How Far Can It Be Argued That Wolsey Was Less Successful In His Administration Of The Church Than In His Other Domestic Arrangements?

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How Far Can It Be Argued That Wolsey Was Less Successful

In His Administration Of The Church Than In His Other Domestic Arrangements?

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was an extremely dedicated and ardent administrator who held various important positions in Henry VII's government and in the Roman Catholic Church in England including Lord Chancellor and Papal Legate. His pluralism led to him having difficulty in fulfilling all of his ambitions due to a lack of time but he was obviously a good enough manager of secular and ecclesiastical affairs to be able to stay as England's second most powerful man for 15 years, which due to Henry VII's fickle nature was a particularly arduous task. He was particularly criticised for his poor management of the Church as he was in a very rare situation in terms of ecclesiastical power and was in one of the best positions to reform the Church. His domestic policy did not receive as much criticism as contemporaries did not expect him to be a reformer and by and large he kept peace and order.

Thomas Wolsey was made Archbishop of York in 1514 and then a Cardinal in 1515. This made him a powerful and influential figure in the Church but when he became a Papal Legate in 1518 he became the most important clergyman in England and then in 1524 he was unusually made Papal Legate for life. This combination of positions gave him absolute control of the Church within England and he could only be overruled in English church affairs by the Pope himself.

Rather than taking advantage though of this position in order to run the Church efficiently and also to reform it if necessary, Wolsey was corrupt and used his position to increase his personal wealth. One cannot though say that Wolsey did not have any good intentions in terms of his administration of the Church as he did have plans for its reform but they were never implemented due to various reasons including his lack of time to dedicate to them due to his pluralism. Some cynical critics of him though state that he only issued plans in order to make it seem as though he wanted to improve the efficiency of the Church but in fact had no intention to do this but there is no significant evidence that indicates this is correct.

Starting with the positive points about Wolsey and his administration of the Church of which there not many, the only relatively useful reform that was partially implemented was the re-organisation of the dioceses to correspond with population levels. Also he did try to make sure that the Church served Henry's interests, that is until Henry's desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon. He did dissolve some monasteries in order to build a college at Oxford and a school at Ipswich although there is also a negative point regarding this. He also tried to kept English control of Irish dioceses by appointing English clergyman to positions there.
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There are a larger amount of negative points about Wolsey's administration of the Church. Firstly his pluralism was exemplified by the amount of bishoprics and abbotships he controlled which he never visited and only controlled for financial purposes. This included York, which he was Archbishop of for 15 years and did not go there once. He also interfered in many clerical affairs, in order to increase his wealth and influence, including appointments and elections of clergy. He decided to introduce an inheritance tax on wills. He kept bishoprics vacant and took the income from them and he also ...

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