Wolsey, THOMAS, cardinal, was born at Ipswich in 1471. His father, Robert Wolsey, seems to have been a grazier and wool-merchant of good substance—the story that he was a butcher having its origin only in contemporary gossip. In his eleventh year Thomas was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, where at the age (early even for that time) of fifteen he took the diploma of Bachelor of Arts. In view of his subsequent career it is noted as a curious circumstance that his favourite study was the Summa Theologie of Thomas Aquinas, with which he became so conversant that he was known among his friends as Thomisticus. As a fellow of Magdalen, and master of the school attached to that college, he remained at the university till 1500, when the Marquis of Dorset gave him the living of Limington in Somerset. In 1501 he became chaplain to Henry Dean, Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1506 a royal chaplain, acting at court as secretary to Fox, Bishop of Winchester. In 1508 he was sent on an embassy to Scotland, and in the autumn of the same year to the Low Countries to further a project of marriage between Henry VII. and Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian. As a reward for his general usefulness, Henry bestowed on him the deanery of Lincoln, the beginning of his immense fortunes.
But it is with the accession of Henry VIII. that the story of Wolsey's greatness begins. Appointed king's almoner and member of the king's council (1511), he speedily made himself an indispensable servant of the young king. In the war with France of 1513 he showed such energy and ability that Henry bestowed on him the bishopric of Tournai (an appointment never confirmed by the pope), and in the following year the sees of Lincoln and York. In 1514 Wolsey still further advanced his interests by contriving an understanding between England and France, which was the beginning of the continental policy he pursued till his fall in 1529. Though unpopular with the English people, this alliance first taught the continental powers that England was a factor to be reckoned with in all their future combinations. Wolsey was now one of the leading personages in Europe, and honours fell thick upon him from every side. He held in commendam the sees, successively, of Bath and Wells (1518), Durham (1523), and Winchester (1529); as also the abbey of St Albans. The year 1515 saw him Lord Chancellor of England, and Cardinal; and in 1517 Leo. X., greatly against his will, was forced to appoint him Cardinal-legate. So great was Wolsey's predominance even at this point of his career that a Venetian ambassador said of him, 'He is seven times more powerful than the pope.' Twice, indeed, in his career he was actually within sight of the popedom itself. On the death of Leo X. in 1521 Wolsey's claim to the succession was strongly supported by Henry, and he had the promise of the emperor's good offices in his favour. But, whether Charles was sincere or not in his promise, when the choice came to be made he set aside Wolsey in favour of a candidate more likely to be at his bidding—Adrian of Utrecht, formerly his own tutor, and now acting as his regent in Spain. At Adrian's death, two years later, there was again a prospect of Wolsey's reaching the goal of his ambition; but Charles on this occasion also played him false, and another opportunity never occurred.
In the career of Wolsey, as in the development of modern Europe, a new chapter opens with the accession of Charles of Spain to the Empire in 1519. For the next quarter of a century the political history of Europe is mainly the history of the rivalry of Charles V. and Francis I. of France for the leading place among the western nations. To hold the balance between these two potentates, so that each should in turn be forced to make common cause with England, such was the foreign policy of Wolsey during the ten years he directed the affairs of his country. The skill and force with which he carried out his purposes is all the more striking that in Henry VIII. he had a master whose violent and jealous spirit would have thwarted a less able minister at every step. But with consummate art, while leading Henry to believe that he was the humble instrument of his wishes, Wolsey in reality controlled the destinies of the country. The policy of England during these years has been sketched in the account of Henry VIII. Here, therefore, it is enough to say that this policy was essentially the work of Wolsey, and that its result for England was the recovery of her place among the nations, which had been lost since the Wars of the Roses.
Wolsey's home policy was conducted on the simplest principles. In his conception it was the best interest of the country that the sovereign's will should be the one motive-power in the state, and parliaments existed simply for supplying the means for the execution of the royal commands. In accordance with these principles he made such frequent and large demands on the purse of the country that all ranks of the people detested him as the author of the ills from which they suffered during Henry's rule. Notable among Wolsey's domestic acts is his dissolution in 1524-29 of above thirty monasteries with fewer than seven inmates. This was done with the full consent of Rome; but, as it proved, Wolsey by this step led the way which Henry was afterwards to follow with such disastrous results to the ancient church in England. Wolsey's zeal for learning, as nobly shown in his foundation of a college in his native town of Ipswich, and of Cardinal College at Oxford, has always been noted as one of the redeeming traits of his character; and it is proof of the sincerity of his zeal that, in the wreck of his fortunes, one of his main concerns was that his college at Oxford should not suffer by his own ruin. The college at Ipswich, however, did not take definite shape, and Cardinal College, afterwards named Christ's College in despite to the memory of Wolsey, but inadequately fulfilled the aims of its founder.
It is part of the greatness of Wolsey's fortunes that his fate is linked with an event which is in itself a turning-point in the history of Christendom.
In 1527 Henry's divorce from Catharine of Aragon became a question that took precedence of all others, and for which Wolsey had to find a satisfactory solution if he was to retain his position as the first subject in England. He had no choice but to use his best efforts to persuade Clement VII. to pronounce Henry's marriage illegal. In 1529, along with Campeggio, the legate specially sent by the pope, Wolsey sat in judgment on the case, with a result that left Henry as far as ever from the attainment of his end. This was no fault of Wolsey's, who was powerless against the diplomacy of Rome; but Henry was now in a mood that needed a victim, and the cardinal's enemies, reinforced by Anne Boleyn, had been long waiting their opportunity. Indicted for a breach of præmunire in procuring bulls from Rome, he was deprived of the Great Seal, and ordered to depart from his palace of York Place, and to take up his residence at Esher, near Hampton Court. Found guilty by parliament of the charges brought against him, he nevertheless obtained his pardon, and was allowed to retain the see of York. At Cawood, in Yorkshire, during the few months that were left to him, he won the hearts of the people by his charity and kindly demeanour. But his enemies could not be satisfied till his ruin was complete. On a charge of high-treason, to which he had imprudently given colour by his own intrigues, he was arrested by the Earl of Northumberland. This last stroke showed Wolsey that thenceforward he had nothing to hope, and seems to have completely broken his proud spirit. On the way to London to meet his trial he died at Leicesters Abbey (November 29, 1530), with the well-known words on his lips, 'Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the king, He would not have given me over in my gray hairs.' 'No statesman of such eminence,' says Dr Brewer of Wolsey, 'ever died less lamented;' and he has remained one of the nuptious characters of English history. Except during his last days there was nothing in his character or career that was fitted to win the heart or touch the imagination of the people. They could not understand what he did for England abroad; and at home they saw the result of his policy only in the grinding taxation for which they naturally held him responsible rather than the youthful and pleasure-loving king. His arrogance and ostentation gave the greater offence in one who had come from the ranks of the people, and the tenor of whose life was so little in accordance with the profession of which he was the chief representative in the country. Disliked by the commons, he was detested by the nobility, whom his greatness overshadowed, and whom he did not think it worth his trouble to conciliate. It is only since the publication of the State Papers of the period that Wolsey has received his due as a statesman of the first rank, whose ambition was coincident with the interest of his country as he conceived it. While his public aims, however, are thus seen to have been nobler than his contemporaries supposed, in his personal character, in his embodiment of a type of churchman most alien to the religion which he represented, Wolsey still remains a figure associated with no principle of beneficence, and essentially repellent in all the salient features of his mind and heart.
See CROMWELL (THOMAS); Lives of Wolsey by George Cavendish (q.v.), Wolsey's gentleman-usher, from which the splendid figure in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. is closely drawn, Fiddes (1724), Grove (1742), Galt the novelist (1812), Martin (1862), Bishop Creighton ('English Statesmen' series); Lord Acton, 'Wolsey and the Divorce,' in the Quarterly Review for January 1877; Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII.; and Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries (1888-89).