Wolsey, Thomas c.1475-1530
English cardinal and politician

He was born in Ipswich, the son of a prosperous butcher and grazier. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and became a Fellow then master in the seminary attached to the foundation. Having been ordained in 1498, he was given the living at Lymington in Somerset; influence later brought him the post of secretary and domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. With the primate's death in 1502 Wolsey was endowed with the chaplaincy of Calais, where his ability brought him to the notice of Henry VII. Appointed a chaplain to the king (1507), he cultivated the favour of Bishop Fox, the Lord Privy Seal, and that of the treasurer of the royal household, Sir Thomas Lovel. His skill and ability brought him the lucrative deanery of Lincoln. With the accession of Henry VIII, Wolsey strove to render himself indispensable. His progress was steady and his growing need for money was only matched by his increasing arrogance. In 1513 Wolsey accompanied Henry to France. His conduct of the negotiations between Henry and Francis I brought him the bishopric of Lincoln, the archbishopric of York (1514) and a cardinalate (1515), and the promise of Gallic support for further claims to preferment. In the same year, he was made Lord Chancellor and awarded by Henry the administration of the see of Bath and Wells and the temporalities of the wealthy abbey of St Alban's. Wolsey even hazarded a breach of the statute of praemunire by accepting the appointment of papal legate from Leo X. Deep in the king's confidence, he had attained a position more powerful than that enjoyed by any minister of the Crown since Thomas (�) Becket. As the controller of England's foreign policy he lent support to France and Germany alternately, entering into a secret alliance with the Emperor Charles V against Francis I, always seeking to improve England's position, but this policy ultimately proved unsuccessful. His aim in England was absolute monarchy with himself behind the throne. He established Cardinal's College (Christ Church) at Oxford and a grammar school at Ipswich. Wolsey's downfall originated in his prevarication and evasiveness over the question of Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which provoked the king's anger and aroused the enmity of the Anne Boleyn faction and of many other enemies outraged by the cardinal's haughtiness, his parvenu display, and his punishing fiscal exactions. His outmoded assertion of the ecclesiastical right to dominate secular policy was unacceptable to the powerful aristocracy of the counting-house bred by the new spirit of mercantilism. Prosecuted under the statute of praemunire in 1529, the cardinal had to surrender the Great Seal and retire to Winchester. Impeachment by the House of Lords was followed by the forfeiture of all his property to the Crown. Arrested again on a charge of high treason, he died while journeying from his York diocese to London.

Bibliography: A F Pollard, Wolsey (1929)