The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey by Gwyn Peter

Author:Gwyn, Peter [Gwyn, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781446475133
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-04-29T23:00:00+00:00

Today the Churchy, whose former devotion has cooled, is injured. And is she not injured by herself? Certainly by herself. Our true predecessors, both monks and secular clergy, led a holy and hard life, we a much easier and softer one, we who have stained her pristine beauty and devotion with worldly desires.374

It was up to the monastic orders and the church authorities to bring the Church back to her ‘pristine beauty’. He did not actually say, as Bishop Fox had written only a few days earlier,375 that this would best be achieved under Wolsey’s leadership as legate, but, given the occasion, the implication was surely there.

Given this rousing start, what followed may seem a little disappointing. As we have already seen, the number of legatine visitations was not all that great. Moreover, as with Westminster, in most cases there is no reason to suppose that there was anything especially wrong with the places visited. The visitations were, therefore, in part at least, an assertion of Wolsey’s legatine authority, in the same way as his compositions with the bishops were – which is not to say that they were merely a formality.

The only details we have are a set of injunctions dated 17 April 1525 in connection with a visitation of Worcester Priory, later revised because they were ‘frequently occasion of strife and controversy from ambiguous and obscure language’, and not, apparently, ratified by Wolsey until November 1526.376 Contrary to the generalization that has just been made, all was not entirely well at Worcester. Prior William More had been in dispute with his sub-prior, Neckham, and his cellarer, Fordham, and in the revised injunctions Wolsey’s usual legatine visitor, John Allen, sided with the prior, confirming their dismissal from office, as well as that of two ‘scholastics’.377 That he did so could be taken as evidence that the prior’s ‘gifts’ had taken effect.378 Moreover, it has to be said that the character of the prior which emerges from his journal is not that of a zealous reformer. Neither is it, however, that of a villain.379 William More liked his country pursuits and entertainments, and was at ease with the local gentry, but he also cared a great deal for the well-being of his priory. When in the 1530s – a time when the opportunities for settling scores were easily come by – the two dismissed monks, along with another who had been imprisoned by More for stealing, caused him considerable trouble, both the local gentry and most of the monks of Worcester supported their prior. Indeed, twenty-eight of them wrote to Cromwell saying that they had no wish to have Fordham back as cellarer, because not only was he ‘a troublesome person’, but he had also contracted ‘the pox’.380 As so often, there is not enough available detail for the rights and wrongs of what was going on at Worcester to be fully established, but the burden of the surviving evidence points to the conclusion that Allen had been right to back the prior in 1525.

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