King Henry VIII & Thomas Cardinal Wolsey

Butcher's Boy

Thomas Wolsey was a commoner, a butcher's son. His was not the humblest class; most Englishmen were farmhands or laborers, and Wolsey's father was a prosperous merchant. But a butcher's son would never expect to meet the King of England, or have anything to do with him beyond paying taxes, unless he were so unlucky as to run afoul of the law. Thomas Wolsey, however, was no ordinary butcher's boy, and had no intention of growing up to take his father's place at the meat counter.

Instead he went into the Church. Wolsey felt no spiritual calling, but the Catholic Church was one institution where men of talent could sometimes rise above the station they were born into. (Even humbly born women might become abbesses.) Thomas Wolsey was one of them. He soon became a bishop's chaplain and secretary, and by 1507 he became the royal chaplain of King Henry VII of England, a position that made him a midlevel royal adviser. Then in 1509 dour old Henry died and his 18 year old son, also named Henry, became king.

Henry VIII was a young man, tall athletic, and by every contemporary account handsome and charming. More than that he was a young king, and meant to enjoy every minute of it. He did not particularly enjoy the day to day business of governing England, signing papers and sitting through meetings. He left this largely in the hands of his father's advisers, beheading a couple so the rest would be clear about who was the new boss.

Hunting and jousting by day, dancing by evening, young Henry still paid enough attention to notice who produced results. Wolsey did, and soon emerged as his chief minister. One observer wrote that while Henry's other advisers told he what he ought to do, Wolsey told Henry how to do what he wanted. And what Henry wanted was mainly glory for himself, especially in war. He saw himself in the mold of England's great medieval warrior kings, Edward III and Henry V, and like them he wanted to conquer France.

A few churchmen were brave enough to argue against war, even to Henry's face. (Henry thanked them for their moral courage and ignored them.) Wolsey, though a churchman, wasted no time on the case for peace. Instead he set to work efficiently organizing the war effort and laying the diplomatic groundwork to see that Henry (and incidentally England) got the most out of the victories Henry eagerly anticipated.

Henry won his victories, personally commanding in the long forgotten Battle of the Spurs. Later historians have tended to dismiss Henry's wars as a wasteful folly, but no one at the time did, except for that handful of churchmen who told him that all war was wasteful folly. The English were always eager to fight the French, except when they had to pay for it – so Wolsey bullied, bribed, and sweet talked Parliament into voting the money. Machiavelli, the inventor of cold eyed realpolitik, gave Henry an approving nod for using his own troops instead of hiring mercenaries.

By 1520 Henry VIII was a dominant figure in Europe, while his all powerful minister Wolsey was himself regarded as nearly the equal of a king. Wolsey had kept rising in church politics as well. In 1515 he was made a cardinal, a prince of the church, and in 1521 he was a serious contender for the papacy.

The model of a worldly churchman, Wolsey discreetly kept a mistress. He did not involve himself much in the theological controversies that were just now boiling up into the Protestant Reformation. But when Henry, an enthusiastic amateur theologian, wrote a scathing denunciation of Martin Luther, Wolsey made sure that Henry got something out of it beyond the satisfaction of being a 16th century royal blogger. The Pope conferred on Henry the title Defender of the Faith, still borne by British monarchs.

But Henry wanted one thing that Thomas Cardinal Wolsey could not deliver for him: a son. His (first) queen, Catherine of Aragon, gave him a healthy daughter, Mary, in 1516, but her other five children were born dead or died in infancy. By about 1520 it was clear she would have no more. And about 1525 Henry started to want something more specific. He wanted Anne Boleyn as his wife, who surely would bear him the son he so desired.

The Client From Hell

Wolsey was trained as a lawyer, and now he went to work as Henry's lawyer in the church courts to un-marry him from Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. History's most famous divorce was not actually a divorce, something the Catholic Church did not grant at all. What Wolsey sought on Henry's behalf was an annulment, a ruling that the partners had never been properly married to begin with.

Not only was Wolsey Henry's lawyer in the case, he also might be the judge. Only the Pope could grant an annulment, but he could delegate the power to a legate – and Thomas Cardinal Wolsey was already a papal legate. All he needed was an artifully ambiguous letter of authorization, and Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon could be annulled without the Pope ever quite having to dirty his fingers with it.

Everything appeared set, but Wolsey and Henry had not reckoned on the one thing that would turn Henry's quiet non-divorce into a messy divorce case for the ages: an outraged wife. Inevitably Catherine of Aragon found out. The daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain was not to be quietly or easily dumped. She turned up unannounced at the hearing Wolsey had arranged on the annulment case, and the battle was on.

Catherine did not fight alone. Most of England was on her side, especially the women; officially they did not count, but even Henry's male advisers had to face their own wives. More important, though her formidable parents were long dead she had an equally formidable nephew who took her side, Emperor Charles V, the most powerful ruler in Europe. Wolsey was stalemated.

Popes in the past had annulled royal marriages to give kings another chance at an heir, but while Wolsey had arguments and precedents, Charles had soldiers surrounding the Vatican. In 1527 his unpaid and mutinous troops sacked Rome, slaughtering thousands of men, women, and children. Even by 16th century standards it was a shocking war crime, and a shameful display of the emperor's poor control over his own troops. But it ended any chance of Wolsey getting Henry his annulment from the papal court.

In a warning of things to come that Anne Boleyn might have taken to heart, Henry now turned on Wolsey and finally had him arrested for high treason. The specification, as good lawyers like Wolsey would have said, was that he had appealed over the head of the King of England to a foreign authority, the Pope, an offense that medieval English law called praemunire.

How had Cardinal Wolsey committed this crime? By bringing Henry's own annulment case before the papal court in Rome. In the ultimate divorce court revenge, Henry charged the lawyer who lost his divorce case with treason for having dared to file it.

"If I had served God as well as I served Henry," Wolsey said, "he would not have given me over in my gray hairs." But Wolsey was already a sick man, and on his slow way to London to stand trial he died of natural causes, cheating Henry and the headsman.