"The Only Book About Cardinal Wolsey Written Specifically
To Help YOU Get An 'A*' In A-Level History"
Meticulously Researched and Referenced - Your Long Search For Reliable Information About Wolsey Is Over
This fully updated (2013) book covers every Wolsey-related topic relevant to the AS/A2-level syllabus...
The Rise of Cardinal Wolsey
- Wolsey's rise to power
- How and why he came to emerge as the King's chief minister
- The political power of Cardinal Wolsey
Wolsey and Henry VIII
- Was Wolsey a dominant figure or the King's faithful servant?
- Wolsey and the royal authority of Henry VIII
- Wolsey, Henry VIII, and the marriage to Catherine of Aragon
After nearly thirty years of intense, if inconclusive debate about Henry VIII's relationship with his ministers, a consensus is finally emerging. The king in his twenties and early thirties, it is generally agreed, was less consistently the author of his own policy than Edward IV or Henry VII, but it is wrong to cast him either as an 'absentee landlord' or as a 'mental defective'.
Domestic policies of Cardinal Wolsey
- Successes and failures
- Cardinal Wolsey and the Church
- Opposition to his reforms
- Could Wolsey have done more to reform government?
- Strengthening the royal authority of Henry VIII
Wolsey's domestic policy is often subordinated to consideration of his foreign policy, but this lopsidedness springs from an imbalance in the sources. Although intact at the time of his fall, Wolsey's files of domestic correspondence were subsequently broken up and partly lost or destroyed, whereas the bulk of his foreign papers survived. This makes it appear as if his priorities lay in foreign policy, which is incorrect.
Foreign policy of Cardinal Wolsey
- Cardinal Wolsey's desire for peace
- Satisfying the ambitions of Henry VIII
- Wolsey and the Field of the Cloth of Gold
- Wolsey and the promomtion of peace
- The degree to which Wolsey's foreign policy was defensive
- The effectiveness of Wolsey's foreign policy
- Success and failures
Traditional accounts of Wolsey's foreign policy have attempted to structure a mass of detailed facts around a single organizational theme. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the emphasis was on Wolsey as the impresario of a European 'balance of power'. But this mantra neither existed nor had conceptual meaning in the 16th century.
The Fall of Cardinal Wolsey
- Why Wolsey fell from power
- The role of Wolsey's enemies in his fall
- Wolsey fall and his failure to achieve an annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon
