The Tudors by G. J. Meyer Read Free Book Online Page A

deep obscurity one of the last and most remarkable products of the medieval English church’s meritocracy, an Oxford-educated butcher’s son named Thomas Wolsey, a tightly packed bundle of talent and drive with a sharp eye for the main chance. A priest from age twenty-five, Wolsey had escaped the schoolmaster’s life for which he seemed destined by securing appointment as one of several chaplains in the household of the archbishop of Canterbury. From there he moved on to become chaplain to the governor of Calais, England’s last foothold on the coast of France, and then somehow at the court of Henry VII himself. Thus he was in royal service when Henry VIII took the throne in 1509, and that was all the advantage he needed. The new king first made him almoner, dispenser of charity, and then in 1511 appointed him to the council, the circle of royal advisers.
    When in the fourth year of his reign Henry wanted to invade France—his opportunity to do so came in the form of an invitation from Pope Julius II to join a so-called Holy League against King Louis XII—he got no encouragement from the two dominant members of his council,Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fox. This was Wolsey’s cue to rise and meet his fate. Almost forty years old now, he offered the twenty-two-year-old king not only approval but a willingness to take responsibility for the logistics of the entire French campaign—a tremendously challenging assignment. Again Henry was freed, first to pursue his dreams of military greatness without actually having to do very much, and then, after he had landed in France, to indulge in jousting and festivities rather than subjecting himself to actual combat or, worse, the hard toil of keeping an army in good order on foreign soil. As a precautionary measure, before leaving England Henry saw to the execution of his cousin Edmund de la Pole, who by then had been a prisoner in the Tower for seven years. In strict legalistic terms the killing was justified: de la Pole, younger brother of the John de la Pole who had masterminded the Lambert Simnel affair, had committed treason by claiming the crown for himself. By the time of his execution, however, he had become an impotent and even pathetic figure. In practical terms the execution was simply another Tudor murder.
    This was Henry’s first war, and like all his European campaigns it turned out to be sterile militarily, financially, and diplomatically. The old-timers on the council had been entirely right in attempting to discourage him. The king’s partners in the Holy League made a fool of him. His father-in-law Ferdinand of Spain betrayed him not once but three times, the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian and the Swiss mercenary army whose services Henry had purchased at immense expense once each. The bill, including both direct costs and the subsidies that Henry had naïvely paid his faithless allies, was nearly £1 million. This wiped out everything inherited from Henry VII and plunged the Crown into financial difficulties from which it would emerge only intermittently over the next century and more. But Henry returned home convinced he had achieved great things. Together his troops and those of Emperor Maximilian had captured the towns of Thérouanne and Tournai, successes of some value to Maximilian but none to England. At one of the few points of real drama English horsemen had put the French cavalry to flight in what was jokingly named the Battle of the Spurs, a skirmish of no consequence in which Henry played no part. In fact, though he loved to play at jousting and was big and strong and well equipped enough to be successful at it, Henry would never in his lifeface an enemy in battle. But he heaped upon his fellow campaigners rewards that might have been excessive even if something of consequence had been accomplished. Many were knighted, and Henry’s boon companion Charles Brandon, son of the William Brandon who had carried Henry VII’s banner at Bosworth and been cut