Henry by David Starkey Read Free Book Online Page A

easy. Almost all the participants – including Henry himself – were safely dead, while Polydore was back in Italy and preparing for death himself. 5
    What follows is therefore based on the 1555 text, in which Vergil – unconstrained – was at last free to speak his mind.
    The key to developments, as Vergil sees it, was a power struggle between the two dominant figures on Henry’s council: Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, and Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester and lord privy seal. ‘These men’, Vergil writes, ‘had long nursed secret quarrels betweenthemselves, which their rivalry made bigger and bigger every day.’
    But it was more than a clash of personalities. ‘Each of them’, Vergil points out, ‘had different interests.’ Foxe was a satisfied power; Surrey, a lean and hungry one. Foxe, sitting comfortably on the vast revenues of his bishopric, was able to take a loftily disinterested view of politics, seeking only (Vergil claims) to serve the king and state. Surrey was the opposite. Since ‘his patrimony … had been shipwrecked’ in the Wars of the Roses, his aim in politics was to recover it. Which meant in turn that he put ‘his own private interests’ first in his dealings with the king.
    The earl, ‘sticking determinedly to the king’s side, profitably received great kindnesses from him, which the earl might then grant, give or assign to his family or other people according to his judgment’. This is a loaded but recognizable account of the rise of the Howards as we have traced it in the first eighteen months or so of the reign. By which time it indeed seemed, as Vergil claims, that Surrey, having already ‘loaded his relatives and friends with honours and riches’, might ‘soon entirely take over the prime positions in [Henry’s] household’. 6
    This Foxe determined to prevent. And his instrument was Wolsey.
    Thomas Wolsey would eventually make an impression on contemporaries and posterity second only to Henry himself. But it would be hard to think of a more different start in life.
    Wolsey, or ‘Wulcy’ as he usually spelled his name, was born in about 1475 in Ipswich, where his father was a butcher and grazier. He was a bright boy and was early destined for what was then the only career open to talent: the church. He went to Oxford where, as he graduated BA at the age of only fifteen, he was known as the boy bachelor. By 1497 he was a fellow of Magdalen College and was ordained a priest the following year. He was then studying for a higher degree in theology. This was an odd choice if he already harboured ambitions for the sort of administrative career that had taken his soon-to-be patron Richard Foxe to the summit of political power. At first he thrived at Magdalen, becoming in quick succession bursar, master of Magdalen College School and dean of divinity. But he resigned his fellowship in about 1502.
    Had he trodden on toes, as his enemies claimed? Or was he wanting to make a name for himself in the wider world?
    His first leg up came from Henry’s half-blood uncle, the marquess of Dorset, whose sons Wolsey taught. This established a taste for life in a great household and he became chaplain successively to three important figures: Henry Deane, who was archbishop of Canterbury for two years before his premature death in 1503; Sir Richard Nanfan, treasurer of Calais, who died in 1507; and finally, after Nanfan’s death, Henry VII.
    The king sent him on two or three diplomatic missions. The outcome was not particularly successful but the whirlwind energy he showed got him his first major promotion in the church to dean of Lincoln in February 1509.
    Two months later, Henry VII was dead and Wolsey was still only royal chaplain. 7
    He did, however, already have a certain reputation at court. He was, notes Vergil, ‘learned in letters … a wise man … [and] also bold and absolutely prepared to do anything’.
    This, Foxe decided, was the man to take on Surrey: Wolsey was a hot iron