welcome back everyone this is history with Hilbert here and today you're watching a video about Cardinal Wolsey now Cardinal Wolsey was born in the early 1470s and what made him special was that he was of common stock now his father is often described as being a butcher and therefore he is a commoner which is unusual for the period now the only way that commoners could sort of rise in the social hierarchy during this time was through the church and this is exactly what Thomas Wolsey does now his route to learning went through I think he went to Ipswich school where he was born in Ipswich and then he went on to a maudlin College at Oxford and after that he was ordained as a priest because as I said that's the only way you used to be able to rise up through the ranks of society indeed the medieval in the Tudor period now in 1502 he became chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury and in 1507 he started working for Henry the seventh who you know we all know Henry the seventh if you've been watching my channel the original OG and we started working for Henry the seventh in 1507 as the royal chaplain so he really does very quickly become quite an important figure in the country and he you can tell he was an important figure and respected by Henry the seventh because he was sent to Scotland on the diplomatic mission after the Scots were trying to reform the old alliance with the French now unfortunately Henry the seventh isn't alive for much longer and he's given a seat on the Privy Council under Henry the eighth now Henry the eighth's wanted to go to war but most of his councilors didn't now Wolsey didn't want to go to war at first however he realized that if he was the only counselor saying you know let's go to war then the king is much more likely to promote him because King Henry at this stage was a young man he wanted to be more of a warrior king whereas the councilors who we had I think Fox is one of them Richard Fox he was inherited from his father from Henry the seventh Infuse watched a few of my videos on Henry the seventh you'll know that foreign policy-wise he's very careful very cautious he was very much and looking at all the documents of making sure everything was in order much more like Wolsey Wolsey was a bit more like Henry the seventh he was very much enjoyed looking at documents and going through things that other rulers would find tedious Henry the eighth's is the opposite he's a young man he wants to go to war he wants to make a name for himself and to sort of bring England onto the world stage which was very much sort of the opposite of what Henry the seventh day so will we realizes this and Wolsey says let's go to war and he gives lots of speeches in the Privy Council to persuade the other councillors to join him in war and in 1515 Wolsey becomes the Lord Chancellor I think he replaces and the Archbishop of Canterbury Sir William Wharram so Wolsey immediately sets out to do what Henry wants him to do and to aid him as best as possible now before I go on I'm going to have a quick look at what was going on in Europe at the time because some of Woolsey's best achievements were in the realm of foreign policy and if we look at Europe at the time we'll start with England England was a fairly and significant player on the European stage at the time the dynasty the Tudor dynasty had been started by Henry the eighth's dad by Henry the 7th got plenty of idiots about him and the dynasty was still fairly weak now to the north Scotland was a fully independent nation at the time and the Scots were enemies of the English so the Scots were also allies of the French who were also traditionally the enemies of the English and this alliance was called the old alliance and this was a constant headache for the English kings because then you've got the possibility of a Scottish invasion from the north drawing away English troops to fight that off while the French would then land troops on the south coast of England in another place you'd have to divert your armies and this happened several times during this period so this definitely wasn't unfounded at the same time you had the Habsburg powers of the Holy Roman Empire and in Spain as well stain was also a fairly new country and a fairly new unified country but it was it was also on the rise but less so as France now Spain had been United before in the 1490s of ink by sending nice Avella who the king and queen of Castile and Leon or no Castile and Leon and am I gone I think never mind they were important Spanish kingdoms and the Habsburg Netherlands we'll also a power around he will link to the two and spin and the Holy Roman Emperor actually amalgamated into essentially amalgamated into one Kingdom or Empire or Confederacy under charles v who during this period became both the king of spain and the holy roman emperor now the French as I said were on the rise during this period their power was increasing and where this essentially played out was in Italy you had the Italian walls you have the walls of the League of Cambre you have the walls of the League of cognac you had there and yeah many Italian Wars which played out in Italy now Italy wasn't unified at this time there were lots of little Italian States you had genoa Florence as NS they'll switch sides many times and that's essentially where the French did battle with the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope now at the same time you had in Eastern Europe in the ball come in some of the Slavic countries the Ottoman Empire was the big power they've invaded Europe they were Atlas Islamic Kingdom or an Islamic empire so he had much of North Africa under their control large parts of the Middle East and they had invaded this part of Europe and they actually tried to push into Western Europe another first Islamic attempts at and conquest of Europe were from the Moors from Spain but they were defeated already in I think the 8th century and by the by the Franks by Charles Martel at the Battle of Blacky and they'd been pushed back but now they were coming in from the other side from the very the Ottoman Empire obviously this was a big worry for the Pope it was the papacy the traditional enemy of Islam because they were they here of holders of Christendom so while all the European nations were fighting each other the Pope was going guys can did the Ottomans you might want to sort them out and obviously they did get sorted out they I think the siege of Vienna in 15 2015 14 so I don't know somewhere you have the siege of Vienna and after that they cease to become a power and go in a sort of a long period of stagnation I believe also with the finish fleets negative route Ottoman fleets but that's that's definitely time for another video I definitely to be more research in that but essentially what we need to know for this one is that everyone was basically ganging up on the French and apart from the Scottish because they in a vested interest in being the a like you their enemies enemy I II the French was a part of the League of Canberra and in this sort of general anti-french coalition the English and the Henry days they invade Gascony which is a region in thing it's the southwest of France it was called accutane and it used to belong to England during the Hundred Years War and all that before but the French basically took back all the English possessions in France apart from I think Colette remained them in English territory in France in sort of the latter half of the 15th century while the English were busy fighting each other in the Wars of the Roses now Henry the eighth's army doesn't do very well and they are being pushed back in 1512 however in 1513 Coronel Wolvie takes over now he's very good at organizing things and he ensures that the English army is supplied and organized throughout the campaign and the English actually managed to quite well in 1513 as well you've got the Battle of the Spurs which was a battle in which Henry Duke himself took part now in it sounds very glorious and Henry the eighth's led the charge himself and routed the French but there were 30,000 Anglo imperial troops the Spanish under King and so no Muslimin a must-have in the end yeah imperial troops from the Holy Roman Empire in the English they had about 30,000 troops the French had about 7,000 and they managed to surprise the French and it really wasn't that much of a significant battle but it was a big morale booster in it and it filled Henry's ego significantly that Wolvie went up in his good books so it was all good for Wolsey now in 1514 the very creatively named anglo-french Treaty of 1514 was signed and this was between the English and the French sort of off the back of the Battle of the spares of winning that battle and it said that Princess Mary who was Henry's sister would marry the king of the French to King Louis as well the city of dignity which had been besieged by the English was allowed to remain an English hand and the French word essentially paid English more money and this was worked up by Cardinal Wolsey again so to another success of his in the realm of foreign policy now in 1518 Wolsey is made the papal legate to England by the Pope and as I was saying before the Pope really didn't like the fact that the European nations were fighting each other while the Ottomans were slowly becoming more powerful while they were slowly marching westwards potentially towards Rome that would be the biggest nightmare of all for the Christians was if Rome itself would fall to you know the Muslims that's unthinkable when a few centuries before they were the ones who are in control of the Holy Land of Jerusalem so what Wolsey does is he holds a summit between all the largest powers in Europe now all the nations of here were invited and most of them did show up so you've got things like the whole Roman Empire the French you've got the and the gundy in Burgundy and I'm not sure if they were around still love to check that one you have the Habsburg Netherlands you've got Spain you've got the papal States you've got England of course all of the big powers were there and essentially it's just a big anti-war coalition so if you think of sort of stop the war kind of thing that you might have today a big protest march it's kind of like that but then the Renaissance version with Cardinal Wolsey there and essentially all promise that the I'm going to attack each other and that they have a non-aggression pact and that instead they are then going to fight against the rising power of the Ottomans in the Balkan which is why the Pope wanted them to do this in the first place so that's all well and good no another of his great achievements was the field of the cloth of gold in 1520 and what this was was essentially a massive how to describe it best maybe as a huge fun fair maybe that kind of thing very lavish to show off the wealth of the English and it was held in I think the the county of Calais in northern France which was then kal-el was then an English garrison city in northern France on the other side of the English Channel and it was essentially a meeting between the English King Henry the eighth and the French King I think was it francis already I think Francis the first of France and they essentially met and this was again to back up the anglo-french treaty which was signed in 1514 to ensure good relations between the two kings and essentially to show off English wealth and this was all organized by Cardinal Wolsey again and it was very much a success however the nations of Europe would soon be busy fighting each other once again the Ottomans forgotten so that they can you know let off some steam I imagine now in 1525 the Battle of power the elders Falls and this was a very decisive battle it was fought between the Imperial armies of the Holy Roman Empire and under Spanish against the French and the French were defeated in what can only be decided as a decisive shreking now this actually led to the end of a whole war with very large numbers of soldiers involved I think something like 15,000 Frenchmen fell on the day with only a few hundred casualties on the Imperial side and what's more the French King Francis was captured by the Holy Roman Empire now this had huge consequences not only for the involved in the actual battle and fun fact Richard Zeller poll died in that battle he was younger brother to Edwin dilip all they had been Yorkist rebels and potential claimants to the throne so that silver by the by I think I mentioned that one in one of my Henry seventh videos but for Henry the eighth's as well Henry the eighth now sees this as his chance to reclaim the lands in France lost to the French which used to be English and this claim went right back to Henry the sixth to Henry the fifth who invaded areas and you've got Edward the third Black Prince goes right the way back to probably to William the Conqueror and this claim was still being pressed you know at least 500 years later now all Henry needed to do was to raise the funds to invade France because the king of France has been taken prisoner the French army had had a massive you know shreking as I called it at the Battle of Pavia so the road essentially lay open to the English dominating France there was no powerful figurehead and the army was in tatters all they needed now was money and Parliament said no and you can imagine how annoyed Henry would have been at that so Henry as he always does in this year and he asks Wolsey to sort out from so what Wolvie does is he essentially levies this tax called the amicable Gramp and the amicable amicable grant was a benevolent and a benevolent was essentially forcing people to pay you money and saying you're doing it from the good of your own heart because you are loyal to your king obviously people are not very happy and people were very annoyed about the amicable grant it essentially entailed that a sixth of or six to a 10th of a laypersons goods were taken and a third of the clergies goods were taken and to fund the war effort and this the reception was awful they were huge riots and unhappiness and this almost broke out into an absolute rebellion so Henry the seventh as well taxation rewards had rebellion in Yorkshire in Cornwall several times and it's no different for having the eighth and actually Cardinal Wolsey has to completely back down because there is the threat of there being a complete national rebellion against these taxes for the amicable grant and this means that he has failed Henry and Henry is none too happy about this at all and this is one of the reasons why Wolsey fell from grace in the meantime the French are back on their feet they've got an interim government under the needs of Savoy and then Cardinal Wolsey has to sign a treaty with them called the Treaty of renewal which essentially said the English would give up some of the claims on the French territory in exchange for the French paying the rest of the dowry price of Queen Mary he'd been married to King Louie of France but knew he had died very soon after and now the new King Francis was imprisoned by the Holy Roman Empire and the English promised that they would then try and secure the release of Francis who was a versed in Imperial captivity now some of the other things that Cardinal Wolsey did during his period that would relate foreign policy so domestic policy was to reform the system of taxation of the old system of Taxation it deemed that essentially the exact same sum would be taken from essentially a very poor person as say a minister or and someone else very high up so essentially they would lose the same amount of money but of course to a purpose and that can be half of their annual income and for a minister on the council that would be say that maybe a twentieth of their annual income so it was the the disparity was very large but what Cardinal Wolsey did was he made it more proportional in a sense so it would be proportional to say how much they earned now Connor Wolsey did a lot to help the poor people at the time and this was another reason why so many noble really really did not like cardinal wolsey because he stood up for a porter now because remember Cardinal Wolsey himself was a commoner which was very unusual at the time to have commoners rising through the ranks Henry the seventh did this as well with the councillors Leonard in law with Empson and oddly they too were both from lower background which was very unheard of it in this time as I said now he also started a court of the Star Chamber and what the court of the Star Chamber was and the court of the Chancery they were to deal with more high-profile cases as well as that common people could bring their grievances to court and get a fair hearing now it was very efficient in doing this and this is obviously a much more fair system than before where essentially if you were had a grievance in Europe with us and get on with it because you're not poor enough you're not going to be able to pay for having a lawyer and having representation and the if it's against some rich folks then they can just pay off the judge bribe them but this was a lot more fair however it was very much abused and so many poor people came to court with issues because they'd always be had a lot of issues that it was just so overloaded that it couldn't function properly now as well he actually dissolved some monasteries and this is in part due to the Reformation obviously he was Catholic he's a cardinal most of England was Catholic at this time Henry was still Catholic at this time although that would change soon and he actually dissolved some of the monasteries and he sent his secretary in the later years of his life Thomas Cromwell who would later also dissolve monasteries under Henry the eighth but I'll get onto that later and he did this because he thought that they were to corrupt these monasteries which is quite surprising and because if any one was corrupt and it was Cardinal Wolsey himself he really profited very much from the church he had lots of estates lots of wealth which is then another reason why I was very much hated by many people because he was seen as this corrupt figure and a commoner to make even worse now Cardinal Wolsey's real downfall comes when Henry d8 is looking to get rid of his lawfully wedded wife Catherine of Aragon now they'd married very young get married for love and they had a genuinely happy marriage however Catherine of Aragon hadn't been able to produce a male heir she'd had a daughter called Mary who would later become the famous Bloody Mary but no son and this was a big issue for Henry the eighth no pun intended now Henry the eighth was actually already in love with another woman with Anne Boleyn who was one of the I think one of the courtiers yeah she was one of the courtiers she'd been brought up at a French Court and he was very much charmed by her and what he needed was a male heir and he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn but of course he was already married mm of Aragon so what they had to do back in the days before the Reformation and before the Reformation of Catholicism was to get a divorce you had to get an annulment and to get an annulment you had to go straight to the Pope Christ's vicar on earth so Henry has to go to the Pope to get an annulment with for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to marry and Berlin and this is werewolves his downfall comes in because Henry then obviously asks wolves you to do this forum wills he has sorted everything out for him in the past whoever The Situation's complicated the Pope who was Clement at the time might have wanted to give Henry an annulment but he had been captured by Imperial forces when they had sacked Rome of the safe was the king of Spain as well as the Holy Roman Emperor and his niece was Catherine of Aragon so of course he who is essentially controlling the Pope doesn't want Henry to have the annulment granted which would then see his niece being divorced from power so this complicates the situation very much and essentially means that Cardinal Wolsey has no way of granting the annulment now Anne Boleyn then really doesn't like cotton or wool the either and she essentially persuades Henry that it's Woolsey's fault that the annulment hasn't gone ahead and Henry then has him arrested and has all of his titles stripped upon from the Archbishop of York now he then returns to your cardinal wolsey because that fear lead position he's got left but then he's recalled to London on treason charges and the charges he's called on are the charges of creme in higher and pray Minaya was essentially where it's believed that you were putting your religion or the Pope before the king of the land and this is very much a Reformation idea and at the time Henry was flirting with Protestantism I think amberlynn was a convinced Protestant and he was always being you know and looking to marry her and this was as well when Henry was thinking well if I can't get a divorce through the church then I might make my own church what was the alternative to Catholicism starting up in northern Germany well that would be Protestantism so this charge of pramana is put against Cardinal Wolsey and he's recalled to London so he goes back from York down to London but on the road in Leicester he falls severely ill and Cardinal Wolsey dies in 1530 in Leicester on the road to London and that's the end of the saga essentially of Cardinal Tom see now Wolsey secretary accident Thomas Cromwell would soon replace him as Henry's chief advice for upon his death and it's under Thomas Cromwell that the English Reformation goes through it's under Thomas Cromwell that the enrolment of the marriage to Catherine of Aragon happens and he's the guy who's in charge of the dissolution of the monasteries so in Episode two of what I think will be a series I will look into Thomas Cromwell at the rise and fall of him and what he got up to now and I just like to read a little bit before ending this video from a very good book by Ronald Hutton called a brief history of Britain in 1485 to 1660 because I think it's quite an interesting dynamic and I'd like to leave you with this so one final reflection may help to set Wolsey in perspective in the early 15th century England was also ruled on behalf of a young king called Henry by a brilliant hard-working arrogant greedy and sensual man who is both a cardinal and a royal minister this was Cardinal Beaufort yet he has always been remembered with general admiration as a great statesman could it be that Beaufort was lucky enough to live in a less demanding age with no Reformation swelling up behind him or could it be that he was a member of the royal family and so everybody expected him to lead and to show off it may be worth wondering how much of the traditional animosity towards Wolvie has been bound up with the English class system or everyone so this has been my video on Cardinal Wolsey and the rise and fall now I hope you have enjoyed this video it's been a bit little bit rounding but I guess I still care as far as in the very video so if you'd like to know anything else then please do leave a comment in the comment section below I think I will make another one another video like this about Thomas Cromwell and perhaps some more videos about this Kyra now I am going to return to you Henry the seventh at some point as well because I honestly prefer and returns to mb8 as well as some other topics to small historical discussions maybe some more stuff about South Africa Vikings of course anglo-saxon some of the Celtic nations that kind of thing so if that sounds like something you're interested in and it's not already then don't forget to subscribe and give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it if you are know anything else I want to leave anything behind then pop a comment and I will see you in the next one