On this day in Tudor history, 4th November 1530, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII's former Lord Chancellor, was arrested at his home of Cawood Castle in Yorkshire.
Wolsey was accused of high treason, but why? And what happened when his former servant, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, arrived with orders to arrest him?
I explain all in today's talk, including how Wolsey 'cheated' the axeman.
Also on this day in history:
- 1538 - Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu, was arrested for treason along with his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Neville; Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, and Courtenay's family (wife Gertrude Blount and son Edward Courtenay). The three men were accused of conspiring against the king, seeking to deprive the king of his title of supreme head of the church and plotting with Cardinal Reginald Pole, the exiled brother of Montagu.
- 1551 – Date given in the epitaph of John Redman, theologian and first Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He died of consumption and was buried at Westminster Abbey, in the north transept. Redman's works included De justificatione, which he presented to Henry VIII in 1543, and “A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man”.
I blame Anne Boleyn and her family and Norfolk here because they worked on Henry Viii to arrest Thomas Wolsey after his pardons and these accusations were dubious. Wolsey possibly had contacted Charles V and Katherine of Aragon, but I doubt it was treason. Henry, I suspect was showing himself weak here and allowed himself to be persuaded into this action.