Henry VIII Part 10

[Footnote 308: _L. and P._, ii., 3558.]

[Footnote 309: _Ibid._, iii., 1713.]

[Footnote 310: _Ven. Cal._, iii., 975.]

[Footnote 311: Brewer (Henry VIII., ii., 388; _L.

and P._, vol. iv., Introd., p. dx.x.xv. _n._) is very indignant at this allegation, and when recording Chapuys' statement in 1529 that Pace had been imprisoned for two years in the Tower and elsewhere by Wolsey, declares that "Pace was never committed to the Tower, nor kept in prison by Wolsey" but was "placed under the charge of the Bishop of Bangor,"

and that Chapuys' statement is "an instance how popular rumour exaggerates facts, or how Spanish amba.s.sadors were likely to misrepresent them". It is rather an instance of the lengths to which Brewer's zeal for Wolsey carried him. He had not seen the despatch from Mendoza recording Pace's committal to the Tower on 25th Oct., 1527, "for speaking to the King in opposition to Wolsey and the divorce" (_Sp. Cal._, 1527-29, p. 440). It is true that Pace was in the charge of the Bishop of Bangor, but he was not transferred thither until 1528 (Ellis, _Orig. Letters_, 3rd ser., ii., 151); he was released immediately upon Wolsey's fall.

Erasmus, thereupon, congratulating him on the fact, remarked that he was consoled by Pace's experience for his own persecution and that G.o.d rescued the innocent and cast down the proud (_ibid._, iv., 6283). The _D.N.B._ (xliii., 24), has been misled by Brewer. Wolsey had long had a grudge against Pace, and in 1514 was anxious to make "a fearful example" of him (_L. and P._, i., 5465); and his treatment of Pace was one of the charges brought against him in 1529 (_ibid._, iv., p. 2552).]

Wolsey's pride in himself, and his jealousy of others, were not (p. 115) more conspicuous than his thirst after riches. His fees as Chancellor were reckoned by Giustinian at five thousand ducats a year. He made thrice that sum by New Year's presents, "which he receives like the King".[312] His demand for the Bishopric of Bath and Wells, coupled with the fact that it was he who pet.i.tioned for Hadrian's deprivation, amazed even the Court at Rome, and, "to avoid murmurs,"[313] compliance was deferred for a time. But these scruples were allowed no more than ecclesiastical law to stand in the way of Wolsey's preferment. One of the small reforms decreed by the Lateran Council was that no bishoprics should be held _in commendam_; the ink was scarcely dry when Wolsey asked _in commendam_ for the see of the recently conquered Tournay.[314]

Tournay was restored to France in 1518, but the Cardinal took care that he should not be the loser. A _sine qua non_ of the peace was that Francis should pay him an annual pension of twelve thousand livres as compensation for the loss of a bishopric of which he had never obtained possession.[315] He drew other pensions for political services, from both Francis and Charles; and, from the Duke of Milan, he obtained the promise of ten thousand ducats a year before Pace (p. 116) set out to recover the duchy.[316] It is scarcely a matter for wonder that foreign diplomatists, and Englishmen, too, should have accused Wolsey of spending the King's money for his own profit, and have thought that the surest way of winning his favour was by means of a bribe.[317] When England, in 1521, sided with Charles against Francis, the Emperor bound himself to make good to Wolsey all the sums he would lose by a breach with France; and from that year onwards Charles paid--or owed--Wolsey eighteen thousand livres a year.[318] It was nine times the pensions considered sufficient for the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk; and even so it does not include the revenue Wolsey derived from two Spanish bishoprics. These were not bribes in the sense that they affected Wolsey's policy; they were well enough known to the King; to spoil the Egyptians was considered fair game, and Henry was generous enough not to keep all the perquisites of peace or war for himself.

[Footnote 312: Giustinian, _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]

[Footnote 313: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1045.]

[Footnote 314: _L. and P._, i., 5457.]

[Footnote 315: _Ibid._, ii., 4354.]

[Footnote 316: _L. and P._, ii., 1053, 1066.]

[Footnote 317: _Ibid._, ii., 1931; _cf._ Shakespeare, _Henry VIII._, Act. I., Sc. i.:--

Thus the Cardinal Does buy and sell his honour as he pleases And for his own advantage.]

[Footnote 318: _L. and P._, iii., 709, 2307 (where it is given as nine thousand "crowns of the sun"); _Sp. Cal._, ii., 273, 600. In 1527 Charles instructed his amba.s.sador to offer Wolsey in addition to his pension of nine thousand ducats with arrears a further pension of six thousand ducats and a marquisate in Milan worth another twelve or fifteen thousand ducats a year (_L. and P._, iv., 3464).]

Two years after the agreement with Charles, Ruthal, Bishop of Durham, died, and Wolsey exchanged Bath and Wells for the richer see formerly held by his political ally and friend. But Winchester was richer (p. 117) even than Durham; so when Fox followed Ruthal to the grave, in 1528, Wolsey exchanged the northern for the southern see, and begged that Durham might go to his natural son, a youth of eighteen.[319] All these were held _in commendam_ with the Archbishopric of York, but they did not satisfy Wolsey; and, in 1521, he obtained the grant of St. Albans, the greatest abbey in England. His palaces outshone in splendour those of Henry himself, and few monarchs have been able to display such wealth of plate as loaded the Cardinal's table. Wolsey is supposed to have conceived vast schemes of ecclesiastical reform, which time and opportunity failed him to effect.[320] If he had ever seriously set about the work, the first thing to be reformed would have been his own ecclesiastical practice. He personified in himself most of the clerical abuses of his age. Not merely an "unpreaching prelate," he rarely said ma.s.s; his _commendams_ and absenteeism were alike violations of canon law. Three of the bishoprics he held he never visited at all; York, which he had obtained fifteen years before, he did not visit till the year of his death, and then through no wish of his own. He was equally negligent of the vow of chast.i.ty; he cohabited with the daughter of "one Lark," a relative of the Lark who is mentioned in the correspondence of the time as "omnipotent"

with the Cardinal, and as resident in his household.[321] By her (p. 118) he left two children, a son,[322] for whom he obtained a deanery, four archdeaconries, five prebends, and a chancellors.h.i.+p, and sought the Bishopric of Durham, and a daughter who became a nun. The accusation brought against him by the Duke of Buckingham and others, of procuring objects for Henry's sensual appet.i.te, is a scandal, to which no credence would have been attached but for Wolsey's own moral laxity, and the fact that the governor of Charles V. performed a similar office.[323]

[Footnote 319: _L. and P._, iv., 4824.]

[Footnote 320: There is no doubt about his eagerness for the power which would have enabled him to carry out a reformation. As legate he demanded from the Pope authority to visit and reform the secular clergy as well as the monasteries; this was refused on the ground that it would have superseded the proper functions of the episcopate (_L. and P._, ii., 4399; iii., 149).]

[Footnote 321: _L. and P._, ii., 629, 2637, 4068.

Lark became prebendary of St. Stephen's (_Ibid._, iv., _Introd._, p. xlvi.).]

[Footnote 322: Called Thomas Wynter, see the present writer's _Life of Cranmer_, p. 324 _n._ Some writers have affected to doubt Wolsey's parentage of Wynter, but this son is often referred to in the correspondence of the time, _e.g._, _L. and P._, iv., p. 1407, Nos. 4824, 5581, 6026, 6075.

Art. 27.]

[Footnote 323: _Ibid._, iii., 1284; iv., p. 2558; ii., 2930.]

Repellent as was Wolsey's character in many respects, he was yet the greatest, as he was the last, of the ecclesiastical statesmen who have governed England. As a diplomatist, pure and simple, he has never been surpa.s.sed, and as an administrator he has had few equals. "He is,"

says Giustinian, "very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability and indefatigable. He alone transacts the same business as that which occupies all the magistracies, offices, and councils of Venice, both civil and criminal; and all State affairs are managed by him, let their nature be what it may. He is thoughtful, 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. He also makes the lawyers plead gratis for all poor suitors. He is in very great repute, seven times more so than if (p. 119) he were Pope."[324] His sympathy with the poor was no idle sentiment, and his commission of 1517, and decree against enclosures in the following year, were the only steps taken in Henry's reign to mitigate that curse of the agricultural population.

[Footnote 324: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287; Giustinian, _D sp._, App. ii., 309; _L. and P._, iii., 402.]

The Evil May Day riots of 1517 alone disturbed the peace of Wolsey's internal administration; and they were due merely to anti-foreign prejudice, and to the idea that strangers within the gates monopolised the commerce of England and diverted its profits to their own advantage.

"Never," wrote Wolsey to a bishop at Rome in 1518, "was the kingdom in greater harmony and repose than now; such is the effect of my administration of justice and equity."[325] To Henry his strain was less arrogant. "And for your realm," he says, "our Lord be thanked, it was never in such peace nor tranquillity; for all this summer I have had neither of riot, felony, nor forcible entry, but that your laws be in every place indifferently ministered without leaning of any manner.

Albeit, there hath lately been a fray betwixt Pygot, your Serjeant, and Sir Andrew Windsor's servants for the seisin of a ward, whereto they both pretend t.i.tles; in the which one man was slain. I trust the next term to learn them the law of the Star Chamber that they shall ware how from henceforth they shall redress their matter with their hands. They be both learned in the temporal law, and I doubt not good example shall ensue to see them learn the new law of the Star Chamber, which, G.o.d willing, they shall have indifferently administered (p. 120) to them, according to their deserts."[326]

[Footnote 325: _Ibid._, ii., 3973.]

[Footnote 326: _L. and P._, ii., App. No. 38; for the Star Chamber see Scofield, _Star Chamber_, 1902, and Leadam, _Select Cases_ (Selden Soc., 1904).]

Wolsey's "new law of the Star Chamber," his stern enforcement of the statutes against livery and maintenance, and his spasmodic attempt to redress the evils of enclosures,[327] probably contributed as much as his arrogance and ostentation to the ill-favour in which he stood with the n.o.bility and landed gentry. From the beginning there were frequent rumours of plots to depose him, and his enemies abroad often talked of the universal hatred which he inspired in England. The cla.s.ses which benefited by his justice complained bitterly of the impositions required to support his spirited foreign policy. Clerics who regarded him as a bulwark on the one hand against heresy, and, on the other, against the extreme view which Henry held from the first of his authority over the Church, were alienated by the despotism Wolsey wielded by means of his legatine powers. Even the mild and aged Warham felt his lash, and was threatened with _Praemunire_ for having wounded Wolsey's legatine authority by calling a council at Lambeth.[328]

Peers, spiritual no less than temporal, regarded him as "the great tyrant". Parliament he feared and distrusted; he had urged the speedy dissolution of that of 1515; only one sat during the fourteen years of his supremacy, and with that the Cardinal quarrelled. He possessed no hold over the nation, but only over the King, in whom alone he put his trust.

[Footnote 327: _L. and P._, App. No. 53; _cf._ Leadam, _Domesday of Enclosures_ (Royal Hist.

Soc.).]

[Footnote 328: _Ibid._, iii., 77, 98; _cf._ ii., 3973; iii. 1142.]

For the time he seemed secure enough. No one could touch a hair (p. 121) of his head so long as he was s.h.i.+elded by Henry's power, and Henry seemed to have given over his royal authority to Wolsey's hands with a blind and undoubting confidence. "The King," said one, in 1515, "is a youngling, cares for nothing but girls and hunting, and wastes his father's patrimony."[329] "He gambled," reported Giustinian in 1519, "with the French hostages, occasionally, it was said, to the amount of six or eight thousand ducats a day."[330] In the following summer Henry rose daily at four or five in the morning and hunted till nine or ten at night; "he spares," said Pace, "no pains to convert the sport of hunting into a martyrdom".[331] "He devotes himself," wrote Chieregati, "to accomplishments and amus.e.m.e.nts day and night, is intent on nothing else, and leaves business to Wolsey, who rules everything."[332] Wolsey, it was remarked by Leo X., made Henry go hither and thither, just as he liked,[333] and the King signed State papers without knowing their contents. "Writing," admitted Henry, "is to me somewhat tedious and painful."[334] When Wolsey thought it essential that autograph letters in Henry's hand should be sent to other crowned heads, he composed the letters and sent them to Henry to copy out.[335] Could the most const.i.tutional monarch have been more dutiful? But const.i.tutional monarchy was not then invented, and it is not surprising that Giustinian, in 1519, found it impossible to (p. 122) say much for Henry as a statesman. _Agere c.u.m rege_, he said, _est nihil agere_;[336] anything told to the King was either useless or was communicated to Wolsey. Bishop West was sure that Henry would not take the pains to look at his and Worcester's despatches; and there was a widespread impression abroad and at home that the English King was a negligible quant.i.ty in the domestic and foreign affairs of his own kingdom.

[Footnote 329: _L. and P._, ii., 1105; _cf. ibid._, ii., 215.]

[Footnote 330: Giustinian, _Desp._, App. ii., 309.]

[Footnote 331: _L. and P._, iii., 950; _cf._ iii., 1160, where Fitzwilliam describes Henry as a "master" in deer-hunting.]

[Footnote 332: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 788.]

[Footnote 333: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 281.]

[Footnote 334: _L. and P._, iii., 1.]

[Footnote 335: _Ibid._, iii., 1453, 3377.]

[Footnote 336: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1110.]

For ten years Henry had reigned while first his council, and then Wolsey, governed. Before another decade had pa.s.sed, Henry was King and Government in one; and n.o.body in the kingdom counted for much but the King. He stepped at once into Wolsey's place, became his own prime minister, and ruled with a vigour which was a.s.suredly not less than the Cardinal's. Such transformations are not the work of a moment, and Henry's would have been impossible, had he in previous years been so completely the slave of Vanity Fair, as most people thought. In reality, there are indications that beneath the superficial gaiety of his life, Henry was beginning to use his own judgment, form his own conclusions, and take an interest in serious matters. He was only twenty-eight in 1519, and his character was following a normal course of development.

From the earliest years of his reign Henry had at least two serious preoccupations, the New Learning and his navy. We learn from Erasmus that Henry's Court was an example to Christendom for learning and piety;[337] that the King sought to promote learning among the clergy; and on one occasion defended "mental and _ex tempore_ prayer" against those who apparently thought laymen should, in their private (p. 123) devotions, confine themselves to formularies prescribed by the clergy.[338] In 1519 there were more men of learning at the English Court than at any university;[339] it was more like a museum, says the great humanist, than a Court;[340] and in the same year the King endeavoured to stop the outcry against Greek, raised by the reactionary "Trojans" at Oxford. "You would say," continues Erasmus, "that Henry was a universal genius. He has never neglected his studies; and whenever he has leisure from his political occupations, he reads, or disputes--of which he is very fond--with remarkable courtesy and unruffled temper. He is more of a companion than a king. For these little trials of wit, he prepares himself by reading schoolmen, Thomas, Scotus or Gabriel."[341] His theological studies were encouraged by Wolsey, possibly to divert the King's mind from an unwelcome interference in politics, and it was at the Cardinal's instigation that Henry set to work on his famous book against Luther.[342] He seems to have begun it, or some similar treatise, which may afterwards have been adapted to Luther's particular case, before the end of the year in which the German reformer published his original theses. In September, 1517, Erasmus heard that Henry had returned to his studies,[343] and, in the following June, Pace writes to Wolsey that, with respect to the commendations given by the Cardinal to the King's book, though Henry does not think it worthy such great praise as it has had from him and from all other "great learned" men, yet he says he is very glad to have "noted in your (p. 124) grace's letters that his reasons be called inevitable, considering that your grace was sometime his adversary herein and of contrary opinion".[344] It is obvious that this "book," whatever it may have been, was the fruit of Henry's own mind, and that he adopted a line of argument not entirely relished by Wolsey. But, if it was the book against Luther, it was laid aside and rewritten before it was given to the world in its final form. Nothing more is heard of it for three years. In April, 1521, Pace explains to Wolsey the delay in sending him on some news-letters from Germany "which his grace had not read till this day after his dinner; and thus he commanded me to write unto your grace, declaring he was otherwise occupied; _i.e., in scribendo contra Lutherum,_ as I do conjecture".[345] Nine days later Pace found the King reading a new book of Luther's, "which he dispraised"; and he took the opportunity to show Henry Leo's bull against the Reformer.

"His grace showed himself well contented with the coming of the same; howbeit, as touching the publication thereof, he said he would have it well examined and diligently looked to afore it were published."[346]

Even in the height of his fervour against heresy, Henry was in no mood to abate one jot or one t.i.ttle of his royal authority in ecclesiastical matters.

[Footnote 337: _L. and P._, ii., 4115.]

[Footnote 338: _L. and P._, iii., 226.]

[Footnote 339: _Ibid._, iii., 251.]

[Footnote 340: _Ibid._, ii., 4340.]