Wolsey Dies in the Tower of London

Today’s installment concludes The English Reformation and Wolsey’s Fall,
our selection from A Short History of the English People by John Richard Green published in 1874.

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Previously in The English Reformation and Wolsey’s Fall.

Time: 1529

Although judgment of forfeiture and imprisonment was given against him in the king’s bench at the close of October, in the following February he received a pardon on surrender of his vast possessions to the crown and was permitted to withdraw to his diocese of York, the one dignity he had been suffered to retain.

Not less significant was the attitude of the New Learning. On Wolsey’s fall the seals had been offered to Warham, and it was probably at his counsel that they were finally given to Sir Thomas More. The Chancellor’s dream, if we may judge it from the acts of his brief ministry, seems to have been that of carrying out the religious reformation which had been demanded by Colet and Erasmus while checking the spirit of revolt against the unity of the Church. His severities against the Protestants, exaggerated as they have been by polemic rancor, remain the one stain on a memory that knows no other. But it was only by a rigid severance of the cause of reform from what seemed to him the cause of revolution that More could hope for a successful issue to the projects of reform which the council laid before parliament.

The “Petition of the Commons” sounded like an echo of Colet’s famous address to the convocation. It attributed the growth of heresy not more to “frantic and seditious books published in the English tongue contrary to the very true Catholic and Christian faith” than to “the extreme and uncharitable behavior of divers ordinaries.” It remonstrated against the legislation of the clergy in convocation without the King’s assent or that of his subjects, the oppressive procedure of the church courts, the abuses of ecclesiastical patronage, and the excessive number of holy days. Henry referred the petition to the bishops, but they could devise no means of redress, and the ministry persisted in pushing through the houses their bills for ecclesiastical reform. The importance of the new measures lay really in the action of parliament. They were an explicit announcement that church reform was now to be undertaken, not by the clergy, but by the people at large. On the other hand, it was clear that it would be carried out in a spirit of loyalty to the Church. The commons forced from Bishop Fisher an apology for words which were taken as a doubt thrown on their orthodoxy.

Henry forbade the circulation of Tyndale’s translation of the Bible as executed in a Protestant spirit. The reforming measures, however, were pushed resolutely on. Though the questions of convocation and the bishops’ courts were adjourned for further consideration, the fees of the courts were curtailed, the clergy restricted from lay employments, pluralities restrained, and residence enforced. In spite of a dogged opposition from the bishops the bills received the assent of the House of Lords, “to the great rejoicing of lay people, and the great displeasure of spiritual persons.”

Not less characteristic of the New Learning was the intellectual pressure it strove to bring to bear on the wavering Pope. Cranmer was still active in the cause of Anne Boleyn; he had just published a book in favor of the divorce; and he now urged on the ministry an appeal to the learned opinion of Christendom by calling for the judgment of the chief universities of Europe. His counsel was adopted; but Norfolk trusted to coarser means of attaining his end. Like most of the English nobles and the whole of the merchant class, his sympathies were with the house of Burgundy. He looked upon Wolsey as the real hinderance to the divorce through the French policy which had driven Charles into a hostile attitude; and he counted on the Cardinal’s fall to bring about a renewal of friendship with the Emperor and to insure his support.

The father of Anne Boleyn, now created Earl of Wiltshire, was sent in 1530 on this errand to the imperial court. But Charles remained firm to Catharine’s cause, and Clement would do nothing in defiance of the Emperor. Nor was the appeal to the learned world more successful. In France the profuse bribery of the English agents would have failed with the University of Paris but for the interference of Francis himself, eager to regain Henry’s good-will by this office of friendship. As shameless an exercise of the King’s own authority was needed to wring an approval of his cause from Oxford and Cambridge. In Germany the very Protestants, then in the fervor of their moral revival and hoping little from a proclaimed opponent of Luther, were dead against the King. So far as could be seen from Cranmer’s test every learned man in Christendom, but for bribery and threats, would have condemned the royal cause.

Henry was embittered by failures which he attributed to the unskillful diplomacy of his new counsellors; and it was rumored that he had been heard to regret the loss of the more dexterous statesman whom they had overthrown. Wolsey, who since the beginning of the year had remained at York, though busy in appearance with the duties of his see, was hoping more and more as the months passed by for his recall. But the jealousy of his political enemies was roused by the King’s regrets, and the pitiless hand of Norfolk was seen in the quick and deadly blow which he dealt at his fallen rival.

On November 4th, the eve of his installation feast, the Cardinal was arrested on a charge of high treason and conducted by the lieutenant of the Tower toward London. Already broken by his enormous labors, by internal disease, and the sense of his fall, Wolsey accepted the arrest as a sentence of death. An attack of dysentery forced him to rest at the Abbey of Leicester, and as he reached the gate he said feebly to the brethren who met him, “I am come to lay my bones among you.”

On his deathbed his thoughts still clung to the Prince whom he had served. “Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the King,” murmured the dying man, “he would not have given me over in my gray hairs. But this is my due reward for my pains and study, not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to my Prince.”

This ends our series of passages on The English Reformation and Wolsey’s Fall by John Richard Green from his book A Short History of the English People published in 1874. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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