Thomas Wolsey

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Thomas Wolsey : biography

March 1473 – 1530

The same can be said for Wolsey’s legal reforms. By making justice accessible to all and encouraging more people to bring their cases to court, the system was ultimately abused. The courts became overloaded with incoherent, tenuous cases, which would have been far too expensive to have rambled on in the Common Law courts. Wolsey eventually ordered all minor cases out of the Star Chamber in 1528. The result of this venture was further resentment from the nobility and the gentry.

Failures with the Church

As well as his State duties, Wolsey simultaneously attempted to exert his influence over the Church in England. As cardinal and, from 1524, lifetime papal legate, Wolsey was continually vying for control over others in the Church. His principal rival was William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who made it more difficult for Wolsey to follow through with his plans for reform. Despite making promises to reform the bishoprics of England and Ireland, and, in 1519, encouraging monasteries to embark on a programme of reform, he did nothing to bring about these changes.

Memorials

  • Before Wolsey was removed from power, he planned to make his home town of Ipswich a seat of learning. He built a substantial college, which for two years, 1528–1530, was parent of the Queen Elizabeth School or Ipswich Grammar School, which today flourishes on another site. All that remains of the Wolsey structure is the former waterside gate, figured by Francis Grose in his Antiquities, which can still be seen in College Street.
  • In 1930 Wolsey was commemorated in Ipswich with a substantial Pageant Play.
  • He is far from forgotten in the town, an appeal having been launched in October 2009 to erect a statue there as a permanent commemoration. Arising from this project, a more-than-life-sized bronze statue to Cardinal Wolsey, shown seated facing south towards St Peter’s Church (the former mediaeval Augustinian Priory Church of St Peter and St Paul, which Wolsey annexed as the chapel of his College of Ipswich), teaching from a book, with a familiar cat at his side, was unveiled from beneath a covering flag on 29 June 2011 near the site of the Wolsey home in St Nicholas Street, Ipswich. After a civic procession from the Tower Church, the image, created by sculptor David Annand, was dedicated by blessing in the name of the Holy Trinity by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, and launched in the civic capacity by the Mayor of Ipswich, in the presence of a crowd of onlookers.Ipswich, Evening Star, 30 June 2011.

Downfall

In spite of having many enemies, Cardinal Wolsey retained Henry VIII’s confidence until Henry decided to seek an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Wolsey’s failure to secure the annulment is widely perceived to have directly caused his downfall and arrest.

Ultimately, Anne Boleyn and her faction, it was rumored, convinced Henry that Wolsey was deliberately slowing proceedings, and as a result, he was arrested in 1529, and the Pope decided the official decision should be made in Rome anyway.

In 1529 Wolsey was stripped of his government office and property, including his magnificently expanded residence of Hampton Court, which Henry chose to replace the Palace of Westminster as his own main London residence. However, Wolsey was permitted to remain Archbishop of York. He travelled to Yorkshire for the first time in his career, but at Cawood in North Yorkshire, he was accused of treason and ordered to London by Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland. In great distress, he set out for the capital with his personal chaplain, Edmund Bonner. He fell ill on the journey, and died at Leicester on 29 November 1530, around the age of 60. "If I had served my God", the Cardinal said remorsefully, "as diligently as I did my king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs.""" By J H Merle d’Aubigné, p.515

In keeping with his practice of erecting magnificent buildings at Hampton Court, Westminster and Oxford, Wolsey had planned a magnificent tomb at Windsor by Benedetto da Rovezzano and Giovanni da Maiano but he was buried in Leicester Abbey (now Abbey Park) without a monument. After his own even grander plans fell through, Henry VIII eventually intended the impressive black sarcophagus for himself, but Lord Nelson now lies in it, within the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Henry often receives credit for artistic patronage that properly belongs to Wolsey.’Early Tudor Tombs’ by Edward Chaney