On 29th November 1530 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey died
at Leicester Abbey during a journey south that would almost certainly have ended
with his execution at the Tower of London.
Thomas Wolsey is generally supposed to have been the son of
an Ipswich butcher and cattle dealer, but there is always the possibility that
this was a story put about by his enemies in an attempt to demean him as an
upstart who had no right to the high office that he achieved.
When King Henry VIII succeeded his father in 1509, Thomas
Wolsey was already in royal service, having been chaplain to Henry VII. He had
been noted for his willingness to do just about any task that was asked of him
and to get results through his dogged insistence on seeing things through.
He was therefore in just the right place to be advanced
under Henry VIII, because the young king (aged only 17 at the time of his
accession) was far less interested in the minutiae of government than his
father had been. Someone like Thomas Wolsey was just what Henry needed to relieve
him of the more boring aspects of being in charge of the country.
Wolsey therefore rose rapidly to become Henry’s chief
minister and he also acquired important offices in the church, particularly
Archbishop of York and Prince-Bishop of Durham. These offices brought him
considerable wealth, which he used to build a magnificent palace for himself at
Hampton Court. This latter was an unwise move in that it excited the envy of
King Henry.
For twenty years Thomas Wosley (a Cardinal from 1515) was
the real power in the land and also a dominating figure in foreign policy. His
methods were often underhand and corrupt, but Henry was not too bothered about
how a job was done as long as the result was what he wanted.
However, things started to unravel when Henry realised that
his best chance of fathering a son would be with someone other than Queen
Catherine. He set his mind towards marrying one of her maids-of-honour, named
Anne Boleyn, and he needed a way of getting his marriage annulled. This would
have to be done by a decree from the Pope and Wolsey was obviously the person
to act as Henry’s representative in obtaining such a decree. Wolsey was also
the Pope’s legate to England, so he had the ear of both parties in the dispute.
This was easier said than done, not least because Pope Clement
VII had no wish to anger the powerful Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who was a
nephew of Queen Catherine. No amount of persuasion on Wolsey’s part would make
the Pope hurry his decision. Henry and Anne Boleyn now began to wonder if
Wolsey’s loyalty to the Church was outweighing his loyalty to the king, so
Henry started to think of a different means to the desired end.
The new solution, which involved breaking with the Church of
Rome, would bypass the need for Thomas Wolsey to act on his behalf and there
was also that rather attractive big house just up the Thames that Henry had his
eye on. With Wolsey out of the way, two desirable objectives could be met.
Wolsey knew that things were stacked against him when Henry
simply commandeered Hampton Court in 1529 and stripped Wolsey of all his
government offices. He was, however, allowed to retain his archbishopric of
York.
Wolsey was a sick man when, in 1530, he started out for
York, which would have been the first time he had done so since his appointment
in 1514. While in Yorkshire the news reached him that he had been arraigned for
high treason, and he was under arrest when he arrived at Leicester Abbey.
Among his last words, he said: “Had I but served God as
diligently as I have my king, he would not have given me over in my grey
hairs”. He was aged 55 when he died.
© John Welford
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