WOLSEY, THOMAS, cardinal, was born iu 1471 at Ipswich, in the county of Suffolk, and is reputed to have been the son of a butcher of that place. Though thus of humble origin, it is certain that by some means a good education was secured him, and at an unusually early age, he was sent to Magdalen college, Oxford, of which he became a fellow. It is said that while at Oxford, he was brought into somewhat intimate relations with the great Erasmus, unquestionably then in England. He afterward acted as tutor to the sons of the marquis of Dorset, through whose favor lie became in 1500, rector of Lymington, in Somersetshire. On one occasion he appears to have got himself into difft culties. At a fair in the neighborhood, it was his misfortune one day, it is said, to be found drunk and disorderly: and by a certain knight of the shire, by name sir Amias Poulet, he was put in the stocks for the misdemeanor. That he figured in the stocks is certain; that he did so on the score of drunkenness there is no adequate evidence. When the power to retaliate came to him, lie took his revenge on sir Amias by having him im prisoned for six years.
Wolsey, who *as plainly one of the most insinuating of men in Somersetshire, became Intimate with a sir John Nafant, a man of considerable mark. Through the influence at court of this gentleman, he was appointed chaplain to Henry VII., with whom he speedily ingratiated himself. Being sent by the king on a special embassy to the con tinent, he acquitted himself so dexterously. that lie rose still higher in favor; and in 1508 the deanery of Lincoln was conferred on him. The year after, Henry VIII. succeeded left vacant by the death of his father. Nearly from this time forward, the life of Wolsey, previously noted, indeed, as a rising man, yet of no special public impor tance, Is in effect the history of the England of which he implicitly became the ruler. From Henry he enjoyed the most unbounded favor and confidence; and the influence which he thus exerted in the conduct of affairs was such as has seldom been exerted by a subject. The most valuable ecclesiastical preferments were showered upon him; and finally, in the same year (1514), he obtained the bishopric of Lincoln and the archbishopric of 'York. The year following the dignity of cardinal was conferred on him by the pope, who, not long after, appointed him also legate. Besides these ecclesiastical honors, lie was made by the king. in 1515, his prime-minister, and lord high-chancellor of England. From this time, up to that of his forfeiture of the royal favor, Wolsey was one of the most im portant men in Europe; and at home his power was almost without limit. The reven ues derived from his various offices were of princely magnitude; and they were further enlarged by subsidies from foreign potentates, eager to conciliate his favor. He did not.
bear his honors meekly; in his way of life he affected a sumptuous magnificence, and a,. state only not royal, while in bearing he was arrogant and imperious. He openly aspired to he pope; and there seemed more than once ground for supposing that this object of his ambition was really within his reach. He was, however, disappointed; and it has been surmised that his resentment against Charles V.,- to whom he attributed his failure, determined, to a considerable extent, the foreign policy of the country.
Such a man could not fail to have many enemies, eager, as occasion might offer, to discredit him with his royal master; and an occasion at length came, of which they did not fail to take advantage. To the project on which the king had set his heart, of divorcing queen Catherine, and marrying Anne Boleyn, Wolsey showed himself hostile; of the latter part of the scheme lie was known to disapprove; and his negotiations with a view to securing the consent of the pope to the divorce were conducted, as it seemed to the king, in a dilatory and half-hearted manner. Henry, where his passions were in terested, could little brook contumacy of this kind; his displeasure was carefully fanned, and the disgrace of Wolsey was accomplished. In 1529 he was stripped of all his lion. ors, and diiven with ignominy from the court. Symptoms of relenting showed themselves, however, next year iu the mind of the monarch, and it seemed as if Wolsey might again be taken into favor. The prospect, as it proved, was delusive. Being at the time is Yorkshire, the archbishopric having been restored to him, along with others of his minor preferments, he was arrested on a charge of high treason, and ordered to be conveyed to London for trial. On his journey lie was attacked with dysentery, and at the monastery of Leicester, in Nov. 1530, lie died.
The faults of Wolsey's character are obvious; but if his pride, ambition, and rapacity were inordinate, his luxury and ostentation somewhat unbeseeming a successor of the primitive apostles, he was not without redeeming qualities. Haughty and insolent to his enemies, and those whose claims ran counter to his own, to his dependents and in feriors lie was generous, affable, and humane; and not a few of them showed their hon orable sense of this by devotion to him in his misfortunes. Of learning he was a most liberal and enlightened patron; and the endowment of Christ Church college, Oxford, sur vives as a monument to attest this. He was plainly a man of large and splendid capacity, and he seems, on the whole to have been a diligent, faithful, conscientious, and salutary counselor and servant of the monarch who so long and entirely trusted to him. There are lives of Wolsey by Cavendish (1667), Fiddes (1724), Galt (1812), and Martin (1862).