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Chapter 5 takes as its starting point the premiere of Robert Bolt’s historical play about the life of Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons. It goes on to consider Wolsey’s representation in academic writings and influential historical fictions in the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. The chapter explores the five biographies of the cardinal that appeared during this period, discussing at the same time how Wolsey has been represented in the broader historiography of the early reign of Henry VIII. While revisionists of the 1980s and 1990s demonstrated little interest in Wolsey, their discoveries about the early English Reformation have shaped the most recent academic representations of the cardinal. At the same time, however, some of the most influential representations of Wolsey in the past half-century have been fictional. Therefore, the chapter also analyzes Bolt’s play, the controversial television drama The Tudors, and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall novels.

This chapter traces the emergence of three prototypical representations of Thomas Wolsey. Of these, the most prevalent is that of Wolsey the papist, whereby the cardinal symbolized all that was wrong with Roman Catholicism. A second representation depicts Wolsey as the author of the English schism, criticizing him for the role that he was believed to have played in encouraging King Henry VIII to pursue the annulment of his first marriage. Finally, there is the representation of Wolsey as repentant sinner: this prototype is not blind to the cardinal’s faults but instead portrays him as a hard-working, sometimes morally ambiguous, often put-upon administrator who sought to do the bidding of his royal master even as King Henry made increasingly impossible demands on him. The chapter elaborates how a series of sixteenth-century writers adapted and interwove memories and texts in order to construct their accounts of the cardinal.

Chapter 4, which covers the period from c. 1850 to c. 1960, begins with a genre of representation that came into its own in the nineteenth century: historical fiction. The chapter addresses some of the interpretive challenges that historical fictions present and offers new readings of two early stories about Wolsey, both set in his native Suffolk. The emergence of historical fiction occurred contemporaneously with far-reaching developments in academic historiography. With the publication of copious original documents from the Henrician period came new resources for the study of Wolsey. The chapter explores the work of such historians as James Anthony Froude and J. S. Brewer, alongside the Wolsey biographies of Mandell Creighton (1891), Ethelred Taunton (1902), A. F. Pollard (1929), and Hilaire Belloc (1930). It observes how Victorian historians were often zealous about policing the boundaries of their discipline. Finally, since it is from this period that we have the earliest evidence for the public commemoration of Wolsey, the chapter explores the ways in which the cardinal was remembered in early-twentieth-century civic pageants in Oxford and Ipswich, as well as on the anniversaries of his Oxford foundation, currently known as Christ Church.

Chapter 2 begins by exploring the literary fate of George Cavendish’s Life of Cardinal Wolsey from the time of its composition at the end of Queen Mary’s reign through its first appearance in print, in a highly expurgated, theologically and politically partisan edition of 1641. Both manuscripts and printed editions of the Life are analyzed in detail. But the chapter’s broader concern is the representation of Wolsey under the first two Stuart monarchs. The years leading up to the outbreak of the English civil wars witnessed the publication of numerous texts featuring the cardinal, including several pamphlets critical of the churchmanship of Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud. The chapter considers these popular publications alongside early Stuart dramas, especially William Shakespeare’s and John Fletcher’s King Henry VIII, as well as learned texts like the church histories of Francis Godwin (1630) and Edward, Lord Herbert (written 1639, published 1649).

This chapter begins with a brief history of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's relationship with Henry VIII. The king gradually lost confidence in Wolsey's (then leading minister) abilities, leading to the latter's downfall. Cromwell was called upon to handle the cardinal's affairs at court; his entry into the royal service was unexpected and entirely dependent on circumstance, in contrast to Geoffrey Elton's depiction of a Cromwell as someone “intent on power.” Henry VIII recruited Cromwell specifically to manage the inquests into Wolsey's confiscated college lands. His undoubted talents had certainly caught the king's attention. However, Cromwell also relied greatly for assistance on other figures such as Sir John Gage, Sir John Russell, William Paulet, George Boleyn, and Sir Henry Guildford, among others.

Chapter 3 encompasses the greatest chronological sweep, 1641 to c. 1860, and it surveys the representation of Wolsey in influential histories of the English Reformation, such as those of Thomas Fuller, Gilbert Burnet, and John Lingard. The chapter observes how a number of these texts were written with contemporary ends in view: Lingard, for instance, worked amidst the controversy over Catholic emancipation. The period covered by this chapter also witnessed the publication of the first book-length biographies of the cardinal, most of which sought to defend Wolsey from what authors like Richard Fiddes (1724) and Joseph Grove (1742) considered to be the slanders of his critics. The chapter concludes with an important moment in the public history of Wolsey’s legacy, namely, Queen Victoria’s 1838 decision to open Hampton Court Palace to the public. The history of restoration work and commemorative display at Hampton Court is a fascinating one, intersecting with the heritage industry’s changing canons of preservation and authenticity.

This chapter introduces the subject of the book, namely, the myriad ways in which Thomas Wolsey has been represented and commemorated since his death in 1530. His name and image have been invoked in a bewildering, and often surprising, variety of contexts, including retellings of the early English Reformation and narratives about the development of British democracy. It enumerates the major purposes for which cultural producers have told the story of Wolsey’s life, and situates this book’s contribution within recent scholarly discussions about collective memory and mnemohistory. The chapter distinguishes between mnemohistory and reception history and further describes how the terms memory, commemoration, and representation will be used throughout the book. It illustrates the book’s mnemohistorical method with a case study about the representation of Wolsey as obese. Finally, it previews the arguments of the chapters that follow.

This chapter argues that the fall of Wolsey and the promotion of More to the chancellorship also inform Heywood’s next major dramatic work, A Play of Love. Evidently designed for performance either at Lincoln’s Inn or on Rastell’s household stage, the play offers a parodic legal moot on the question of happiness and unhappiness in love. But it also offers sharp satire of the judicial methods allegedly characteristic of Wolsey’s conduct in the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber, and offers sober counsel to More as he prepared to take on the responsibility of presiding over the ‘courts of conscience’ in Wolsey’s stead.

Henry VIII knew that a true Christian prince sought and considered counsel and weighed it in his conscience before acting. Council and counsel were therefore highly important to him in the crisis over his divorce and the royal supremacy. The discarding of his first great minister, Thomas Wolsey, led to an overt revival of conciliar activity in the early 1530s. This chapter argues that Henry used such structures of counsel, including what looks very like a traditional ‘great council’, less to seek advice than to build consensus around his chosen policies. Counsel as such seems to have been received by him in less formal and inevitably less well-documented contexts, evidence for which is used in this chapter to show not only how the conciliar process might work, but also how the ideal of honest and freely spoken counsel was strained by Henry’s increasing determination to have his own way.

This chapter sets Heywood’s Play of the Weather in the context of the remarkable opening session of the Reformation Parliament. It reads the play’s opening lines in the context of More’s savage speech describing Wolsey as a ‘great wether’ (castrated ram), and the call for redress of ‘enormities’. It looks at More’s speech, showing for the first time how the sources differ over what More said, and suggesting that More intended at least part of what he said as implied criticism of the king’s position rather than celebration of it. It suggests Heywood, inspired and provoked by the terms of the speech, offered the court a play that also gently ironized Henry VIII’s self-serving claims, and shows how Heywood may have revised the play in 1533, adding material that gently satirized the king’s secret marriage to Anne Boleyn and his claims to be Supreme Head of the Church.

This short chapter identifies 1529 as a hugely significant year both for the fortunes of the More–Rastell family and for the political nation as a whole. Drawing together a range of sources, it charts the dramatic consequences of the fall of Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey, and the sudden elevation of Thomas More to replace him as lord chancellor. It draws out the significance of these events for the More circle, arguing that they were the principal stimulus for Heywood’s remarkable turn to political drama in this period. Heywood’s career as a playwright would be fundamentally energized as a result of his kinsman’s elevation to the highest of political and legal offices.

This chapter looks at the minds of the first two presidents of Corpus Christi College, John Claymond and Robert Morwent, speculating on what might have been their most worrying moments. For Claymond, it is the death of Richard Fox in 1528, which brought the greatest predator of the decade into an uncomfortably intimate relationship with the College, because Fox’s successor at Winchester was none other than Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Indeed, the two or three years after 1528 would have remained anxious for Claymond. The chapter next looks into the mind of President Morwent, and shows how another perilous moment would have arrived in 1538. By 1538, Cardinal Reginald Pole headed King’s Henry’s list of people who required murdering. It was amid the political turmoil of this debacle that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer let Thomas Cromwell know of dangerously papalist sentiments currently being expressed among the Corpus Fellowship. In the end, Corpus sneaked past this crisis too.

This chapter discusses the aftermath of Churchyard’s slaying of an individual in 1580 and the author’s flight to Scotland. Using correspondence preserved in Christopher Hatton’s letter book, it shows how Churchyard undertakes to gather intelligence about French and Catholic influence at the Scots court. The chapter recounts how Churchyard was forced to flee Scotland and seek refuge in England, where he was subsequently arrested. It discusses the author’s return to royal favour and involvement in Anjou’s investiture as Duke of Brabant in 1582. Attention then turns to Churchyard’s continued military activities including work as muster-master in Kent and in Flushing with the Earl of Leicester in 1587. The chapter concludes by examining two works that Churchyard publishes on his return from his final stint in military service: The Worthines of Wales and Cardinal Wolsey’s tragedy from the 1587 Mirror for Magistrates.

This chapter begins by discussing the laws governing the appointment of sheriffs. It explains the nature of the annual meeting on 3 November in which the Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, and other officials met in the Exchequer Chamber to shortlist candidates for the shrievalty. This meeting produced a role of names to be conveyed to the king, who made the final decision by marking or pricking one name for each county. It discusses the politicking that happened behind the scenes in favour of certain candidates, but insists that factionalism never truly endangered the correct working of the shrieval system. The chapter also discusses the different methods of electing sheriffs in London and other towns. It explains the sheriff’s responsibilities during his first days in office, including the swearing of an oath, the text of which was revised in 1516.