Further reasons for Wolsey's success

• Wolsey had the right patrons. Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fox of Winchester were eager to retire from royal service and saw Wolsey as a ‘safe pair of hands’.
• Wolsey was a very able man with a real appetite for administration. He had great ability and ruled wisely and fairly.
• While Henry liked to have the nobility around him at Court he, like his father, did not wish them to exercise real power.
• Nobility were given honorary positions.

  • Wolsey’s extensive power and influence would remind them that the king was the ultimate authority in the land.
• Wolsey got on well with the king at a personal level. He was a scholar and good speaker; very much like the tutors and intellectuals which the young Henry found congenial company.
• Wolsey’s accumulation of offices was unique but he was not very different from Cardinal Morton during the reign of Henry VII, who was Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury.
• Although Wolsey had extensive power, the king retained overall control of policy, especially foreign policy and the machinery of government at the centre and in the localities saw little reform.
• Wolsey could act as a convenient scapegoat when things went wrong e.g. the Amicable Grant of 1525 and the Divorce Crisis.
• Wolsey got results. Throughout his tenure of office, he relieved the king of tedious business and carried out the king’s wishes in foreign policy.