62 Facts About Thomas Wolsey

When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner.

Thomas Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state.

The highest political position Wolsey attained was Lord Chancellor, the king's chief adviser.

Thomas Wolsey retreated to York to fulfil his ecclesiastical duties as archbishop, a position he nominally held but had neglected during his years in government.

Thomas Wolsey was born about 1473, the son of Robert Wolsey of Ipswich and his wife, Joan Daundy.

Thomas Wolsey attended Ipswich School and Magdalen College School before studying theology at Magdalen College, Oxford.

From 1500 to 1509, Thomas Wolsey held a living as rector of St Mary's church, Limington, in Somerset.

Thomas Wolsey was then taken into the household of Sir Richard Nanfan, who made Wolsey executor of his estate.

Thomas Wolsey benefited from Henry VII's introduction of measures to curb the power of the nobility; the king was willing to favour those from more humble backgrounds.

Thomas Wolsey's remarkable rise to power from humble origins attests to his intelligence, administrative ability, industriousness, ambition, and rapport with the king.

Until 1511, Thomas Wolsey was adamantly antiwar, but when the king expressed his enthusiasm for an invasion of France, Thomas Wolsey adapted his views to the king's and gave persuasive speeches to the Privy Council in favour of war.

Warham and Foxe, who did not share the king's enthusiasm for the French war, fell from power, and Thomas Wolsey took over as the king's most trusted advisor and administrator.

When Warham resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1515, probably under pressure from Thomas Wolsey, Henry appointed Thomas Wolsey in his place.

Thomas Wolsey made careful moves to destroy or neutralise other courtiers' influence.

Thomas Wolsey helped cause the fall of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham in 1521, and in 1527 he prosecuted Henry's close friend William Compton and Henry's ex-mistress Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon, for adultery.

Thomas Wolsey advised the king not to execute the newlyweds but to embrace them; whether this was out of care for the couple or because of the threat they posed to his own safety remains unclear.

The bride, both as sister to Henry and as Dowager Queen of France, had high royal status that could have threatened Thomas Wolsey had she so chosen.

Thomas Wolsey's rise to a position of great secular power paralleled his increasing status in the church.

Thomas Wolsey then proposed an alliance with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire against France.

In 1518 Thomas Wolsey was made Papal Legate in England, enabling him to realise Leo's desire for peace by organising the Treaty of London.

Thomas Wolsey had invested enormous sums in bribing the electorate to elect him emperor, and thus used the Treaty of London as a justification for the Habsburg-Valois conflict.

Thomas Wolsey appeared to act as mediator between the two powers, both of which were vying for England's support.

Thomas Wolsey organised much of this grandiose meeting between Francis I and Henry VIII, accompanied by 5,000 followers and involving court activities more than military discussion.

Thomas Wolsey chose Charles mainly because England's economy would suffer from the loss of the lucrative cloth trade industry between England and the Netherlands had France been chosen instead.

Thomas Wolsey developed links with Charles in 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

At the Calais Conference Thomas Wolsey signed the Secret Treaty of Bruges with Charles V, stating that England would join Spain in a war against France if France refused to sign the peace treaty and ignored the Anglo-French treaty of 1518.

An alternative hypothesis is that Campeggio was kept waiting until Thomas Wolsey received his legacy, thus asserting Thomas Wolsey's attachment to Rome.

Thomas Wolsey's plan was that the League of Cognac, an alliance between France and some Italian states, would challenge Charles's League of Cambrai.

Thomas Wolsey believed God had cursed him for the sin of marrying the widow of his elder brother, and that the papal dispensation for that marriage was invalid because it was based upon the claim that Catherine was still a virgin after her first husband's death.

Thomas Wolsey's motivation has been attributed to his determination to have a son and heir, and to his desire for Anne Boleyn, one of his wife's maids-of-honour.

Thomas Wolsey delayed his decision as long as possible, infuriating Henry and Anne Boleyn, who began to doubt Wolsey's loyalty to the Crown over the Church.

Thomas Wolsey appealed to Clement for an annulment on three fronts.

Second, Thomas Wolsey objected to the dispensation on technical grounds, claiming it was incorrectly worded.

For much of the time, Henry VIII had complete confidence in him, and as Henry's interests inclined more towards foreign policy, he was willing to give Thomas Wolsey free rein in reforming the management of domestic affairs, for which Thomas Wolsey had grand plans.

Thomas Wolsey built a great fortune for himself and was a major benefactor of arts, humanities and education.

Thomas Wolsey projected numerous reforms, with some success in areas such as finance, taxation, educational provision and justice.

Historians agree that Thomas Wolsey was a man dogged by other men's failures and his own ambition.

Thomas Wolsey made changes to the taxation system, devising, with treasurer of the Chamber John Heron, the "Subsidy".

Thomas Wolsey established the Court of Requests for the poor, where no fees were required.

Thomas Wolsey used his courts to tackle national controversies, such as the pressing issue of enclosures.

Thomas Wolsey conducted national enquiries into enclosures in 1517,1518 and 1527.

Thomas Wolsey used the Star Chamber to enforce his 1518 policy of Just Price, which attempted to regulate the price of meat in London and other major cities.

In 1524 and 1527 Thomas Wolsey used his powers as papal legate to dissolve 30 decayed monasteries where monastic life had virtually ceased in practice, some in Ipswich and Oxford.

Thomas Wolsey died five years before Henry's dissolution of the monasteries began.

Thomas Wolsey attempted many times to disperse them from court, giving them jobs that took them to the Continent and far from Henry.

Consequently, Thomas Wolsey devised a grand plan of administrative reforms, incorporating the notorious Eltham ordinances of 1526.

Thomas Wolsey eventually ordered all minor cases out of the Star Chamber in 1528.

From 1515, when he became cardinal, until his death, Thomas Wolsey used art and architecture to underpin his positions.

Thomas Wolsey initiated a building campaign on a scale not only unprecedented for an English churchman and Lord Chancellor, but exceeded by few English kings.

Thomas Wolsey supervised the grandiose temporary buildings at the Field of Cloth of Gold and renovated Hampton Court, which he later relinquished to the king.

Thomas Wolsey oversaw tombs for Henry's VIII's parents at Westminster Abbey and negotiated contracts for Henry VIII's tomb as well as one for himself.

The college originally founded and planned by Thomas Wolsey and refounded by Henry VIII remains the largest and grandest of all Oxford colleges.

In spite of having many enemies, Thomas Wolsey retained Henry VIII's confidence until Henry decided to seek an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.

In 1529, Thomas Wolsey was stripped of his government office and property, including his magnificently expanded residence of Hampton Court, which Henry took to replace the Palace of Westminster as his own main London residence.

Thomas Wolsey travelled to Yorkshire for the first time in his career, but at Cawood in North Yorkshire, he was accused of treason and ordered to London by Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland.

In keeping with his practice of erecting magnificent buildings at Hampton Court, Westminster and Oxford, Thomas Wolsey had planned a magnificent tomb at Windsor by Benedetto da Rovezzano and Giovanni da Maiano, but he was buried in Leicester Abbey without a monument.

Thomas Wolsey lived in a "non-canonical" marriage for around a decade with a woman called Joan Larke of Yarmouth, Norfolk.

Thomas Wolsey later married and had children of his own.

All that remains of Thomas Wolsey's structure is the former waterside gate, figured by Francis Grose in his Antiquities, which can still be seen on College Street.

In 1930 Thomas Wolsey was commemorated in Ipswich with a substantial Pageant Play.

Thomas Wolsey is far from forgotten in the town of Ipswich, an appeal having been launched in October 2009 to erect a statue there as a permanent commemoration.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's bust was used in the 1980s above the London Transport roundel on London's buses in west and south-west London as the symbol of the Cardinal bus district, which was named after him and his residence at Hampton Court.