Review of how Guy sees the relationship between Henry VIII and Wolsey

Henry VIII was less part of his own policy than Edward IV or Henry VII. However it is wrong to claim that he was acting as a ‘absentee landlord’ (who delegated the affairs of state to others) or as a ‘mental dejective’ (who needed ministers to manage him). Like Elizabeth I, he was just uninterested in routine administration. However, he always had the decisive influence over key issues of policy but councillors could sway his decisions, unlike Elizabeth’s. However, Guy makes a point that he did not just follow councillor’s advice.

Henry chose to do as little writing as possible – finding it ‘both tedious and painful’ in his youth. There are, however, two turning points in the 1520’s. Firstly, in 1521, after a suggestion from Wolsey, he wrote a treatise in reply to Martin Luther’s ‘The Babylonian Captivity of the Church’. Titled ‘The Assertion of the 7 Sacraments’, it won him the title of the Defender of Faith’. It was a team effort in which Oxford and Cambridge theologians nominated by Wolsey assisted him. Wolsey and Thomas More were also involved in its writing. Secondly, in the summer of 1527, Henry seized an initiative from an absent Wolsey in soliciting support for and orchestrating the strategy that underpinned his first divorce campaign. He used arguments of interpretation of passages from the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. This undermined Wolsey’s position as papal legate and led towards the break with Rome.

This was a disaster for Wolsey who had enjoyed considerable discretion in policies until then, although there had been limits (e.g. In 1515, after heated debate at Blackfrias, Wolsey was forced to submit Henry on his knees. This was a foretaste of later events.

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Guy makes reference to the idea that Wolsey enjoyed a ‘prime-ministerial’ ascendancy’ for 14 years. However, he disagrees with this view. He claims that a prime minister has a settled constitutional position, while Wolsey only served at the king’s will and pleasure, that the prime minister was properly accountable to Parliament, while Wolsey was far from loved by the lay nobility in the Council and at Parliament, and that the prime minister can’t be dismissed by the head of state, while Wolsey was overthrown in 1529.

He also claims that the Prime Minister was a public official. This suggests that that he was the public servant of the state with a duty to set the public interest – an argument cast in fictional terms in Book 1of More’s Utopia. Under Henry VIII, a minister was personal servant. Wolsey was the king’s peeminent councillor; but he held this position as a royal servant.

Guy also makes reference to ‘revisionist’ scholarship which states: that Wolsey arrogated power to himself in the Council (ruling the roost in the Star Chamber and depriving the king of attendant councillors at court), he showed Tudor Government at it’s most ambitious and least effective (for example, he repeatedly began things that he was unable to finish) and he thought that all opinions, except Henry VIII’s, were irrelevant.

If Wolsey was the king’s loyal ‘servant’ and merely following instructions it would explain things such as his foreign policy. Wolsey could be described as somebody who would want to make peaceful European relations. However, under the constraint of Henry VIII, was forced into making war. The failures Wolsey’s domestic policy, although his plans were far too ambitous, can be excused under ‘revisionism’ in Henry’s excessive demands for money. The same can be seen from the failure of Wolsey’s ecciestical reforms which can be blamed on Henry’s demands for clerical taxation and desire to control the Church.

However, despite Henry VIII being the final decision maker, until the mid-1520’s Wolsey enjoyed a considerable degree of latitude. This is because Wolsey was able to dominate the King’s council until 1525 and was able to concentrate it around him in the Sstar Chamber at Westminster during the legal terms, whilst the king resided at Greenwich (the old palace of Westminster had been abandoned as a royal residence in 1512 after a disasterous fire. Wolsey exerted strict control over councillors at Court and consolidated his power by the manner in which he was ‘fed’ information – he dealt with important matters personally, while lesser matters were given to trusted secretaries whom he manipulated.

Until the summer of 1527, Wolsey controlled most of the domestic policy. In foreign affairs, Henry had responsibility for the broard outline but more than mere details were left for Wolsey. Wolsey shared the same principle as Henry on conquests in northern France but expressed reservations.They rarely disagreed. Guy claims that to credit their successes largely to Wolsey’s leadership and to blame their failures on Henry is too ‘schematic’.

Until 1527,Henry saw Wolsey as a friend and partner and spent a lot of time with him (especially at the start of their friendship). The sticking point with the nobility was that of Wolsey’s close relationship with the king.

Guy claims that Wolsey was attacked for many abuses of power but the charges were symptons of the cause, not the cause itself. He claims that it was less Wolsey’s actual decisions but the fact that he was Henry VIII’s partner. Political opponents were jealous of this privelage.

Guy claims that he broke the mould of conciliar government and this was his main offence.