Thomas Wolsey as the Key Figure in Church Essay

Thomas Wolsey as the Key Figure in Church - Essay ExampleWolsey was very much a human being in the right place at the right time. The new King was young, fun-loving and, truth be told, alternatively lazy. His conception of Kingship was embodied in all-action heroes homogeneous King Henry V rather than frugal administrators like his own father, Henry VII. Nevertheless, he was not prepared to leave the affairs of state in the transfer of his fathers wide servants, whom he found (typically enough for a teenager) old, boring, and behind the times. Empson and Dudley, his fathers hated tax collectors, were executed Foxe and Warham were rapidly reaching retirement age and were encouraged out of court with a series of withering insults by Wolsey. By 1519, the Venetian ambassador, Giustinian, was summing up the situation well when he told Francis I of France that King Henry use himself to pleasure and ease and left the cares of the State to the Cardinal. Nevertheless, it cannot be deni ed that Wolsey made the most of the opportunities given to him. He had the great ability to gauge his audience, to flatter and to be entertaining. He had a special gift of natural eloquence (Cavendish) which the likes of Castiglione in the Book of the Courtier had stressed as being so important in the age of Renaissance diplomacy. Wolsey was a man who enjoyed the fine things of life. He was sociable, witty and convivial, a sponsor of musicians and artists. Polydore Vergil, the Tudor historian, gives us a coup doeil into his tactics when he tells us that whenever the Cardinal wanted something from Henry, he brought out some small designate or other ... and while the King was admiring it intently, Wolsey would adroitly bring forward the project on which his understanding was fixed.