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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: WIL-YAK |
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WOLSEY, THOMAS (c. 14751530) , English cardinal and statesman, born at Ipswich about 1475, was son of Robert Wolsey (or Wuley, as his name was always spelt) by his wife Joan. His father is generally described as a butcher, but he sold other things than meat; and although a man of some property and a church-warden of St Nicholas, Ipswich, his character seems to have borne a striking resemblance to that of Thomas Cromwell's father. He was continually being fined for allowing his pigs to stray in the street, selling bad meat, letting his house to doubtful characters for illegal purposes, and generally infringing the by-laws respecting weights and measures (extracts from the Ipswich records, printed in the Athenaeum, 1900, i. 400). He died in September 1496, and his will, which has been preserved, was proved a few days later. Thomas was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; but the details of his university career are doubtful owing to the defectiveness of the university and college registers. He is said to have graduated B.A. at the age of fifteen (i.e. about 1490); but his earliest definite appearance in the records is as junior bursar of Magdalen College in 149$1499, and senior bursar in 149915oo, an office he was compelled to resign for applying funds to the completion of the great tower without sufficient authority (W. D. Macray, Reg. of Magdalen College, i. 29-30, 133-134). He must have been elected fellow of Magdalen some years before; and as master of Magdalen College school he had under his charge three sons of Thomas Grey, first marquess of Dorset. Dorset's beneficent intentions for his sons' pedagogue probably suggested Wolsey's ordination as priest at Marlborough on March 10, 1498, and on October 10, 1500, he was instituted, on Dorset's presentation, to the rectory of Limington in Somerset. His connexion with Magdalen had perhaps terminated with his resignation of the bursarship, though he supplicated for the degrees of B.D. and D.D. in 1510; and the college appears to have derived no advantage from Wolsey's subsequent greatness. At Limington he came into conflict with law and order as represented by the sheriff, Sir Amias Paulet, who is said by Cavendish to have placed Wolsey in the stocks; Wolsey retaliated long afterwards by confining Paulet to his chambers in the Temple for five or six years. Dorset died in 1501, but Wolsey found other patrons in his pursuit of wealth and fame. Before the end of that year he obtained from the pope a dispensation to hold two livings in conjunction with Limington, and Arch-bishop Deane of Canterbury also appointed him his domestic chaplain. Deane, however, died in 1503, and Wolsey became chaplain to Sir Richard Nanfan, deputy of Calais, who apparently recommended him to Henry VII. Nanfan died in 1507, but the king made Wolsey his chaplain and employed him in diplomatic work. In 1508 he was' sent to James IV. of Scotland, and in the same year he pleased Henry by the extraordinary expedition with which he crossed and recrossed the Channel on an errand connected with the king's proposal of marriage to Margaret of Savoy. His ecclesiastical preferments, of which he received several in 1506-1509, culminated in his appointment by Henry to the deanery of Lincoln on February 2, 1509. Henry VIII. made Wolsey his almoner immediately on his accession, and the receipt of some half-dozen further ecclesiastical preferments in the first two years of the reign marks his growth in royal favour. But it was not till towards the end of 1511 that Wolsey became a privy councillor and secured a controlling voice in the government. His influence then made itself felt on English policy. The young king took little pains with the government, and the control of affairs was shared between the clerical and peace party led by Richard Fox (q.v.) and Archbishop Warham, and the secular and war party led by Surrey. Hitherto pacific counsels had on the whole prevailed; but Wolsey, who was nothing if not turbulent, turned the balance in favour of war, and his marvellous administrative energy first found full scope in the preparations for the English expedition to Biscay in 1512, and for the campaign in northern France in 1513. He brought about the peace with France and marriage between Mary Tudor and Louis XII. in 1514, and reaped his reward in the bishoprics of Lincoln and Tournai, the archbishopric of York
The election of Charles V. as emperor in 1519 brought the rivalry between him and Francis I. to a head, and Wolsey was mainly responsible for the attitude adopted by the English government. Both monarchs were eager for England's alliance, and their suit enabled Wolsey to appear for the moment as the arbiter of Europe. England's commercial relations with Charles V.'s subjects in the Netherlands put war with the emperor almost out of the question; and cool observers thought that England's obvious policy was to stand by while the two rivals enfeebled each other, and then make her own profit out of their weakness. But, although a gorgeous show of friendship with France was kept up at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, it had been deter-mined before the conference of Calais in 1521, at which Wolsey pretended to adjudicate on the merits of the dispute, to side actively with Charles V. Wolsey had vested interests in such a policy. Parliament had in 15131515 showed signs of strong anti-clerical feeling; Wolsey had in the latter year urged its speedy dissolution, and had not called another; and he probably hoped to distract attention from the church by a spirited foreign policy, as Henry V. had done a century before. He had, moreover, received assurances from the emperor that he would further Wolsey's candidature for the papacy; and although he protested to Henry VIII. that he would rather continue in his service than be ten popes, that did not prevent him from secretly instructing his agents at Rome to press his claims to the utmost. Charles, however, paid Wolsey the sincere compliment of thinking that he would not be sufficiently subservient on the papal throne; while he wrote letters in Wolsey's favour, he took care that they should not reach their destination in time; and Wolsey failed to secure election both in 1521 and 1524. This ambition distinguishes his foreign policy from that of Henry VII., to which it has been likened. Henry VII. cared only for England; Wolsey's object was to play a great part on the European stage. The aim of the one was national, that of the other was oecumenical. In any case the decision taken in 1521 was a blunder. Wolsey's assistance helped Charles V. to that position of predominance which was strikingly illustrated by the defeat and capture of Francis I. at Pavia in 1525; and the balance of power upon which England's influence rested was destroyed. Her efforts to restore it in 15261528 were ineffectual; her prestige had depended upon her reputation for wealth derived from the fact that she had acted in recent
This failure reacted upon Wolsey's position at home. His domestic was sounder than his foreign policy: by his development of the star chamber, by his firm administration of justice and maintenance of order, and by his repression of feudal jurisdiction, he rendered great services to the monarchy. But the inevitable opposition of the nobility to this policy was not mitigated by the fact that it was carried out by a churchman; the result was to embitter the antagonism of the secular party to the church and to concentrate it upon Wolsey's head. The control of the papacy by Charles V., moreover, made it impossible for Wolsey to succeed in his efforts to obtain from Clement VII. the divorce which Henry VIII. was seeking from Charles V.'s aunt, Catherine of Aragon. An inscription on a contemporary portrait of Wolsey at Arras calls him the author of the divorce, and Roman Catholic historians from Sanders downwards have generally adopted the view that Wolsey advocated this measure merely as a means to break England's alliance with Spain and confirm its alliance with France. This view is unhistorical, and it ignores the various personal and national motives which lay behind that movement
The appeal to Rome was a natural course to be advocated by Wolsey, whose despotism over the English church depended upon an authority derived from Rome; but it was probably a mistake. It ran counter to the ideas suggested in 1527 on the captivity of Clement VII., that England and France should set up independent patriarchates; and its success depended upon the problematical destruction of Charles V.'s power in Italy. At first this seemed not improbable; French armies marched south on Naples, and the pope sent Campeggio with full powers to pronounce the divorce in England. But he had hardly started when the French were defeated in 1528; their ruin was completed in 1529, and Clement VII. was obliged to come to terms with Charles V., which included Campeggio's recall in August 1529. Wolsey clearly foresaw his own fall, the consequent attack on the church and the triumph of the secular party. Parliament, which he had kept at arm's length, was hostile; he was hated by the nobility, and his general unpopularity is reflected in Skelton's satires and in Hall
York
The completeness of Wolsey's fall enhanced his former appearance of greatness, and, indeed, he is one of the outstanding figures in English history. His qualities and his defects were alike exhibited on a generous scale; and if his greed and arrogance were colossal, so were his administrative capacity and his appetite for work. " He is," wrote the Venetian ambassador Giustiniani, " very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability and indefatigable. He alone transacts the business which occupies all the magistrates and councils of Venice, both civil and criminal; and all state affairs are managed by him, let their nature he what it may. He is grave, and has the reputation of being extremely just; he favours the people exceedingly, and especially the poor, hearing their suits and seeking to despatch them instantly." As a diplomatist he has had few rivals and perhaps no superiors. But his pride
That such a man would ever have used the unparalleled powers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction with which he had been entrusted for a genuine reformation of the church is only a pious opinion cherished by those who regret that the Reformation was left for the secular arm to achieve; and it is useless to plead lack of opportunity on behalf of a man who for sixteen years had enjoyed an authority never before or since wielded by an English subject. Wolsey must be judged by his deeds and not by doubtful intentions. During the first half of his government he materially strengthened the Tudor monarchy by the vigorous administration of justice at home and by the brilliance of his foreign policy abroad. But the prestige he secured by 1521 was delusive; its decline was as rapid as its growth, and the expense of the policy involved taxation which seriously weakened the loyalty of the people. The concentration of civil and ecclesiastical power by Wolsey in the hands of a churchman provided a precedent for its concentration by Henry VIII. in the hands of the crown; and the personal example of lavish ostentation and loose morals which the cardinal-archbishop exhibited cannot have been without influence on the king, who grew to maturity under Wolsey's guidance.The Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vols. i.-iv., supplemented by the Spanish and Venetian Calendars, contain almost all that is known of Wolsey's public career, though additional light on the divorce has been thrown by Stephen Ehses' Romische Dokumente (1893). Cavendish's brief Life, which is almost contemporary, has been often edited. Fiddes's huge tome (1724) is fairly exhaustive. Brewer, in his elaborate prefaces to the Letters and Papers (reissued as his History of the Reign of Henry VIII.), originated modern admiration for Wolsey; and his views are reflected in Creighton's Wolsey in the " Twelve English Statesmen " series, and in Dr Gairdner's careful articles in the Diet. Nat. Biog. and Cambridge Modern History. A less enthusiastic view is adopted in H. A. L. Fisher's volume (v.) in Longmans
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