EVER SINCE HIS accession in January 1515, Francis I had been a thorn in Henry’s side. The English king veered between bouts of intense jealousy towards his French rival, and overblown expressions of love and amity for him, during which he would seek to emulate his court and habits. He was going through one such phase in 1518. Francis sent an embassy to the English court that year which included a number of his most highly favoured men, or ‘mignons’, for whom he had recently created the new rank of ‘gentilhomme de la chambre’. Not to be outdone, Henry created a replica post in his own inner sanctum. The gentlemen of the privy chamber were thus established and soon became the most sought-after appointments in Henry’s service. That one of the most important positions at the English court came about because of the king’s insecurity and jealousy towards Francis reveals the profound impact that the latter had upon his reign.
Prominent among the new appointees was Francis Bryan, one of the wildest of Henry’s male companions. Bryan’s father had been a knight of the body to Henry VII and was vice chamberlain to Catherine of Aragon, and his mother Margaret was governess to Princess Mary. Francis himself had come to court at a very young age and, like his royal master, had soon developed a passion for jousting, gambling and tennis. Edward Hall noted that Bryan was one of two young men (the other being Nicholas Carew) whom the king ‘delighted to set forth’ at the tilts in April 1515.1 So vigorously did Bryan pursue his sporting interests that he lost an eye during a later tournament, in which Henry also took part, and was obliged to wear an eye-patch thereafter. Bryan was also an accomplished soldier, diplomat and man of letters, and many at court fell prey to his acerbic wit and irresistible charm. Although he had not attended university and was not formally trained in rhetoric, he was naturally skilled in the arts of eloquence, as his letters testify. But he preferred talking to writing, and often complained that it would take him a week to write what he could say in an hour.
Surrounded as he was by sycophants, Henry was beguiled by Bryan’s natural irreverence, not to mention his frankness. He would tell the king the truth when nobody else dared. Florentius Volusensus, a Scottish humanist who knew Bryan well, recalled that he was ‘accustomed to speak familiarly to the King’. Rather less approvingly, the Abbot of Woburn observed: ‘The said Sir Francis dare boldly speak to the King’s Grace the plainness of his mind and that his Grace doth well accept the same.’2 Jealous courtiers viewed this as over-familiarity, but Bryan cared little for that – and neither did his royal master, who appreciated his frankness. Bryan also made Henry laugh with his endless stream of jokes, and treated him as a friend rather than a king. Henry loved him for it. The two men also shared a love of clothes, and no matter how neglectful Bryan might have been of court etiquette, he was always careful to dress in rich apparel of the latest fashion.
As one of the king’s new gentlemen of the privy chamber, Bryan accompanied his royal master on a visit to the French court in 1518, the same year as his appointment. There, unfettered by the conventions of his own court, Henry went on the rampage with Bryan, each donning a disguise as they took to the streets of Paris. Bryan was more sexually promiscuous and a good deal less bashful than his royal master, and he was said to have demanded ‘a soft bed then a hard harlot’. One disapproving member of Henry’s court noted that the king and his ‘minions’, Bryan included, returned ‘all French, in eating, drinking and apparel, yea, and in French vices and … high in love with the French court’.3
The expedition ignited a passion for overseas adventure in Bryan, the most energetic and restless of all Henry’s men. During the years to come, he would be almost constantly on the move, flitting between England and the Continent in a series of diplomatic missions. His friend Sir Thomas Wyatt was both staggered and concerned by his wanderlust:
To thee, therefore, that trots still up and down
And never rests, but running day and night
From realm to realm, from city, street, and town,
Why dost thou wear thy body to the bones?4
Another of the gentlemen of the privy chamber who was appointed that year was Sir Nicholas Carew. Born no later than 1496, he was the eldest son of Sir Richard Carew, head of a noble family of ancient lineage. Sir Richard had been knighted by Henry VII at the Battle of Blackheath in 1497 and had later served as captain of Calais. His loyalty to the crown had secured a place at court for his son from an early age, and he was later described as being of Henry VIII’s ‘own bringing up’.5
Sir Nicholas was a groom of Henry’s privy chamber by May 1511, esquire of the body and a ‘cipherer’ (cupbearer) in 1515, and gentleman in 1518. In the meantime, like many of his companions in the king’s private apartments, he had distinguished himself in the field of combat. He had been among the contingent that Henry had taken to France in 1513, and had commanded the artillery with a personal retinue of 1,000 men. His father had also been there, along with another kinsman, Sir Edmund Carew, who had been killed at Thérouanne by a bullet that struck him as he sat at the council table. Sir Nicholas survived the campaign and was one of six favoured men to be rewarded with the gift of a coat of green velvet and cloth of silver. His position as royal favourite was made clear in the jousts held in July 1517 for the entertainment of some visiting ambassadors. Nicolo Sagudino, the Venetian envoy, was overawed by the young man’s show of martial might: ‘The jousts being ended, a beam was brought, some twenty feet in length, and was placed on the head of one of his Majesty’s favourites, by name master Caroll [Carew], who was one of the jousters, and he ran a long way with the beam on his head to the marvel of everybody.’6
Carew was particularly close to two of the other favourites in Henry’s privy chamber. In 1514 he married Elizabeth Bryan, sister of Sir Francis. The ties of kinship fostered a close and enduring friendship between the two men. Carew also became good friends with Charles Brandon, and would later invite him to his estate at Beddington, south of London. But it was Henry himself with whom he won greatest favour. Indeed, he soon became so intimate with the king that Wolsey accused him of being overly familiar. Born into a family distinguished for their military service, Carew both admired and understood the king’s warlike nature. Their mutual lust for glory was the strongest tie that bound the two men together.
Henry’s other gentlemen of the privy chamber included William Carey, who was in his early twenties at the time of his appointment. His grandfather had been a prominent Lancastrian, and his father married into the Beaufort family, which made him a distant cousin of the king. Carey shared the king’s sporting interests and was often to be found in the tournament field or tennis court. He was also a skilled card player and on at least one occasion won a significant sum from his royal master.
Another ‘minion’ to benefit from the newly created posts in the privy chamber was Henry Norris. Born in the late 1490s into a long-serving court family, he received his first royal grant in 1515 and was appointed to the privy chamber from at least 1517. By the following year, he had been entrusted with handling the king’s money, and in September he was made gentleman of the privy chamber. Norris more than fulfilled what had become the unwritten qualification for members of Henry’s inner circle: the ability to excel in the tiltyard. He also played a prominent part in court revels and was clearly a man of considerable charm.
Two other gentlemen were Arthur Pole, son of Lady Margaret, and William Coffin, who had served in the Tournai campaign and had subsequently been appointed to the royal household. In total, Henry appointed twelve gentlemen (including the groom of the stool), and they were marked out by their distinctive black damask gowns and doublets. Although their role was in theory confined to domestic duties, the fact that they spent so much time with the king presented an irresistible opportunity to advise and influence their royal master. For all his considerable intelligence, Henry could be easy to manipulate, as Wolsey had proven on a number of occasions. Perhaps this was the result of his vanity, which made him more susceptible to flattery than most men.
As well as serving Henry in his private apartments, his gentlemen were often dispatched on errands throughout the court and kingdom. On such occasions, they were seen not merely as messengers, but as the personification of their royal master – as if they had been able to imbibe his God-given powers through their close and constant access to his person.
Lower down the pecking order at court was Thomas Wyatt, who entered Henry’s service as ‘Sewer Extraordinary’ in 1515. This was evidently a part-time position, for he began his studies at Cambridge the same year. Wyatt thrived in the intellectually stimulating atmosphere at St John’s College, and by the time that he rose to prominence in royal service he had also gained renown as a poet. He is credited with many innovations in English poetry and, alongside his protégé Henry Howard, later Earl of Surrey, introduced the sonnet into England from Italy. Wyatt’s literary prowess also won him favour with Henry, who had always prided himself on his own writing skills. He soon enlisted Wyatt on a number of important diplomatic missions.
Henry had spent the first decade of his reign filling the privy chamber with his favourites. The majority of the men who kept him company there appealed to him for their martial prowess and seemingly endless capacity for entertainments, but their close and regular access to the king imbued them with political power too. Increasingly, there was a blurring of roles between the privy chamber and the council, to the detriment of the latter – and in particular its chief, Wolsey.
The men who served Henry in his privy chamber exerted a distinct advantage over Wolsey and his fellow officials because they were his constant companions, entertaining him during his leisure hours, attending him during his most intimate moments, and even sleeping in the same room as him. As a result, they enjoyed a level of intimacy with the king that his councillors – even Wolsey – could only dream of. It was galling for the cardinal to realise that he himself was partly to blame: if he had not encouraged his master to spend so many hours at leisure, his companions would not have been able to grow so familiar – or influential. That they made the most of the opportunity had been demonstrated on numerous occasions since Henry’s accession, most of which concerned the granting of royal favours.
A prime example of this occurred in 1517, when Richard Vernon of Haddon Hall in Derbyshire died, leaving a widow, Margaret. The daughter of the king’s hereditary Champion, Sir Robert Dymoke, she would make a prestigious wife for any ambitious gentleman. Wolsey was fully aware of the fact, and with lightning speed petitioned her to marry Sir William Tyrwhit, one of his own servants. But one of Henry’s privy chamber gentlemen, William Coffin, wanted her for himself. Together with his friend Carew, he persuaded his royal master to further his suit, and Henry duly wrote to Margaret, asking her to look kindly upon Coffin as a man ‘whom we singularly favour at this time’. Wolsey was furious, and refused to be bought off by Henry with the grant of the wardship of Vernon’s heir. ‘My lord Cardinal is not content withal,’ reported Thomas Allen to his patron the Earl of Shrewsbury, with barely concealed relish. Coffin himself wrote to the earl soon afterwards, confidently asserting that ‘whatsoever noise or report is … made in those parts to my discomfort … the King continueth my good and gracious lord and so will do to the end of the matter’.7 He was right: the marriage went ahead soon afterwards.
Wolsey was all too well aware of the danger that the men of the privy chamber presented to his own standing with Henry. The Venetian envoy Sebastian Giustiniani, who had had the opportunity to observe the king and his men at close quarters, judged that the cardinal feared Henry’s minions were ‘so intimate with the King that in the course of time they might have ousted him from the government’. Giustiniani shared the cardinal’s view that they were ‘youths of evil counsel, and intent upon their own benefit, to the detriment, hurt and discredit of his Majesty’. According to his account, Wolsey resolved to protect himself from being ‘ousted … from the government’ by striking against them first. ‘By this [Wolsey] will secure the King entirely to himself.’8
Whether or not this intention lay behind his actions, at the beginning of 1519, Wolsey proposed a series of sweeping reforms to government administration, justice, the economy, local and national affairs. All were intended to draw his royal master into playing a more active role in governing his realm, which was the exact opposite of the strategy that Wolsey had originally adopted to win favour and influence with Henry. In order to convince the king of the need for these reforms, the cardinal presented them as a seismic break with the past and a means by which Henry could really make his mark. At the same time, he painted a picture of the privy chamber men as feckless and overindulged, and hinted that they were holding Henry back from being the king that he could be – a king, indeed, who would far outshine his father.
Wolsey could have employed no more effective means to persuade Henry to take action. Content though he had been to let his chief minister take the reins of government, Henry was aware that he had yet to make his mark as king. Military glory had proved all too fleeting, so the prospect of asserting his kingly authority at home held considerable appeal. Without hesitation, he therefore gave his full backing to Wolsey’s reforms and threw himself into directing them with all the enthusiasm and energy of a man who delights in novelty.
The documents recording what happened next make it seem as if the king, rather than his chief minister, was the architect of all the reforms. ‘A remembrance of such things as his grace will have to be done, and hath given in commandment to his Cardinal to put the same in effectual execution’ is one such example.9 The cardinal knew, though, that his royal master would soon lose interest: indeed, he himself had little intention of seeing through most of the reforms. ‘Every one of these enterprises was great, and the least of them to our commonwealth much expedient,’ observed John Palsgrave, a priest at court, not long afterwards, ‘but they have been begun, and brought to no good end.’10
This mattered little to Wolsey. The proposed reforms had given him the excuse he needed to get rid of his rivals. With the support of the council, in May 1519, Wolsey set about purging the privy chamber of the ‘minions’ whom he and his fellow ministers claimed were having a deleterious influence on their royal master. The men were charged before the council with over-familiarity with the king, for having ‘played such light touches with him that they forgot themselves’, and for ‘diverse considerations’, including being ‘the cause of [Henry’s] incessant gambling, which has made him lose of late a treasure of gold’.
Henry, meanwhile, was presented as the victim: a master of such ‘gentleness and liberality to all persons’ that he had neither ‘rebuked nor reproved’ them.11 It is difficult to see him in this light. Gregarious and sociable he might have been, but he was hardly the blameless and submissive victim that his councillors claimed. He had encouraged, not merely suffered, the more wayward tendencies of his privy chamber companions. But by implying that Henry’s honour was at stake, the council had played a masterstroke. This was something that the chivalric-obsessed king could not ignore. ‘Resolving to lead a new life, he, of his own accord removed these companions of his excesses,’ recorded Guistiniani.12 He also gave his council full authority to do everything necessary ‘both for the maintenance of his honour, and for the defence of all things that might blemish the same’.13
Among those whose wrists had been firmly slapped was William Carey, who along with his fellow minions was ‘grieved sore’ when he heard the news.14 But the greatest troublemaker was Sir Francis Bryan, whose reckless behaviour was said to have brought disgrace upon the king and his court. Bryan’s partner in crime was his brother-in-law, Sir Nicholas Carew. The council at Greenwich heard how the pair had run riot during a recent embassy to France, when they ‘rode disguised through Paris, throwing eggs, stones and other foolish trifles at the people’.15
This was the second time in the space of a year that Carew had been reprimanded. Early in 1518, objections had been raised (almost certainly by Wolsey) about the intimacy that he enjoyed with his royal master. The latter had responded by distancing himself from Carew, but he could not keep up the pretence for long. In March, Wolsey’s agent reported that Carew and his wife had returned to the king’s grace, ‘too soon, after mine opinion’.16
There was to be no such reprieve now. Along with Sir Francis Bryan, Sir Henry Guildford and a number of other ‘minions’, Carew was exiled from court. Each of these men felt aggrieved that, for all the influence they enjoyed with Henry, Wolsey had been able to remove them so quickly. If they were angry with their master for being manipulated by his base-born minister, they did not show it. Instead, it was Wolsey himself who was the focus of their ire. His purge might have achieved its short-term objective of enhancing his own influence over Henry, but it had also increased the ranks of his enemies.
Wolsey clearly wanted to ensure that Carew would not creep his way back into favour this time because he secured him a post in Calais, where he was made lieutenant of the tower of Rysbank, guarding the entrance to the harbour. Sir Nicholas arrived there on 20 May, the day of his formal appointment. Although he was aggrieved at being sent so far away from court, he was at least afforded a comfortable living, having been granted an annuity of £109 6s 8d from the issues of the town. Those minions who escaped exile in Calais were found ‘employment extra curiam (outside the court) in other parts of the kingdom’.17
The purge was about more than just power. Through it, Wolsey was encouraging his youthful and exuberant royal master to mature into a responsible and authoritative leader who would command the respect of his subjects and peers. In short, he was helping his royal master to grow up. It was high time Henry did so. He was now on the cusp of his twenty-eighth birthday and had ruled England for ten years. Although he was a popular and well-liked king, he had little to show for his reign beyond a depleted treasury and a few minor military victories. The alacrity with which he responded to Wolsey’s proposed reforms suggests that he was already aware of the need to take greater responsibility. But for Wolsey, it was a high-risk strategy. Encouraging his royal master to mature into an authoritative, responsible king might get rid of the troublesome young men who surrounded him, but it also threatened his own hold over Henry. Having realised the full potential of his powers, the king might not want to cede so many of them to his chief minister in future. It is an indication of how much Wolsey wished to oust the ‘minions’ that he was prepared to take the risk.
Wolsey was not the only man who urged Henry that the time had come to change. The king’s former tutor, John Skelton, expressed his support for the privy chamber purge in his ambitious morality play, Magnificence. This sought to persuade Henry to take care in choosing his most intimate advisers, to curb his financial excesses and to run his household efficiently. The parallels with the politics of court are even more obvious than in his other works. Set in London, it centres upon the struggle for power in the household of a ‘prince’, who is persuaded by irresponsible and scheming favourites to dismiss his steward, Measure. They go on to squander the prince’s money, leaving him impoverished and humiliated until Good Hope, Redress, Sad Circumspection and Perseverance bring him back to good order.
These virtues were probably a thinly veiled reference to the ‘four sad and ancient knights, put into the king’s privy chamber’ by the council that year. All of them were thought to be Wolsey’s ‘creatures’, and were serious, hard-working men in middle age at least.18 They included Sir John Welsbourne. The son of a Buckinghamshire landowner, little is known of him before his appointment. He was initially made a page, but rapidly rose through the ranks and was soon so firmly established in Henry’s favour that he was allowed to exercise his office of controller of custom in Bristol by deputy as ‘he has been retained as one of the grooms of the Privy Chamber’.19
Another of the new men was Sir Richard Wingfield, who was approaching fifty at the time of his appointment. The Wingfields were a distinguished Suffolk gentry family, with many years of military and diplomatic service to their credit. They had been prominent as officials at the court of Edward IV, and Sir Richard had married Katherine Woodville, one of the sisters of Edward’s queen, Elizabeth. He had also found favour with the first Tudor king, serving as his esquire of the body and helping to put down the Cornish rebels in 1497. In January 1513, Wingfield had been appointed special ambassador to the Low Countries, and had taken part in the French campaign that summer. He had acquitted himself well, and early the following year he is first referred to in the records as a royal councillor. He had soon won the cardinal’s trust, and Wolsey had discussed the coming purge with him, as well as giving him an assurance of a place in the new order.
Wingfield was well aware of the mockery that he and his fellow ‘ancient knights’ were subjected to, and at a royal banquet held at Beaulieu in September 1519, these aged men entered in masks and false white beards, and proceeded to dance gravely and silently with the queen’s ladies. His self-deprecating manner, as well as his ‘wise counsel’, secured Wingfield the favour of the king, who soon described him as a trusted friend. But Wingfield always insisted that he owed his place to the cardinal alone.
Sir Richard Jerningham and Sir William Kingston were the other ‘ancient’ men with whom Wolsey filled the vacant places. Both were adherents of the cardinal and could boast distinguished service to the crown. Jerningham had been appointed a gentleman of the chamber upon Henry VIII’s accession, but had spent most of the following decade abroad on a series of diplomatic missions, to which he was arguably better suited than as a companion for the king. Kingston, meanwhile, had served Henry’s father as a yeoman of the chamber, and had been present at his funeral as a gentleman usher. Recognising his military ability, the new king had enlisted him in a number of campaigns, and he had been awarded a knighthood for his service at Flodden in 1513.
The ousting of Henry’s ‘minions’ sent shockwaves across Europe. The Venetian ambassador Giustinian described it as being ‘of as vital importance as any [event] that had taken place for many years’, and Francis I claimed that it had resulted in ‘a new world in England’.20 Henry might have been gratified by the latter description, but the truth was that although this naturally genial king did his best to reconcile himself to his new attendants, he sorely missed his old companions. His resolve to follow Wolsey’s advice and adopt a more sober life soon crumbled, and within six months of the purge, all of the ousted men had been recalled. This was one of the earliest demonstrations of Henry’s fickle and changeable nature. No matter how passionately he committed himself to a cause, he could prove as easily distracted from it as a child from a toy. It was a tendency that would come increasingly to the fore as his reign progressed – with often devastating consequences for those who were caught up in his whims.
Henry was as delighted to see his former favourites as they were to be back. Eager to make amends, the king was even more generous towards them than he had been before. The spendthrift Carew had a debt of £742 (equivalent to around £280,000 today) that he had run up as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex cancelled by letters patent. Furthermore, when he resigned his lieutenancy of Rysbank in 1520, he was granted a pension of £100.
At about the same time as Henry’s favourites were welcomed back into the privy chamber, a new face appeared there. Anthony Browne was the half-brother of the king’s great favourite, William Fitzwilliam. Born around 1500, he was one of the youngest of Henry’s privy chamber servants and had probably been raised in the royal household. His father had been Henry VII’s standard-bearer and lieutenant of Calais Castle. Despite his impeccable breeding, Browne was something of a hothead. Sir John Russell, a professional soldier and adherent of Wolsey, disparagingly remarked that Browne was ‘most unreasonable and … one whose words and deeds do not agree together’.21 In 1518, Henry had recalled Sir Anthony from an embassy to Tournai for striking one of his fellow emissaries. Henry soon forgave him, though, and Browne became one of his favourite attendants during the years that followed.
Another regular attendant was Thomas More. He had been striving to enhance his position at court for almost ten years now, but he was still far from being an intimate of the young king. More’s son-in-law William Roper claimed that Henry often summoned More to his private apartments in order to debate with him about ‘astronomy, geometry, divinity, and sometimes of his worldly affairs’. Often, they would head up to the palace roof to consider ‘the diversities, courses, motions and operations of the stars and planets’, and at other times More would be invited to take supper with the king and queen and ‘be merry with them’.22
Either Roper was overstating the case, or he was confusing the chronology of his father-in-law’s life, because More himself admitted that during the early years of his service to Henry, he was hardly distinguished from the many other men whom the young king showed favour towards. ‘So far I keep my place there [at court] as precariously as an unaccustomed rider in the saddle,’ he wrote to Fisher in 1518. ‘But the king (whose intimate favour I am far from enjoying) is so courteous and kindly to all that everyone who is in any way hopeful finds a ground for imagining that he is in the king’s good graces, like the London wives who, as they pray before the image of the Virgin Mother of God which stands near the Tower, gaze on it so fixedly that they imagine it smiles upon them. But I am not so fortunate as to perceive such signs of favour, nor so despondent as to imagine them.’23 More would soon find himself propelled to the centre of court life, however, because it was at around this time that he was appointed to the council. Thereafter, his rise in Henry’s favour would be rapid.
The return of the minions threatened to undermine Wolsey’s position once more, but on the surface at least his power and influence seemed undiminished. Even the highest-ranking noblemen in the kingdom could not rival the magnificence of the cardinal’s household, his growing portfolio of lavish properties, or his priceless collection of art and furnishings. At its height, Wolsey’s household comprised no fewer than 429 members, making it second only to the king’s. Seventy-three men and boys served in the kitchens alone, and in his stables he employed half as many servants as his royal master. Wolsey’s influence with Henry was so widely known that competition for places in his service was almost as fierce as in the royal household itself.
The rapid succession of ecclesiastical and other preferments that the cardinal had acquired helped to fund his lavish lifestyle. The archbishopric of York brought him over £5,000 per annum, and the chancellorship added another £2,000. He also received a substantial pension from France or the empire, depending on which way his diplomacy turned, and in 1518 he obtained the revenues of the bishopric of Bath and Wells, one of the most prestigious benefices in the kingdom. By 1519, Wolsey’s annual income was in the region of £9,500 (equivalent to £3.6 million today), which made him Henry’s wealthiest subject.
Before long, there were whispers that the cardinal had come to rival the king himself. Aware of this, Wolsey always took care to ensure that he expressed his subservience to his royal master. Thus, for example, he gifted Henry his best singer, knowing that he admired him. But if gestures like these placated the king, they did little to convince his noble rivals that he was anything other than a dangerous upstart, intent upon their destruction. Their suspicions were at least partially justified.
Ever since entering Henry’s service, Wolsey had been intent upon restricting the nobility’s powers. In so doing, he was echoing the policy of his royal master’s father, who had kept a tight rein on the men whose birth and estates made them a threat to his authority. But Henry VIII had relaxed these strictures, eager to win favour with the magnates of his realm. Wolsey had soon set about unpicking this. In 1511, a proclamation had been issued declaring the king’s ‘great displeasure’ upon hearing that many of his ‘lords and nobles’ had been unlawfully accumulating retainers under cover of supporting the king’s war effort.24 They were ordered immediately to cease this practice or face the consequences.
In May 1516, the cardinal went further still when he made a speech in the Star Chamber, declaring that those responsible for administering justice should not regard themselves as being above the law. To prove the point, on the very same day, Henry Percy, fifth Earl of Northumberland, was summoned into court for contempt of the council’s jurisdiction in private suits, and was subsequently committed to Fleet prison. This was a studied insult to one of the highest-ranking noblemen in the land, and sent out a clear message about Wolsey’s intentions. His other measures included an attempt to control marriage between aristocratic families, which had been the traditional means of forging powerful alliances, sometimes against the crown. By the end of May, the cleric Thomas Allen reported ‘great snarling’ at court.25
It was not long before resentment among the nobility broke out into open aggression. Polydore Vergil claims that Thomas Howard threatened Wolsey with his dagger. Even though this is not substantiated by any other source, there can be little doubt as to the virulent hatred that Wolsey’s noble rivals now harboured against him. From thenceforth, he knew that his security would increasingly rest in the king’s hands alone.
Wolsey might have been protecting his own authority, and that of his royal master, with his strictures against the nobility, but he was also courting a growing body of dangerous enemies. The Duke of Buckingham, who had also fallen foul of the cardinal’s policies, was heard to complain that Wolsey would undo all noblemen if he could. The chronicler Raphael Holinshed recorded: ‘The duke … could not abide the cardinal’, and had uttered ‘grievous words’ against him.26 On another occasion, the duke waited on the king while he dined with Wolsey, and held a bowl of water for him to wash his hands in. After Henry had completed his ablution, Wolsey also dipped his hands in the water. This was too much for the duke to bear, and he threw the water over Wolsey’s shoes. Although Wolsey brazened it out and sent Buckingham a warning to mind his manners in the king’s presence, the incident had served as yet another reminder of his growing body of enemies at court.
By 1518, the chief minister had sparked such opposition that there were rumours of a plot to oust him from power. But Wolsey had taken care to convince Henry of the need to bring the aristocracy to heel. In April that year the king praised the cardinal’s ‘special regard for the surety of his person’, and alluded to the threat posed by certain ‘great personages’.27
In January 1519, Henry wrote to his chief minister, secretly instructing him to ‘make good watch on the duke of Suffolk, on the duke of Buckingham, on my lord of Northumberland, on my lord of Derby, on my lord of Wiltshire and on others which you think suspect’.28 That Henry should have included his best friend, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, among those whom he wished his chief minister to keep a close eye on demonstrates the extent of Wolsey’s influence at this time. Henry also made it clear that Wolsey was under his protection. When his father’s former solicitor-general, Thomas Lucas, slandered the cardinal, he was sent straight to the Tower.
Although Suffolk quickly allayed his master’s suspicions against him with a demonstration of humble submission, Wolsey continued to stoke the king’s growing paranoia about his nobles. He had a vested interest in doing so: it made more of a virtue of his own humble birth, for he could never pose a similar threat to Henry’s crown. The following year, he sent a ‘Privy remembrance’ to Henry ‘to put himself in strength with his most trusty servants in every shire for the surety of his royal person and succession’.29 Little wonder that Thomas Howard later claimed that Wolsey had spent years plotting his destruction. According to Holinshed, when addressing the Earl of Kildare during his interrogation by the council, the cardinal told him: ‘I wot [know] well (my lord) that I am not the meetest at this board to charge you with these treasons because it pleased some of your purfellows to report that I am a professed enemy to all nobility.’30 But this account was written almost fifty years after Wolsey’s death and oversimplifies the situation.
Certainly, Wolsey was determined to bring the nobility under royal control, but he did so by the carrot as well as the stick. He encouraged them to demonstrate their fidelity to the crown by hinting at desirable appointments that he could help them to, and in so doing established a network of supporters in the localities. Although he was despised by some eminent members of the aristocracy, he counted others, such as Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester, as his friends.
The year 1519 was a significant one for Henry’s foreign relations, as well as his domestic affairs. That June, the nineteen-year-old Charles V, King of Spain, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Charles’s inheritance was greater than that of any European ruler in history – and certainly far greater than that of his closest rivals, Henry and Francis I. For all his power, though, the young emperor lacked the presence of these rivals. He was unattractive and ungainly, with a huge chin and protruding lower lip. Introverted and serious, he suffered from a severe stammer and eschewed the public court ceremony that Henry and Francis so revelled in. Neither was he their equal in intellect or culture. But in piety and industriousness, he far outstripped both men. He also had a fierce ambition for territory and power that spelt danger for any who opposed him.
This ambition was matched by that of Henry and Francis, both of whom had sought ways of extending their domains through an aggressive foreign policy since the beginning of their reigns. They gloried in the military aspect of kingship and personally took part in many campaigns. Francis had inherited an ongoing war in Italy from his predecessors. This came to dominate his reign, and many of his military encounters were against the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor.
In 1520, Francis made overtures to Henry as a means of countering Charles’s growing power. The two kings agreed to meet in June that year on neutral territory that lay between Ardres in France and Guines in the English Pale of Calais. The event, which would last for eighteen days, became known as the Field of Cloth of Gold because of the dazzling splendour and opulence with which it was staged. Although in theory a summit at which Henry and Francis could affirm their friendship and conclude an alliance, it turned into an expression of their intense rivalry, as each tried to outdo the other with the magnificence of their retinue and entertainments, and the various ‘friendly’ competitions that they entered into.
The man behind it was Cardinal Wolsey, who had long promoted amity with the French. He set his impressive organisational skills to work in creating a showpiece such as the world had never seen. Thomas Boleyn, Henry’s resident ambassador to France, also played a prominent role: indeed, he could be credited with suggesting the summit in the first place. By this time, the two men were sworn enemies. Henry had promised Thomas Boleyn the comptrollership of the household in 1519, but the cardinal had obstructed the appointment. Affronted, Boleyn demanded to know if Wolsey perceived some fault in him, but was offered empty reassurances. In 1520, though, he had his revenge when the king not only appointed him comptroller but also found a position in the queen’s household for Boleyn’s eldest daughter, Mary.
Mary Boleyn had recently returned from France, where she had served in the household of Henry’s sister Mary during her short-lived marriage to Louis XII. She had remained in France after Louis’ death and had transferred to the household of Claude, wife of Francis I. A comely young woman, then in her late teens, Mary had attracted the attention of the lascivious French king, who had made her his mistress. Alarmed, her father had recalled Mary to England and, thanks to his favour with Henry, restored her reputation by having her appointed one of Queen Catherine’s ladies and marrying her to William Carey, who was by then one of Henry’s closest companions. The king was the principal guest at the wedding and provided the newlyweds with rooms at court, close to his own. Both Mary and her husband were among the huge entourage that accompanied the king to France in 1520 for the meeting that her father had instigated.
When Henry and his queen embarked from Dover at the beginning of June, they were accompanied by 3,000 foot soldiers and 500 horsemen, as well as all of the king’s favourites and attendants. To accommodate this vast entourage, a series of lavish tents had been erected, many crafted out of the cloth of gold that gave the summit its name. The most impressive accommodation was reserved for the king: a huge temporary palace covering an area of nearly 10,000 square metres, which was built to receive him. The cost of all this splendour was staggering. The food alone for Henry and his retinue cost £7,409 (£2.8 million). For Henry, though, no expenditure was too great when it came to outshining his French rival. His deep-seated insecurity about Francis could only be suppressed – albeit temporarily – by lavish displays of magnificence.
Although Henry’s father had bequeathed him a full treasury, this had soon been depleted by Henry’s increasingly magnificent court and his incessant foreign campaigns. It was largely thanks to Wolsey’s financial ingenuity that his royal master did not consistently live beyond his means. The chief minister reformed the taxation system so that it was both fairer and more lucrative. A new tax, or ‘subsidy’, was introduced that was based upon an individual’s wealth. This meant that the poorer members of society paid much less than the rich. The cardinal also made frequent use of ‘benevolences’ – enforced loans from the nobility – which could raise vast sums. In 1522, for example, he secured £200,000 (equivalent to more than £100 million) through this means.
Wolsey’s trusted friend, Sir Nicholas Wingfield, had been sent to France as ambassador in February 1520, and was charged with arranging most of the details of this spectacular event. Henry paid close attention to the martial and chivalric aspects of the meeting, and corresponded extensively with Wingfield to ensure that he had all the related matters in hand. It is a sign of the esteem in which Wingfield was held that he was able to gently tease his royal master about matching the French king’s plans to bring numerous beautiful women in his train: ‘I never saw your highness encumbered or find default with over great press of ladies,’ he wrote.31
But it was the men with whom Henry was more concerned. He made sure to take with him all of his companions who had proved their prowess in the field of combat or tournament. Through them, as well as his own martial skills, he could demonstrate his superiority over Francis. But one man who did not accompany him across the Channel was Thomas Howard. Although Henry had appointed him his deputy to manage governmental affairs during his absence, it was soon obvious that Howard would enjoy only empty authority. The real power still rested in Wolsey, who took with him all of the trappings of government, including officials, secretaries and the seals with which to authenticate royal decisions. Howard, meanwhile, had been left out in the cold. As if to further emphasise the fact, his son Henry was at the same time dispatched to Ireland. The Howards’ resentment against Henry’s chief minister had reached boiling point by the time the royal party set sail.
As well as entrusting Wolsey with the task of creating this spectacle, the king also gave him responsibility for the more serious diplomatic business that lay behind it. The chronicler Edward Hall recalled that Henry ‘by his letters patents, had given full power and authority to the same lord Cardinal, concerning all matters to be debated, touching the king and the realm, and also gave unto the same Cardinal, full strength, power and authority, to affirm and confirm, bind, and unbind, whatsoever should be in question, between him and the French king, as though the king in proper person had been there presently’.32
When the French councillors heard how much power the English king had vested in the cardinal, they reported it to their royal master. Wolsey had taken care to cultivate Francis since his accession, and the latter soon sent word to the cardinal that he wished to imbue him with ‘the same power and authority’ to treat on his behalf as Henry had given him. When Wolsey received the patent, he sent word to Francis ‘that he would no such power receive, without the consent of the king of England his sovereign lord’. This was a clever move on Wolsey’s part: he knew that his rivals would seize upon any evidence that he was overstepping his authority, so he was careful to defer to his royal master. Henry did not hesitate to give his approval. ‘It was highly esteemed and taken for great love that the French king had given so great power to the king of England’s subject,’ Hall concluded.33
This cordial exchange set the scene for the meeting of the two kings, which took place soon afterwards. Hall describes the spectacular scene that unfolded as Henry and Francis made their way towards the meeting place. Both men were flanked by hundreds of noblemen, squires, knights, bishops and other officials, all clad in cloth of gold and silver, crimson satin, velvets of rich colours, and in the case of the officers of court, ‘chains of gold, great and marvellous weighty’. But eclipsing all of his men was Henry himself, who was dressed in a garment ‘of such shape and making, that it was marvellous to behold’. Fashioned from cloth of silver and damask, and ‘ribbed with cloth of gold, so thick as might be’, the outfit was the most sumptuous among the hundreds of others that filled the royal wardrobe. Clearly Henry was determined not to be outshone by his French rival.
The meeting had been carefully stage-managed by Wolsey so that each king would ride to the top of opposing hillsides, before descending into the valley below. The thousands of people who waited there were commanded to stand absolutely still and silent as Henry and Francis prepared to advance. When at last the two men drew level, they alighted from their horses and embraced, then ‘with benign and courteous manner each to the other, with sweet and goodly words of greeting: and after few words, these two noble kings went together into the rich tent of cloth of gold … arm in arm’.34
The encounter had got off to the best possible start, but it was not long before the intense rivalry between these two men showed through the dazzling splendour that had momentarily eclipsed it. Henry might have superseded Francis in material splendour, but he was bested in the series of tournaments that followed. The carefully established rules of the tournament dictated that the two kings could not compete against each other, so Henry contented himself with showing off his prowess – and that of his companions – against a series of French opponents. He threw himself into the jousting with such vigour that one of his best horses died from exhaustion.
Although Henry and his men had shown off their athleticism and skill, he was still so desperate to prove his physical superiority over Francis that he challenged him to a wrestling match. Unfortunately, he was quickly defeated by his rival, which was a bitter blow for a king who so prided himself on his sporting prowess. But Francis also proved himself the greater gallant when, at a dinner with the English queen, he ‘went from one end of the room to the other, carrying his hat in his hand and kissing all the ladies on both sides – except for four or five who were too old and ugly’. He then turned his attention to Catherine and conversed with her for a good while before ‘spending the rest of the day dancing’. At the same time, Henry attended a dinner with Francis’s wife Claude, but Hall deemed his efforts less worthy of note.35
Wolsey brought the proceedings to a formal close on 24 June, when he said mass before the two kings departed. The pretence at amity was already wearing thin, and Henry was eager to depart. The ostentatious summit had merely served to intensify his rivalry with Francis. Soon after leaving Guines, Henry made his way to Gravelines, about eighteen miles to the east, to meet Charles V. Ever mindful of the need to keep both of his powerful rivals in play, Henry entertained Charles in England just a few days before his summit with Francis. He now escorted the emperor to Calais and concluded an alliance with him there. Charles V promptly declared war on France.
The Field of Cloth of Gold might have worsened relations between Henry and Francis, but it accelerated Charles Brandon’s return to favour. Brandon had played a prominent role in the jousting, and Henry was glad of his old companion at arms, whose skill outshone that of many other combatants. The summit also led to Brandon finally abandoning his pro-French stance, to the extent that three years later Henry appointed him to command an army of more than 11,000 men to invade northern France. He was accompanied by another military stalwart from the king’s favourites, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy.
As Master of the Horse, Sir Henry Guildford had been a prominent member of Henry’s entourage in June 1520. The contemporary descriptions of the event record that he led his master’s spare mount onto the field, and that both he and the horse were richly adorned. He remained with the king for his meeting with the Emperor Charles V at Gravelines shortly afterwards. Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, was also prominent at both occasions and was accorded even greater honour. At the Field of Cloth of Gold he preceded the king, on whose orders he carried the sword of state unsheathed so as not to be upstaged by the French king. Guildford and Dorset were chosen as much for their skill at arms as for their rank: their master had pulled out all the stops in order to gain the upper hand over his French rival.
Another of the king’s favourites who had been present at the meeting between the two kings was Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon. He had excelled in feats of arms against his French opponents, which had helped to offset his master’s embarrassment about his own ignominious defeats. In the same year, Courtenay was rewarded with the highest honours that he had yet received at his cousin’s hands: he was appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber and was sworn of the council.
Courtenay’s old friend William Carey had also distinguished himself in the jousts, and now that he was allied to the powerful Boleyn family, his future in the king’s service seemed assured. But his new marriage was to win him favour with his royal master in a rather unexpected way. Mary Boleyn had caught the king’s eye soon after her arrival in his wife’s household. The same attributes that had attracted the attention of Francis I appealed to his English rival, and within a short time of Mary’s marriage she had become Henry’s mistress. Their relationship was soon an open secret at court, and William Carey certainly knew of it. But service to the king came before personal concerns, and he was obliged to play the part of cuckolded husband without complaint. Henry rewarded him with grants of land, and his influence in the privy chamber continued to grow. Mary’s father and brother also profited from her affair with the king. Henry granted the two men various offices in Tonbridge in Kent, close to their estate at Hever.36 George was later granted the manor of Grimston in Norfolk.
Despite causing embarrassment on a previous excursion to France, a number of the king’s hell-raising intimates had been among his entourage. They included Francis Bryan and Sir Nicholas Carew, who, along with Courtenay, staged an elaborate masque as part of the entertainments. Dressed as ‘Eastlanders’, their garish apparel comprised hose of gold satin, shoes with small spikes of white nails, doublets of crimson velvet lined with cloth of gold, hats from Danzig, and purses and girdles of sealskin. Thus attired, they led processions through the streets of Ardres and Guisnes, accompanied by minstrels.
The king had taken other men along for a different reason. They included Henry Percy, fifth Earl of Northumberland. The Percys were one of the most distinguished and wealthy noble families in the country, and they had traditionally enjoyed hegemony in the northern counties. But while Henry Percy’s father had led the Council of the North, an administrative body established by Edward IV to strengthen his control of northern England, upon his death Henry VII had given this honour to Thomas Savage, Archbishop of York. The fifth earl’s hopes that the new king would restore the leadership to him were dashed early in the reign, and his servants reported loose talk ‘that if their lord had not room in the North as his father had, it should not be long well’.37
Henry VIII evidently did not have a high opinion of Percy, and he went on to deny him the border offices that he justifiably expected by right, and that he was best equipped to fulfil. The earl became increasingly disaffected and troublesome, and in 1516 he was imprisoned in the Fleet for contempt of the council’s jurisdiction in private suits. His servants, meanwhile, were also accused of violence against a local landowner. None of this made Henry inclined to give Percy what he wanted, and instead he limited him to ceremonial roles. Thus, for example, in 1517 Percy was charged with escorting the king’s sister Margaret from York to the Scottish border. He did so with bad grace and subsequently grumbled about the cost. Increasingly paranoid about any threats to his authority, Henry instructed Wolsey to keep a close eye on him. Wolsey was in a good position to do so: he had already taken the earl’s young son Henry into his charge and was overseeing his education. The younger Percy was no more endearing than his father, however, and the cardinal developed a low opinion of him, not least for his lack of financial sense.
Another peer whom Henry had made sure accompanied him to France was Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. As one of the highest-ranking members of the nobility, it was natural that Henry should wish Buckingham to attend, but the latter grumbled about the expense involved. According to his son’s account, written many years later, the duke clashed with Wolsey during the festivities by springing to Queen Catherine’s defence when she was rebuked by the cardinal.
The blue-blooded duke and the butcher’s boy were natural adversaries, and Buckingham had made no secret of his dislike of Wolsey. According to Holinshed, this incited the cardinal to begin plotting his destruction: ‘He [Wolsey] cast before hand all ways possible to have him in a trip, that he might cause him to leap headless.’ Upon hearing the duke’s slanders, Wolsey was ‘boiling in hatred … and thirsting for his blood’.38 But Buckingham’s worst enemy was himself. He was highly strung, intemperate and had a loose tongue. As well as loudly criticising Wolsey’s policies and declaring that he would govern affairs more effectively himself, he also expressed his contempt for the king’s father. Perhaps he judged that this would win him favour with Henry, who despite his confident displays of kingship had always lived in his father’s shadow. But if this was the case, then he had miscalculated. To make matters worse, he also boasted of his own royal blood.
Although Henry had never entrusted Buckingham with any real political power, in 1514 he had appointed him to the commission of the peace in nine English counties in which he owned extensive property. The Duke was also responsible for public order in his lordships in south Wales, but despite his efforts he was rebuked by the king in 1518 for failing to achieve results. Henry had also denied him the constableship of England, which Buckingham had successfully argued was rightfully his by virtue of his tenure of certain manors. But while the judges upheld his claim, they made the proviso that the king could dispense with his services, which Henry promptly did.
The king had not always been hostile towards Buckingham, but the latter’s royal blood and overweening ambition ensured that relations were never harmonious for long. In August 1519, Henry paid a visit to the duke at his magnificent home at Penshurst in Kent, but was outraged when he saw Sir William Bulmer, a member of his own household, wearing Buckingham’s livery. This earned Bulmer a public rebuke from the king, who declared: ‘He would none of his servants should hang on another man’s sleeve.’39 Thereafter, Buckingham became increasingly alienated from the king and was prone to bouts of severe ill temper, possibly also depression. He began to talk vaguely of rebellion, but was also plagued with self-doubt. Early in 1520 he told his chancellor that ‘he had been such a sinner that he was sure that he lacked grace’.40 In October, apparently on a whim, he suddenly announced an intention to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Courting the king’s disapproval was bad enough, but now that Buckingham had alienated his chief minister, his downfall was inevitable. In April 1521, he was arrested on suspicion of treason. The evidence against him was provided by members of his household, who testified that since 1512 a Carthusian monk named Nicholas Hopkins had been telling the duke of his prophecies, notably that he would one day be king. They also attested that Buckingham believed the Tudors had been cursed by God because of the unjustified execution of the Earl of Warwick in 1499 (the duke had been among the jury), and that was why Henry VIII had failed to produce a male heir. His loose-tongued remarks also included grumblings against Wolsey and the reluctance of his fellow nobles to get rid of this low-born upstart. Even more damning was his reference to his father’s plans to stab Richard III to death. Kings were clearly dispensable to a man who saw the throne as his by right.
Hopkins had apparently also advised Buckingham to make himself popular with the people in order to prepare for his accession. In the indictment, the duke was charged with trying to bribe the king’s guard with expensive clothes, and with building up his following with supernumerary officials. Much was made of the fact that he had also sought permission to take an armed guard of 300 to 400 men with him to establish his authority in his Welsh lordships. Buckingham’s chancellor, Robert Gilbert, allegedly confessed that his master had accused Wolsey of practising witchcraft in order to retain the king’s favour, and of being Henry’s ‘bawd’.
None of these charges bore close scrutiny, and the case depended heavily upon speculation about the duke’s intentions. Certainly he expected to be at least regent if Henry should die, and planned to take revenge on Wolsey. But only one of the prophecies about Buckingham becoming king was made after Princess Mary’s birth in 1516. Nevertheless, his claim to regency was easily twisted into a design on the throne, and the fact that he had countenanced the king’s death was a treasonable offence.
The duke was indicted for treason on 8 May, and five days later he was put on trial at Westminster Hall before his peers. Many of the king’s most favoured men were among them, including William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who had been active in Henry’s service since his return from Tournai three years earlier, and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Thomas Howard’s father, the Duke of Norfolk, presided over the proceedings as chief judge. When Buckingham was brought to the bar, the axe of the Tower was set before him. It was an ominous sign. His rivals enjoyed the spectacle as this ‘proud prince’ was obliged to humbly bow before them, bareheaded.41
When the indictment against him was read out, Buckingham declared it to be ‘false and untrue and conspired and forged to bring me to my death’.42 But it was to no avail. On 16 May, after the evidence had been heard and the jury had returned from considering the case, the Duke of Suffolk pronounced their verdict that the duke was guilty of high treason. Edward Hall describes how Buckingham was brought to the bar ‘sore chafing and sweating marvellously’. In an impressive show of grief, the Duke of Norfolk wept as he described the sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. Buckingham was not fooled. He reiterated his innocence and told his peers that he bore them no malice. Then, turning to Norfolk, he declared: ‘The eternal God forgive you my death.’43 The axe was then twisted towards the condemned man and he was ushered out of the hall and into a barge that was waiting to take him to the Tower.
To guard against any repercussions, the wording of the attainder left no doubt about the heinousness of Buckingham’s crimes. He had ‘divers times … imagined and compassed traitorously and unnaturally the destruction of the most royal person of our said sovereign lord the king’.44 The duke was executed the next day, the king having commuted the sentence to beheading. The speed with which it all happened suggests that Wolsey had been laying the groundwork for some time – and that he wanted to rush it through before there were any objections. A number of men who were closely involved in the case were in no doubt that Wolsey had been responsible for the duke’s downfall. In reporting his death, foreign ambassadors claimed that it was due to his having spoken out against the cardinal. But Wolsey confided to the French ambassador that Buckingham’s opposition to an alliance with France had been his undoing.
The duke’s brother Henry might have feared the same fate – after all, he had been under scrutiny by Wolsey at the king’s command. But he escaped any reprisals and continued in royal service until his death three years later. Less fortunate was the king’s long-standing companion, Sir Edward Neville. His elder brother George, third Baron Bergavenny, had married Buckingham’s daughter, Lady Mary Stafford, in June 1519, and had subsequently supported – or at least concealed – his father-in-law’s schemes. He was committed to the Tower, surrendered all of his offices and submitted to a heavy fine, until eventually receiving a royal pardon. Sir Edward, meanwhile, was banned from the king’s presence on the grounds of having favoured the duke himself. His prohibition was only lifted ten months later, but he swiftly regained some of his favour with the king, albeit on less intimate terms.
The Duke of Buckingham’s execution marked a turning point in Henry’s relations with his nobles. At the beginning of the reign, when his confidence was riding high, he had been content to show them every favour. But now, twelve years on and still lacking a male heir, the same nagging fears that had plagued his father had begun to sound in his ears. Wolsey, who had always been suspicious of the aristocracy, urged his master to heed the policy of his father in keeping them at arm’s length, and of only making new creations in reward for proven loyalty. Henry was now ready to listen, and from that moment onwards, the only ennoblements he made were to his own ‘creatures’.
In what would become a practised routine, the king divided the spoils of the fallen duke among his favourites. One of those to profit most was Sir Nicholas Carew, who had been a member of the grand jury that had indicted Buckingham. He was granted the duke’s forfeited manor of Bletchingley in Surrey, and also succeeded Buckingham as steward of the park of Brasted, Kent, which brought with it an income of £40 per annum. Further grants of land and honours were to follow during the years ahead, making Carew one of the wealthiest of all the men who served in the king’s privy chamber.
One of the king’s men who had little need of Buckingham’s lands was Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset. He owned land in no fewer than sixteen counties, and thanks to his favour with Henry he had enjoyed a succession of honours over the past decade, including a place on the council and the coveted role of gentleman of the privy chamber. But his magnificence landed him in trouble during the early 1520s. A fierce dispute with the Hastings family in Leicestershire spilled over into the court when George, Baron Hastings, and his father-in-law, Sir Richard Sacheverell, arrived with large retinues. Not to be outdone, Dorset promptly expanded his own already considerable body of men. This violated the law against retaining, and Wolsey brought both Dorset and Hastings before the Star Chamber, before turning the matter over to the Court of King’s Bench.
Although Henry had forgiven his old jousting companion in the past, he could not allow this transgression to pass. Dorset and Hastings were bound over for good behaviour, and the marquess temporarily lost his seat on the council. But the dispute simmered on, stoked by the king’s obvious preference for Dorset’s side, and in 1524 a fight broke out in Leicester between Dorset’s cook and a client of Hastings, which escalated into a brawl involving hundreds of men. Wolsey was forced to intervene once more, and after levying a heavy fine on both parties, he had Dorset appointed lord master of Princess Mary’s council and sent off to Wales. This was an honourable position, but it deprived the marquess of his accustomed proximity to the king, and when the privy chamber was reorganised two years later, he found himself without a place.
Three months after the Duke of Buckingham’s execution, a peace conference was held in Paris to try to resolve the differences between Francis I and Charles V. Spying his chance to pursue his own diplomatic objectives, Wolsey, who had succeeded in ingratiating himself with both parties, offered to arbitrate. Henry empowered him to conclude an alliance with either France or the emperor, as he saw fit, or indeed to form a confederation with both powers and the papacy too. It is an indication of the enormous trust that the king now placed in his chief minister that he gave him free rein to act on his behalf in such an important international summit.
But Wolsey was not satisfied with even this level of authority because he feared that in his absence, decisions would be made in England that ran contrary to his wishes. It was already his custom whenever he was away from court to bombard the king with letters and messengers in order to update him on progress – and, no doubt, to make sure that he was not forgotten by his fickle master. As an additional safeguard, Wolsey also selected a small group of trusted men to report back on what was happening in council. They included Richard Pace, who acted as the king’s secretary for a while, and even his rival Thomas More, but he would change them if ever they showed signs of putting their interests ahead of his own.45 Now, though, he went one step further by taking the Great Seal with him, which prevented the king from sealing letters patent without his knowledge. This was both staggeringly audacious and illegal, and it whipped up even greater resentment among the cardinal’s adversaries.
Having thus protected his interests at home, Wolsey embarked for France in early August 1521. He clearly relished the position of power into which Henry had placed him and was determined to flaunt it because he travelled with no fewer than 1,000 horsemen. He presided over a conference between French and Imperial ambassadors, but was unable to bring them to agreement, and subsequently travelled to Bruges. Charles V met him at the gates of the city and embraced him as if he were an equal. Even though he had traditionally favoured France, Wolsey proceeded to negotiate an offensive alliance with the emperor against Francis I, and concluded a new treaty that committed England to declaring war in March 1523. The cardinal was rewarded with a pension of £1,200 a year, which was ostensibly to compensate for relinquishing his claims to the bishopric of Tournai.
All the while, Henry was kept up to date with his chief minister’s dealings. His reaction was mixed. In one dispatch, he alarmed Wolsey by making a show of wanting to recover his rightful inheritance in France and referred to Charles as ‘double-tongued’, but in others he expressed his satisfaction with the cardinal’s wisdom.46 When Wolsey begged him to reimburse the £10,000 of expenses that he claimed to have laid out in Calais, Henry’s pockets yet again proved deep. He granted his minister St Albans Abbey in trust, which added a further £1,000 to his yearly income. This was supplemented by the grant of further benefices during the next few years so that, by the end of the 1520s, it was estimated that Wolsey’s annual income had risen to a staggering £30,000 (£9.6 million).
Meanwhile, in order to fund his master’s cripplingly expensive French campaign, in 1525 Wolsey organised another benevolence, or forced loan. Known as the ‘Amicable Grant’, it was anything but. Previous benevolences had primarily targeted the nobility, but this one included ordinary people and the clergy. It sparked widespread discontent. Although Henry had not only approved, but probably instigated the grant, most of the blame fell upon Wolsey’s shoulders, as Hall recorded: ‘All people cursed the Cardinal and his coadherents as subvertor of the law and liberty of England.’47 Wolsey’s reaction was typically sanguine: ‘It is the custom of the people, when anything miscontenteth them, to blame those that be near the King,’ he told Thomas Howard (now Duke of Norfolk) and Charles Brandon.48 He proceeded to let his master enjoy the glory of withdrawing the tax and pardoning his people, while Wolsey himself shouldered the responsibility for the ill-fated project. ‘Because every man layeth the burden from him, I am content to take it on me,’ he declared, ‘and to endure the fame and noise of the people for my goodwill towards the king, and comfort of you my lords, and other the king’s councillors.’ He could not resist adding, though, that ‘the eternal God knoweth all’.49
But if the king was prepared to tolerate or even encourage his chief minister’s autonomy, his subjects were not. The king’s old tutor John Skelton penned ‘Speak Parrot’, a vicious attack on Wolsey for so far overreaching himself. Using the parrot of the title as a mouthpiece, the poet pretended to be merely repeating what he had heard around the court.50 He went on to compose a series of similarly critical verses, the most notorious of which was composed in November 1522 and entitled: ‘Why come ye not to court?’ Whereas before, Skelton had at least attempted to disguise – albeit thinly – the subject of his criticism, this poem was a direct and highly personal attack on the cardinal. It mentions the trouble that Wolsey was having with his eyes, and draws on the rumours that he was syphilitic. Above all, though, it criticises the chief minister for dominating his aristocratic peers and setting himself up as an equal of the king himself:
Set up a wretch on high,
In a throne triumphantly,
Make him of great estate
And he will play check mate
With royal majesty.51
For all Skelton’s criticism of Wolsey, his own ambition for influence and preferment at the king’s hands did not bear close scrutiny, particularly for a man of the Church. Moreover, there were rumours that he kept a concubine and, like Wolsey, he had at least one illegitimate child.
Although most of Skelton’s poems about Wolsey were not printed until some years later, it is likely that they were circulated in manuscript form and that the subject of his attacks was well aware of them. Rather than seeking to punish Skelton, however, Wolsey seems to have decided to use the poet’s pen to his own advantage. Less than a year after Skelton’s most vicious attack appeared, his ‘Garland of Laurel’ was published, dedicated to Henry VIII and, surprisingly, Wolsey. The swift change of tack was probably due to Skelton having remembered (or having been reminded) that Wolsey had promised him a prebend – that is, revenues from a cathedral or college. With a typical lack of subtlety, Skelton chose to remind Wolsey of this in his latest poem.