House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty Page 8

  Norfolk and Suffolk, both jealous of Wolsey’s power and wealth, now sought ways and means to topple him. His failure to fulfil his pledge of success to Henry provided them with a weapon with which to cut him down. His departure from the corridors of power would also allow them to achieve another of their objectives: the reform of England’s huge clerical estate.19

  For a few weeks more, the Lord Chancellor continued to shuffle moodily through his piles of paper at the centre of Henry’s government, as significantly, perhaps, the king enjoyed himself killing deer with Norfolk and Suffolk in the fresh air of Oxfordshire.

  But Eustace Chapuys, the new Spanish ambassador in London,20 perceptively reported at the end of August that the Cardinal’s power was ebbing. And there were more straws of disaster for the minister blowing in the wind: foreign envoys were being denied access to him and increasing volumes of state business were now decided by Norfolk, Suffolk, and Rochford, Anne Boleyn’s father.21 At the end of August, Henry’s new secretary Stephen Gardiner - formerly the Cardinal’s own assistant - wrote to him, refusing to allow him to wait upon the king at Woodstock, and instructing him to put down on paper the issues he wanted to discuss.22 Just over two weeks after this rebuff, Wolsey managed to arrive at court, which had moved on to Grafton in Northamptonshire, bringing with him his brother papal legate, the duplicitous Campeggio, who wished to offer up a formal farewell to the king on his departure for Rome. It was a poor pretext for a visit: when Campeggio limped in, he must have felt as welcome as the sweating sickness itself in Henry’s presence chamber. The minister talked vigorously with his monarch for several hours before being peremptorily dismissed to spend the night at nearby Easton Neston, while his enemies busied themselves ‘stirring the coals’ of conspiracy at court.

  The following day, the malice against Wolsey was palpable. Henry left Grafton with Anne Boleyn on a hunting trip she had hastily planned and, before riding off, roughly told the two cardinals there was no time for further talk.

  He also instructed them to leave.23

  Wolsey was a broken man, his face devoid of animation.24 Back in London, he told the French ambassador Jean du Bellay that ‘he did not desire . . . power [and that] he was ready to give up everything, [down] to his shirt, and live in a hermitage, if the king would not keep him in his displeasure’.25 But it was too late for any grand gestures, or uncharacteristic humility.

  On 17 October, Henry, now ensconced at Windsor Castle, sent an exultant Norfolk and Suffolk to Wolsey’s opulent London home, York Place, to insist on his immediate surrender of the Great Seal of England, held by him as Lord Chancellor. The Cardinal refused, having demanded to see their warrant. They had come without it and, despite their angry blustering, they were forced to return empty-handed to Windsor to fetch the royal authorisation. This only postponed the denouement of the drama. The two dukes were back the next day with the correct paperwork and told Wolsey he had to retire to his manor at Esher, in Surrey. His goods, huge wealth and possessions were confiscated by the crown.

  He finally handed over the Seal to the triumphant dukes at six o’clock in the evening in the gallery of his house26 and later departed by boat down the Thames into exile, smarting from ‘the sharp sword of the king’s [displeasure] that had so penetrated his heart’. The French ambassador suspected a greater conspiracy: that ‘these lords intend, after he is dead or ruined, to impeach the state of the church and take all their goods’.

  In the days following Wolsey’s downfall, there was inevitably much speculation about who would replace him as the king’s minister. But, shrewdly, Henry was in no hurry to create another great panjandrum. Du Bellay reported on 22 October that Norfolk had been appointed President of the king’s Council, with Suffolk deputising for him in his absence. ‘It is not yet known who [will] have the [Great] Seal. I expect that priests will never have it again and that in Parliament, they will have terrible alarms,’ he added.27

  The successful conspirators in the Cardinal’s disgrace then turned on each other. Norfolk, always jealous of another’s status and influence, objected strongly to the proposed appointment of Suffolk as Lord Chancellor, and, three days later, after much indecorous haggling, a reluctant Sir Thomas More finally agreed to take on this unwanted, onerous and perilous duty. The Great Seal was delivered to him by the king in his chamber at Greenwich Palace and the next day, 26 October, he took the oath of fidelity in Westminster Hall. Norfolk and Suffolk escorted him to his seat in the Court of Chancery and by ‘special command’ of the king, Norfolk declared:openly, in the presence of them all, how much all England was beholden to Sir Thomas More for all his good service and how worthy he was to have the highest rank in the realm and how dearly his Grace loved and trusted him.

  He added that, for all this, he personally had ‘great cause to rejoice’.28

  Small wonder that Norfolk was happy. His comments had a double meaning. His presence there, and his public annointment of the new Lord Chancellor, were a clear signal that the old aristocracy had won back their power and clout in England. Indeed, in the days to come, Norfolk worked diligently to ensure that happened, building a caucus of ‘old money’ nobles around him to exercise authority on behalf of the crown. Even responsibility for the custody and education of the king’s bastard, Henry Fitzroy, was transferred from Wolsey to Norfolk.

  The duke, in his new role, received Chapuys with ‘great distinction’, and laughingly told him: ‘How glad the Emperor [Charles V] will be to hear of the fall of the Cardinal and his loss of office!’ The ambassador reported Norfolk ‘highly pleased’ with himself as he politely repeated his family’s long-standing goodwill towards the Spanish crown:No one lamented the great disagreements [with Spain] more than himself [but] that all the evil and misunderstanding ought to be attributed to those who formerly directed the king’s counsels, acting by their own will and authority, with which the king himself was often dissatisfied.29

  Henry, however, still had not got his annulment nor Anne Boleyn’s hand in marriage - and she was becoming impatient. She suddenly turned on Norfolk, complaining that she was ‘wasting her time and youth to no purpose’ and he frequently suffered the unpleasant effects of the full force of his niece’s fractious, petulant temper. Later, walking and talking with More in the new Lord Chancellor’s Thames-side garden at Chelsea, Norfolk warned him, in his ‘rough but friendly manner’, of the great personal dangers posed by Henry’s love for Anne Boleyn:By the Mass, Master More, it is perilous striving with princes. And therefore, I would wish you somewhat to incline to the king’s pleasure. For, by God’s body, Master More, indignato principis mors est - ‘the anger of the prince means death’.

  More was totally unmoved by the advice. He told Norfolk:Is that all my lord? Then in good faith, the difference between your grace and me is but this: that I shall die today and you tomorrow.30

  These simple words offended the prickly duke and he stalked off, angry that his worldly-wise counsel had been so casually ignored. But More felt confident and relaxed: after all, did he not have Henry’s personal pledge over the divorce: that he would ‘never, with that matter, molest his [More’s] conscience’?

  Among the many casualties of Wolsey’s downfall was Thomas Cromwell, his ambitious legal adviser. After talking with his stricken master at Esher, he rode hastily to London, to seek a seat in the new House of Commons, due to be sworn in two days later. In times of trouble, any politician calls in favours owed to him and he sent his servant Ralph Sadler to talk to Sir John Gage, Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, and an ally of Norfolk’s. After much discussion, the duke graciously let it be known that he had spoken with the king ‘and that his highness was very well contented that [Cromwell] should become a burgess [in Parliament and] should order [himself] according to such instructions as the Duke of Norfolk shall give you from the king’. Cromwell thus became Member of Parliament for Taunton.31

  So Cromwell rescued his career from the ruin of Wolsey’s downfall and lived to fight another day - and
all at Norfolk’s instigation. In the decade that followed, the duke would many times rue that cold night when he unwittingly rescued from the gutter of Tudor political life the man who was to become another powerful enemy.

  Norfolk was, meanwhile, busy preparing the coup de grâce against his fallen enemy; a Bill of Attainder, with forty-six clauses, was down for debate as the first item of business at the opening session of Parliament. For him, settling old scores was always a joy. The Bill, nicknamed the Book of Articles because of its huge bulk, employed virulent language against Wolsey, including the outlandish allegation that he had attempted to infect the king with syphilis.32 It was passed by the Lords on 1 December and immediately sent down to the Commons for their approval. Here, Norfolk had overreached himself. The Attainder was attacked over its intemperate wording - Cromwell himself argued against it ‘discreetly . . . with such witty persuasions and deep reasons’33 - and it was quickly dropped, probably by royal command, before Parliament was prorogued on 17 December. Though the duke failed finally to destroy the Cardinal, at least he had thoroughly blackened his name.

  So the problem of Wolsey’s fate remained undecided. Henry clearly still harboured some sympathy for the broken old man and sent four of his physicians to nurse him through an acute attack of dropsy.34 Norfolk thoroughly mistrusted his sovereign’s compassion for his fallen minister and was painfully aware that, amid the shifting, uncertain loyalties of Henry’s court, if the Cardinal ever managed to claw his way back to power he, Norfolk, would be the first to end up in the Tower. He therefore devised a plan to neutralise the threat still posed by Wolsey. Simply put, it was ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and after Wolsey’s earlier banishments of Norfolk it had the sweet taste of apposite revenge. The prelate should now return to his benefice, ideally as far away as possible from London and the court, and live out his days quietly as a pious churchman. Wolsey had collected a number of clerical hats - Archbishop of York, and Bishop of Winchester, for example - and Norfolk believed that York, 175 miles (282 km.) north of the capital, would fit the bill admirably.

  Wolsey grasped that proximity to the king might still bring reinstatement and salvation. When Cromwell informed him of the plan, he replied cheerfully: ‘Well then Thomas, we will go to Winchester’ - signalling his intention to take up residence at his rich bishopric in Hampshire, not far from London. He failed to realise he was speaking to a man who temporarily owed much to Norfolk and, anyway, was only interested in advancing his own fortunes. Cromwell hastened to the duke to pass on Wolsey’s decision.

  Norfolk often presented a mask of affability to the outside world. He was short and wiry, with a hooked, aquiline nose, inherited from his father, dominating his fleshy features. Beneath his cordial exterior and those hooded eyes lurked a violent temper, a cold brutality and a callous, single-minded determination. Now his friendly façade was swiftly stripped away and he answered Cromwell candidly:I think that the Cardinal . . . makes no haste to go northward. Tell him, if he go not away shortly but shall tarry, I shall tear him with my teeth.

  I would advise him to prepare himself as quickly as he can, or else he shall be sent forward.35

  Wolsey duly left for the north on 5 April 1530, and entered, for the first time, the Church province he had ruled as an absentee metropolitan since August 1514. He arrived at his decayed palace at Southwell, Nottinghamshire, on the 28th, whingeing about being ‘wrapped in misery and need on every side’ before moving on to Cawood Castle, twelve miles (19 km.) from York,36 at the end of September. There he regained his refined taste for the trappings and splendours of ecclesiastical life and despatched a letter to Henry, seeking the rich ‘mitre and pall37 which he had formerly used . . . in celebrating the divine office’. When he read the note, the king was astonished at Wolsey’s ‘brazen insolence’ adding: ‘Is there still arrogance in this fellow, who is so obviously ruined?’38

  Cromwell tempered the king’s reaction when he told his former master that Henry was ‘very sorry that you are in such necessity . . . The Duke of Norfolk promises you his best aid, but he wills you for the present to be content and not much to molest the king (concerning payment of your debts) for, as he supposes, the time is not right for it.’ These were saccharic words and Cromwell knew it full well.39

  Wolsey wrote to Norfolk on 30 October, in a disingenuous attempt to reassure his brooding enemy that he did not wish to be restored as Lord Chancellor and would be happy to spend the rest of his life in York. He sent Thomas Arundell, a gentleman of his privy chamber, to deliver the letter to the duke, then staying at Hampton Court. After reading it, Norfolk walked in the park, mulling over its empty promises, and then brusquely told the messenger that ‘no man should make him believe that’. Arundell reported: ‘The more I spoke to the contrary, the more out of frame I found him.’

  The duke and his niece were yet more determined to tear down the Cardinal once and for all and Norfolk posted agents to watch the movements of the household at Cawood and to intercept the communications, in cipher, of his Venetian physician, Dr Augustine de Augustinis. One of the reasons for his angry rejection of Wolsey’s blandishments was his knowledge of three secret messages sent by the Cardinal ‘whereby it appears that [he] desires as much authority as ever [he] did’.40 Furthermore, he disclosed to Chapuys that Wolsey had attempted, by different agents, to undermine Norfolk’s position at court and they had told him all about it.41

  Wolsey was arrested for treason as he sat down to dinner at Cawood on Friday 4 November. Augustine was also detained, tied backwards to a horse like all such felons, and led to London. After spending an uncomfortable night in the Tower of London to concentrate his mind, Augustine was quietly removed to Norfolk’s town house in Broken Wharf, on the south side of Upper Thames Street,42 and there gently interrogated, while being ‘treated like a prince’. The Italian sang like a canary and his disclosures delighted his inquisitors. Wolsey, he chirruped, had asked Pope Clement to excommunicate the king and shut all the parish churches in the realm, unless Anne Boleyn was exiled from court and Catherine reinstated as queen. Moreover, he said, the Cardinal prayed that such an interdict would spawn a widespread popular uprising, when he could snatch back the levers of power in England.43

  After hearing that Augustine had fallen into Norfolk’s hands, Chapuys, the Spanish envoy, was worried that his own dealings in the murky business could be compromised by the doctor’s disclosures. As he reported the latest developments, he tried to reassure himself:I think the physician must have declared he had no intelligence with me. Otherwise the duke, who is a bad dissembler, would have said something about it. . . . Were the physician to say all that has passed between us, he could not do anything but impugn me.44

  Augustine provided the final proof of Wolsey’s treason, or so Norfolk claimed. The Cardinal, being brought back to London by easy stages because of his poor health, died on 29 November 1530 at the Augustinian abbey of St Mary’s, in Leicester, probably from dysentery, although there were some who believed ‘he killed himself with purgatives’.45 He was aged about sixty.

  Norfolk delightedly claimed Wolsey’s fleshy scalp as his own trophy. Anne’s brother, George, specially commissioned a hastily written masque, charmingly entitled On the Cardinal ’s Going into Hell that was performed at Greenwich Palace, to the gratification and merriment of the Howard and Boleyn clan.

  Twelve days after Wolsey’s death, his physician signed a recognisance pledging payment of £100 to the king to ‘keep secret from any man all such matter as is mentioned in a book written with his own hand, concerning the late Cardinal of York and presented by him to my lord of Norfolk, President of the Council . . .’.46

  Although the threat posed by Wolsey had been extinguished, the secrets of his downfall had to be protected.

  In June 1530, a huge and much redrafted document, signed with the seals of two archbishops, four bishops, twenty-five abbots, two dukes and forty other peers, appealed to the Pope to produce a speedy decision on the king’s marriage
to Queen Catherine. It was all to no avail: Rome had no real understanding of the serious ramifications of the issue, nor the need for its urgent resolution.

  Catherine was in despair. ‘God knows what I suffer from these people; enough to kill ten men, much more a shattered woman who has done no harm,’ she wrote miserably to her nephew, Charles V, in mid-October 1531.

  For the love of God, procure a final sentence from his Holiness as soon as possible.

  The utmost diligence is required.

  May God forgive him [the Pope] for the many delays which he has granted and which alone are the cause of my extremity! I am the king’s lawful wife and while I live, I will say no other.

  The Pope’s tardiness makes many on my side waver and those who would say the truth, dare not.47

  Norfolk, also weary of the whole business, lugubriously confided to Chapuys that he would be prepared to sacrifice the greater part of his wealth, if God was ‘pleased to take to himself’ both Catherine and Anne ‘for the king would never enjoy peace of mind till he had made another marriage, for the relief of his conscience and the tranquillity of the realm, which could only be secured’ by a lawful male heir to the throne. 48

  Wishing both ladies dead through some kind of divine thunderbolt was hardly a practical or plausible solution. A papal nuncio visiting England, anxious to discover why the Pope was so unpopular, was amazed and intimidated by Norfolk and Suffolk’s curt declaration that they cared nothing for popes ‘in England - not even if St Peter came to life again. The king was [now] emperor and pope in his own dominions.’49