WOLSEY, THOMAS (c. 1475-1530), English cardinal and statesman, born at Ipswich about 1475, was son of Robert Wolsey (or Wuley, as his name was always spelt) by his wife Joan. His father is generally described as a butcher, but he sold other things than meat; and although a man of some property and a churchwarden of St Nicholas, Ipswich, his character seems to have borne a striking resemblance to that of Thomas Cromwell's father. He was continually being fined for allowing his pigs to stray in the street, selling bad meat, letting his house to doubtful characters for illegal purposes, and generally infringing the by-laws respecting weights and measures (extracts from the Ipswich records, printed in the Athenaeum, 1900, i. 400). He died in September 1406, and his will, which has been preserved, was proved a few days later.
Thomas was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; but the details of his university career are doubtful owing to the defectiveness of the university and college registers. He is said to have graduated B.A. at the age of fifteen (i.e. about 1490); but his earliest definite appearance in the records is as junior bursar of Magdalen College in 1498-1499, and senior bursar in 1499-1500, an office he was compelled to resign for applying funds to the completion of the great tower without sufficient authority (W. D. Macray, Reg. of Magdalen College, i. 29-30, 133-134). He must have been elected fellow of Magdalen some years before; and as master of Magdalen College school he had under his charge three sons of Thomas Grey, first marquess of Dorset. Dorset's beneficent intentions for his sons' pedagogue probably suggested Wolscy's ordination as priest at Marlborough on March 10, 1498, and on October 10, 1500, he was instituted, on Dorset's presentation, to the rectory of Limington in Somerset. His connexion with Magdalen had perhaps terminated with his resignation of the bursarship, though he supplicated for the degrees of B.D. and D.D. in 1510; and the college appears to have derived no advantage from Wolsey's subsequent greatness.
At Limington he came into conflict with law and order as represented by the sheriff. Sir Amias Paulet, who is said by Cavendish to have placed Wolsey in the stocks; Wolsey retaliated long afterwards by confining Paulet to his chambers in the Temple for five or six years. Dorset died in 1501, but Wolsey found other patrons in his pursuit of wealth and fame. Before the end of that year he obtained from the pope a dispensation to hold two livings in conjunction with Limington, and Archbishop Deane of Canterbury also appointed him his domestic chaplain. Deane, however, died in 1503, and Wolsey became chaplain to Sir Richard Nanfan, deputy of Calais, who apparently recommended him to Henry VII. Nanfan died in 1507, but the king made Wolsey his chaplain and employed him in diplomatic work. In 1508 he was sent to James IV. of Scotland, and in the same year he pleased Henry by the extraordinary expedition with which he crossed and recrossed the Channel on an errand connected with the king's proposal of marriage to Margaret of Savoy. His ecclesiastical preferments, of which he received several in 1506-1509, culminated in his appointment by Henry to the deanery of Lincoln on February 2, 1509.
Henry VIII. made Wolsey his almoner immediately on his accession, and the receipt of some half-dozen further ecclesiastical preferments in the first two years of the reign marks his growth in royal favour. But it was not till towards the end of 1511 that Wolsey became a privy councillor and secured a controlling voice in the government. His influence then made itself felt on English policy. The young king took little pains with the government, and the control of affairs was shared between the clerical and peace party led by Richard Fox (q.v.) and Archbishop Warham, and the secular and war party led by Surrey. Hitherto pacific counsels had on the whole prevailed; but Wolsey, who was nothing if not turbulent, turned the balance in favour of war, and his marvellous administrative energy first found full scope in the preparations for the English expedition to Biscay in 1512, and for the campaign in northern France in 1513. He brought about the peace with France and marriage between Mary Tudor and Louis XII. in 15 14, and reaped his reward in the bishoprics of Lincoln and Tournai, the archbishopric of York, which was conferred on him by papal bull in September, and the cardinalate which he had sent Polydore Vergil to beg from Leo X. in May 1514, but did not receive till the following year. Nevertheless, when Francis I. in 1515 succeeded Louis XII. and won the battle of Marignano, Wolsey took the lead in assisting the emperor Maximilian to oppose him; and this revival of warlike designs was resented by Fox and Warham, who retired from the government, leaving Wolsey supreme. Maximilian proved a broken reed, and in 1518 Wolsey brought about a general pacification, securing at the same time his appointment as legate à latere in England. He thus superseded Warham, who was legatus natus, in ecclesiastical authority; and though legates à latere were supposed to exercise only special and temporary powers, Wolsey secured the practical permanence of his office.
The election of Charles V. as emperor in 1519 brought the rivalry between him and Francis I. to a head, and Wolsey was mainly responsible for the attitude adopted by the English government. Both monarchs were eager for England's alliance, and their suit enabled Wolsey to appear for the moment as the arbiter of Europe. England's commercial relations with Charles V.'s subjects in the Netherlands put war with the emperor almost out of the question; and cool observers thought that England's obvious policy was to stand by while the two rivals enfeebled each other, and then make her own profit out of their weakness. But, although a gorgeous show of friendship with France was kept up at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, it had been determined before the conference of Calais in 1521, at which Wolsey pretended to adjudicate on the merits of the dispute, to side actively with Charles V. Wolsey had vested interests in such a policy. Parliament had in 1513-1515 showed signs of strong anti-clerical feeling; Wolsey had in the latter year urged its speedy dissolution, and had not called another; and he probably hoped to distract attention from the church by a spirited foreign policy, as Henry V. had done a century before. He had, moreover, received assurances from the emperor that he would further Wolsey's candidature for the papacy; and although he protested to Henry VIII. that he would rather continue in his service than be ten popes, that did not prevent him from secretly instructing his agents at Rome to press his claims to the utmost. Charles, however, paid Wolsey the sincere compliment of thinking that he would not be sufficiently subservient on the papal throne; while he wrote letters in Wolsey's favour, he took care that they should not reach their destination in time; and Wolsey failed to secure election both in 1521 and 1524. This ambition distinguishes his foreign policy from that of Henry VII., to which it has been likened. Henry VII. cared only for England; Wolsey's object was to play a great part on the European stage. The aim of the one was national, that of the other was ecumenical.
In any case the decision taken in 1521 was a blunder. Wolsey's assistance helped Charles V. to that position of predominance which was strikingly illustrated by the defeat and capture of Francis I. at Pavia in 1525; and the balance of power upon which England's influence rested was destroyed. Her efforts to restore it in 1526-1528 were ineffectual; her prestige had depended upon her reputation for wealth derived from the fact that she had acted in recent years as the paymaster of Europe. But Henry VII.'s accumulations had disappeared; parliament resisted in 1523 the imposition of new taxation; and the attempts to raise forced loans and benevolences in 1526-1528 created a storm of opposition. Still more unpopular was the brief war with Charles V. in which Wolsey involved England in 1528. The sack of Rome in 1527 and the defeat of the French before Naples in 1528 confirmed Charles V.'s supremacy. Peace was made in 1529 between the two rivals without England being consulted, and her influence at Wolsey's fall was less than it had been at his accession to power.
This failure reacted upon Wolsey's position at home. His domestic was sounder than his foreign policy: by his development of the star chamber, by his firm administration of justice and maintenance of order, and by his repression of feudal jurisdiction, he rendered great services to the monarchy. But the inevitable opposition of the nobility to this policy was not
