WOLSEY

1514-1529.

"THERE are many things in the commonwealth of Nowhere that I rather wish than hope to see embodied in our own." It was with these words of characteristic irony that More closed the first work which embodied the dreams of the New Learning. Destined as they were to fulfilment in the course of ages, its schemes of social, religious, and political reform broke in fact helplessly against the temper of the time. At the moment when More was pleading the cause of justice between rich and poor social discontent was being fanned by new exactions and sterner laws into a fiercer flame. While he was advocating toleration and Christian comprehension Christendom stood on the verge of a religious strife which was to rend it forever in pieces. While he aimed sarcasm after sarcasm at king-worship the new despotism of the Monarchy was being organized into a vast and all-embracing system by the genius of Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey was the son of a wealthy townsman of Ipswich whose ability had raised him into notice at the close of the preceding reign, and who had been taken by Bishop Fox into the service of the Crown. The activity which he showed in organizing and equipping the royal army for the campaign of 1513 won for him a foremost place in the confidence of Henry the Eighth. The young King lavished dignities on him with a profusion that marked the completeness of his trust. From the post of royal almoner he was advanced in 1513 to the see of Tour-nay. At the opening of 1514 he became bishop of Lincoln; at its close he was translated to the archbishopric of York. In 1515 Henry procured from Rome his elevation to the office of cardinal and raised him to the post of chancellor. So quick a rise stirred envy in the men about him; and his rivals noted bitterly the songs, the dances, and carousals which had won, as they believed, the favor of the king. But sensuous and worldly as was Wolsey's temper, his powers lifted him high above the level of a court favorite. His noble bearing, his varied ability, his enormous capacity for toil, the natural breadth and grandeur of his mind, marked him naturally out as the minister of a king who showed throughout his reign a keen eye for greatness in the men about him.

Wolsey's mind was European rather than English; it dwelt little on home affairs but turned almost exclusively to the general politics of the European powers and of England as one of them. Whatever might be Henry's disappointment in the issue of his French campaigns the young King might dwell with justifiable pride on the general result of his foreign policy. If his direct gains from the Holy League had been little, he had at any rate won security on the side of France. The loss of Navarre and of the Milanese left Lewis a far less dangerous neighbor than he had seemed at Henry's accession, while the appearance of the Swiss soldiery during the war of the League destroyed the military supremacy which France had enjoyed from the days of Charles the Eighth. But if the war had freed England from the fear of French pressure Wolsey was as resolute to free her from the dictation of Ferdinand, and this the resentment of Henry at his unscrupulous desertion enabled him to bring about. Crippled as she was, France was no longer formidable as a foe; and her alliance would not only break the supremacy of Ferdinand over English policy but secure Henry on his northern border. Her husband's death at Flodden and the infancy of their son raised Margaret Tudor to the Scotch regency, and seemed to promise Henry a hold on his troublesome neighbors. But her marriage a year later with the Earl of Angus, Archibald Douglas, soon left the Regent powerless among the factions of warring nobles. She appealed to her brother for aid, while her opponents called on the Duke of Albany, the son of the Albany who had been driven to France in 1484 and heir to the crown after the infant king to return and take the regency. Albany held broad lands in France; he had won fame as a French general; and Scotland in his hands would be simply a means of French attack. A French alliance not only freed Henry from dependence on Ferdinand but would meet this danger from the north; and in the summer of 1514 a treaty was concluded with the French King and ratified by his marriage with Henry's youngest sister, Mary Tudor.

The treaty was hardly signed when the death of Lewis in January 1515 undid this marriage and placed his young cousin, Francis the First, upon the throne. But the old king's death brought no change of policy. Francis at once prepared to renew the war in Italy, and for this purpose he needed the friendship of his two neighbors in the west and the north, Henry and the ruler of the Netherlands, the young Charles of Austria. Both were willing to give their friendship. Charles, jealous of Maximilian's desire to bring him into tutelage, looked to a French alliance as a security against the pressure of the Emperor, while Henry and Wolsey were eager to dispatch Francis on a campaign across the Alps, which would at any rate while it lasted remove all fear of an attack on England. A yet stronger ground in the minds of both Charles and Henry for facilitating the French King's march was their secret belief that his invasion of the Milanese would bring the Young king to inevitable ruin, for the Emperor and Ferdinand of Aragon were leagued with every Italian state against Francis, and a Swiss army prepared to dispute with him the possession of the Milanese. Charles therefore betrothed himself to the French King's sister, and Henry concluded a fresh treaty with him in the spring of 1515. But the dreams of both rulers were roughly broken. Francis succeeded both in crossing the Alps and in beating the Swiss army. His victory in the greatest battle of the age, the battle of Marignano, at once gave him the Milanese and laid the rest of Italy at his feet. The work of the Holy Alliance was undone, and the dominion which England had dreaded in the hands of Lewis the Twelfth was restored in the younger and more vigorous hands of his successor. Neither the King nor the Cardinal could hide their chagrin when the French minister announced his master's victory, but it was no time for an open breach. All Wolsey could do was to set himself secretly to hamper the French King's work. English gold hindered any reconciliation between France and the Swiss, and enabled Maximilian to lead a joint army of Swiss and Imperial soldiers in the following year over the Alps.

But the campaign broke down. At this juncture indeed the death of Ferdinand in January 1516 changed the whole aspect of European politics. It at once opened to Charles of Austria his Spanish and Neapolitan heritage. The presence of the young King was urgently called for by the troubles that followed in Castile, and Charles saw that peace was needed for the gathering into his hands of realms so widely scattered as his own. Maximilian too was ready to set aside all other aims to secure the aggrandizement of his house. After an inactive campaign therefore the Emperor negotiated secretly with France, and the treaty of Noyon which Charles concluded with Francis in August 1516 was completed in March 1517 by the accession of Maximilian to their alliance in the Treaty of Cambray. To all outer seeming the Treaty of Cambray left Francis supreme in the west, unequalled in military repute, a soldier who at twenty had withstood and broken the league of all Europe in arms, master of the Milanese, and through his alliances with Venice, Florence, and the Pope virtually master of all Italy save the Neapolitan realm. On the other hand the treaty left England exposed and alone, should France choose this moment for attack. Francis was well aware of Wolsey's efforts against him, and the state of Scotland offered the ready means of bringing about a quarrel. While Henry, anxious as he was to aid his sister, was fettered by the fear that English intervention would bring French intervention in its train and endanger the newly concluded alliance, Albany succeeded in evading the English cruisers and landing in the May of 1515. He was at once declared Protector of the realm by the Parliament at Edinburgh. Margaret on the other hand was driven into Stirling, and after a short siege forced to take refuge in England. The influence of Albany and the French party whom he headed secured for Francis in any struggle the aid of Scotland. But neither Henry nor his minister really dreaded danger from the Treaty of Cam-bray; on the contrary it solved all their difficulties. So well did they understand the aim of Charles in concluding it that they gave him the gold which enabled him to reach Spain. Master of Castile and Aragon, of Naples and the Netherlands, the Spanish King rose into a check on the French monarchy such as the policy of Henry or Wolsey had never been able to construct before. Instead of towering over Europe, Francis found himself confronted in the hour of his pride by a rival whom he was never to overcome; while England, deserted and isolated as she seemed for the moment, was eagerly sought in alliance by both princes. In October 1518 Francis strove to bind her to his cause by a new treaty of peace, in which England sold Tournay to France and the hand of the French dauphin was promised to Henry's daughter Mary, now a child of two years old.