HENRY VIII
From the Portrait by Holbein, at Warwick Castle
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
In these notes, written as a holiday task, it is not intended to give an exhaustive record of the events of Henry’s reign; but rather to offer an impression of the more prominent personages in Shakespeare’s play; and perhaps to aid the playgoer in a fuller appreciation of the conditions which governed their actions.
Marienbad, 1910
| PAGE | |
| King Henry VIII. | 1 |
| Wolsey | 21 |
| Katharine | 47 |
| Anne Boleyn | 55 |
| Divorce | 63 |
| The Reformation | 77 |
| Manners and Customs | 83 |
| A Note on the Production of Henry VIII. at His Majesty’s Theatre | 87 |
| An Apology and a Footnote | 103 |
| Chronology of Public Events during the Lifetime of Henry VIII. | 111 |
| Shakespearean Plays Produced under Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s Management at the Haymarket Theatre | 115 |
| Henry VIII. | Frontispiece | |||
| Cardinal Wolsey | Facing | page | 42 | |
| Katharine of Aragon | " | " | 76 | |
| Anne Boleyn | " | " | 96 | |
His Character
Holbein has drawn the character and written the history of Henry on the canvas of his great picture. Masterful, cruel, crafty, merciless, courageous, sensual, through-seeing, humorous, mean, matter of fact, worldly-wise, and of indomitable will, Henry the Eighth is perhaps the most outstanding figure in English history. The reason is not far to seek. The genial adventurer with sporting tendencies and large-hearted proclivities is always popular with the mob, and “Bluff King Hal,” as he was called, was of the eternal type adored by the people. He had a certain outward and inward affinity with Nero. Like Nero, he was corpulent; like Nero, he was red-haired; like Nero, he sang and poetised; like Nero, he was a lover of horsemanship, a master of the arts and the slave of his passions. If his private vices were great, his public virtues were no less considerable. He had the ineffable quality called charm, and the appearance of good-nature which captivated all who came within the orbit of his radiant personality. He was the “beau garçon,” endearing himself to all women by his compelling and conquering manhood. Henry was every inch a man, but he was no gentleman. He chucked even Justice under the chin, and Justice winked her blind eye.
It is extraordinary that in spite of his brutality, both Katharine and Anne Boleyn spoke of him as a model of kindness. This cannot be accounted for alone by that divinity which doth hedge a king.
There is, above all, in the face of Henry, as depicted by Holbein, that look of impenetrable mystery which was the background of his character. Many royal men have this strange quality; with some it is inborn, with others it is assumed. Of Henry, Cavendish,[1] a contemporary, records the following saying: “Three may keep counsel, if two be away; and if I thought my cap knew my counsel, I would throw it in the fire and burn it.” Referring to this passage, Brewer says, “Never had the King spoke a truer word or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior—the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good humour and frankness—there lay a watchful and secret mind that marked what was going on without seeming to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey. It was strange to witness so much subtlety combined with so much strength.”
There was something baffling and terrifying in the mysterious bonhomie of the King. In spite of Cæsar’s dictum, it is the fat enemy who is to be feared; a thin villain is more easily seen through.
His Ancestry
Henry’s antecedents were far from glorious. The Tudors were a Welsh family of somewhat humble stock. Henry VII.’s great-grandfather was butler or steward to the Bishop of Bangor, whose son, Owen Tudor, coming to London, obtained a clerkship of the Wardrobe to Henry V.’s Queen, Catherine of France. Within a few years of Henry’s death, the widowed Queen and her clerk of the wardrobe were secretly living together as man and wife. The two sons of this morganatic match, Edmund and Jasper, were favoured by their half brother, Henry VI. Edmund, the elder, was knighted, and then made Earl of Richmond. In 1453 he was formally declared legitimate, and enrolled a member of the King’s Council. Two years later he married the Lady Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of Edward III. It was this union between Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort which gave Henry VII. his claim by descent to the English throne.
The popularity of the Tudors was, no doubt, enhanced by the fact that with their line, kings of decisively English blood, for the first time since the Norman Conquest, sat on the English throne.
His Early Days
When Henry VIII. ascended the throne in 1509, England regarded him with almost universal loyalty. The memory of the long years of the Wars of the Roses and the wars of the Pretenders during the reign of his father, were fresh in the people’s mind. No other than he could have attained to the throne without civil war.
Within two months he married Katharine of Aragon, his brother’s widow, and a few days afterwards the King and Queen were crowned with great splendour in Westminster Abbey. He was still in his eighteenth year, of fine physical development, but of no special mental precocity. For the first five years of his reign, he was influenced by his Council, and especially by his father-in-law, Ferdinand the Catholic, giving little indication of the later mental vigour and power of initiation which made his reign so memorable in English annals.
The political situation in Europe was a difficult one for Henry to deal with. France and Spain were the rivals for Imperial dominion. England was in danger of falling between two stools, such was the eagerness of each that the other should not support her. Henry, through his marriage with Katharine, began by being allied to Spain, and this alliance involved England in the costly burden of war. Henry’s resentment at the empty result of this warfare, broke the Spanish alliance. Wolsey’s aim was to keep the country out of wars, and a long period of peace raised England to the position of arbiter of Europe in the balanced contest between France and Spain.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold
It was in connection with the meetings and intrigues now with one power, now with the other, that the famous meeting with the French King at Guisnes, known as “the Field of the Cloth of Gold,” was held in 1520.
That the destinies of kingdoms sometimes hang on trifles is curiously exemplified by a singular incident which preceded the famous meeting. Francis I. prided himself on his beard. As a proof of his desire for the meeting with Francis, and out of compliment to the French King, Henry announced his resolve to wear his beard uncut until the meeting took place. But he reckoned without his wife. Some weeks before the meeting Louise of Savoy, the Queen-Mother of France, taxed Boleyn, the English Ambassador, with a report that Henry had put off his beard. “I said,” writes Boleyn, “that, as I suppose, it hath been by the Queen’s desire, for I told my lady that I have hereafore known when the King’s grace hath worn long his beard, that the Queen hath daily made him great instance, and desired him to put it off for her sake.” This incident caused some resentment on the part of the French King, who was only pacified by Henry’s tact.
So small a matter might have proved a casus belli.
The meeting was held amidst scenes of unparalleled splendour. The temporary palace erected for the occasion was so magnificent that a chronicler tells us it might have been the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Henry “the goodliest prince that ever reigned over the realm of England,” is described as “honnête, hault et droit, in manner gentle and gracious, rather fat, with a red beard, large enough, and very becoming.”
On this occasion Wolsey was accompanied by two hundred gentlemen clad in crimson velvet, and had a body-guard of two hundred archers. He was clothed in crimson satin from head to foot, his mule was covered with crimson velvet, and her trappings were all of gold.
There were jousts and many entertainments and rejoicings, many kissings of Royal cheeks, but the Sovereigns hated each other cordially. While they were kissing they were plotting against each other. A more unedifying page of history has not been written. Appalling, indeed, are the shifts and intrigues which go to make up the records of the time.
The rulers of Europe were playing a game of cards, in which all the players were in collusion with, and all cheating each other. Temporizing and intriguing, Henry met the Spanish monarch immediately before and immediately after his meeting with the French King. Within a few months, France and Spain were again at war, and England, in a fruitless and costly struggle, fought on the side of Spain.
It was the divorce from Katharine of Aragon and its momentous consequences, which finally put an end to the alliance with Spain, and to the struggle with France succeeded a long struggle with Spain, which culminated in the great event of The Armada in the reign of Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth.
However, in these pages it is not proposed to enlarge upon the political aspect of the times, but rather to deal with the dramatic and domestic side of Henry’s being. In the play of Henry VIII., the author or authors (for to another than Shakespeare is ascribed a portion of the drama), have given us as impartial a view of his character as a due regard for truth on the one hand, and a respect for the scaffold on the other, permitted.
His Aspirations
There can be no doubt that when Henry ascended the throne, he had a sincere wish to serve God and uphold the right.
In his early years he was really devout and generous in almsgiving. Erasmus affirmed that his Court was an example to all Christendom for learning and piety. To the Pope he paid deference as to the representative of God.
With youthful enthusiasm, the young King, looking round and seeing corruption on every side, said to Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador: “Nor do I see any faith in the world save in me, and therefore God Almighty, who knows this, prosper my affairs.”
In Henry’s early reign, England was trusted more than any country to keep faith in her alliances. At a time when all was perfidy and treachery, promises and alliances were made only to be broken when self-interest prompted. History, like Nature itself, is ruled by brutal laws, and to play the round game of politics with single-handed honesty would be to lose at every turn. Henry was born into an inheritance of blood and blackmail. Corruption has its vested interests. It is useless to attempt to stem the recurrent tide of corruption by sprinkling the waves with holy water.
Then religion was a part of men’s daily lives, but the principles of Christianity were set at naught at the first bidding of expediency.
Men murdered to live—the axe and the sword were the final Court of Appeal. Nor does the old order change appreciably in the course of a few hundred years. In international politics, as in public life, when self-interest steps in, Christianity goes to the wall.
To-day we grind our axe with a difference. A more subtle process of dealing with our rivals obtains. To-day the pen is mightier than the sword, the stylograph is more deadly than the stiletto. The bravo still plies his trade. He no longer takes life, but character. To intrigue, to combine against those outside the ring is often the swiftest way to fortune. By such combination do weaker particles make themselves strong. To “play the game” is necessary to progress. The world was not made for poets and idealists. To quote an anonymous modern writer:
“‘Act well your part, there all the honour lies’;
Stoop to expediency and honour dies.
Many there are that in the race for fame,
Lose the great cause to win the little game,
Who pandering to the town’s decadent taste,
Barter the precious pearl for gawdy paste,
And leave upon the virgin page of Time
The venom’d trail of iridescent slime.”
Henry’s eyes soon opened. His character, like his body, underwent a gradual process of expansion.
Soon the lighter side of kingship was not disdained. One authority wrote in 1515: “He is a youngling, cares for nothing but girls and hunting.” He was an inveterate gambler, and turned the sport of hunting into a martyrdom, rising at four or five in the morning, and hunting till nine or ten at night. Another contemporary writes: “He devotes himself to accomplishments and amusements day and night, is intent on nothing else, and leaves business to Wolsey, who rules everything.”
As a sportsman, Henry was the “beau idéal” of his people. In the lists he especially distinguished himself, “in supernatural feats, changing his horses, and making them fly or rather leap, to the delight and ecstasy of everybody.”
He also gave himself to masquerades and charades. We are told: “It was at the Christmas festivals at Richmond, that Henry VIII. stole from the side of the Queen during the jousts, and returned in the disguise of a strange Knight, astonishing all the company with the grace and vigour of his tilting. At first the King appeared ashamed of taking part in these gladiatorial exercises, but the applause he received on all sides soon inclined him openly to appear on every occasion in the tilt-yard. Katharine humoured the childish taste of her husband for disguisings and masquings, by pretending great surprise when he presented himself before her in some assumed character.”
He was gifted with enormous energy; he could ride all day, changing his horses nine or ten times a day; then he would dance all night; even then his energies were not exhausted; then he would write what the courtiers described as poetry, or he would compose music, or he would dash off an attack on Luther, and so earn from the Pope the much-coveted title of “Fidei Defensor.”
In shooting at the butt, it is said, Henry excelled, drawing the best bow in England. At tennis, too, he excelled beyond all others. He was addicted to games of chance, and his courtiers permitted him to lose as much as £3,500 in the course of one year—scarcely a tactful proceeding. He played with taste and execution on the organ, harpsichord and lute. He had a powerful voice, and sang with great accomplishment.
One of Henry’s anthems, “O Lord, the Maker of all thyng,” is said to be of the highest merit, and is still sung in our Cathedrals. In his songs,[2] he particularly liked to dwell on his constancy as a lover:
“As the holly groweth green and never changeth hue,
So I am—ever have been—unto my lady true.”
and again:
“For whoso loveth, should love but one.”
An admirable maxim.
As Statesman
In spite of all these distractions, Henry was an excellent man of business in the State—indeed, he threw himself into public affairs with the energy which characterised all his doings. The autocrat only slumbered in Henry; and before many years had passed, he threw the enormous energy, which he had hitherto reserved for his pleasure, into affairs of State.
Under Henry, the Navy was first organised as a permanent force. His power of detail was prodigious in this direction. Ever loving the picturesque, even in the most practical affairs of life, Henry “acted as pilot and wore a sailor’s coat and trousers, made of cloth of gold, and a gold chain with the inscription, ‘Dieu est mon droit,’ to which was suspended a whistle which he blew nearly as loud as a trumpet.” A strange picture!
He was a practical architect, and Whitehall Palace and many other great buildings owed their masonry to his hand.
He spoke French, Spanish, Italian and Latin with great perfection.
He said many wise things. Of the much-debated Divorce, Henry said: “The law of every man’s conscience be but a private Court, yet it is the highest and supreme Court for judgment or justice.” As the most unjust wars have often produced the greatest heroisms, so the vilest causes have often produced the profoundest utterances.
He appears to have been at peace with himself and complacent towards God. In 1541, during his temporary happiness with Catherine Howard, he attended mass in the chapel, and “receiving his Maker, gave Him most hearty thanks for the good life he led and trusted to lead with his wife; and also desired the Bishop of Lincoln to make like prayer, and give like thanks on All Souls’ Day.”
Henry confessed his sins every day during the plague. When it abated, his spirits revived, and he wrote daily love-letters to Anne Boleyn, whom he had previously banished from the Court.
As Moralist
A stern moralist in regard to the conduct of others, he had an indulgence towards himself which enabled him somewhat freely to interpret the Divine right of Kings as “Le droit de seigneur.” But it is human to tolerate in ourselves the failings which we so rightly deprecate in our inferiors.
So strong was he in his self-assurance, that he made even his conscience his slave.
Henry sometimes lacked regal taste. The night Anne Boleyn was executed he supped with Jane Seymour; they were betrothed the next morning, and married ten days later. It is also recorded that on the day following Katharine’s death, Henry went to a ball, clad all in yellow.
The commendation or condemnation of Henry’s public life depends upon our point of view—upon which side we take in the eternal strife between Church and State.
In this dilemma we must then judge by results, for the truest expression of a man is his work; his greatness or his littleness is measured by his output. Henry produced great results, though he may have been the unconscious instrument of Fate. The motives which guided him in his dealings with the Roman Catholic Church may have been only selfish—they resulted in the emancipation of England from the tyranny of Popedom. A Catholic estimate of him would, of course, have been wholly condemnatory, yet it must be remembered that his quarrel was entirely with the supremacy of the Pope, and that otherwise Henry’s Church retained every dogma and every observance believed in and practised by Roman Catholics.
His Greatness
His learning was great, and it was illuminated by his genius. Gradually he learned to control others—to do this he learned to control his temper, when control was useful, but he was always able to make diplomatic use of his rage—a faculty ever helpful in the conduct of one’s life! In fact, it is difficult to determine whose genius was greater—Wolsey’s as the diplomatist and administrator, or Henry’s as the man of action, the figurehead of the State. Around him he gathered the great men of his time, and their learning he turned to his own account, with that adaptiveness which is the peculiar attribute of genius. Shakespeare himself was not more assimilative. In Wolsey, Henry appreciated the mighty minister, and this is one of his claims to greatness, for graciously to permit others to be great is a sign of greatness in a King.
His Early Life
Wolsey was born at Ipswich, probably in the year 1471. His father, Robert Wolsey, was a grazier, and perhaps also a butcher in well-to-do circumstances. Sent to Oxford at the age of 11, at 15 he was made a Bachelor of Arts. He became a parish priest of St. Mary’s, at Lymington, in 1500. Within a year he was subjected to the indignity of being put into the public stocks—for what reason is not known. It has been said that he was concerned in a drunken fray. I prefer to think that, in an unguarded moment, he had been tempted to speak the truth. No doubt this was his first lesson in diplomacy.
In 1507 Wolsey entered the service of Henry VII. as chaplain, and seems to have acted as secretary to Richard Fox, Lord Privy Seal. Thus Wolsey was trained in the policy of Henry VII., which he never forgot.
His Growing Power
When Henry VIII. came to the throne, he soon realised Wolsey’s value, and allowed him full scope for his ambition.
Wolsey thought it desirable to become a Cardinal—a view that was shared by Henry, whose right hand Wolsey had become. In 1514 Henry wrote to the Pope asking that the Hat should be conferred on his favourite, who in the following year was made Lord Chancellor of England. There was some hesitancy which bribery and threats overcame, and in 1515 Wolsey was created Cardinal, in spite of the hatred which Leo X. bore him. Having won this instalment of greatness, Wolsey promptly asked for the Legateship which should give him precedence over the Archbishop of Canterbury. This ambition was realised three years later, but only by what practically amounted to political and ecclesiastical blackmail. In the Church and State Wolsey now stood second only to the King.
(a) His Retinue
As an instance of the state he kept, we are told that he had as many as 500 retainers—among them many lords and ladies. Cavendish, his secretary, describes his pomp when he walked abroad as follows: “First went the Cardinal’s attendants, attired in boddices of crimson velvet with gold chains, and the inferior officers in coats of scarlet bordered with black velvet. After these came two gentlemen bearing the great seal and his Cardinal’s hat, then two priests with silver pillars and poleaxes, and next two great crosses of silver, whereof one of them was for his Archbishoprick and the other for his legacy borne always before him, whithersoever he went or rode. Then came the Cardinal himself, very sumptuously, on a mule trapped with crimson velvet and his stirrup of copper gilt.” Sometimes he preferred to make his progress on the river, for which purpose he had a magnificent State barge “furnished with yeomen standing on the bayles and crowded with his Gentlemen within and without.”
His stables were also extensive. His choir far excelled that of the King. Besides all the officials attendant on the Cardinal, Wolsey had 160 personal attendants, including his High Chamberlain, vice-chamberlain; twelve gentlemen ushers, daily waiters; eight gentlemen ushers and waiters of his privy chamber, nine or ten lords, forty persons acting as gentlemen cupbearers, carvers, servers, etc., six yeomen ushers, eight grooms of the chamber, forty-six yeomen of his chamber (one daily to attend upon his person), sixteen doctors and chaplains, two secretaries, three clerks, and four counsellors learned in the law. As Lord Chancellor, he had an additional and separate retinue, almost as numerous, including ministers, armourers, serjeants-at-arms, herald, etc.
(b) Gifts from Foreign Powers
Nor was he above using the gentle suasion of his office to obtain sumptuous gifts from the representatives of foreign powers—for Giustinian, on his return to Venice, reported to the Doge and Senate that “Cardinal Wolsey is very anxious for the signory to send him a hundred Damascene carpets for which he has asked several times, and expected to receive them by the last galleys. This present,” continues the diplomat, “might make him pass a decree in our favour; and, at any rate, it would render the Cardinal friendly to our nation in other matters.” The carpets, it seems, were duly sent to the Cardinal.
(c) His Drinking Water
To show his disregard for money, it may be mentioned that in order to obtain pure water for himself and his household, and not being satisfied with the drinking water at Hampton Court, Wolsey had the water brought from the springs at Coombe Hill by means of leaden pipes, at a cost, it is said, of something like £50,000.
(d) His Table
Wolsey seems to have been a lover of good food, for Skelton, for whose verse the Cardinal had perhaps expressed contempt, wrote:
“To drynke and for to eate
Swete hypocras[3] and swete meate
To keep his flesh chast
In Lent for a repast
He eateth capon’s stew,
Fesaunt and partriche mewed
Hennes checkynges and pygges.”
(Skelton, it should be explained, was the Poet Laureate.) It appears that on this score of his delicate digestion, Wolsey procured a dispensation from the Pope for the Lenten observances.
He had not a robust constitution, and suffered from many ailments. On one occasion, Henry sent him some pills—it is not recorded, however, that Wolsey partook of them.
(e) His Orange
Cavendish speaks of a peculiar habit of the great Cardinal. He tells us that, “Whenever he was in a crowd or pestered with suitors, he most commonly held to his nose a very fair orange whereof the meat or substance within was taken out, and filled up again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar and other confections against the pestilent airs!” The habit may have given offence to importunate mayors and others—the Poet Laureate himself may have been thus affronted by the imperious Cardinal, when he wrote:
“He is set so high
In his hierarchy
Of frantic phrenesy
And foolish fantasy
That in the Chamber of Stars
All matters there he mars.
Clapping his rod on the Board
No man dare speak a word;
****
Some say “yes” and some
Sit still as they were dumb.
Thus thwarting over them,
He ruleth all the roast
With bragging and with boast.
Borne up on every side
With pomp and with pride.”
As a proof of his sensuous tastes, Cavendish wrote:
“The subtle perfumes of musk and sweet amber
There wanted none to perfume all my chamber.”
That Wolsey, like Henry, was possessed of a sense of humour we have abundant evidence in his utterances. Yet he kept a Fool about him—possibly in order that he might glean the opinions of the courtiers and common people. After Wolsey’s fall, he sent this Fool as a present to King Henry. But so loth was the Fool to leave his master and to suffer what he considered a social descent, that six tall yeomen had to conduct him to the Court; “for,” says Cavendish, “the poor fool took on and fired so in such a rage when he saw that he must needs depart from my lord. Yet, notwithstanding, they conveyed him with Master Norris to the Court, where the King received him most gladly.”[4]
(g) Hampton Court
At his Palace of Hampton Court there were 280 beds always ready for strangers. These beds were of great splendour, being made of red, green and russet velvet, satin and silk, and all with magnificent canopies. The counterpanes, of which there were many hundreds, we are told, were of “tawny damask, lined with blue buckram; blue damask with flowers of gold; others of red satin with a great rose in the midst, wrought with needlework and with garters.” Another is described as “of blue sarcenet, with a tree in the midst and beastes with scriptures, all wrought with needlework.” The splendour of these beds beggars all description.
(h) His Plate
His gold and silver plate at Hampton Court alone, was valued by the Venetian Ambassador as worth 300,000 golden ducats, which would be the equivalent in modern coin of a million and a half! The silver was estimated at a similar amount. It is said that the quality was no less striking than the quantity, for Wolsey insisted on the most artistic workmanship. He had also a bowl of gold “with a cover garnished with rubies, diamonds, pearls and a sapphire set in a goblet.” These gorgeous vessels were decorated with the Cardinal’s hat, and sometimes too, less appropriately perhaps, with images of Christ!
It is said that the decorations and furniture of Wolsey’s Palace were on so splendid a scale that it threw the King’s into the shade.
(i) His Prodigal Splendour
Like a wise minister, Wolsey did not neglect to entertain the King and keep his mind on trivial things. Hampton Court had become the scene of unrestrained gaiety. Music was always played on these occasions, and the King frequently took part in the revels, dancing, masquerading and singing, accompanying himself on the harpsichord or lute.
The description in Cavendish’s “Life of Wolsey” of the famous feast given by the Cardinal to the French ambassadors gives a graphic account of his prodigal splendour. As to the delicacies which were furnished at the supper, Cavendish writes:—
“Anon came up the second course with so many dishes, subtleties and curious devices, which were above a hundred in number, of so goodly proportion and costly, that I suppose the Frenchmen never saw the like. The wonder was no less than it was worthy, indeed. There were castles with images in the same; Paul’s Church and steeple, in proportion for the quantity as well counterfeited as the painter should have painted it upon a cloth or wall. There were beasts, birds, fowls of divers kinds, and personages, most lively made and counterfeit in dishes; some fighting, as it were, with swords, some with guns and crossbows; some vaulting and leaping; some dancing with ladies, some in complete harness, justing with spears, and with many more devices than I am able with my wit to describe.”
Giustinian, speaking of one of these banquets, writes: “The like of it was never given either by Cleopatra or Caligula.” We must remember that Wolsey surrounded himself with such worldly vanities less from any vulgarity in his nature than from a desire to work upon the common mind, ever ready to be impressed by pomp and circumstance.
The Mind of Wolsey
If the outer man was thus caparisoned, what of Wolsey’s mind? Its furniture, too, beggared all description. Amiable as Wolsey could be, he could also on occasions be as brusque as his royal master. A contemporary writer says: “I had rather be commanded to Rome than deliver letters to him and wait an answer. When he walks in the Park, he will suffer no suitor to come nigh unto him, but commands him away as far as a man will shoot an arrow.”
Yet to others he could be of sweet and gentle disposition and ready to listen and to help with advice.
“Lofty and sour to them that loved him not,
But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.”
To those who regard characters as either black or white, Wolsey’s was indeed a contradiction. Charges of a personal character have been brought against the great prelate, which need not here be referred to, unless it be to say that if they were true, by so much the less he was a priest, by so much more he was a man.
His Ambition
There is no doubt that the Cardinal made several attempts to become Pope—but this enterprise was doomed to failure, although in it he was supported warmly by the King. To gain this end much bribery was needed, “especially to the younger men who are generally the most needy,” as the Cardinal said. Wolsey was a sufficiently accomplished social diplomatist to conciliate the young, for their term of office begins to-morrow, and gold is the key of consciences. He was hated and feared, flattered, cajoled and brow-beaten where possible. But as a source of income he was ever held in high regard by the Pope.
His own annual income from bribes—royal and otherwise—was indeed stupendous, though these were received with the knowledge of the King.
So great was the power Wolsey attained to that Fox said of him: “We have to deal with the Cardinal, who is not Cardinal but King.” He wrote of himself, “Ego et rex meus,” and had the initials, “T. W.” and the Cardinal’s hat stamped on the King’s coins. These were among the charges brought against him in his fall.
To his ambitions there was no limit. For the spoils of office he had “an unbounded stomach.” As an instance of his pretensions it is recorded that during the festivities of the Emperor’s visit to England in 1520, “Wolsey alone sat down to dinner with the royal party, while peers, like the Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham, performed menial offices for the Cardinal, as well as for Emperor, King and Queen.”
When he met Charles at Bruges in 1521 “he treated the Emperor of Spain as an equal. He did not dismount from his mule, but merely doffed his cap, and embraced as a brother the temporal head of Christendom.”
“He never granted audience either to English peers or foreign ambassadors” (says Guistinian) “until the third or fourth time of asking.” Small wonder that he incurred the hatred of the nobility and the jealousy of the King. During his embassy to France in 1527, it is said that “his attendants served cap in hand, and when bringing the dishes knelt before him in the act of presenting them. Those who waited on the Most Christian King, kept their caps on their heads, dispensing with such exaggerated ceremonies.” Had Wolsey’s insolence been tempered by his sense of humour, his fall might have been on a softer place, as his Fool is believed to have remarked.
His Policy
In his policy of the reform of the Church, Wolsey dealt as a giant with his gigantic task. To quote a passage from Taunton: “Ignorance, he knew, was the root of most of the mischief of the day; so by education he endeavoured to give men the means to know better. Falsehood can only be expelled by Truth.... Had the other prelates of the age realized the true cause of the religious disputes, and how much they themselves were responsible for the present Ignorance, the sacred name of religion would not have had so bloody a record in this country.”
Wolsey’s idea was, in fact, to bring the clergy in touch with the thought and conditions of the time. It is wonderful to reflect that this one brain should have controlled the secular and ecclesiastical destinies of Christendom.
To reform the Church would seem to have been an almost superhuman undertaking, but to a man of Wolsey’s greatness obstacles are only incentives to energy. He was “eager to cleanse the Church from the accumulated evil effects of centuries of human passions.” A great man is stronger than a system, while he lives; but the system often outlives the man. Wolsey lived in a time whose very atmosphere was charged with intrigue. Had he not yielded to a Government by slaughter, he would not have existed.
The Cardinal realised that ignorance was one of the chief causes of the difficulties in the Church. So with great zeal he devoted himself to the founding of two colleges, one in Ipswich, the other in Oxford. His scheme was never entirely carried out, for on Wolsey’s fall his works were not completed. The College at Ipswich fell into abeyance, but his college at Oxford was spared and refounded. Originally called Cardinal College, it was renamed Christ Church, so that not even in name was it allowed to be a memorial of Wolsey’s greatness.
His Genius
For a long time Wolsey was regarded merely as the type of the ambitious and arrogant ecclesiastic whom the Reformation had made an impossibility in the future. It was not till the mass of documents relating to the reign of Henry VIII. was published that it was possible to estimate the greatness of the Cardinal’s schemes. He took a wider view of the problems of his time than any statesman had done before. He had a genius for diplomacy. He was an artist and enthusiast in politics. They were not a pursuit to him, but a passion. Not perhaps unjustly has he been called the greatest statesman England ever produced.
England, at the beginning of Henry VIII.’s reign, was weakened after the struggles of the Civil Wars, and wished to find peace at home at the cost of obscurity abroad. But it was this England which Wolsey’s policy raised “from a third-rate state of little account into the highest circle of European politics.” Wolsey did not show his genius to the best advantage in local politics, but in diplomacy. He could only be inspired by the gigantic things of statecraft. When he was set by Henry to deal with the sordid matter of the divorce, he felt restricted and cramped. He was better as a patriot than as a royal servant. It was this feeling of being sullied and unnerved in the uncongenial skirmishings of the divorce that jarred on his sensitive nature and made his ambitious hand lose its cunning. A first-rate man cannot do second-rate things well.
Henry and Wolsey were two giants littered in one day. Wolsey had realised his possibilities of power before Henry. But when Henry once learned how easy it was for him to get his own way, Wolsey learned how dependent he necessarily was on the King’s good will. And then, “the nation which had trembled before Wolsey, learned to tremble before the King who could destroy Wolsey with a breath.”
Had Wolsey been able to fulfil his own ideals, had he been the head of a Republic and not the servant of a King, his public record would no doubt have been on a higher ethical plane. That he himself realised this is shown by his pathetic words to Sir William Kingston, which have been but slightly paraphrased by Shakespeare: “Well, well, Master Kingston, I see how the matter against me is framed, but if I had served my God as diligently as I have done the King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs.” In this frankness we recognise once again a flicker of greatness—one might almost say a touch of divine humour.
The lives of great men compose themselves dramatically; Wolsey’s end was indeed a fit theme for the dramatist.
His Fall
In his later years, Wolsey began to totter on his throne. The King had become more and more masterful. It was impossible for two such stormy men to act permanently in concord. In 1528, Wolsey said that as soon as he had accomplished his ambition of reconciling England and France, and reforming the English laws and settling the succession, “he would retire and serve God for the rest of his days.” In 1529 he lost his hold over Parliament and over Henry. The Great Seal was taken from him.
The end of Wolsey was indeed appalling in its sordid tragedy. The woman had prevailed—Anne’s revenge was sufficiently complete to satisfy even a woman scorned. The King, too, was probably more inclined to lend a willing ear to her whisperings, since he had grown jealous of his minister’s greatness. He paid to his superior the tribute of hatred. Henry, who had treated the Cardinal as his friend and “walked with him in the garden arm in arm and sometimes with his arm thrown caressingly round his shoulder,” now felt very differently towards his one-time favourite.
Covetous of Wolsey’s splendour, he asked him why he, a subject, should have so magnificent an abode as Hampton Court, whereupon Wolsey diplomatically answered (feeling perhaps the twitch of a phantom rope around his neck), “To show how noble a palace a subject may offer to his sovereign.” The King was not slow to accept this offer, and thenceforth made Hampton Court Palace his own.
Wolsey, too, was failing in body—the sharks that follow the ship of State were already scenting their prey. As the King turned his back on Wolsey, Wolsey turned his face to God. Accused of high treason for having acted as Legate, Wolsey pleaded guilty of the offence, committed with the approval of the King. He was deprived of his worldly goods, and retired to his house at Esher.