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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
In composing the work known as The life and death of Cardinal Wolsey, some twenty-five years after the last event it describes, George Cavendish was not motivated by the ambitions of a secular annalist or historian. He wrote mostly from memory without verifying dates or the sequence of events, and he was not much interested in the sort of things historians ordinarily want to know. It is an odd biography of a great political figure. Up to the period of Wolsey's mid fifties (c. 1472–1527) it is little more than a loose succession of anecdotes and vignettes, and becomes more expansive only for the last three years of his life after his political career had first run into insuperable difficulties and then collapsed in disaster (1527–30). The whole second half of the book is taken up with the very last year of his life, one of frustration and dejection. This weighting towards Wolsey's last years might be explained as a bias towards the time when Cavendish was closest to his subject; Wolsey perhaps talked to his servants more when he had nothing else to do. This prompted A. F. Pollard, in his biography of Wolsey, to describe the Life as ‘the classic example of history as it appears to a gentleman-usher’.
I am indebted to my wife, Jennifer Britnell, for her comments on this paper and for all I know about Renaissance prophetic traditions.
1 The composition of the work may be dated to 1554–8: The life and death of Cardinal Wolsey by George Cavendish (hereinafter cited as LDCW), ed. Sylvester, R. S. (Early English Text Society ccxliii, 1959), pp. xxvi–xxviiGoogle Scholar.
2 Pollard, A. F., Wolsey, 2nd edn, London 1953, 2Google Scholar.
3 This hinges on his having been present at an interview between Wolsey and Lord Henry Percy, and later at an interview between the latter and his father, that can be dated sometime between the spring of 1522 and the summer of 1523: LDCW, 30, 32; Ives, E., Anne Boleyn, Oxford 1986, 82Google Scholar.
4 LDCW, 3.
5 Sylvester, R. S., ‘Cavendish' Life of Wolsey: the artistry of a Tudor biographer’, Studies in Philology lvii (1960), 44–71Google Scholar. So too, but more briefly, Lewis, C. S., English literature in the sixteenth century excluding drama, Oxford 1954, 287–8Google Scholar.
6 LDCW, 10, 13, 28–9, 34.
7 Ibid. 187–8.
8 Sylvester, , ‘Cavendish's Life of Wolsey’, 47Google Scholar.
9 LDCW, 3–4.
10 Ibid.. 4.
11 Ibid. 100–11, cf. 136.
12 Ibid. 7, 11.
13 Ibid. 15.
14 Ibid. 5.
15 Ibid. 18–21, 22–4.
16 Stow, J., The chronicles of England from Brute vnto this present yeare 1580, London [1580], 904–22Google Scholar; Holinshed, R., Harrison, W. and others, The first and second [and third] volumes of chronicles, London 1587, iii. 917–22Google Scholar. For discussion see Wiley, P. L., ‘Renaissance exploitation of Cavendish's Life of Wolsey’, Studies in Philology xliii (1946), 127–32Google Scholar, and LDCW, 270–1.
17 Shakespeare, and Fletcher, , King Henry VIII, 1. ivGoogle Scholar. This is ultimately from LDCW, 25–8, by way of Holinshed, , Harrison, and others, Chronicles, iii. 921–2Google Scholar.
18 Hall's chronicle, ed. Ellis, H., London 1809, 755Google Scholar.
19 The Anglica historia of Polydore Vergil, A.D. 1485–1537, ed. Hay, D. (Camden 3rd ser. lxxiv, 1950), 324–5Google Scholar; cf. Hall's chronicle, 728.
20 LDCW, 84.
21 Ibid. 74–5.
22 Ibid. 75.
23 Ibid. 82–3.
24 Ibid. 85–6.
25 Ibid. 34–5. For a commentary on this section of the Life see Ives, , Anne Boleyn, 77–83Google Scholar.
26 LDCW, 35–6.
27 Ibid. 95 (‘hissecrettennemyes’), 108 (‘my mortall ennemyes’), 113 (‘hysennemyes’, ‘my Ennemyes’), 119 (‘his ennemyes’), 123 (‘hys ennemyes’, ‘hys mortall ennemyes’), 124 (‘The lordes who ware not all his ffrendes’), 136 (‘my ennemyes’), 137 (‘my ennemyes’), 150 (‘My lordes accustumed Ennemyes in the Court’, ‘his ennemyes’), 156 (‘my Cruell ennemyes’), 157 (‘my onmercyfull ennemyes’), 159 (‘your oncharitable ennemyes’, ‘myn ennemyes’), 163 (‘his ennemyes’, ‘my ongentill accusers’), 165 (‘my malygnaunt ennemyes’, ‘my ennemyes’), 166 (‘my accusers’), 170 (‘your ennemyes’). For a balanced account of the faction that brought Wolsey down see Ives, E., ‘The fall of Wolsey’, in Gunn, S. J. and Lindley, P. G. (eds.), Cardinal Wolsey: Church, state and art, Cambridge 1991, 286–315Google Scholar.
28 LDCW, 137.
29 Ibid. 94, 124, 127, 129.
30 Ibid. 90.
31 Ibid. 105–10, 114–16, 158–9, 160–1, cf. 154–5.
32 Ibid. 100, 103–4, 114, 137–8, 156–7, 161, 163, 165–6, 176, 179.
33 Ibid. 184–5, 187.
34 Sylvester, ‘Cavendish's Life of Wolsey’, 58–61Google Scholar.
35 LDCW, 182, 188.
36 Holinshed, , Harrison, and others, Chronicles, iii. 915–17Google Scholar. The material here is taken from Cavendish by way of Stow, , Chronicles, 970–8Google Scholar. Cavendish's work was not printed as a work in its own right until 1641: LDCW, p. xi.
37 Shakespeare, and Fletcher, , King Henry VIII, 1. iGoogle Scholar, lines 52, 72; Shakespeare, W., Comedies, histories and tragedies, London 1623, pt 2, 206Google Scholar.
38 Shakespeare, and Fletcher, , King Henry VIII, III. ii, lines 352–8, 459Google Scholar: Shakespeare, , Comedies, histories and tragedies, pt 2, 222–3Google Scholar.
39 It is remarkable that the play should assign this role to a gentleman-usher. Shakespeare and Fletcher possibly knew more about the origins of their material than meets the eye, but the fact remains that Cavendish's text was not in print and there is no evidence that they had read it.
40 Shakespeare, and Fletcher, , King Henry VIII, iv. ii, lines 64–72Google Scholar: Shakespeare, , Comedies histories and tragedies, pt 2, 225Google Scholar.
41 Hall's chronicle, 774.
42 Anglica historia, 332–3.
43 Ibid.
44 LDCW, 144–5.
45 Ibid. 148. Cavendish is probably correct on this point, since Wolsey did not have adequate means for such display even had he wanted to emulate his predecessors. The installation of archbishops of York in the late Middle Ages had become an occasion for notorious extravagance. The installation of George Neville in 1465 has been described as ‘the single most spectacular event in the history of the fifteenth-century Minster’: Dobson, R. B., ‘The later Middle Ages, 1215–1500’, in Aylmer, G. E. and Cant, R. (eds), A history of York Minster, Oxford 1977, 79, 100Google Scholar.
46 LDCW, 146–9.
47 It is also much more in keeping with the mood of Wolsey's surviving letters from this period: State papers during the reign of Henry VIII (Record Commission), London 1830–1852, i. nos clxxxiii–ccii, pp. 347–71Google Scholar.
48 LDCW, 172.
49 Ibid. 143–4.
50 Ibid. 162.
51 Ibid. 182.
52 Ibid. 178.
53 Historically, this is probably because Cavendish had nothing very specific to say about these accusations. Wolsey is unlikely to have drawn his gentlemen-ushers into his political dealings.
54 LDCW, 136–7.
55 Ibid. 165; cf. Psalms xxiii. 4; lxi. 3.
56 LDCW, 165.
57 This is supported by the Milanese ambassador's account of Wolsey's death, in which he reported that ‘his mind never wandered at the last’ and that ‘whenever he heard the king's name mentioned, he bowed his head, putting his face downwards’: Calendar of state papers, Venetian and northern Italian, ed. Brown, R., London 1864–1890, iv, no. 637, p. 266Google Scholar.
58 Ibid., iv, no. 641, p. 270.
59 Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, ed. Allen, P. S., Oxford 1906–1958, ix, no. 2413, p. 96Google Scholar.
60 Hall's chronicle, 774. The story is repeated in Holinshed, , Harrison, and others, Chronicles, iii. 922Google Scholar, but not used by Shakespeare and Fletcher.
61 LDCW, 168.
62 Ibid. 178–9.
63 Ibid. 181.
64 The prophetic nature of Wolsey's reported speech was recognised by Pollard, , Wolsey, 300–1Google Scholar, but he offered no interpretation. Wolsey's impassioned prediction that the country might be going to the dogs as a result of Henry VIII's toying with heretics was unremarkable in the circumstances, and did not need divine revelation for its foundation.
65 LDCW, 178.
66 Ibid. 181.
67 Ibid. 175.
68 Ibid. 181–2. The original text has ‘lokyng’ for ‘loked’. Wolsey's prediction of the hour of his death (in which he was mistaken by twenty-four hours) was based on medical opinion. On 23 Nov., probably in the morning, and at a guess about 8 o'clock, the earl of Shrewsbury's physician had predicted that he had only four or five days to live, and Wolsey had been told this: ibid. 174. It is not surprising, considering how ill he was, that he was surprised to be still alive on the morning of 28 Nov.
69 LDCW, 128.
70 Ibid. 151.
71 Ibid. 152. Wolsey's interpretation of the falling cross was articulated only after some of the predicted events had happened; he himself had been arrested, and d'Agostini had been arrested on a charge of treason and taken to London. Wolsey knew he was facing a charge of high treason: ibid. 156–7. The suggestion that d'Agostini might testify something against Wolsey, and that the latter's life was in danger, was hardly dependent on heightened powers of prophecy at the time it was made.
72 Ibid. 149.
73 Ibid. 128–9; cf. Isaiah xliv. 25.
74 Cavendish does not tell the tale, reported over a century later, that Wolsey ‘was inform'd of some Fortune-tellers, that he should have his end at Kingston’: Fuller, T., The church-history of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ untill the year MDCXLVIII, London 1655, bk v, sect. 2Google Scholar. 6, i. 178. There is no evidence that Wolsey knew such a prophecy, or that it was ‘one of his superstitions’ (pace Pollard, , Wolsey, 298nGoogle Scholar.). It sounds like a later fairy-tale. Cavendish indeed describes Wolsey's dismay on hearing that he was being placed in Kingston's custody, but he also supplies the obvious explanation; the latter was ‘Constable of the tower, And Capteyn of the Gard hauyng xxiiijti of the gard to attend vppon hyme’: LDCW, 169. Wolsey had not been the king's leading minister for fourteen years without learning how to interpret the most obvious of danger signals.
75 Plato, , Apology 39c (trans. Tredennick, H.), in The collected dialogues, including the letters, ed. Hamilton, E. and Cairns, H., Princeton 1961, 24Google Scholar.
76 Plato, , Phaedo 65c, and Republic, 518aGoogle Scholar, ibid. 48, 750.
77 Cicero, , De divinatione i. 30 (trans.Google ScholarFalconer, W. A.), in Cicero in twenty-eight volumes, XX, Cambridge, Mass. 1923, 294–5Google Scholar.
78 Aune, D. E., Prophecy in early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean world, Gran d Rapids, Mich. 1983, 289Google Scholar; Luke ii. 25–38.
79 Ficino, , Theologia platonica ix. 2Google Scholar, in Ficin, M., Théologie platonicienne de Pimmortalité des âimes, ed. Marcel, R., Paris 1964–1970, ii. 10–11Google Scholar.
80 della Mirandola, J. F. Pico, De rerum praenotione ii. 6Google Scholar (Strasbourg edition of 1506–7, fo. Diijv).
81 The text of the 1511 edition is printed in Screech, M. A., Ecstasy and the Praise of folly, London 1980, 253Google Scholar.
82 Agrippa, , De occulta philosophia i. 60Google Scholar, in De occulta philosophia libri tres, ed. Perrone, V.Compagni, Leiden 1992, 216Google Scholar.
83 Rabelais Tiers livre, ch. 21, inTiers livre, ed. Screech, M. A., Geneva 1964, 152–3Google Scholar.
84 LDCW, 78.
85 Ibid. 183.
86 Ibid. 185.
87 Sylvester, ‘Cavendish's Life of Wolsey’ 70Google Scholar. Sylvester supposes that the council was aware of the truth of the matter but was (presumably) intimidating Cavendish into silence. This does not square with Cavendish's narrative; it makes Kingston's actions unintelligible.
88 Kingston had died in 1540: DNB s. v. William Kingston.
89 Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, J. and Brodie, R. H., London 1862–1910, iv/3, nos 6759, 6760, pp. 3055–6Google Scholar.
90 Ibid, iv/3, no. 6763, p. 3057.
91 Fox, A., ‘Prophecies and politics in the reign of Henry VIII’, in Fox, A. and Guy, J., Reassessing the Henrician age: humanism, politics and reform, 1500–1550, Oxford 1986, 92Google Scholar; Jansen, S. L., Political protest and prophecy under Henry VIII, Woodbridge 1991, 24–61Google Scholar.
92 Guy, J. A., The public career of Sir Thomas More, New Haven-London 1980, 131–40Google Scholar; Haigh, C., English Reformations: religion, politics and society under the Tudors, Oxford 1993, 101–2, 105Google Scholar; Ives, , Anne Boleyn, 165–6Google Scholar.
93 LDCW, 4.