Thomas Wolsey's fall from power

Thomas Wolsey's fall from power is the removal and death of a once-dominant royal minister, but the novel makes it more than a change of office: it tests Thomas Cromwell’s loyalty, exposes the precariousness of court advancement, and leaves the cardinal present in memory after his authority has vanished. Watched by the king’s council, arrested before his planned investiture at York, and taken south under guard, Wolsey dies at Leicester Abbey before he can return to court. Cromwell’s response—his continued service to Wolsey, his grief, and his preservation of the cardinal’s turquoise ring—turns political disgrace into an enduring bond.

Political Isolation and a Loyal Servant

In the winter of 1529–spring 1530, Rafe Sadler reports that the Duke of Norfolk believes Wolsey has hidden treasure and suspects Cromwell knows where it is. Norfolk expects Cromwell to work for him, and Rafe has assured the duke of Cromwell’s respect and willingness to serve. Cromwell does not treat the overture as an uncomplicated change of allegiance. He recalls going to Wolsey at Esher, where he tells him he will not forsake him, and continues to manage the cardinal’s household and affairs even as he enters a new Parliament at Taunton with the king’s and Norfolk’s approval.

The political danger is intensified by the uncertainty surrounding Wolsey’s position. Although Henry VIII has pardoned him, Cromwell knows that the king’s favour can be withdrawn again. Those who previously assembled forty-four charges against Wolsey could devise more, whether or not they were constrained by truth. Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner watch Cromwell together and glare at him without speaking. Cromwell, meanwhile, carries confidential letters between the cardinal and the king, remaining close to both sides of a court in which access and suspicion are inseparable.

Wolsey’s popularity among ordinary people makes his weakened position more dangerous rather than less. When Cromwell hears that the cardinal is cheered wherever he goes, Norfolk dismisses the people’s approval; Cromwell answers that the same people will eventually have to be taxed. The exchange exposes a political contradiction: public affection cannot protect Wolsey from the council, but it is a resource that his enemies cannot wholly ignore. His charitable acts and attention to local disputes help sustain that affection even while his enemies treat it as a possible sign of independence.

The Northern Progress and Arrest

In September 1530, Wolsey leaves Southwell and travels north to York. The journey becomes a popular procession: people gather at wayside crosses, bring their children for his blessing, and come in large numbers to see him. The council has placed him under observation and closed the ports. Norfolk threatens that, if he sees Wolsey again, he will destroy him; Cromwell records the threat and sends its exact substance northward. The journey is therefore both a display of the cardinal’s continuing public influence and a movement under surveillance.

On 2 October, Wolsey reaches his palace at Cawood, ten miles from York. His enthronement is planned for 7 November, and he has called a convocation of the northern church to meet in York the day after. He has informed neither the king nor William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury. To some observers, the convocation signals independence; to others, it looks like revolt. The planned ceremony and assembly make the unresolved question of Wolsey’s authority impossible to avoid: whether he remains a servant of the king or is beginning to act as a power in his own right.

On 1 November, a commission for Wolsey’s arrest is given to Henry Percy, the young Earl of Northumberland. Percy arrives at Cawood forty-eight hours before Wolsey was due to enter York for his investiture. According to George Cavendish’s later account to Cromwell, Percy comes in mud-spattered from the road, already holding the keys taken from the porter and having placed sentries on the stairs. He arrests Wolsey for high treason. Wolsey asks to see the commission; when Percy says that parts of his instructions cannot be shown, Wolsey refuses to surrender until he and Cavendish can confer in his rooms. The arrest brings the intended northern progress to an abrupt end and turns an anticipated public investiture into a guarded removal.

Removal, Illness, and Death

Wolsey is taken first to Pontefract Castle, then to Doncaster, and then to Sheffield Park, the home of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He falls ill there. On 26 November, the Constable of the Tower arrives with twenty-four men-at-arms to escort him south. Wolsey is eventually taken to Leicester Abbey, where he dies three days later. The route from Cawood to Leicester makes the fall concrete: the cardinal who had planned to take his place at York is instead moved from one guarded stop to another, with no return to the king’s service.

Cavendish tells Cromwell that when Percy announced the arrest, Wolsey did not erupt in anger. He put his fingers together as if in prayer. When Percy would not show the whole commission, Wolsey walked into his chamber with the earl’s party close behind. Cavendish held the doorway, and Wolsey turned to declare that he feared no living man. Outside, the townspeople knelt and wept as he was taken away, asking God to punish Percy. At Doncaster, crowds stood through the night holding candles. Their vigil marks the distance between official treatment of Wolsey as a traitor and the popular grief of people who still saw him as their cardinal.

During the journey, Wolsey goes for a week without eating, though Cavendish cannot accept the suggestion that he meant to destroy himself. He arranges for Wolsey to have roasted warden pears with spices, and Wolsey eats a little. When he complains of a painful, cold sensation in his chest, Cavendish has an apothecary prepare medicine and takes one of the cups himself to test it. The pain eases temporarily, and Wolsey says it was wind. Later, when the Constable of the Tower arrives to take him south, Wolsey recognizes the danger in the journey and tells Cavendish that he knows what death is prepared for him. These details remain Cavendish’s recollection, delivered after the cardinal’s death; the account establishes his suffering but does not resolve its cause.

At Leicester Abbey, Wolsey remains ill for days, in pain and unable to keep food down. He refuses chicken broth when told it is a meatless day. In his final hours he wakes, sees a shadow on the wall, and calls Cromwell’s name. Cavendish tells him that Cromwell is on the road, though he is not. The story gives Cromwell no chance to reach Wolsey before his death: the cardinal dies at eight the next morning, with the sound of rosary beads around his bed. Cavendish later says that Wolsey was speaking to the end, and Cromwell asks whether he spoke of him again.

Burial and the Afterlife of the Fall

After Wolsey dies, Cavendish washes and lays him out. Beneath his shirt he finds a belt of hair, a devotional practice Wolsey may have adopted among the monks at Richmond. The monks at Leicester keep it. Cavendish also describes the plain wooden coffin, a stark contrast with the elaborate tomb the cardinal had expected from a Florentine sculptor. The night before burial, Wolsey is dressed in his archbishop’s robes and given his crozier, an emblem of the York enthronement that was only days away. Instead of assuming that office, he is laid in the crypt at six in the morning on the feast of St Andrew the Apostle.

Cavendish and Cromwell arrange for the mayor and city officials to see Wolsey in his coffin so that there can be no rumours that he escaped to France. Cromwell tells Cavendish to say nothing if questioned about the cardinal’s last days, especially to Norfolk, who might turn the account into treason. The instruction shows how even death does not remove Wolsey from political danger: the story of his final words could still be used against those associated with him. Cavendish says he has already told the king and Norfolk nothing, though Norfolk has paid him wages that were in arrears.

After Cavendish leaves, Cromwell opens a secret drawer and unwraps the package Wolsey gave him before the journey north. Inside is the turquoise ring, which rolls into Cromwell’s palm and fits him. The object carries the relationship forward after the cardinal’s death, while Wolsey’s empty scarlet clothes are described as material that will be cut up and made into other garments. His political body has been removed, but fragments of his presence may pass into other lives and objects. Cromwell, by contrast, imagines Wolsey alive in the red of a carpet, a bird’s breast, a wax seal, and a ruby. The ring and the colour red turn remembrance into something physical: the fallen cardinal remains present in the world Cromwell sees.

The court’s public treatment of Wolsey sharpens the contrast. At Hampton Court, an interlude titled The Cardinal’s Descent into Hell stages a scarlet figure dragged across the floor by actors dressed as devils. Norfolk laughs and proposes having the performance printed and repeated; Anne Boleyn watches with laughter and applause, while Henry VIII sits largely frozen beside her. Cromwell recalls that Wolsey died conscious and speaking of the king, so the mock spectacle cannot erase the private account he has just heard. The performance converts a former minister’s fall into entertainment, while the ring, the funeral vigil, and Cromwell’s memory preserve a different version: one in which loyalty survives the public destruction of Wolsey’s authority.