The Rise of Wolsey

• Wolsey was the son of an Ipswich butcher. His lowly origins made him unpopular with the nobility but it meant that he would never represent a threat to the king.
• Henry VIII made him and he could unmake him!
• He became bursar of Magdalen College, Oxford and then was appointed to Henry VII’s Council as almoner – the man who distributed food and money to the poor on the king’s behalf.
• In 1513, he was the main organizer of Henry’s great expedition to France.
• In 1514, he was rewarded with the Bishoprics of Lincoln and Tournai (one of two French towns captured by Henry VIII the year before) and then was elevated to the vacant Archbishopric of York.
• In 1515, he was made Chancellor of England – a legal office usually held by a cleric – and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
• In 1524, the Pope agreed to make Wolsey, legate a latere for life, a very high honour, so that Wolsey outranked the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham.
• In 1529 he was dismissed as Chancellor and sent to York. He died in 1530, on his way to London to stand trial.