Henry VIII and His Court Part 2

"To drynke and for to eate Swete hypocras[3] and swete meate To keep his flesh chast In Lent for a repast He eateth capon's stew, Fesaunt and partriche mewed Hennes checkynges and pygges."

(Skelton, it should be explained, was the Poet Laureate.) It appears that on this score of his delicate digestion, Wolsey procured a dispensation from the Pope for the Lenten observances.

He had not a robust const.i.tution, and suffered from many ailments. On one occasion, Henry sent him some pills--it is not recorded, however, that Wolsey partook of them.

(_e_) _His Orange_

Cavendish speaks of a peculiar habit of the great Cardinal. He tells us that, "Whenever he was in a crowd or pestered with suitors, he most commonly held to his nose a very fair orange whereof the meat or substance within was taken out, and filled up again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar and other confections against the pestilent airs!" The habit may have given offence to importunate mayors and others--the Poet Laureate himself may have been thus affronted by the imperious Cardinal, when he wrote:

"He is set so high In his hierarchy Of frantic phrenesy And foolish fantasy That in the Chamber of Stars All matters there he mars.

Clapping his rod on the Board No man dare speak a word;

Some say "yes" and some Sit still as they were dumb.

Thus thwarting over them, He ruleth all the roast With bragging and with boast.

Borne up on every side With pomp and with pride."

As a proof of his sensuous tastes, Cavendish wrote:

"The subtle perfumes of musk and sweet amber There wanted none to perfume all my chamber."

(_f_) _His Fool_

That Wolsey, like Henry, was possessed of a sense of humour we have abundant evidence in his utterances. Yet he kept a Fool about him--possibly in order that he might glean the opinions of the courtiers and common people. After Wolsey's fall, he sent this Fool as a present to King Henry. But so loth was the Fool to leave his master and to suffer what he considered a social descent, that six tall yeomen had to conduct him to the Court; "for," says Cavendish, "the poor fool took on and fired so in such a rage when he saw that he must needs depart from my lord. Yet, notwithstanding, they conveyed him with Master Norris to the Court, where the King received him most gladly."[4]

(_g_) _Hampton Court_

At his Palace of Hampton Court there were 280 beds always ready for strangers. These beds were of great splendour, being made of red, green and russet velvet, satin and silk, and all with magnificent canopies. The counterpanes, of which there were many hundreds, we are told, were of "tawny damask, lined with blue buckram; blue damask with flowers of gold; others of red satin with a great rose in the midst, wrought with needlework and with garters." Another is described as "of blue sarcenet, with a tree in the midst and beastes with scriptures, all wrought with needlework." The splendour of these beds beggars all description.

(_h_) _His Plate_

His gold and silver plate at Hampton Court alone, was valued by the Venetian Amba.s.sador as worth 300,000 golden ducats, which would be the equivalent in modern coin of a million and a half! The silver was estimated at a similar amount. It is said that the quality was no less striking than the quant.i.ty, for Wolsey insisted on the most artistic workmans.h.i.+p. He had also a bowl of gold "with a cover garnished with rubies, diamonds, pearls and a sapphire set in a goblet." These gorgeous vessels were decorated with the Cardinal's hat, and sometimes too, less appropriately perhaps, with images of Christ!

It is said that the decorations and furniture of Wolsey's Palace were on so splendid a scale that it threw the King's into the shade.

(_i_) _His Prodigal Splendour_

Like a wise minister, Wolsey did not neglect to entertain the King and keep his mind on trivial things. Hampton Court had become the scene of unrestrained gaiety. Music was always played on these occasions, and the King frequently took part in the revels, dancing, masquerading and singing, accompanying himself on the harpsichord or lute.

The description in Cavendish's "Life of Wolsey" of the famous feast given by the Cardinal to the French amba.s.sadors gives a graphic account of his prodigal splendour. As to the delicacies which were furnished at the supper, Cavendish writes:--

"Anon came up the second course with so many dishes, subtleties and curious devices, which were above a hundred in number, of so goodly proportion and costly, that I suppose the Frenchmen never saw the like.

The wonder was no less than it was worthy, indeed. There were castles with images in the same; Paul's Church and steeple, in proportion for the quant.i.ty as well counterfeited as the painter should have painted it upon a cloth or wall. There were beasts, birds, fowls of divers kinds, and personages, most lively made and counterfeit in dishes; some fighting, as it were, with swords, some with guns and crossbows; some vaulting and leaping; some dancing with ladies, some in complete harness, justing with spears, and with many more devices than I am able with my wit to describe."

Giustinian, speaking of one of these banquets, writes: "The like of it was never given either by Cleopatra or Caligula." We must remember that Wolsey surrounded himself with such worldly vanities less from any vulgarity in his nature than from a desire to work upon the common mind, ever ready to be impressed by pomp and circ.u.mstance.

_The Mind of Wolsey_

If the outer man was thus caparisoned, what of Wolsey's mind? Its furniture, too, beggared all description. Amiable as Wolsey could be, he could also on occasions be as brusque as his royal master. A contemporary writer says: "I had rather be commanded to Rome than deliver letters to him and wait an answer. When he walks in the Park, he will suffer no suitor to come nigh unto him, but commands him away as far as a man will shoot an arrow."

Yet to others he could be of sweet and gentle disposition and ready to listen and to help with advice.

"Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, But to those men that sought him sweet as summer."

To those who regard characters as either black or white, Wolsey's was indeed a contradiction. Charges of a personal character have been brought against the great prelate, which need not here be referred to, unless it be to say that if they were true, by so much the less he was a priest, by so much more he was a man.

_His Ambition_

There is no doubt that the Cardinal made several attempts to become Pope--but this enterprise was doomed to failure, although in it he was supported warmly by the King. To gain this end much bribery was needed, "especially to the younger men who are generally the most needy," as the Cardinal said. Wolsey was a sufficiently accomplished social diplomatist to conciliate the young, for their term of office begins to-morrow, and gold is the key of consciences. He was hated and feared, flattered, cajoled and brow-beaten where possible. But as a source of income he was ever held in high regard by the Pope.

His own annual income from bribes--royal and otherwise--was indeed stupendous, though these were received with the knowledge of the King.

So great was the power Wolsey attained to that Fox said of him: "We have to deal with the Cardinal, who is not Cardinal but King." He wrote of himself, "_Ego et rex meus_," and had the initials, "T. W." and the Cardinal's hat stamped on the King's coins. These were among the charges brought against him in his fall.

To his ambitions there was no limit. For the spoils of office he had "an unbounded stomach." As an instance of his pretensions it is recorded that during the festivities of the Emperor's visit to England in 1520, "Wolsey alone sat down to dinner with the royal party, while peers, like the Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham, performed menial offices for the Cardinal, as well as for Emperor, King and Queen."

When he met Charles at Bruges in 1521 "he treated the Emperor of Spain as an equal. He did not dismount from his mule, but merely doffed his cap, and embraced as a brother the temporal head of Christendom."

"He never granted audience either to English peers or foreign amba.s.sadors"

(says Guistinian) "until the third or fourth time of asking." Small wonder that he incurred the hatred of the n.o.bility and the jealousy of the King.

During his emba.s.sy to France in 1527, it is said that "his attendants served cap in hand, and when bringing the dishes knelt before him in the act of presenting them. Those who waited on the Most Christian King, kept their caps on their heads, dispensing with such exaggerated ceremonies."

Had Wolsey's insolence been tempered by his sense of humour, his fall might have been on a softer place, as his Fool is believed to have remarked.

_His Policy_

In his policy of the reform of the Church, Wolsey dealt as a giant with his gigantic task. To quote a pa.s.sage from Taunton: "Ignorance, he knew, was the root of most of the mischief of the day; so by education he endeavoured to give men the means to know better. Falsehood can only be expelled by Truth.... Had the other prelates of the age realized the true cause of the religious disputes, and how much they themselves were responsible for the present Ignorance, the sacred name of religion would not have had so b.l.o.o.d.y a record in this country."

Wolsey's idea was, in fact, to bring the clergy in touch with the thought and conditions of the time. It is wonderful to reflect that this one brain should have controlled the secular and ecclesiastical destinies of Christendom.

To reform the Church would seem to have been an almost superhuman undertaking, but to a man of Wolsey's greatness obstacles are only incentives to energy. He was "eager to cleanse the Church from the acc.u.mulated evil effects of centuries of human pa.s.sions." A great man is stronger than a system, while he lives; but the system often outlives the man. Wolsey lived in a time whose very atmosphere was charged with intrigue. Had he not yielded to a Government by slaughter, he would not have existed.

The Cardinal realised that ignorance was one of the chief causes of the difficulties in the Church. So with great zeal he devoted himself to the founding of two colleges, one in Ipswich, the other in Oxford. His scheme was never entirely carried out, for on Wolsey's fall his works were not completed. The College at Ipswich fell into abeyance, but his college at Oxford was spared and refounded. Originally called Cardinal College, it was renamed Christ Church, so that not even in name was it allowed to be a memorial of Wolsey's greatness.

_His Genius_

For a long time Wolsey was regarded merely as the type of the ambitious and arrogant ecclesiastic whom the Reformation had made an impossibility in the future. It was not till the ma.s.s of doc.u.ments relating to the reign of Henry VIII. was published that it was possible to estimate the greatness of the Cardinal's schemes. He took a wider view of the problems of his time than any statesman had done before. He had a genius for diplomacy. He was an artist and enthusiast in politics. They were not a pursuit to him, but a pa.s.sion. Not perhaps unjustly has he been called the greatest statesman England ever produced.

England, at the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign, was weakened after the struggles of the Civil Wars, and wished to find peace at home at the cost of obscurity abroad. But it was this England which Wolsey's policy raised "from a third-rate state of little account into the highest circle of European politics." Wolsey did not show his genius to the best advantage in local politics, but in diplomacy. He could only be inspired by the gigantic things of statecraft. When he was set by Henry to deal with the sordid matter of the divorce, he felt restricted and cramped. He was better as a patriot than as a royal servant. It was this feeling of being sullied and unnerved in the uncongenial skirmis.h.i.+ngs of the divorce that jarred on his sensitive nature and made his ambitious hand lose its cunning. A first-rate man cannot do second-rate things well.