At the same time Wolsey wanted to England to become more influential in Europe in order to do this Wolsey tried to play the peacemaker in Europe. The Conference in London in 1518 was a prime example of this. The aim of this conference was to secure peace with France but also with the rest of Europe, the Pope Leo X who wanted to unite the European states in order to send a crusade to Turkey encouraged this conference. This helped Wolsey to gain favour with the Pope and become Papal Legate. Whether this shows that Wolsey was simply following his own interests and gaining favour in the Vatican or whether he was doing it in order to secure peace for England we cannot be sure about. However the conference was certainly successful in doing what it aimed to do with 25 European Princes present at the Conference. Shortly after the Conference in London in 1518 the Treaty of London was signed by France and a further 20 states which made them agree to resist aggression and preserve peace. This treaty had not only secured safety of England from attack in the near future but also boosted England into the forefront of European diplomacy and drew her out of isolation, making her a desirable ally. This is well illustrated by the Anglo-French treaty signed two days afterwards. Wolsey had many ulterior motives, Wolsey knew that as long as there was peace between France and Spain then England remained isolated as they were viewed as unnecessary. It was the Treaty of London that caused the desired conflict between the two Nations. In 1519, when Charles ascended to the throne of the Holy Roman Emperor after the death of his grandfather Maximillian, Francis, king of France, was infuriated. He had invested enormous sums of money in bribing the electorate to select him as emperor, he used the Treaty of London as a justification for the Habsburg-Valois conflict. Now, Wolsey was able to mediate between the two powers, both of which were vying for England’s support.
This clearly shows how the Conference of London and the London Treaty, showed Wolsey to be very successful in achieving his aims had largely boosted England’s influence and status.
It is not long before Wolsey arranges another opportunity to boost England’s status in Europe. The field of the Cloth of Gold as it was known. In 1920 Henry, Wolsey and some 5000 followers travelled from Dover across to Calais and met with the French King Francis at Val D’or. The event was not meant to be a conflict it was a meeting between the two Kings with sports played such as jousting and a chance to secure peace between the two Nations. However Wolsey had ulterior motives once again for this meeting. The event was very lavish indeed for a temporary affair. The tents and the costumes displayed so much , an expensive fabric woven with silk and gold thread, that the site of the meeting was named after it. A temporary palace was built for Henry and was painted to look even more elaborate. This was the perfect opportunity for England to show off its prestige and wealth to the French King who would then hopefully take England more seriously as a major power in Europe. Although England impressed greatly with the high levels of prestige that they displayed the meeting didn’t make too much political change and soon after the relationship between France and England worsened greatly by the alliance Wolsey made with Charles, which was explicitly Anti-French. Every detail of the Field of the Cloth of Gold was organised by Wolsey. He made sure that everything went as planned, although the consequences were not huge in political terms, it served well as an opportunity for England to show off her wealth and prestige and in this sense Wolsey was successful in reaching this aim.
With both France and Spain vying for England’s allegiance, Wolsey was given the opportunity to chose the ally which best suited his policies. Wolsey wisely and selfishly chose Charles since, quite simply, England's economy would suffer from the loss of the lucrative cloth trade industry between England and the Netherlands. Furthermore, Henry had closer links with Charles than with Francis because he was married to Charles’ aunt. This was also in keeping with his duty to the pope, who was strictly anti-French. This alliance had complete papal support. In May 1521 Wolsey met with Charles in Canterbury who was angry with France as they seized Navarre from Spain Charles claimed that France had broken the treaty of London and asked for English support. In August 1521 the treaty of Bruges was signed which agrees for England to join Charles in an alliance against the French. As Henry had not yet produced a male heir, he promised his daughter Mary to Charles therefore ensuring that England would remain in the top tables of Europe after he had died.
This alliance between Henry and Charles worsened relations between France and England which resulted in war with France being declared in May 1522, Wolsey only hoped to increase influence he did not want to try and conquest France. The War was disastrous for England an Offensive in Northern France led by the Duke of Suffolk turned out to just be an expensive failure. Wolsey had to use the alliance he formed with Charles to apply pressure on France from Italy. In 1525, when Charles won a decisive battle at Pavia and captured the French king, a realistic opportunity for Henry to seize power of the French crown presented itself. All that stood in the way of victory was parliament, which body ultimately refused to raise any more money by taxation. This, accordingly, led to Wolsey devising the , which was met with even more hostility, and ultimately led to his own downfall. With no money there was no invasion of France. Charles became tired of his fruitless alliance with England and the “Great Enterprise” crumbled. Wolsey had been very unsuccessful in dealing with the War with France and had ultimately lost his allegiance with Charles. Finally in 1525 the Treaty of the More was signed between France and England which ended the war but also abandons England’s claims to any territory. Charles no longer viewed England as being beneficial allies to have and so cut his ties, he refused to support Wolsey as a Papal Candidate and refused to marry Mary who had been promised to him by Henry but instead married Princess Isabella of Portugal. Now Wolsey had to worry about the increasing power of Charles and his reluctance to be associated with England. Also Henry worried about his dynasty, as he had no male heir to the throne.
Wolsey backed setting up the League of Cognac, which involved the Pope, Venice, Florence and France. However things got worse for Wolsey and Henry in the upcoming years with the sack of Rome in 1527, Charles now had control over the Pope, and refused to annul Henrys marriage which was the reason for Wolsey’s eventual downfall. Wolsey tried to counter the sack of Rome with two different projects both of which were a complete failure, first of all the avignon project was wolseys plan to set himself up as Pope in exile this was unlikely as the Pope was normally Italian. Secondly Wolsey had to admit that he had failed in trying to be diplomatic and solve the issue. Another great setback for Wolsey was the defeat of France by Charles at the battle of Llandriano. The final blow to Wolsey’s foreign policy, ultimately out of his hands and partially just bad luck, was in 1529 when the French made peace with Charles, shattering Wolsey’s ambitions for the League of Cognac. With peace between France and Charles, there was no one to free the pope of Charles. He would be unable to grant Henry an annulment from Charles’ aunt, Catherine. Since 1527, Wolsey’s foreign policy had been dominated by his attempts to secure an annulment for Henry, and by 1529, his policy had failed.
Although it seems that even though he enjoyed some success in the long run Wolsey’s foreign policy did not benefit Englands status in Europe. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to ignore Wolsey’s lack of diplomatic experience. Rarely did Wolsey have any clear and concise aims, he often had to work out what Henry really wanted in his foreign policy. What they achieved from their experiences in Europe was more a consequence of the events, rather than Wolsey acting on and following through on his specific aims. Wolsey is often praised as being the arbiter of Europe. For example, The Treaty of London (1518) is often regarded as Wolsey’s finest moment, but it was ultimately an excuse for England to assert some influence in Europe, and its wishes to secure peace were abandoned within a year. This shows that clearly Wolsey did not have many specific aims to follow when foreign policy was concerned. However the aims which he did have to follow e.g. avoid war with France and boost England into the top tables of Europe he was very successful with at first in the period of 1518-1522. The War with France was a major turning point in the success of Wolsey’s success, The war was a complete disaster and relations with France were awful. What’s worse is that the abandonment of Charles from the English side simply left England with no major support in Europe and they were then isolated once again. It seems clear that Wolsey may have been unlucky with some of the turns of events, for example with the death of both Louis XII and Ferdinand who Henry had good relations with, came the accession of Charles and Francis who would be much more difficult to please. Wolsey showed he had the capability of acting successfully in a diplomatic manner and did so on numerous occasions but his lack of experience and his own self interest conflicting with the interests of Henry and England meant that in the long run Wolseys Foreign Policy was a failure.
