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's Chronicle. Even churchmen had been alienated by his suppression of monasteries and by his monopoly of ecclesiastical power; and his only support was the king, who had now developed a determination to rule himself. He surrendered all his offices and all his preferments except the archbishopric of York, receiving in return a pension of 1000 marks (equal to six or seven thousand pounds a year in modern currency) from the bishopric of Winchester, and retired to his see, which he had never before visited. A bill of attainder, passed by the Lords, was rejected at Cromwell's instigation and probably with Henry's goodwill by the Commons. The last few months of his life were spent in the exemplary discharge of his archiepiscopal duties; but a not altogether unfounded suspicion that he had invoked the assistance of Francis if not of Charles V. and the pope, to prevent his fall involved him in a charge of treason. He was summoned to London, but died on his way at Leicester abbey on November 30, and was buried there on the following day.
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 be 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 was equal to his abilities. The familiar charge, repeated in Shakespeare, of having written Ego et meus rex, while true in fact, is false in intention, because no Latin scholar could put the words in any other order; but it reflects faithfully enough Wolsey's mental attitude. Giustiniani explains that he had to make proposals to the cardinal before he broached them to Henry, lest Wolsey "should resent the precedence conceded to the king." "He is," wrote another diplomatist, "the proudest prelate that ever breathed." He arrogated to himself the privileges of royalty, made servants attend him upon their knees, compelled bishops to tie his shoelatchets and dukes to hold the basin while he washed his hands, and considered it condescension when he allowed ambassadors to kiss his fingers; he paid little heed to their sacrosanct character, and himself laid violent hands on a papal nuncio. His egotism equalled Henry VIII.'s; his jealousy and ill-treatment of Richard Pace, dean of St Paul's, referred to by Shakespeare but vehemently denied by Dr Brewer, has been proved by the publication of the Spanish state papers; and Polydore Vergil, the historian, and Sir R. Sheffield, speaker of the House of Commons, were both sent to the Tower for complaining of his conduct. His morals were of the laxest description, and he had as many illegitimate children as Henry VIII. himself. For his son, before he was eighteen years old, he procured a deanery, four archdeaconries, five prebends and a chancellorship, and he sought to thrust him into the bishopric of Durham. For himself he obtained, in addition to his archbishopric and lord chancellorship, the abbey of St Albans, reputed to be the richest in England, and the bishopric first of Bath and Wells, then of Durham, and finally that of Winchester. He also used his power to extort enormous pensions from Charles V. and Francis I. and lavish gifts from English suitors. His New Year's presents were reckoned by Giustiniani at 15,000 ducats, and the emperor paid - or owed - him 18,000 livres a year. His palaces outshone those of his king, and few monarchs could afford such a display of plate as commonly graced the cardinal's table. His foundations at Oxford and Ipswich were, nevertheless, not made out of his superabundant revenues, but out of the proceeds of the dissolution of monasteries, not all of which were devoted to those laudable objects.
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.
Continued on page four.
This article is from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia, which is out of copyright here in the U.S. See the encyclopedia main page for disclaimer and copyright information.
