Thomas Wolsey facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
His Eminence
The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Thomas Wolsey
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| Lord High Chancellor of England | |
| In office 1515–1529 |
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| Preceded by | William Warham |
| Succeeded by | Sir Thomas More |
| Personal details | |
| Born | c. March 1473 Ipswich, Suffolk, England |
| Died | 29 November 1530 (aged 57) Leicester, Leicestershire, England |
| Children | Thomas and Dorothy |
| Parents | Robert Wolsey (father) and Joan Daundy (mother) |
| Education | Magdalen College, Oxford |
| Signature |  |
Thomas Wolsey (c. March 1473 – 29 November 1530) was an English statesman and Catholic bishop. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state. 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. 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 was charged with treason and sentenced to death—charges Henry commonly used against ministers who fell out of his favour—but died from natural causes before his execution.
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Early life
Thomas Wolsey was born about 1473, the son of Robert Wolsey of Ipswich and his wife, Joan Daundy. 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 1507, Wolsey entered the service of King Henry VII. Wolsey's remarkable rise to power from humble origins attests to his intelligence, administrative ability, industriousness, ambition, and rapport with the king.
Career
Wolsey's rise coincided with the accession in April 1509 of Henry VIII. He became the king's most trusted advisor and administrator. 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.
Wolsey's rise to power paralleled his increasing status in the church. Pope Leo X made him a cardinal in 1515. With his roles in the church came great wealth and estates.
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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-reaching. He built a great fortune for himself and was a major benefactor of arts, humanities and education. He projected numerous reforms, with some success in areas such as finance, taxation, educational provision and justice. From the king's perspective, his greatest failure was an inability to get a divorce when Henry wanted a new wife to give him a son who would be the undisputed heir to the throne. Historians agree that Wolsey was a man dogged by other men's failures and his own ambition. In the end, abandoned by the king, Wolsey was charged with treason, but died of natural causes before he could be beheaded.
Taxation
Wolsey made changes to the taxation system. The old fixed tax of 15ths and 10ths meant that those who earned very little had to pay almost as much as the wealthy. With the new income tax the poorer members of society paid much less. This more progressive form of taxation enabled Wolsey to raise enough money for the king's foreign expeditions, bringing in over £300,000. He also raised considerable capital through other means, such as "benevolences", and enforced loans from the nobility, which yielded £200,000 in 1522. Ultimately, Wolsey's fiscal policy became increasingly disliked- his forced loans and benevolences culminated in the Amicable Grant (1525).
Justice
As a legal administrator, Wolsey reinvented the equity court, where the verdict was decided by the judge on the principle of "fairness". As an alternative to the Common Law courts, Wolsey re-established the position of the prerogative courts of the Star Chamber and the Court of Chancery. The system in both courts concentrated on simple, inexpensive cases, and promised impartial justice. He also established the Court of Requests (although this court was only given this name later on) for the poor, where no fees were required. Wolsey's legal reforms were popular, and overflow courts were required to attend to all the cases. Many powerful men who had felt invincible under the law found themselves convicted; for example, in 1515, the Earl of Northumberland was sent to Fleet Prison and in 1516 Lord Abergavenny was accused of illegal retaining.
Wolsey used the Star Chamber to enforce his 1518 policy of Just Price, which attempted to regulate the price of meat in London and other major cities. Those found to be charging too much were prosecuted by the Chamber. After the bad harvest of 1527, Wolsey bought up surplus grain and sold it off cheaply to the needy. This greatly eased disorder and became common practice after a disappointing harvest.
Church reforms
In 1524 and 1527 Wolsey used his powers as papal legate to dissolve 30 decayed monasteries where monastic life had virtually ceased in practice, some in Ipswich and Oxford. He used the income to found a grammar school in Ipswich (The King's School, Ipswich) and Cardinal College in Oxford (in 1532, after Wolsey's fall, the king renamed it King Henry VIII's College; it is now known as Christ Church). In 1528 he began to limit the benefit of clergy. He also attempted, as legate, to force reform on monastic orders like the Augustinian canons.
Art patronage
From 1515, when he became cardinal, until his death, Wolsey used art and architecture to underpin his positions. He initiated a building campaign on a scale not only unprecedented for an English churchman and Lord Chancellor, but also exceeded by few English kings. In so doing, he brought Italian Renaissance ideas, classical embellishments, and architectural models into English architecture.
Among Wolsey's projects were lavish, classically inspired additions to York Palace in London, the Archbishop of York's residence. He supervised the grandiose temporary buildings at the Field of Cloth of Gold and renovated Hampton Court, which he later relinquished to the king. Wolsey's use of architecture as a symbol of power, along with his introduction of Italian classical ornamentation, set a trend continued by Henry VIII and others. Wolsey oversaw tombs for Henry's VIII's parents at Westminster Abbey and negotiated contracts for Henry VIII's tomb as well as one for himself. If these works had been completed as planned, they would be among Europe's largest, most elaborate, and grandest tombs. The college originally founded and planned by Wolsey and refounded by Henry VIII (Christ Church) remains the largest and grandest of all Oxford colleges.
Downfall and death
In spite of having many enemies, 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 directly caused his downfall and arrest. It was rumoured that Anne Boleyn and her faction convinced Henry that Wolsey was deliberately slowing proceedings; as a result, he was arrested in 1529, and the Pope decided that the official decision should be made in Rome, not England.
In 1529, Wolsey was stripped of his government office and property, including his magnificently expanded residence of Hampton Court, which Henry took to replace the Palace of Westminster as his own main London residence. 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 57. Just before his death he reputedly spoke these words:
I see the matter against me how it is framed. But if I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.
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.
Henry VIII contemplated using the impressive black sarcophagus for himself, but Lord Nelson now lies in it, in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral. Henry often receives credit for artistic patronage that properly belongs to Wolsey.
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 School, which today flourishes on another site. All that remains of Wolsey's structure is the former waterside gate, figured by Francis Grose in his Antiquities, which can still be seen on College Street. In 1930 Wolsey was commemorated in Ipswich with a substantial Pageant Play.
He is far from forgotten in the town of Ipswich, 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 on 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.
A statue of Wolsey stands in Leicester's Abbey Park close to the site of his burial. It was donated by the Wolsey hosiery company, a major employer in the city and also named after the cardinal.
The Wolsey Place shopping centre and Woking F.C.'s nickname The Cardinals commemorate the fact Wolsey was visiting Henry VIII at Woking Palace when the news arrived that he had been made a cardinal.
Other
Cardinal Wolsey's bust was used in the 1980s above the London Transport roundel on London's buses in west and south-west London as the symbol of the Cardinal bus district, which was named after him and his residence at Hampton Court.
Carlos Logario, a Spanish doctor practising in England, was the doctor to Thomas Wolsey.
Arms
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Images for kids
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"Cardinal Woolsey" (an archaic spelling) by an unknown artist c.1520. Detail from an oil on panel in the National Portrait Gallery
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Queen Catherine of Aragon, by an unknown artist
See also
In Spanish: Thomas Wolsey para niños
