HistoryExtrahttps://www.historyextra.comHome of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast2024-10-20T16:20:38.000Zhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00Your guide to Cardinal Wolsey, Tudor statesman and prince of the churchhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/cardinal-wolsey-thomas-facts-achievements-death-how-die-where-buried/2020-11-27T14:52:35.000ZBorn some time in the early 1470s, Thomas Wolsey was educated in theology at Oxford University. He was ordained a priest and, in 1509 – having served a series of powerful patrons, including King Henry VII – Wolsey was called to the council of Henry VIII.
Wolsey rapidly established a close working relationship with the young king, supporting his wish to renew the Hundred Years’ War with France in the face of opposition from his fellow counsellors. By so doing, he cemented his place as the pre-eminent royal advisor, in effect becoming the chief executive of the Tudor state for the next two decades.
Thomas Wolsey: a biography
Born: 1470–1 (but 1472–3 is also possible) in Ipswich Died: 29 November 1530 at Leicester Abbey Known for: Being England’s greatest medieval cardinal. Wolsey had a brilliant mastery of foreign policy, as well as the legal and ecclesiastical administration of England under King Henry VIII. He organised three major peace treaties which improved Henry’s strategic position when war did not succeed. Wolsey oversaw Parliament and the Court of Chancery, introduced legal changes and exercised crown authority over nobles and commoners alike. He also oversaw the running of the church in England, countered Lutheran heresy and introduced monastic and educational reforms. Most famously, however, he could not secure from Pope Clement VII the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Responsibilities: He was made the royal almoner (responsible for charitable giving) and royal counsellor in 1509. He became quarter-master general of war against France in 1512–3. Wolsey was made Bishop of Tournai in 1513, Bishop of Lincoln and then Archbishop of York in 1514. Pope Leo X created him Cardinal Saint-Cecilia-beyond-Tiber in 1515. The same year, Henry made him lord chancellor of England. In 1518 he became a papal legate (high representative), confirmed for life in 1524. He was also abbot of St Albans and successively bishop of Bath and Wells (1518–23); Durham (1523–9), and Winchester (1529–30).
What did Cardinal Wolsey do for Henry VIII?
Wolsey was made lord chancellor to facilitate his supervision of the legal system and its operation as it directly affected the king’s interests. He oversaw Parliamentary legislation and raising of taxation. He used the Court of Chancery and the royal council sitting in its judicial guise, as the Star Chamber, to impose royal authority in a more thoroughgoing way than his predecessors, particularly on the gentry and nobility.
As Archbishop of York and Cardinal-legate, he imposed a similar, although perhaps somewhat more contested, authority over the church in England. He intervened directly in the affairs of monastic houses and the dioceses, in appointments and in local church governance. In so doing, Wolsey significantly enhanced Henry’s already strong sense of his sovereignty within and, crucially, even beyond his realm.
The conduct of Henry’s foreign relations occupied Wolsey’s time and more engaged his considerable energies and imaginative intelligence than any other sphere of activity. War was very expensive, and after 1513 Wolsey always had trouble financing it. So, using the rhetoric of peace that was then much in vogue among humanists like the scholar Erasmus, he advocated magnificent and ostentatious peace-making between European princes.
Wolsey strove thereby to increase Henry’s prominence, allowing England often to hold an imbalance of power between France, ruled by Francis I, and the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
The high point of this diplomacy was a non-aggression pact between Christian states known as the ‘Universal Peace’, agreed in London in 1518. It was inaugurated at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, an event that Wolsey organised, choreographed and directed. It did not usher in the intended universal peace, but England and France were allied once more after war in the mid-1520s. Peaceful relations with France continued after Wolsey until the last years of Henry’s reign, long after the cardinal’s death.
Wolsey was also a wealthy patron of education and architecture. He founded Cardinal College (now Christ Church), Oxford, and a grammar school in Ipswich. He refurbished and extended his principal home, Hampton Court, together with York Place at Westminster (later Whitehall Palace) and the manor of The More in Hertfordshire. He patronised the best craftsmen available including the sculptors Giovanni Da Maiano and Benedetto da Rovezzano.
Why did Cardinal Wolsey fall from power?
Thomas Wolsey fell from power in October 1529, in the aftermath of his inability to obtain an annulment of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Virtually from the outset of the campaign in 1527, Henry was convinced of the rightness of his cause. The outcome of the legatine trial of the marriage at Blackfriars in July 1529 was Catherine’s direct appeal to Rome, and a consequent campaign of intimidation against the church in England. Following this outcome, Wolsey lost favour with Henry and last saw the king at Grafton in September 1529.
On 17 October, Wolsey was commanded to surrender the Great Seal of England he held as Chancellor, and in April 1530 travelled to York, finally to take up his seat as its archbishop. On 4 November, however, he was arrested for treason for allegedly plotting outside the realm, seeking to have himself restored to power. In reality, there was little substantial evidence for the charge.
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How did Cardinal Wolsey die?
As he was travelling south from York to face trial, Wolsey fell seriously ill, probably from dysentery exacerbated by stress. He died at Leicester Abbey on 29 November 1530. He had planned for himself an enormous tomb, but of the work done for it only the sarcophagus survived. It now houses the body of Admiral Lord Nelson in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. There is a monument to Wolsey in the public gardens on the site of the former abbey at Leicester but the exact location of his burial there remains unknown.
By the time of his death, Henry saw Wolsey only as the pope’s man who had denied him the opportunity to secure the dynasty through a new marriage. The two had, nevertheless, worked effectively together before then, for two decades as friends.
Wolsey may not have innovated in legal and church matters as radically as later Tudor ministers would do, but he enabled the king’s authority to reach as far as it practically could throughout his realm, and to enhance Henry’s reputation as a powerful English monarch in Christendom beyond it. This, together with his educational and artistic patronage and even the buildings and possessions he owned, were his direct legacy to Henry. Whether he was ever ‘alter rex’ – the ‘other king’ – remains debatable, but he was in death, as in life, ever ‘the king’s cardinal’.
Glenn Richardson is Professor of Early Modern History at St Mary’s University in London and the author of a biography of the cardinal titled Wolsey (Routledge, 2020)
This content was first published by HistoryExtra in 2020
]]>Your guide to the Field of the Cloth of Goldhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/what-was-field-of-the-cloth-of-gold-facts-when-why-held-henry-viii/2020-11-16T14:45:24.000ZWhat was the Field of the Cloth of Gold?
It was a spectacular meeting between the kings of England and France, the likes of which had never been seen before. On 7 June 1520, Henry VIII met Francis I of France in a valley near Calais for a grand festival – 18 days of tournaments, feasts, masquerades and religious services. Due to its opulence and grandeur, the event was known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Officially, it was an event designed to solidify the friendship between the two nations; in reality, it was a chance for each king to show off his wealth, power and refinement.
What was the purpose of the Field of the Cloth of Gold?
It was hoped that the momentous event would mark an end to almost two centuries of animosity between England and France. Both Henry and Francis were at the height of their power, and their boisterous rivalry could easily have spilled over into war once again.
Kings of England had been pressing claims to the throne of France since the early 14th century, in a series of on-and-off conflicts known as the Hundred Years’ War. Following in his predecessors’ footsteps, Henry VIII had invaded France in 1513 (while Francis was still heir to the French throne) and scored a victory at a skirmish dubbed the Battle of the Spurs; the following year peace was secured with the then king Louis XII. Francis’s ascension to the French throne in 1515 might have heralded a new chapter, but Henry saw Francis as a nobody who was merely squatting on his throne. The spectre of war was never far away.
Why was the Field of the Cloth of Gold held?
It was a direct result of the Treaty of London, organised by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (the man who would later fail to secure papal blessing for Henry’s annulment to Catherine of Aragon). This treaty was a pact of non-aggression between the major powers of Europe, including England, France and the Holy Roman Empire. Among the terms was the commitment that Henry and Francis would meet to affirm their friendship.
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Where did the Field of the Cloth of Gold take place?
Wolsey and his French counterpart Guillaume Gouffier decided that the meeting should take place on neutral ground – between English-owned Guînes in the Pale of Calais and the French town of Ardres.
How hard was it to organise?
It took just two months for tents, a tiltyard for jousting and a palace to be built for Henry and Catherine of Aragon. Keen to best his French rival, a type of ‘portable palace’ for the English court was built from timber and canvas and painted to resemble stone. Stained glass and terracotta roundels were used to give it the appearance of Hampton Court Palace; it even had a wine fountain. Of the French pavilions – all made by master craftsmen – the centrepiece was a 120ft tent decked completely in gold. This glittering edifice didn’t last long: strong gales meant it had to be taken down before the kings met.
What happened when Henry VIII met Francis I?
The atmosphere was tense right up until the actual meeting. The gold coats worn by the English party were briefly mistaken for armour and all was paused until the French were reassured that Francis was in no danger. Then the kings doffed their caps and embraced each other as if old friends.
Why did Henry's beard almost cause a diplomatic incident?
Plans for the meeting were briefly put on hold when, in 1519, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I died (both Henry and Francis put themselves forward as candidates for the imperial crown, but were usurped by Maximilian’s grandson, 19-year-old Charles V). In anticipation of the postponed summit, both monarchs agreed not to shave their beards until they met, so that they could compare them. Henry, however, ‘forgot’ this and arrived in France clean shaven. Francis’s mother was, reportedly, outraged. The situation was only prevented from becoming a diplomatic incident by the suggestion that Catherine of Aragon had implored her husband to shave, as she preferred him without facial hair. Francis was appeased and professed that his and Henry’s love for each other was “not in their beards but in their hearts”.
What happened for the rest of the 18-day festival?
Feasting, sporting contests and revelry. To ensure there were no arguments, Henry and Francis allied themselves against brave volunteers when it came to the sporting events such as the joust. The queen consorts, Catherine and Claude (alongside Francis’ mother, Louise de Savoie, and Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor) each hosted the opposing king for feasts, dances and theatre. A dragon kite was made for the occasion, with Francis’s salamander symbol entwined with the Tudor dragon – a symbol of the two kings’ bond that awed the crowds.
Did King Henry VIII and Francis I wrestle at the Field of the Cloth of Gold?
Wrestling was the preferred entertainment when the weather turned sour. Completely unexpectedly, and after a few drinks, Henry challenged Francis to a wrestling match, but was easily defeated. He did, however, best the French king at archery, as his longbow proved too heavy for Francis to draw.
On the penultimate day, a mass was held in a temporary chapel erected for the occasion, presided over by Cardinal Wolsey – the most senior clergyman in attendance – and each party’s choir sang. The kings parted ways on 24 June, but not before gifting each other the work of their finest goldsmiths.
Was the Field of the Cloth of Gold a success?
On 10 July, Henry met with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and both agreed to forge no new alliance with France for two years – diplomacy through expensive partying had not worked, it seemed. By mid-1521, France and the Holy Roman Empire were again at war and England was dragged into it – a peaceful Europe no more. The Field of the Cloth of Gold became a distant memory.
What does the surviving painting of the event tell us?
In c1545, more than 20 years after the extraordinary meeting, Henry VIII is supposed to have commissioned an oil painting of the events. The artist (or artists) is unknown. Painted so long after the event, it is filled with inaccuracies, but still gives an idea of the scale and number of people involved.
On the right side of the painting, are the ovens that would have helped feed the 12,000 or so people at the event. The now aging and infirm Henry is shown in his younger glory three time over, decked in his finery as a true Renaissance prince: first on horseback in the procession, then embracing Francis in the magnificent gold tent towards the rear of the painting (though of course, the tent had been taken down by then), and finally watching a jousting match.
The Henry on horseback is the most intriguing: his head has been cut out and replaced with a later portrait of the king that bears striking resemblance to works by Hans Holbein the Younger.
Highlights from the c1545 painting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold
View Gallery on the source website
Hampton Court Palace is planning an exhibition to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Field of the Cloth of Gold when circumstances allow. hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace
This content first appeared in the June 2020 issue of BBC History Revealed
]]>Henry VIII: 5 places you (probably) didn’t know shaped his lifehttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/henry-viii-places-shaped-his-life-ludlow-castle-mary-rose-waltham-abbey/2018-06-28T09:55:25.000Z
Ludlow Castle
Henry never visited Ludlow Castle and yet events there were to have the greatest and most irreversible impact upon his life.
In November 1501, Arthur Tudor, the eldest son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (and Henry’s VIII’s older brother), married the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon at old St Paul’s Cathedral. Following the wedding the new Prince and Princess of Wales moved to Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, seat of the Council of the Marches, where Arthur’s role at its head was considered to be good preparation for his eventual role as king. But it was not to be. Arthur died quickly and unexpectedly on 2 April 1502. The cause of death is uncertain but it was a shock to all.
Arthur's death was a huge personal, as well as political, tragedy for the Tudor family. With his older brother dead, Henry’s future was altered completely and irreversibly. He was now heir to the throne with all the expectation, pressure and duty that entailed, including the essential task of securing the Tudor line of succession.
One of Henry’s first decisions as king was to marry, and he chose his brother’s widow, Catherine. As time ticked by, and despite numerous pregnancies, the royal couple had not produced a surviving male heir. Henry found that his conscience was becoming troubled and he began looking for a reason why he and Catherine remained “childless” (as Henry saw it, despite having a living daughter, Mary). He turned to the Bible for answers.
Two passages from Leviticus, which refer to the taking of a brother’s wife, gave Henry reason to believe, with sincerity, that God was punishing him for marrying Catherine. His argument rested on his belief that Catherine was not a virgin when they married. Catherine herself maintained that she was “virgo intacta” and actively opposed Henry’s theory. Her steadfastness made it frustratingly difficult for Henry to convince others of his logic. The unsuccessful negotiations to secure an annulment of the marriage from Pope Clement VII ultimately led to Henry making the momentous decision to break from the church in Rome.
Catherine and Arthur had been married for six months – is it possible they had not had sex during that time? Would the pious Catherine have jeopardised her soul by maintaining a lie even on her deathbed? If only the ruined walls of Ludlow Castle could talk, they could tell us what really happened in the prince’s bedchamber!
Eltham Palace
As a child, Henry VIII had enjoyed a more relaxed, less rigid upbringing and education than his older brother Arthur. Being only the ‘spare’ and not the heir, Henry was not required to spend as much time in his father’s court and he therefore enjoyed more time in his mother’s company. As a result they had a very close relationship. It was unequivocally the most important relationship in terms of shaping the young Henry’s picture of what a royal wife and mother should be, and how she should behave. Much of their time was spent at the palace her father Edward IV had favoured, at Eltham, along the River Thames from London.
It was here that Henry first met and impressed the scholar Erasmus, introduced to him by Thomas More. As king, Henry VIII invested a lot of money into Eltham and built a chapel there. He and Anne Boleyn visited on 24 November 1533 on their return from France where they had met King Francis at the famous ‘Field of Cloth of Gold’, near Balingnem.
The relative peace that the country enjoyed under Henry VII can be attributed in part to his marriage to Elizabeth of York, which had effectively joined the warring Houses of York and Lancaster. That stability was threatened with the unexpected death of Arthur Prince of Wales in 1502.
With only one male child, Elizabeth of York was expected to perform her royal duty once again; this time, though, there were to be tragic consequences. Elizabeth fell pregnant but, following the premature birth of a baby girl within the White Tower at the Tower of London, she died on 11 February 1503, her 37th birthday. Henry was aged 11: old enough to be fully aware of events, young enough to truly feel the loss of a mother.
Some historians and writers have played down or even omitted to discuss the impact of Elizabeth’s death on Henry, potentially misunderstanding the strength of bond between mother and son. It is true that Henry had a ‘lady mistress’ who took care of him day-to-day, but we should not assume from this that he did not suffer the loss of his mother greatly. In 2012, an incredible discovery at the National Library of Wales revealed an illustrated manuscript containing a painting showing the 11-year-old Henry crying at the empty bedside of his dead mother. The painting indicates not only that Henry's grief was real but that it was recognised and accepted.
The impact of losing his mother, with whom he had built such a strong bond during the many hours spent with her at Eltham Palace, is worth consideration when thinking about Henry’s subsequent relationships with women, wives in particular. Was he subconsciously, maybe even consciously, looking for the perfect wife to emulate his mother?
Despite Eltham’s significance, only the great hall built by Edward IV, Henry’s Yorkist grandfather, survives. The palace fell into decline after the reign of James I and suffered grave damage when occupied by parliamentary troops during the Civil War in the 17th century. The ruined great hall, once splendid for court occasions, was even used as a cattle barn during the 18th century.
The Mary Rose
The Mary Rose, raised from the seabed in 1982, was the flagship of Henry VIII’s navy and now sits in her permanent home within Portsmouth Historic Dockyard along with a myriad of artefacts brought up with her from the bottom of the Solent.
She was built in around 1511, two years after Henry became king, and sank on 19 July 1545, two years before Henry died, thus her service spanned almost his entire reign. She is a physical representation of Henry’s navy and the people who served aboard her.
Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and consequential break with Rome produced a real and unrelenting threat of invasion from Catholic countries loyal to the Pope. Henry spent a fortune on ships and a series of land-based coastal defences to protect England from attack. His fears were realised in July 1545 when a French invasion force intent on landing on the English mainland gathered off the Isle of Wight. Henry travelled to Portsmouth to inspect his fleet, which included the 34-year-old Mary Rose. On 19 July the wind turned in favour of the English and the Mary Rose went into battle with the rest of the fleet.
There are a number of theories as to how the ship sank, one of which is that after firing at the French galleys she made a quick turn, at which point the wind caught her sails, causing her to bank so far over that water entered the gun ports which had not yet been closed. Whatever the cause, her demise was swift. Within minutes she was below the waves, taking the lives of the majority of her crew with her. From his vantage point on the battlements of Southsea Castle, where he was gathered with a land army, Henry saw all. He could hear the cries of the drowning men and exclaimed “Oh, my gentlemen! Oh, my gallant men!”
Waltham Abbey
Henry went on regular pilgrimages to see the miraculous black cross at Waltham Abbey, an Augustine monastery north of London. According to records, he was here in 1510; again when sweating sickness ravaged London in 1528; in July 1529 and August 1532, when he was accompanied by Anne Boleyn during their summer progress.
The dissolution of the monasteries which, over four years, had altered the landscape, economy and social welfare system of the country, ended here in March 1540. A walk around the Abbey gardens today gives an impression of how vast the Abbey complex was and, from that, an idea of just how large scale the dissolution was both to individual abbeys and their communities. The presence of a screen, which separated the nave from the Canon’s building, allowed the local people to claim part of the Abbey as their parish church, and remains so to this day .
Henry’s actions – breaking with Rome, destroying the monasteries and declaring himself as head of the Church in England – has misled many writers and educators into assuming Henry had protestant sympathies or indeed had become a Protestant. But as far as Henry was concerned there was still only one form of Christianity, what we know today as Catholicism.
Henry’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr, “the survivor”, only narrowly avoided arrest when she became too bold in making her reformist religious views known. Fortunately for her she received word of her impending arrest and got to Henry first, successfully convincing him that she was merely putting forward alternative views in order to be instructed by him and benefit from his great learning and to distract him from his painfully ulcerated leg.
Windsor Castle
Among the splendour of the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world we find the final resting place of Henry VIII, who lies in St George’s Chapel under the Quire floor along with his third wife, Jane Seymour. They were unmarked up until the reign of William IV, who laid a marble slab to commemorate those buried there.
What Henry would make of this we can only surmise, although we can be sure that he did not imagine this as his final resting place. He had taken possession of Cardinal Wolsey’s sarcophagus after his downfall and planned to transform it into an elaborate tomb depicting himself and his third wife, Jane Seymour. The tomb, however, was not completed in Henry’s lifetime, or during the lives of any of Henry’s children, and his body was never moved.
Some have argued that Henry should now be moved and interred in a tomb more in keeping with his wishes. But the fact that this king, who had such a drastic and enduring impact, remains in a crowded and understated vault is significant. It is a fitting metaphor for his real legacy, compared to that which he expected to create.
Unusually for a monarch, more than half of Henry’s last will and testament is dedicated to setting out the succession. Despite attempts by his son Edward VI to alter the succession by naming Lady Jane Grey as his successor (which as monarch he was entitled to do), Henry’s vision became reality, with all three of his children succeeding him in the order he had set out: Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I.
Philippa Brewell is a historical trip writer and blogs at britishhistorytours.com.
This article was first published by History Extra in November 2016.
]]>Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in their own words: 5 fascinating letters from Tudor monarchshttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/anne-boleyn-henry-viii-and-elizabeth-i-in-their-own-words-5-fascinating-letters-from-tudor-monarchs/2017-06-11T01:51:05.000Z
Henry VII’s dynastic ambitions
The first Tudor king pens a gushing welcome to his son’s wife-to-be, 1501
This missive to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon is one of the only known examples of a letter written in the hand of Henry VII. It appears that the king took great pleasure in writing it, for it presaged an event that, Henry believed, would help secure his grip on the throne – Catherine’s marriage to his son Arthur Tudor.
Henry wrote the letter in October 1501 – 16 years after seizing the English crown from the Yorkist king Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. Henry’s own Lancastrian claim to the throne was tenuous, and even though he quickly married Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV, to unite the rival dynasties of York and Lancaster, a succession of Yorkist plots to unseat him followed.
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In response, the king shrewdly arranged strategic marriages for his children to bolster the new Tudor dynasty by linking it into a network of European royalty. In March 1488, Henry initiated talks with the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, to negotiate an alliance with Spain and the marriage of his eldest son and heir, Prince Arthur, to their youngest daughter, Catherine. The following year, the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of Medina del Campo was concluded and Arthur and Catherine, aged two and three, were pledged to be married.
Catherine’s departure from Spain was repeatedly delayed by disputes over the payment of her dowry but she eventually set sail for England in September 1501. Henry’s excitement at the news is palpable in his letter. “Madam, [your late arrival] here in our realm is to us so very agreeable that we cannot adequately say or express the great pleasure, joy [and] relief which we feel,” the king gushes. The arrival of a princess from one of the greatest royal houses in Europe to marry his eldest son and heir was a triumphant endorsement of the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty.
Catherine and Arthur were married on 14 November 1501, but the union was short-lived. Arthur succumbed to the sweating sickness and died in April 1502, leaving Catherine to face an uncertain future in England.
Extract: “We cannot adequately express our joy”
“Madam, [your late arrival] here in our realm is to us so very agreeable that we cannot adequately say or express the great pleasure, joy, [and] relief which we feel, nor the anticipation of seeing your noble presence, which we have often desired, both for the great graces and virtues which we hear it has pleased [God] to give to your person, and also [for the] mutual amity, confederation, and good alliance between our good cousins the King and Queen of Spain [your] parents and us, which [your presence] will now greatly augment. ”
The wedding planner
Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII seek news on their marriage negotiations, 1528
This remarkable letter, jointly written by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, provides a fascinating window into the couple’s relationship. In August 1528, Anne and Henry were desperate to be married, and the realisation of this goal depended very much on Wolsey.
Henry had become infatuated with Anne some time in 1526 – 17 years into his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon – but Anne had resolutely refused to become his mistress. Tormented by the fact that his marriage to Catherine had yet to produce him a male heir, Henry decided to seek a papal annulment so that he could marry Anne.
In May 1527, Catherine’s nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, sacked Rome and imprisoned Pope Clement VII, thus preventing him from granting Henry the annulment that he craved. So the English king turned to Wolsey, his trusted minister and senior churchman. Wolsey persuaded the pope to allow the final decision on the validity of the king’s marriage to be made in England, and to send papal legate Cardinal Campeggio to preside over a legatine court alongside Wolsey.
In this letter – requesting news about the progress of Cardinal Campeggio’s journey to England – Anne put pen to paper first, expressing her gratitude to Wolsey and reminding him that she longed to receive good news about the cardinal. “My Lord I do assure y[ou I do long to hear] from you some news of the Legate,” she writes. Anne then managed to persuade Henry, an unenthusiastic letter writer, to add some words of his own – and, no doubt, exert some extra pressure on the hard-pressed Wolsey.
Extract: “I pray for good news”
“My lord, in my most humblest wise that my heart can think, [I desire you to pardon] me that I am so bold to trouble you with my simple and [rude writing]… My Lord I do assure y[ou I do long to hear] from you some news of the Legate, for I do hope and [pray they] shall be very good, and I am sure that you desire [it as much as I,] and more if it were possible as I know it is not, [and thus remaining] in a steadfast hope I make an end of my letter [written in the hand] of her that is most bound to be. ”
Extract: “We trust in your vigilance”
“The writer of this letter would not cease till she had [caused me likewise] to set to my hand, desiring you, though it be short, to t[ake it in good part.] … The not hearing of the Legate’s arrival in [France causeth] us somewhat to muse, notwithstanding we trust by your dilig[ence and vigilancy] (with the assistance of Almighty God) shortly to be eased out [of that trouble]. … By your loving so[vereign and] friend. Henr[y R]. ”
A death in the family
Edward VI records his father’s demise with cool detachment, 1547
The rather scruffy handwriting you see here belongs to Edward VI, documenting in his diary (or ‘chronicle’) the fall-out from his father Henry VIII’s death in 1547. The first page of the young king’s chronicle explains that his uncle, Edward Seymour, rode to the medieval palace of Hertford to take him to his sister Elizabeth’s residence at the palace of Enfield. It was here, writes Edward – referring to himself in the third person – “the death of his father was first showed him, and the same day the death of his father was showed in London”.
Edward and Elizabeth are said to have wept in each other’s arms when they were told of their father’s death, but Edward recorded nothing of his personal feelings. What we are left with is his rather detached observation that Henry’s death caused “great lamentation and weeping” in England’s capital city.
The rest of Edward’s Chronicle focuses on the political and military events of his reign, revealing that he took a keen interest in the business of government and policy-making. This, and other papers he wrote on finance, trade, state and diplomacy, indicate that – though he became king at nine years old – Edward possessed the talent to become a great ruler. But his reign was one of unfulfilled potential, for Edward contracted tuberculosis and died in 1553, aged 15.
Extract: “A great lamentation”
“After the death of King Henry the Eighth, his son Edward, Prince of Wales, was come to at Hertford by the Earl of Hertford and Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the Horse, for whom before was made great preparation that he might [be] created Prince of Wales, and afterward was brought to Enfield, where the death of his father was first showed him, and the same day the death of his father was showed in London, where [there] was great lamentation and weeping; and suddenly he [was] proclaimed king. ”
Extract: “The people said ‘Yea’”
“Afterward, all things being prepared for the coronation, the king, being then but nine years old, passed through the City of London as heretofore hath been used, and came to the palace of Westminster, and the next day came into Westminster Hall, and it was asked [of] the people whether they would have him to be their king, who answered ‘Yea, yea’. ”
Siblings at war
Princess Mary rails against her brother’s Protestant agenda, c1551
Unlike Henry VIII, whose break with Rome and flirtations with Protestantism had been politically motivated, his son Edward held strong evangelical beliefs and advocated a full-scale Protestant Reformation in England.
The evangelical establishment around Edward VI, led by his Uncle Edward Seymour, now Lord Protector Somerset, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, initiated a series of religious reforms aimed at framing the evangelical agenda in law. In doing so they enraged Edward’s devoutly Catholic sister, Mary, who refused to accept the legality of the reformist religious legislation, and provoked her into writing this letter to the lords of the Privy Council.
Showing the same spirit and steely resolve as her late mother, Catherine of Aragon, Mary remonstrated with them for breaking the oaths they had sworn to her late father, Henry VIII, and for ignoring his wishes. “It grieveth me I say,” she wrote, “for the love I bear to them, to see both how they break his will, and what usurped power they take upon them.”
Mary persisted in having Latin mass celebrated in her household but, in doing so, she misjudged her brother, who by 1551 would no longer tolerate her disobedience. On 28 January, the 13-year-old king informed his sister: “It is a scandalous thing that so high a personage should deny our sovereignty.”
Two months later, they had an emotional confrontation at Westminster, but neither Mary’s tears nor her declaration that she was prepared to die for her faith persuaded Edward to relent. For the next two years, the king maintained the ban on the mass in Mary’s private chapels.
Extract: “It is against the law of God”
“It is no small grief to me to perceive that they whom the king’s majesty, my father (whose soul God pardon) made in this world of nothing in respect of that they be come to now, and at his last end put in trust to see his will performed, whereunto they were all sworn upon a book. It grieveth me I say, for the love I bear to them, to see both how they break his will, and what usurped power they take upon them, in making (as they call it) laws both clean contrary to his proceedings and will, and also against the custom of all Christendom, and (in my conscience) against the law of God and his church, which passeth all the rest. ”
Elizabeth I’s words of wisdom
The queen offers James VI of Scotland some hard-headed advice, 1603
Following the death of Mary I in 1558, her sister, Elizabeth, ascended the English throne as the last direct heir of the Tudor dynasty. Concerned that the future of the Tudor monarchy depended on the survival of one woman, Elizabeth’s councillors regularly urged her to either marry or to name her successor.
But Elizabeth steadfastly refused, famously declaring that choosing a successor would be tantamount to setting “my winding-sheet [shroud] before my eyes”.
Despite this, towards the end of her reign, Elizabeth came round to the idea that James VI of Scotland should succeed her.
In this letter to James, written just 11 weeks before her death, the queen expresses her pleasure at the king’s willingness to seek advice from her: “It pleaseth me not a little that my true intents, without glosses or guiles, are by you so gratefully taken.”
She also provides her thoughts on Scotland’s diplomatic relations with Spain, France and the Vatican. Tellingly, she advises him against opening diplomatic relations with Spain.
Elizabeth’s flourished signature is instantly recognisable but the elegant italic hand of her youth has been replaced with her virtually illegible “skrating” hand, for which she apologises. For all that, the letter reveals that Elizabeth remained as sharp-minded and politically acute in the final year of her reign as she had the previous 44.
James and Elizabeth never met, but they corresponded regularly from the early 1580s, with Elizabeth frequently providing the Scottish king with outspoken advice on the craft of monarchy.
Elizabeth’s death in 1603 brought to a close the rule of the Tudors. The crown did indeed pass to James VI of Scotland, who – as James I of England – became the first Stuart monarch and ‘King of Great Britain and Ireland’.
Extract: “Your loving sister”
“Thus you see how to fulfil your trust reposed in me, which to infringe I never mind, I have sincerely made patent my sincerity; yet stuffed with great good will. I hope you will bear with my molesting you too long with my skrating hand, as proceeding from a heart that shall ever be filled with the sure affection of your loving and friendly sister, Elizabeth R. ”
Andrea Clarke is curator of early modern historical manuscripts at the British Library. She is author of Tudor Monarchs: Lives in Letters (British Library Publishing, 2017).
This article was first published in the June 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]>Through foreign eyes: the forgotten ambassadors to the Tudor courthttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/through-foreign-eyes-the-forgotten-ambassadors-to-the-tudor-court/2016-11-30T10:55:00.000ZCardinal Wolsey going in procession to Westminster Hall. Reproduced from the original by Sir John Gilbert in 1886-7. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)
Here, writing for History Extra, she explores the lives and experiences of five lesser-known ambassadors whose dispatches have vividly captured a world full of intrigue, espionage and drama…
Inigo de Mendoza, served Charles V as imperial ambassador, 1526–29
Mendoza was a Castilian clergyman and diplomat in the service of Emperor Charles V (ruler of both the Spanish Empire and the Holy Roman Empire) who appointed him ambassador to the English court in 1526. However, Mendoza’s ambassadorship did not begin auspiciously. He travelled through France to reach his post, but despite a peace treaty being in place between Francis I and Charles V, the French were keen to obstruct Anglo–imperial relations and arrested Mendoza. He was jailed in Arques in northern France for several months on trumped-up charges of being an enemy spy, despite the French king's promise of safe conduct.
When he was finally released and allowed to travel to London, Mendoza’s assignment was to promote reconciliation between Henry VIII and his wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and to have him end his pursuit of Anne Boleyn. Further, Mendoza was to promote an English alliance with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, thus disabling France. He was frustrated in the former task and thoroughly thwarted in the latter.
Mendoza was mismatched for the position of ambassador. He struggled to be an impartial observer at court: he blustered, protested, complained and, fatally for a diplomat, let his anger and frustration cloud his judgement. Instead of cultivating relationships with the most powerful men at court, Mendoza stubbornly fought them and thereby alienated himself. He was disastrously outclassed by Henry VIII’s shrewd councillors and was certainly no match for the king’s chief advisor – the ambitious, brilliant-minded father figure, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
Mendoza’s letters to Emperor Charles V reveal that Wolsey outmanoeuvred him and made it his personal mission to make the ambassador’s life as difficult as possible. Not only did Wolsey read every dispatch sent by Mendoza, he then placed him under house arrest in 1528 when England was at war with the Emperor. Mendoza’s dispatches give the impression of a frazzled, enraged and often desperate man. It came as no surprise that in 1528 Mendoza demanded to be recalled, yet the increasing complexity of Henry VIII’s divorce made clear the need not only for a skilled diplomat, but a diplomat with legal and canonical training, who could understand the legal issues of the king’s divorce suit and who could champion Queen Catherine to her husband and his councilors. His replacement was Eustace Chapuys.
In Mendoza’s own words: “At the day fixed, I went to Greenwich, and met the King as he was issuing forth to go to mass. I commenced to speak in a voice so loud and so intelligible that I could be heard by all, saying that I had attended in the Court for three years, during which I had constantly offered the amity of Charles to the King, between whose predecessors and those of the Emperor a firm alliance had perpetually subsisted, while with the King's adversaries the Emperor had remained at enmity.”
Augustino Scarpinello, Milanese ambassador 1525–32
Augustino Scarpinello, the Milanese ambassador to Henry VIII’s court, is often overlooked yet he is a vital source of information about Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s disgrace and downfall.
Scarpinello’s embassy was rather complex, owing to the fact that the Duchy of Milan was highly prized and constantly fought over. The French had long maintained a claim to the duchy and had ousted the ruling Sforza family in 1499. Yet in 1525 Emperor Charles V defeated the French at the battle of Pavia and Milan became part of his empire. He installed Francesco Sforza as Duke of Milan, who became in effect a puppet of the Holy Roman Empire. Such an action sowed the seeds of rebellion, and in 1526 Francis I of France, Pope Clement, the Republics of Venice and Florence, and Sforza – all of whom objected to Charles’ aggressive tactics and the imperial hegemony – signed the League of Cognac, a coalition against Charles.
Scarpinello’s master, the Duke of Milan, was fully immersed in secret rebellion and subterfuge, and the fact that he arrived at the Tudor court with no official communication or introduction from the Duke meant that Wolsey could not officially acknowledge him as an ambassador.
Yet despite the unsteady start in his post, Scarpinello and Cardinal Wolsey developed a rapport, and from Scarpinello’s reports to the Duke of Milan we gain an insight into Wolsey's motives for various policies, his relationship with Henry VIII and his personal character. Henry did not sign the League of Cognac but Wolsey, always partial to the French, was eager to assist Sforza against Charles V, and communicated via Scarpinello. The Milanese ambassador was thrilled by Wolsey’s support and constantly praised the Cardinal to his master. Yet Sforza lacked diplomatic grace, and Scarpinello advised him to maintain friendly and constant correspondence not only with the King and Cardinal Wolsey, but also Thomas Boleyn, one of Henry VIII’s most respected ambassadors. Scarpinello noted that only writing occasional letters to those three key figures would be seen as an affront, not a compliment.
Scarpinello was also instrumental in securing a handsome pension for Wolsey of 10,000 ducats a year, and worked to secure gifts of horses and armour for Henry VIII to maintain England’s support of Milan’s independence from Charles V.
Scarpinello witnessed Wolsey’s downfall from 1528 onwards when he failed to secure Henry VIII’s divorce. He wrote anxiously of Wolsey’s disgrace, alarmed by the prospect of losing so great an ally.
In his own words: “Of the result of [Wolsey’s] arrest and of its causes I have been unable to hear any authentic account; on obtaining certain intelligence I will not fail to transmit it. Some say that the Cardinal purposed making his escape; some that he wished and advised the Pope to make some necessary provision in his own favour, and in that of all the English clergy, contrary to the statutes of the realm, and to the will of the King.
“Others, more friendly to his right reverend lordship, attribute everything to the envy and fear of his rivals, who had now repented of having made him fall on a feather-bed, from which being afraid he might look back and rise again, they determined to make an end of him.”
Mario Savorgnano, Venetian ambassador, 1531
Mario Savorgnano, a wealthy Venetian aristocrat, came to the Tudor court in 1531.
Savorgnano was an accomplished soldier and classical scholar who was also known for his Latin and Greek translations of scholarly texts. His reports give us the impression of a man with an eye for intricate, personal detail, often expressed with an almost mischievous manner.
Savorgnano seems to have been on tour, and England was one of several destinations he visited. Although he promptly felt the absence of the Venetian sun, he found the English weather more favourable than that of France, and described in detail the magnificence of Dover and Canterbury.
He was not so impressed by London, however. He had much to report about the architecture of the capital (which he found rather ugly), as well as the men of court and their drinking habits, and even the quality of the wine served, lamenting that English vineyards were inferior to those of the Italian and French. He spoke highly of English women in general, praising their beauty, but rather disapprovingly reported that married women in London seemed quite comfortable being taken to taverns by men other than their husband − to which their husbands did not object.
Despite his brief stay in England, Savorgnano managed to describe Henry VIII in great detail. He greatly admired the king, often praising his stature and very good looks, but he was not in the least enamoured by his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The ambassador openly criticised Anne, declaring himself to be an ardent admirer and supporter of Queen Catherine. He scathingly reported that Henry’s only flaw was that he allowed himself to be totally controlled by Anne, much to his detriment.
In his own words: “[Henry] is tall of stature, very well formed, and of very handsome presence, beyond measure affable, and I never saw a prince better disposed than this one. He is also learned and accomplished, and most generous and kind, and were it not that he now seeks to repudiate his wife, after having lived with her for 22 years, he would be no less perfectly good, and equally prudent.
“But this thing detracts greatly from his merits, as there is now living with him a young woman of noble birth, though many say of bad character, whose will is law to him, and he is expected to marry her, should the divorce take place, which it is supposed will not be effected, as the peers of the realm, both spiritual and temporal, and the people are opposed to it; nor during the present Queen's life will they have any other Queen in the kingdom.”
Charles de Marillac, French ambassador, 1538–43
In 1538, one of our most important sources of this period, Eustace Chapuys, who served Charles V as imperial ambassador, left the English court for Brussels and did not return for a year and a half. Tudor historians might have felt his absence more keenly were it not for the arrival of the new French ambassador Charles de Marillac.
Marillac, to the delight of the historian, had a penchant for detailed and witty descriptions of Henry VIII and his court, and we are particularly indebted to him for his detailed reports about one of the King’s more elusive queens, Anne of Cleves. But rivalry is a hazard in most professions, and the diplomatic world is not exempt: Marillac and Chapuys clashed, and their antagonism was evident throughout their careers and throughout their numerous dispatches. Marillac had not even met the absent ambassador upon his arrival, but nonetheless described Chapuys as having more malice than cunning and devoted entire letters to the French king Francis I dismissing Chapuys’ reliability, complaining of his lack of diplomatic integrity, and assuring the king that he, Marillac, was far more popular than his imperial counterpart.
Quite by chance, Marillac was lodged in the house in London that Chapuys had recently vacated, and he could barely contain his glee when he wrote that he had found a bundle of Chapuys’ private correspondence and reports to Emperor Charles V. It was a windfall indeed for Marillac, who wasted no time in informing the imperial ambassador upon his return to court in 1540. But Chapuys, never to be bettered, quickly gained the upper hand by turning Marillac’s most trusted servant into his own right-hand man. The servant fed him a profusion of intelligence on Marillac and his highly sensitive correspondence with King Francis I. Chapuys rewarded this informer (who may have equally disliked Marillac) by eventually securing the young man a plum position at the imperial court.
Marillac was furious at having been thwarted by his rival. In his own words: “The Emperor's new ambassador (Chapuys) of whom I wrote in one of my late dispatches, arrived here six days ago. He has met with a very meager reception at this Court, where, to say the truth, he has scarcely any friends, for, if I am to believe what the King himself tells me, no one here esteems or likes him. The duke of Norfolk, who nowadays has the chief management of affairs, clearly shows his dislike of him… The Imperial ambassador will no longer find his Cromwell to warrant the follies that entered his head once.”
François van der Delft, Imperial ambassador, 1545–50
François van der Delft replaced the long serving, and long suffering, imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, who had completed 15 years at the Tudor court, in 1545. Although described in historical texts rather promisingly as a Flemish knight, van der Delft made a rather shaky debut at court. He lacked the stylish flair, charm and confidence that Chapuys had exuded.
Chapuys personally introduced and recommended his successor to various contacts in England, yet within weeks of Chapuys’ departure it seemed that van der Delft was already floundering. Charles V had become accustomed to an extremely high degree of detail and frequency in the dispatches from England and complained that the new ambassador wasn’t performing his duties properly.
Unhappy with this new replacement, Charles wrote to Chapuys repeating his complaints and beseeched him to give his successor some instructions. Although Chapuys was peacefully retired in Louvain, he took on the mantle of mentor to the new ambassador, advising van der Delft as to what level of communication the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire required and what relationships and networks to cultivate. Under Chapuys’ careful guidance, van der Delft did gain confidence, but he refused to ingratiate himself with the court.
The transition between reigns, from Henry VIII to his nine-year-old son Edward VI, was rapid, and van der Delft struggled to keep up. Edward VI was firmly under the control of his uncle, the ambitious and power-hungry Edward Seymour, who Henry had appointed as Lord Protector for his young son until the boy reached maturity.
Van der Delft is not the most reliable source for Edward VI’s reign. He understood very little English, and, unusually for an ambassador, depended heavily on information fed to him by the English court, rather than rely on his own informants and spies. His primary contact at the English court was William Paget, comptroller of Edward VI’s household, whose version of current events the ambassador accepted wholeheartedly, and even worse, passed on to his master without verifying the information. On a number of occasions he imprudently offered advice, such as when he encouraged Henry’s eldest daughter Mary, a steadfast Catholic, to flee England during the reign of her Protestant half-brother Edward VI. Van der Delft was replaced in 1550.
In his own words: “Paget requested me very urgently to keep the matter quite secret and again repeated to me his wish that I should write an account of it to your Majesty as an actual fact. Whatever truth or otherwise there may be in this I presume that your Majesty will be better informed than anyone else. Paget still shows on every occasion his devotion to your Majesty. I also entertain him to the best of my ability, seeing that everything here goes through his hands, and that there is not one of them who can excel him in the management of affairs.”
Lauren Mackay is the author of Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and his Six Wives through the eyes of the Spanish Ambassador (Amberley, 2015). Lauren's second book on the Tudor court will be published by IB Tauris in 2018.
To find out more about Lauren, visit www.laurenmackay.co.uk
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