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  1. Thomas Wolsey - Wikipedia

    During his 14 years as chancellor, Wolsey had more power than any other Crown servant in English history. This led to his being hated by much of the nobility, who believed that power should be theirs. The king protected him from being attacked. As long as he was in the king's favour, Wolsey had great freedom in domestic matters, and had his hand in nearly every aspect of them. For much of the time, Henry VIII had complete confidence in him, an…

    During his 14 years as chancellor, Wolsey had more power than any other Crown servant in English history. This led to his being hated by much of the nobility, who believed that power should be theirs. The king protected him from being attacked. As long as he was in the king's favour, Wolsey had great freedom in domestic matters, and had his hand in nearly every aspect of them. For much of the time, Henry VIII had complete confidence in him, and as Henry's interests inclined more towards foreign policy, he was willing to give Wolsey free rein in reforming the management of domestic affairs, for which Wolsey had grand plans. Historian John Guy explains Wolsey's methods:

    Only in the broadest respects was [the king] taking independent decisions. ... It was Wolsey who almost invariably calculated the available options and ranked them for royal consideration; who established the parameters of each successive debate; who controlled the flow of official information; who selected the king's secretaries, middle-ranked officials, and JPs; and who promulgated decisions himself had largely shaped, if not strictly taken.— Guy 1988, p. 87

    Operating with the king's firm support, and with special powers over the church given by the Pope as legate, Wolsey dominated civic affairs, administration, the law, the church, and foreign policy. He was amazingly energetic and far-reach…

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    Thomas Wolsey was an English statesman and Catholic cardinal. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state. He also held important ecclesiastical appointments. These included the Archbishop of York—the second most important role in the English church—and that of papal legate. His appointment as a cardinal by Pope Leo X in 1515 gave him precedence over all other English clergy.

    The highest political position Wolsey attained was Lord Chancellor, the king's chief adviser (formally, as his successor and disciple Thomas Cromwell was not). In that position, he enjoyed great freedom and was often depicted as the alter rex ("other king"). After failing to negotiate an annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Wolsey fell out of favour and was stripped of his government titles. He retreated to York to fulfil his ecclesiastical duties as archbishop, a position he nominally held but had neglected during his years in government. He was recalled to London to answer to charges of treason—charges Henry commonly used against ministers who fell out of his favour—but died from natural causes on the way.

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    Thomas Wolsey was born in about 1473, the son of Robert Wolsey of Ipswich and his wife, Joan Daundy. Widespread traditions identify his father as a butcher; his modest origin became a topic of criticism later, when he amassed wealth and power that critics thought more befitting a member of the high nobility. Wolsey attended Ipswich School and Magdalen College School before studying theology at Magdalen College, Oxford.

    On 10 March 1498, he was ordained as a priest in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and remained in Oxford, first as the Master of Magdalen College School, and soon the dean of divinity. From 1500 to 1509, Wolsey held a living as rector of St Mary's church, Limington, in Somerset.

    In 1502, he became a chaplain to Henry Deane, archbishop of Canterbury, who died the following year. He was then taken into the household of Sir Richard Nanfan, who made Wolsey executor of his estate. After Nanfan's death in 1507, Wolsey entered the service of King Henry VII.

    Wolsey benefited from Henry VII's introduction of measures to curb the power of the nobility; the king was willing to favour those from more humble backgrounds. Henry VII appointed Wolsey royal chaplain. In this position Wolsey served as secretary to Richard Foxe, who recognised Wolsey's ability, dedication, industry and willingness to take on tedious tasks. Wolsey's remarkable rise to power from humble origins attests to his intelligence, administrative ability, industriousness, ambition, and rapport with the king. In April 1508, Wolsey was sent to Scotland to discuss with King James IV rumours of the renewal of the Auld Alliance.

    Wolsey's rise coincided with the accession in April 1509 of Henry VIII, whose character, policies and attitude to diplomacy differed significantly from his father's. In 1509 Henry appointed Wolsey to the post of almoner, a position that gave him a seat on the Privy Council and an opportunity to attain greater prominence and establish personal rapport with the king. A factor in Wolsey's rise was the young Henry VIII's relative lack of interest in the details of government during his early years.

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    The primary counsellors Henry VIII inherited from his father were Richard Foxe (c. 1448–1528, Bishop of Winchester 1501–1528) and William Warham (c. 1450–1532, Archbishop of Canterbury 1503–1532). They were cautious and conservative, advising the king to act as a careful administrator like his father. Henry soon appointed to his Privy Council men more sympathetic to his own views and inclinations. Until 1511, Wolsey was adamantly antiwar, but when the king expressed his enthusiasm for an invasion of France, Wolsey adapted his views to the king's and gave persuasive speeches to the Privy Council in favour of war. Warham and Foxe, who did not share the king's enthusiasm for the French war, fell from power (1515/1516), and Wolsey took over as the king's most trusted advisor and administrator. When Warham resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1515, probably under pressure from Wolsey, Henry appointed Wolsey in his place.

    Wolsey made careful moves to destroy or neutralise other courtiers' influence. He helped cause the fall of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham in 1521, and in 1527 he prosecuted, unsuccessfully, Henry's close friend William Compton and Henry's ex-mistress Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon, for adultery. In the case of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, Wolsey adopted a different strategy, attempting to win Suffolk's favour by his actions after the duke secretly married Henry's sister Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France, much to the king's displeasure. Wolsey advised the king not to execute the newlyweds but to embrace them; whether this was out of care for the couple or because of the threat they posed to his own safety remains unclear. The bride, both as sister to Henry and as Dowager Queen of France, had high royal status that could have threatened Wolsey had she so chosen.

    Wolsey's rise to a position of great secular power paralleled his increasing status in the church. He became a canon of Windsor in 1511. In 1514 he was made Bishop of Lincoln and then Archbishop of York in the same year. Pope Leo X made him a cardinal in 1515, with the titular church of St Cecilia in Trastevere. In 1518 he was appointed as abbot of St. Albans and bishop of Bath. Following the success of the English campaign in France and the peace negotiations that followed, Wolsey's ecclesiastical career advanced further: in 1523 he became Bishop of Durham, a post with wide political powers, and thus became known as Prince-Bishop of Durham. In 1529 he moved on from the bishop position in Durham to become the Bishop of Winchester. With his roles in the church came great wealth and estates, and with the accumulation of his different roles in the church he made upwards of £35,000 a year.

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    The Anglo-French War (1512–14) gave Wolsey a significant opportunity to demonstrate his talents in foreign policy. A convenient justification for going to war came in 1511 in the form of a plea for help from Pope Julius II, who was beginning to feel threatened by France. England formed an alliance with Julius, King Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor against King Louis XII of France.

    The first English campaign against France proved unsuccessful, partly due to the unreliability of the alliance with Ferdinand. Henry learned from the mistakes of the campaign and in 1513, still with papal support, launched a joint attack on France with Maximilian, successfully capturing two French cities and causing the French to retreat. Wolsey's ability to keep a large number of troops supplied and equipped for the duration of the war proved a major factor in the English success. He also had a key role in negotiating the Anglo-French treaty of 7 August 1514, which secured a temporary peace between the two nations. Under this treaty, Louis XII would marry Henry's young sister, Mary. In addition England was able to keep the captured city of Tournai and secure an increase in the annual pension France paid.

    Meanwhile, a turnover of rulers in Europe threatened to diminish England's influence. With Henry's sister, Mary, married to Louis XII on 9 October 1514, an alliance was formed, but Louis was not in good health. Less than three months later, he died and was succeeded by the young and ambitious Francis I.

    Queen Mary had allegedly secured a promise from Henry that if Louis died, she could marry whomever she pleased. Following Louis's death, she secretly married Suffolk, with Francis I's assistance, which prevented another marriage alliance. As Mary was the only princess Henry could use to secure marriage alliances, this was a bitter blow. Wolsey then proposed an alliance with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire against France.
    The death of Ferdinand II of Aragon, Henry VIII's father-in-law and England's closest ally, in 1516 was a further blow. Ferdinand was succeeded by Charles V, who immediately proposed peace with France. After Maximilian I's death in 1519, Charles was elected in his stead; thus Charles ruled a substantial portion of Europe and English influence became limited on the continent.

    But Wolsey managed to assert English influence by other means. In 1517, Pope Leo X sought peace in Europe to form a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. In 1518 Wolsey was made Papal Legate in England, enabling him to realise Leo's desire for peace by organising the Treaty of London. The treaty showed Wolsey as the arbiter of Europe, organising a massiv…

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