Insofar as he wielded something close to supreme authority in both Church and State, Thomas Wolsey was perhaps the most powerful person in medieval and early modern English history who was not a head of state. This extraordinary power, combined with Wolsey’s rapid fall from grace at a pivotal moment in English history—a symbolic moment of transition from ‘medieval’ to ‘early modern’ England—makes the cardinal a perennial source of historical fascination. Glenn Richardson’s biography of Wolsey provides an accessible and authoritative introduction to the cardinal, and this one-stop biography will surely become the first port of call for both scholars and general readers interested in Wolsey, as well as providing a suitable introduction for students engaging with Wolsey for the first time.
As Richardson notes in the introduction, the evidence for Wolsey’s acts is vast—a significant challenge to a biographer, in and of itself—and yet we still know little of the man himself. Historically, Wolsey ‘was posthumously made to stand for all that Henry no longer wanted himself or his kingdom to be’ (p. 3), but Richardson’s assessment of Wolsey is more sympathetic. He follows the trend of recent scholarship in emphasising Wolsey’s role as a prince of the church of European as well as merely English significance, arguing that Wolsey’s diplomatic efforts made England ‘a force to be reckoned with’ in Henry VIII’s early reign. On the other hand, Richardson is sceptical of Wolsey’s effectiveness as Lord Chancellor and Papal Legate a latere (papal plenipotentiary), arguing that Wolsey spread himself too thinly across other responsibilities to be able to achieve much. However, Richardson views Wolsey as a prolific and effective patron of learning and the arts. The book emphasises Wolsey’s role as a courtier, ‘fixer’ and political ‘spin doctor’ in Henry’s early reign (pp. 13–14).
The biography is structured around Wolsey’s multitude of roles: international diplomat, ‘chief executive’ of government, papal legate, and benefactor, before dealing with the unravelling of Wolsey’s rule and his fall from grace. Wolsey’s early life was characterised by his intellectual brilliance and rapid advance through the Church’s hierarchy; an implicit question that hangs over the chapter on Wolsey’s early life—which there simply is not enough evidence to answer—is why Wolsey (a Doctor of Divinity with a strong interest in Humanist learning) pursued the path of ecclesiastical and political power rather than writing and learning. Whatever the truth, Wolsey soon established himself as a diplomat and negotiator of international standing. Richardson argues that, while Wolsey may have entertained Erasmian ideals of peace for its own sake, his primary reason for pursuing peace at the Field of the Cloth of Gold was to enhance Henry’s status as a great and magnanimous peacemaking prince, the equal of his rival Francis I of France.
Richardson portrays Wolsey’s role as Cardinalis Pacificus and universal peacemaker in Europe as driven by Humanist idealism yet tempered by a considerable dose of political realism; in 1521, ‘Wolsey did want peace, but only for so long as there was no better alternative’ (pp. 196–7). The solemnisation of major international peace treaties in and around London lent a prestige to Henry as a potentate of European stature that was as grand as any military victory, even if some of the treaties proved hard to implement or fleeting in their effects.
Richardson downplays the suggestion of some biographers of Wolsey that Wolsey had a serious ambition to secure the papacy for himself, arguing that Wolsey’s status of legate a latere primarily enabled Wolsey’s domestic ecclesiastical policy. Wolsey was prevented by his governmental duties from ever going to Rome, which limited his influence within the universal church in spite of his high rank. Wolsey was sincere in his desire for reform of the English church in accordance with Erasmian concerns, focussing on clerical education, sound preaching, proper administration of the sacraments, and observance of the calendar, as well as the reformation and dissolution of the monasteries. Wolsey’s plenipotentiary authority prefigured and established the precedent for Thomas Cromwell’s later authority as Henry VIII’s vicar general in the dissolution of the monasteries. This was not the only way in which Wolsey unwittingly prepared the way for the Henrician supremacy. In 1515, he capitulated in a case of praemunire, effectively backing Henry’s view that the king was subject to no ecclesiastical authority. Notwithstanding his position in the church, Wolsey was very much ‘the king’s cardinal’ (p. 132).
Wolsey’s role as a patron receives extended treatment in this biography, correcting what has sometimes been an omission in earlier texts. As Richardson notes, as a non-noble, Cardinal Wolsey’s patronage was not constrained by a dynasty or family to whom he owed allegiance, like the Medici cardinals. Wolsey’s status as a ‘self-made man’ (p. 156) allowed him freedom in choosing how to distribute largesse from his immense income of £30,000 a year, but it also meant he had no ready-made network of friends and allies to fall back on.
Richardson’s biography refreshingly avoids any hint of earlier teleological accounts of Wolsey that cast his entire career in the light of his eventual fall. The cardinal made mistakes and bore some blame for the demise of his personal empire of power and patronage, but he was also a victim of circumstance who, as a low-born royal servant, always depended on Henry’s favour and never had any truly independent power. The book is easy to follow and balances narrative progression with a thematic focus on key areas of Wolsey’s achievements, although I feel each chapter would have benefited from a brief conclusion gathering together its main insights.
Overall, in an admirably concise treatment, Richardson does justice to Thomas Wolsey’s complexity, drawing out the cardinal’s desire to be seen as a learned figure and patron of learning and eschewing simplistic portrayals of Wolsey as a schemer or overreacher. For all that, however, Richardson’s most telling judgement on Wolsey is that ‘His ambitions … ever outran his capacity to achieve them’ (p. 151). In spite of his immense and impressive abilities, Wolsey simply bit off more than he could chew. This balanced, nuanced, and up-to-date biography will hopefully make Wolsey accessible to a new generation of scholars and bring his extraordinary legacy the attention it deserves.
