage of money and the fate of his colleges.42 At the same time, no one would have understood better than the king that his former lord chancellor knew his way around the courts of Europe better than any man living. Wolsey was potentially dangerous, and it was surely only sensible to bring him down from the North, though if this were the case why let him go there in the first place?
At this stage it may be helpful to try to approach the matter from Wolsey’s point of view. How had he come through the enormous strain of the events of October 1529 when, accused of praemunire, he had been dismissed as lord chancellor, and then banished, first to the bishop of Winchester’s palace at Esher, and then in the following March to Richmond? Not surprisingly, his mood appears to have oscillated. In a letter that he wrote to Henry shortly after the original charges of praemunire were made against him he referred to himself as ‘your poor, heavy, and wretched Priest’.43 According to Chapuys, he managed to remain in control of himself until the day after the great seal was removed from him, that is to say 18 October, at which point ‘all his bravadoes turned suddenly into bitter complaints, tears, and sighs which are unceasing night and day’.44 Chapuys also reported that Henry had sent Wolsey a ring ‘by way of consolation’.45 According to Cavendish, on receiving it from the groom of the stool, Sir Henry Norris, Wolsey, ‘incontinent, kneeled down in the dirt upon both his knees, holding up his hands for joy’, where he was joined by Norris…
And talking with Master Norris upon his knees in the mire, he would have pulled off his cap of velvet, but he could not undo the knot under his chin. Wherefore with violence he rent the laces and pulled it from his head and so kneeled bareheaded. And that done, he covered again his head and arose, and would have mounted his mule, but he could not mount again with such agility as he lighted before, where his footmen had as much ado to set him in his saddle as they could have.46
Here are obvious signs of emotional stress, and if one is tempted to think that Cavendish had embroidered the scene a little, it has to be said that the same signs are very much present in Wolsey’s own letters of the next two or three months, especially those that he wrote to the man he was most relying upon to conduct his negotiations, Thomas Cromwell. He was for Wolsey his ‘only aider in this mine intolerable anxiety and heaviness’,47 and any delay in communications with him sent Wolsey into utter despair, in December writing that ‘the furthering and putting over of your coming hither hath so increased my sorrow, and put me in such anxiety of mind that this night my breath and wind by sighing was so short that I was by the space of three hours as one that should have died’.48 How far these symptoms resulted only from stress is hard to say, for by late January he was very ill. Agostini, a doctor himself, wrote a hurried note to Cromwell for Dr Butts, the king’s own doctor, and one other, to be sent immediately, and ordered a good supply of leeches.49 Cromwell seems to have passed the request on to Henry, and, at least according to Cavendish, the royal response was both prompt and friendly. Not only was Butts sent, but four other doctors as well. In addition, and perhaps a far better medicine than any doctor could have provided, Henry sent another ring ‘for a token of our good will and favour’, and with it the message that he was in no way offended by Wolsey, who should therefore ‘be of good cheer, and pluck up his heart and take no despair’. And as if this was not enough, Henry also persuaded Anne to send a token, and with it ‘very gentle and comfortable words’.50 All this royal concern on behalf of one who only a few months before had been dismissed from office and charged with praemunire seems rather curious, all the more so since a few months later he would be arrested for treason. Still, the concern seems to have been effective, for when Joachim visited him late in March he found a Wolsey who was not only physically well but ‘so completely resigned and so armed with patience’ that there was no need for the French ambassador to console him51 – but by then Henry had at last made up his mind about what to do with Wolsey.
When in October 1529 Wolsey confessed to being guilty of praemunire, legally he lost everything but his life. He had no income, no property and no position. His continued existence depended entirely upon what Henry chose to give back to him, and Henry had shown himself to be in no hurry to come to a decision. A general pardon was not granted until 10 February 1530,52 and though Wolsey was at the same time informed about the major decisions concerning his future, in the following weeks negotiations continued, and indeed in a sense they never ceased until the day he was arrested. These decisions can be briefly summarized as follows.53 Wolsey was to be allowed to enjoy all his rights and revenues as archbishop of York, with t
he exception of a few wealthy collations which were to be placed at the king’s disposal. But York Place, the London residence of the archbishops of York and very much Wolsey’s centre of his operations, was to be forfeited to the Crown, shortly to emerge as Whitehall.54 As regards St Albans and Winchester the situation was more complicated. He was to retain the titles of abbot and bishop, but his rights and duties were to be exercised by others. At the same time his income from the two, which in the case of Winchester had amounted to nearly £4,000 a year, was to go to the Crown, in return for which he was to be allowed a pension of 1,000 marks, to be drawn out of Winchester’s revenues.55 He also forfeited to the Crown his French and Spanish pensions. However, he did receive an estimated £6,374 3s. 7d., of which £3,000 was in ready money, and the rest in goods and chattels, urgently required since being stripped of everything that he had previously owned, right down to the sheets and pillow cases.56 Despite this, ready money appears to have remained an acute problem for Wolsey, so that during the next few months he asked for and obtained further sums.57