Turning Princes into Pages: Sixteenth-Century Literary Representations of Thomas Cardinal

Chapter III

“The history of a certaine ridiculous spectacle”: Literary Representations of Cardinal Wolsey in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments

I thought compendiouslye to expresse the ridiculous and pompous qualities, and demaner of thys foresayd Thomas Wolsey, Cardinall and Legate of Rome, in whom alone, the image and life of all other such like followers and professors of the same church, may be seene and obserued.²⁵⁶

Foxe presents an image of Wolsey as a over-proud and clownish hypocrite, far more concerned with increasing his (and the Roman Church’s) temporal wealth and power than appropriately reforming the Church. In weighting his Wolsey anecdotes with such obviously moralistic judgments, Foxe transforms Wolsey from a historical figure—capable of both good and evil—into a vehicle for transmitting anti-Roman sentiment. While Foxe does take other figures as either positive or negative exemplars of the Reformist or Roman Church, Wolsey is unique in that Foxe juxtaposes him through constant repetition and explicit explanatory statements (both in-text and marginal) with the reformers who were just beginning to agitate for any number of religious reforms, whether based on Luther’s teachings or on any of the subsequent luminaries of the Protestant Reformation.

The first four English editions of the Acts and Monuments, published in 1563, 1570, 1576, and 1583, were produced by Foxe himself in conjunction with his printer, John Day.²⁵⁷ What makes these four editions particularly valuable is that not only do they differ considerably in content, but that Foxe was responsible for those editorial decisions. In these four editions, then, modern scholars are given an opportunity to see how a leading Protestant martyrologist and propagandist manipulated his text in response to social and political changes. Though the evolution of these anti-Wolsey anecdotes shows a concerted effort by Foxe to select stories and images that present opinions geared against Wolsey and his policies (and, more broadly, the Roman Catholic Church), the editing of these anecdotes demonstrates Foxe’s keen awareness of the social climate into which his text was being released. Patrick Collinson agrees that the Acts and Monuments was, as he puts it, “a moving target”:

The British Academy Foxe Project […] has taught us what a very unstable entity Acts and Monuments was, the 1583 edition conveying a deceptive stability, for just as Cranmer would, according to Diarmaid MacCulloch, have continued to perfect the Prayer Book if Edward VI had lived to a ripe old age, it is perhaps unlikely that the Book of Martyrs would have remained the same if Foxe had been given another 20 years to work on it.²⁵⁸
The resulting characterizations of Wolsey from this textual manipulation were a key element of Foxe’s propagandist purpose. Of course, editorial manipulation skews any representation of a historical figure; however, Foxe’s clear intention to use his Wolsey-character as anti-Catholic propaganda provides a valuable case-study for examining early English Protestant rhetoric and characterization techniques. This study will therefore consider selected characterizations of Cardinal Wolsey in the Acts and Monuments and how they metamorphosed over the first four English editions. To assist in this analysis, Appendix One provides a database of every Wolsey-related anecdote in all four English editions of the Acts and Monuments, to facilitate inter-edition comparisons. It demonstrates in which edition particular anecdotes first appear, and how in subsequent additions Foxe either expanded, contracted, or moved those anecdotes. The Appendix also includes information about number and type of marginal notation (editorial, citation, or descriptive).

When exploring the Acts and Monuments, even the most casual readers will note that there is a great deal of repetition. Freeman observes that “[Foxe’s] general editorial principle seems to have been that there were never enough edifying anecdotes”.²⁵⁹ The anecdotes about Wolsey are no exception in this respect; Foxe often reiterates certain points or arguments, often without any reference to the previous mentions of that same anecdote. As a result of this repetition as well as the sheer volume of material, this study has had to be fairly exclusive in terms of selecting textual examples. The selected episodes present a characterization of Cardinal Wolsey and do not merely mention his name or record a neutral action. There are numerous mentions of Wolsey in passing that do not contribute to either a specific or overall image of the Cardinal; while doubtlessly valuable in many respects, these instances have been set aside in the interests of relevancy. This study will focus exclusively on episodes or anecdotes that contain explicit characterizations or images of Wolsey. These episodes have been selected because they exemplify a range of editorial mechanisms that Foxe employed to form a cohesive public image of the Cardinal: they show how Foxe incorporated material from other authors; how he connected classical and Biblical fables to Wolsey; how he used marginal comments to clarify and emphasize particular points or conclusions for the reader; how he employed direct speech, written accounts, rumor, and popular stories to craft an image of the Cardinal. In addition, the episodes appearing in this study have been selected to show how Foxe manipulated or preserved particular textual elements throughout the four editions as part of an ongoing editorial process to increase the impact of his Wolsey-images. In many cases, Foxe’s anecdotes were taken whole or in part from previous authors (most notably from Hall); examples have also been selected to demonstrate how Foxe consciously changed or wholly absorbed previous materials to craft his images of Wolsey.