England under the Tudors Part 6

In the result, an alliance was concluded with France under which the infants were betrothed, Tournai was restored to France. France was to pay 60,000 crowns and promise not to interfere in Scottish affairs to the detriment of England, and Wolsey was enabled to pose as the pacificator of Europe; the other Powers with more or less reluctance all finding themselves constrained to give their adherence to the new treaty of Universal Peace.

Thus when the year 1519 opened, Wolsey's policy was triumphant. France was bound to England; the young King of Spain wanted her friendship; Maximilian was still looking to her for money; and the Pope was obliged to applaud her for having usurped his official function as peacemaker. But in the days when war and peace and the movements of armies turned habitually on the personal predilections, quarrels, and amours of monarchs, the political atmosphere was liable to violent disturbances without warning. In January, 1519, Maximilian died suddenly; and his death in fact involved a complete rearrangement of ideas as to the positions of the Powers.

[Sidenote 1: 1519 Charles V.]

[Sidenote 2: The Imperial election]

Ten years before, when Henry came to the throne, he was the only young man among the European sovereigns. The Emperor and the King of France were both more than middle-aged: so was the King of Aragon who was virtually King of Spain and the Sicilies. Before six years were out there was a youthful King of France; not much later, all Spain was under the dominion of a boy. These three Kings were now twenty-eight, twenty-four, and nineteen respectively, while the succession to the Empire lay with the Electoral Princes. Charles was an obvious candidate, since the Habsburgs had actually retained the office among themselves for three generations; yet the Electors were in no way bound to maintain the tradition. In ability and in character, one of their number was fit for the purple--Frederick of Saxony; but Saxony was only one among a number of German States, and Frederick himself had no mind to undertake the office. Thereupon ensued the somewhat curious spectacle of the French King entering the lists, he being the one possible rival of Charles. Of all the Continental Princes, these two alone were powerful enough to sustain the burden of the Empire: yet either of them, achieving it, would have his power dangerously expanded, and would become a serious menace to the Pope.

So Charles and Francis both intrigued and bribed the Electors; the Pope tried to avoid helping either; Wolsey promised support to both; and the Electors themselves watched for opportunities of raising the price of their suffrages. And presently Henry himself conceived the idea of getting himself put forward as a third candidate, through whom a way of escape might be found for those who regarded Francis and Charles as Scylla and Charybdis. The combination however of the Crown of England with the Imperial diadem was no improvement in their eyes. Leo did not wish to find himself in Wolsey's grip. The scheme must almost inevitably have been fraught with disaster both to England and the Empire. Wolsey of necessity made himself the instrument of his master's desires; but while he selected as his agent Pace, the most astute of his subordinates, Pace's own correspondence is a good deal concerned with hints that an over-zealous pursuit of the policy would be a bartering of the substance for the shadow of power, and with explanations of the impracticability of an effective electoral campaign. Pace, in fact, went very little beyond sounding the Electors and declaring the results to be extremely unpromising; a state of things to which we may infer that neither he nor Wolsey had any objection. In the end, the influence of England was employed in favour of Charles, who was chosen Emperor in the middle of summer. The three sovereigns, Charles V., Francis I., and Henry VIII., dominated Europe for nearly thirty years to come--an unusually long period for three princes to reign side by side.

It was now Wolsey's difficult business to keep both Francis and Charles as suitors for the favour of England; and, having placated the latter in the contest for the Empire, to turn his attention to the former.

[1520 Wolsey's triumph]

Francis was at this time ready to meet Wolsey more than half way. He was particularly desirous of holding a formal interview and a personal interchange of courtesies with the King of England; and to this end he actually appointed Henry's minister his own plenipotentiary, a position without precedent or parallel for an English subject. Wolsey prepared to make the meeting an occasion for such a display of magnificence as has rarely been witnessed. At the same time he emphasised the independent position of England by arranging for a separate preliminary interview between Henry and the Emperor, and making it clear that herein it was not the Emperor who was doing the King a favour, but the contrary. If Charles wished to meet Henry, he must come to England for the purpose. Meantime both monarchs sought to obtain the great minister's goodwill by promises of support when the Papacy should become vacant--promises which Wolsey would not permit to influence his plans; whether because he rated them at their true value, or because he had no great anxiety to barter the position he had already secured for one which, however magnificent, however dominant in theory, might convey actual power of a much less substantial kind.

[Sidenote: Rival policies]

The French alliance, it must be observed, was never popular in England.

Tradition was against it; the n.o.bles of the old families were against it; the Queen was also naturally against it and very anxious for close and friendly relations with Spain. A degree of antagonism was thus generated between Katharine and the Cardinal, who held resolutely to his policy of maintaining the balance and never so committing himself to one party as to preclude a _rapprochement_ with the other.

There was much intriguing on the part of Francis to bring on the meeting of the Kings before Charles could visit England. The state of the French Queen's health on one side and of the English Queen's wardrobe on the other figured largely as conclusive reasons for haste or delay. Wolsey however gained the day. The meeting was fixed to take place early in June between Guisnes and Ardres. In the last week of May (1520), Charles came to England, remaining three days; a week later, Henry sailed for Calais.

[Sidenote: Field of the Cloth of Gold]

It might almost be said that the entire courts of England and France, n.o.bles and knights and ladies, met on the famous "field of the Cloth of Gold". Jousts and feastings were the order of the day. Wolsey understood how to impress the popular imagination; and he had a magnificent scorn or a cynical contempt for the enmities and jealousies aroused, of which he himself, as responsible for all the arrangements, became the centre. It may be doubted, however, whether any great goodwill between the two nations was born of all the display of amity; nor were there any very marked diplomatic results. If it was Wolsey's particular object to evolve a triple league, he was disappointed. The two Kings met and parted, Henry proceeding to a fresh conference with his nephew of Spain, from which Francis, in his turn, was excluded. Neither Charles nor Francis knew in the end which of them stood in the more favourable position with England; but the little Princess Mary, betrothed to the Dauphin, was half-pledged to Charles himself; while Charles was still formally betrothed to the French Princess Charlotte, and was inclining to subst.i.tute for both the well-dowered Infanta Isabella [Footnote: Otherwise called Elizabeth. The names are interchangeable.] of Portugal. Among all the surprising matrimonial complications of this half-century, one particular feature appears to be tolerably constant--that when Charles was not actually married, he was rarely without at least one fiancee actual, and another prospective.

At any rate, the total result in 1520 was that Henry was in separate alliance with Francis on one side and with Charles on the other; alliances which neither could afford to break, but on which neither could rely.

[Sidenote: Wolsey's aims]

The main interest of Wolsey's career, from the national point of view, attaches to his conduct of foreign policy: and in the confusion of alliances and counter-alliances it is not always easy to recognise the objects of that policy or its fundamental consistency. The aim always in view was to prevent any Power or combination of Powers from dominating Europe; to subst.i.tute diplomacy for the actual arbitrament of arms; to secure for England recognition as the true arbiter without involving her in war. The three first-cla.s.s Powers of the earlier years were reduced to two by the combination under one head, Charles V., of Spain and the Empire, with France as the sole Continental rival.

But behind Wolsey's own policy was the traditional one of hostility to France, popular in the country, supported by the n.o.bility, and offering attractions to an ambitious and martial-minded monarch who was not yet thirty years of age: whose Queen moreover was by birth and sympathy a strong partisan of Spain. Hence the Cardinal was liable to be forced out of his mediatorial position into one of hostility to France.

[Sidenote: Charles and Francis]

On the other hand, Francis and Charles each desired to strengthen his own position at the expense of the other. Each therefore desired an alliance with England close enough to secure her aid in an aggressive programme. But while Charles required active a.s.sistance and subsidies, seeking to throw on England the real burden of accomplishing his designs, Francis was comparatively satisfied with English neutrality. Again, while an aggressive alliance with Charles offered some uncertain prospects of the acquisition of French territory, circ.u.mstances were once more tending to enable Francis to utilise the ancient Scottish alliance as a means of holding England in check.

[Sidenote: Scotland 1513-20]

Since the decisive battle of Flodden, Scotland had not to any marked degree influenced Wolsey's European diplomacy. The blow dealt to her had been too serious: and the n.o.bles, always turbulent, had never been more so than during the years which followed the great defeat. Queen Margaret, sister of the English King, a woman of only five and twenty when James was killed, made haste to marry the young Earl of Angus within a year of the event. The Douglases had frequently headed the Anglicising factions of the Scottish n.o.bility, whereas the country at large constantly favoured the traditional alliance with France and hostility to the Southron. At present, the Douglases of whom Angus was the chief headed one faction: the Hamiltons, whose chief was Arran, headed the other. The marriage put an end to the arrangement under which Margaret had been Regent; there was intriguing and fighting to obtain possession of the person of the infant King; the Duke of Albany, [Footnote: Albany's father had been brother of James III.; their sister was Arran's mother.] of the royal house, who had been bred in France, was sent for, in the hope that as Regent he would compose discords.

In the summer of 1515 he arrived. In the meantime, Dacre, in charge of the English border, had been fomenting quarrels [Footnote: _Lang_, _Hist. of Scotland_, i., 395. L. & P., ii., 779, 795.] and suborning outlaws to raid and devastate in the border counties, and plotting unsuccessfully to have James carried off into England to the tender care of his uncle. Albany, for his part, demanded the custody of the child, which was refused by Margaret; who however was forced to surrender with a show of friendliness. But she herself very shortly took refuge in England.

In 1517 Albany withdrew to France with a view to resuscitating the French alliance; the rivals Arran and Angus were again the two most powerful of the n.o.bles; Margaret returned to Scotland, but quarrelled with her husband.

In 1520 Albany was still in France which he probably found more cheerful than his own country. Angus got the better of Arran, who fled to France.

There however Francis was still aiming at close alliance with England; and under such a combination of favourable conditions the truce between England and Scotland, entered upon in 1514 and now about to terminate, was extended for a couple of years. But Margaret herself being now hostile to Angus, there was every prospect that, should Albany return to Scotland, Wolsey would have to reckon seriously with the anti-English party there as a factor in his diplomatic relations with France.

[Sidenote: 1520-21 Affairs abroad]

The closing months of 1520 arid the opening months of 1521 witnessed events of importance at the time-and one at least which had very far-reaching consequences. The Emperor's wide do-minions were disturbed by a local outbreak in Germany, a revolt in Spain, and an attempt on the part of the claimant to the throne of Navarre to recover that territory. The Diet of the Empire met at Worms, and Martin Luther was cited before it; with the result that the Empire was practically divided into two camps, Charles ranging himself on the papal side. As Henry VIII. was so far a loyal son of the Church, wielding an anti-Lutheran pen in theological controversy, while the French King's reverence for the papacy was under suspicion, the present tendency of this event was favourable to the union of Charles and Henry with the Pope against Francis. On the other hand there was very little question that the troubles in the Emperor's dominions were fostered by Francis, who was preparing for an Italian expedition. Had Charles and Wolsey trusted each other, their alliance would certainly have been drawn closer; but Wolsey was not the man to take up Charles's cause without securing an adequate return, while Charles wished to involve England on the strength of promises which he expected subsequently to find no necessity for carrying out. Charles found his justification in the unexpected success of his arms in Navarre, in Spain, and in Germany. Good fortune relieved him from the more pressing need of English aid, and thus the prospect of a close and active alliance faded.

[Sidenote: 1521 Buckingham]

In the late spring of 1521 there occurred in England a domestic episode which must have impressed both Charles and Francis with the power wielded in England by Henry; the first notable instance among the numerous executions marking the reign for which treason was the pretext. [Footnote: Unless we except that of Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, in 1513.] The Duke of Buckingham stood at the head of the n.o.bility; accepted as representing the House of Lancaster, next in order to the Tudors.

[Footnote: The Staffords of Buckingham on one side descended, like Henry, from the Beauforts. They were also the representatives of Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward III. See _Front_, and p. 9, note.] The Duke no doubt had a sufficiently strong dislike to Wolsey, and had used very incautious language about him, and the Cardinal was popularly held responsible for his downfall, though there is no evidence that this was actually the case. Buckingham had consulted soothsayers, and was reputed to have used compromising expressions about tyrants and the succession. At any rate, he suddenly found himself arrested for high treason. The King had made preliminary inquiry on his own account--not in the presence of Wolsey--and had made up his own mind that Buckingham was to die. The peers were summoned to try him on May 10th, under the presidency of Norfolk. The depositions of the witnesses against the Duke were read; there was no cross-examination; he denied the charges, but was not allowed counsel. The decision was of course a foregone conclusion. One by one the peers p.r.o.nounced him guilty; he was condemned to death, and executed. No one was found to challenge the justice of the sentence, though on a review of the evidence it is almost incredible that any human being could have honestly endorsed it. The world at large however knew nothing about the evidence, and merely accepted the judgment as final and indisputable. By a single ruthless act, Henry had practically established his own right to judge cases of treason on the hypothesis not that guilt had to be demonstrated but that the accused must prove his own loyalty or suffer the extreme penalty. For the King to entertain an accusation was tantamount to condemnation. Even to plead on behalf of such a one was dangerous: to maintain his innocence would have been a short way to the block.

[Sidenote: Wolsey's diplomacy]

By the execution of Buckingham, Henry vindicated his own authority in England while popular opinion laid the responsibility on the Cardinal's machinations. In the meantime, an impetus was given to the anti-French policy of Charles by the death of his Burgundian minister Chievres. As the summer advanced, the prospect of keeping the peace between the rival monarchs grew fainter. The parties however agreed to hold a conference at Calais, at which Wolsey should act as mediator. But matters looked as if England would be forced to take a side in a European war; and if she did so the balance of advantage to her lay on the side of the Emperor.

In August the conference met. Ostensibly with a view to obtaining from Charles himself more concessions to France than his envoys would allow, the Cardinal visited him at Bruges; where however he was really engaged in coming to comparatively satisfactory terms as to the conditions upon which Charles should receive English a.s.sistance. These included the deferring of actual partic.i.p.ation in hostilities, and indemnification for the inevitable loss of the Tournai purchase-money, of which France had paid only a part.

Wolsey returned to Calais with a secret treaty, and the conference continued, the Cardinal still making every effort to avert war; but towards the end of November it became clear that his endeavours must be fruitless, and the conference was broken up. He was followed to England by the news of Imperial successes both in Italy and in Picardy--which went far to justify Charles in his refusal to postpone hostilities for his own part. Henry, whose own predilections were in favour of war, was very well pleased with the result, and rewarded his minister by presenting him to the vacant and lucrative office of Abbot of St. Albans. Such were the conveniences of being served by an ecclesiastic.

[Sidenote: 1522 A papal Election]

The year closed with an event of importance. Leo X. died unexpectedly and there was an election to the papacy. There is no doubt that Wolsey desired the papal crown; and both Francis and Charles in courting his favour had held out as a bait the influence they were prepared to promise on his behalf. But he had not allowed these offers to influence his actions.

Charles now gave him fair words, but evidently intended his real support to be given to some candidate whom he expected to be more pliant. The man he would have chosen was the Cardinal de Medici, afterwards Clement VII.: but Italian party spirit among the Cardinals ran too high for this to prove practicable, and Adrian VI. who had been tutor to Charles was the new Pope.

Wolsey can hardly have been disappointed, and never gave undue weight to the Emperor's promises: but the event was not calculated to increase his confidence or his goodwill. The present fact however of the alliance between the Emperor and England, with the corollary that England must before long be at war with France, remained unaltered.

[Sidenote 1: War with France]

[Sidenote 2: Scotland]

By the end of May the war could no longer be postponed, and was duly declared. It was still some months before Surrey took the field in France at the head of the English forces--conducting his campaign on the general principles of Anglo-Scottish border warfare--ravaging, burning, and rousing the hatred of the country population, but striking no blow. If Henry seriously contemplated the idea of reviving old claims to the French crown, he could have adopted no worse policy. Charles of course gave no practical a.s.sistance, and the allies each blamed the other for the futility of the operations. Albany on the other hand had been back in Scotland for some months; and in opposition to Angus--in conjunction therefore with Margaret --threatened an invasion as soon as the French expedition started. The ingenious Lord Dacre however by sheer bluff--there is no other word-- succeeded in procuring an armistice when the English border was all but defenceless. After this exhibition, Albany found it as well to retire to France; while Wolsey used the occurrence to urge upon Charles that Scotland required too much attention to allow French expeditions to be practicable.

[Sidenote: 1523 Progress of the war]

With 1523 events took a turn more favourable to Charles. The Duke of Bourbon, Constable of France, turned against the King, on the ground of insults more or less fancied, and of a genuine attempt to deprive him of his inheritance by legal process. The idea was revived in Henry's mind that in alliance with some of the French n.o.bility he might make himself King of France as Henry V. had done; so Wolsey had to develop an active policy against France. His hand being thus forced, the Cardinal devoted his energies to making the combination against the French King really serious, coercing Venice into the coalition. The military operations however were not in train till the autumn; Suffolk, whose military skill was extremely limited, commanded the English expedition, and marched into the interior instead of falling on Boulogne as Wolsey had advised; Bourbon did nothing useful; Charles's troops gave their attention to Fontarabia instead of to a combined operation. From the English point of view the whole campaign was a complete fiasco. Wolsey had been set to carry out a policy of which he disapproved, with instruments of whose incompetence he was fully conscious; and the results were probably neither better nor worse than what he and the cooler onlookers like Sir Thomas More expected. The one thing that Wolsey could do, he had done: he had placed Surrey on the Northern border to deal with the inevitable return to Scotland of Albany with threats of invasion.

Surrey was successful: Albany having advanced into England was obliged to fall back, and the border country was subjected to the usual process of raiding and harrying.

[Sidenote: Election of Pope Clement VII.]

Once again, the closing months of the year witnessed a papal election; and for the second time Wolsey was disappointed. The reign of Adrian closed in September. It had been brief, well intentioned, and honest: but ineffective. The Pope's efforts at reform had been met by the solid _vis inertiae_ of the ecclesiastical world. His successor, the Medici, Clement VII., was destined to play a much more important part in history, and, buffeted by forces which he could not control, to become the instrument whereby England was severed from Rome. In this election Charles played the same part as before. He promised Wolsey his support, wrote letters to Rome which were delayed till too late, and actually expended his influence on behalf of Medici. Again, though Wolsey's anxiety to achieve the papacy has probably been much exaggerated, he would have been more than human if he had not inwardly resented the Emperor's behaviour. It is to be noted in connexion with this election that Wolsey actually proposed the employment of armed coercion to secure a convenient choice--a rather gross method of condemning the theory that the Conclave reached its decision by Divine guidance.

[Sidenote: 1524 Wolsey's difficulties]

The year had but six weeks more to run when Clement was finally elected. In 1524 the belligerents were all desirous of ending the war, but none was willing to make concessions to hasten that end. The allies had good reason to suspect each other of trying to make separate terms with Francis; each hoped to extract concessions from the French King as the price of defection. Wolsey in fact was neither able nor willing to carry on active hostilities. England had gone into the war with a light heart; but when Parliament was called upon in the summer of 1523 to vote the necessary funds, the light-heartedness was modified, and the funds were voted with extreme reluctance, under something very near akin to compulsion; and the collecting of the taxes aroused angry complaint--the blame being as usual laid on the Cardinal. He was well aware that any increase in the burden would be a dangerous matter to propose, and very dangerous indeed to try and carry through; yet without more funds an active campaign was impossible. Therefore, as concerned the Continent, Wolsey on the one hand sought to induce Charles to a.s.sent to a fresh conference where England should mediate as to the claims and counter-claims of Charles and Francis; and on the other made private overtures to Francis.

[Sidenote: Intrigues in Scotland]

In Scotland, the game of intrigue was actively carried on. Albany retired permanently to France soon after the failure of his invasion. While he was in Scotland, Margaret had sided with him; now she began to fall in with the English policy, and was eager for the "erection" of her son--that is for his recognition as actual King though he was barely twelve years old.

Throughout the summer, schemes were on foot for a peace conference--the real object being the kidnapping of Beton, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, coadjutor of Albany, Chancellor of Scotland, and the most resolute opponent of the Anglicising party and policy. Wolsey is quite explicit on this point in a letter to Dacre, though Surrey, who had just succeeded to the Dukedom of Norfolk by the death of the victor of Flodden, never grasped this peculiar method of diplomacy. Beton declined to be trapped; still, the "erection" was carried through. [Footnote: _L. & P._, vol. iv., part i., 549. _Cf._ Lang, _Hist. Scot_., pp. 405, 406. Beton was to have a safe-conduct, and the kidnapping was to be done by Angus, at the time in England, quite as a private personal matter. Angus had come to England from France, whither he had been removed by Albany.] By dint of bribery, many of the anti-English party had now changed sides along with Margaret, with the curious result that Angus, who was bound to be in opposition to his wife, allied himself to Beton. Next year, however, the French or anti-English party in Scotland suffered a serious blow when the French King was vanquished and taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia.

[Sidenote: 1525 Pavia]

Meantime, Wolsey had found Francis not too ready to accept his overtures, and had therefore set about making a show of pursuing a more actively antagonistic policy in conjunction with Bourbon. The Cardinal however, whose object was to make Francis think it necessary to conciliate him--not to be forced into expeditions and armaments--intentionally made his conditions to Bourbon such as the Constable would not agree to; while obtaining the desired result of moving Francis to enter seriously on negotiations. He even felt that matters were progressing favourably enough to justify a "diplomatic episode"--the interception of the Imperial amba.s.sador's dispatches, his virtual imprisonment, and the lodging of a protest against his conduct with the Emperor. But the battle of Pavia wrecked Wolsey's schemes, as well as those of his adversaries in Scotland.

For the disaster to Francis wakened anew in Henry's breast the belief that the French crown was still attainable: and the minister found himself forced to seek means to provide war-funds, while he was alive to the practical impossibility of persuading Parliament to grant them.

For Wolsey to protest would have been vain. He did not in any way dominate Henry, who was ready enough to follow his advice or allow him to carry out his own policy so long as it fell in with the royal views. But if the King chose to lay down a different policy, the Cardinal had to carry it out as best he could--or else to retire in disfavour. And he could not afford to retire in disfavour, since, if the royal countenance were once withdrawn, the malignity of his many enemies would be given rein, and his utter ruin would be inevitable. Therefore, while watching for any opportunity to convert the King from his martial designs, he made a desperate effort to fill the exchequer.