An English Pope? (Part 1): the conclaves of 1521/22 and 1523
The 12th century Pope Adrian IV remains the only Englishman, and the only Briton, ever to be chosen as head of the Catholic Church: but were there near misses?
There is only one
It might be stretching the word beyond its reasonably meaning, but there has ‘famously’ only ever been one English Pope. Adrian IV (1154-59) was born Nicholas Breakspear in Hertfordshire around the turn of the 11th/12th century—we know very little about his early life—and at some point caught the eye of Pope Eugenius III as a skilled and reliable ambassador, travelling to Catalonia and then to Norway and Sweden as a papal legate. When he returned to Rome at the end of 1154, he was elected to the papacy, possibly somewhat reluctantly. Never again has an Englishman sat on the throne of St Peter; no-one from Scotland, Ireland or Wales ever has.
There are a number of reasons for this. It was already the reign of the 64th Pope, St Gregory the Great, by the time St Augustine arrived in England to spread Christianity; England was a relatively small, relatively minor polity until at least the 16th century; and it was at that point that adherence to Roman Catholicism was more or less proscribed for the best part of three centuries. So there were limiting factors.
It is also worth remembering that there have only ever been 46 English cardinals in the history of the Church, four of whom are alive today (although only three are under 80 and were therefore eligible to vote in the recent conclave). Given that every pope since 1389 has been elected from the membership of the Sacred College of Cardinals, England has rarely had many potential candidates for the papacy, and certainly no national voting bloc on which such a candidate could rely. There have only been seven Scottish cardinals and 17 Irish cardinals, while Wales has never produced a prince of the Church.
In truth, no English—no British—cardinal has been widely regarded as papabile for several centuries, with the possible exception of Basil Cardinal Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, at the conclaves of August and October 1978. That said, between 1523 and 1978, every pope was Italian, so it was not only England which did not get a look-in at the throne of St Peter. While Italy’s stranglehold seems to have been broken by pontiffs from Poland, Germany and Argentina, I would have been extremely surprised if any of the three English cardinal electors in the forthcoming conclave had been chosen to be Pope. The Independent included Vincent Cardinal Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, in its profile of some possible candidates, and in 2022 The Catholic Herald talked up the chances of the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Arthur Cardinal Roche; I don’t think either would have done so if the cardinals had not been English.
As readers will know, my original field of study as an historian-in-training was the 16th century, and long years of acculturation mean that, even if some of the details sink below the surface of my consciousness for a while, it is that period in which I am most at home; in English terms, from the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 to the accession of Elizabeth I on 1558, or in European terms, say, from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the closing of the Council of Trent in 1563. And there is a sense, a faint one, that this period includes a very narrow window between the re-emergence of England as an important actor on the European stage for the first time certainly since the reign of Henry V and perhaps since the dissolution of the Angevin Empire, and the irreversible entrenchment of the Protestant settlement in 1559-63 and the disastrous issuing of Regnans in excelsis by Pius V in 1570, when the Tudor kingdom not only had political and diplomatic weight; it was producing able and impressive clerics of scholarship and statecraft, the sort of churchmen would might have gone on to the papacy under other circumstances.
This began—don’t they all?—as a few broad-brush musings but there has been, as it turns out, rather a lot to say and many conclusions to draw. In the end, therefore, it will, like Holy Scripture, come in (at least) two parts: first, the two rapidly successive papal conclaves of 1521-22 and 1523; and then the great conclave of 1549-50, at that point the largest in the Church’s history. All had huge importance for England but also offered the possibility, perhaps, of greater influence by England than had been exercised for more than a century. What really happened, why, and what opportunities were missed?
Two editorial notes, one minor, one more substantial. The first is that I took the decision to follow the modern style and put the title of “cardinal” between the forename and surname: yes, that’s how they have officially been described, and it is how popes are described in the proclamations of their election, so Pope Leo XIV was referred to as “Robertum Franciscum Sanctae Romane Ecclesiae Cardinalem Prevost” when his election was proclaimed last week. In the 16th century, titles and styles were often much more varied and less prescriptive than now, so I had to impose some kind of order, and that is the kind I have chosen.
The second note is that casual readers will find a College of Cardinals dominated by Italians but also full of cardinals who are related to each other, to popes and to previous cardinals. It should be said that, at the time, this was as much a feature as a bug of the Sacred College: it was fully expected that popes would create “cardinal-nephews” (cardinali nepoti), who could be their actual nephews, other relatives or, occasionally, their illegitimate children (like Cesare Borgia, son of Alexander VI, and possible Tiberio Crispo, alleged son of Paul III). With the exceptions of the short-lived Adrian VI and Marcellus II, every Pope of the 16th century did so; the practice was dramatically curtailed by the terms of the papal bull Romanum decet Pontificem of 1692. Modern readers should not find this kind of (literal) nepotism too scandalous or shocking, because contemporaries would not have done so.
There was also no age limit for participating in a conclave until St Paul VI issued the document Ingravescentem aetatem in 1970 and imposed a maximum age of 80. In the 16th century, of course, it was extremely rare for a cardinal or indeed anyone to survive into his 80s anyway, though octogenarians will flit through this narrative.
Cardinal Wolsey—nearly man of the Renaissance papacy or self-deluded outsider?
It is often stated confidently that Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chief minister, came close to becoming Pope. Again, because of the closed nature of the conclave and the lack of definitive records, it is difficult to be certain. There is no question that Wolsey was personally ambitious: born to an Ipswich butcher, by the time he was 45 he was a cardinal, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor, and a papal legate a latere, effectively giving him the delegated powers of the Pope and status above all other clergymen in England. He had risen as high as a commoner could, and it would hardly be surprising, especially given his extensive diplomatic experience, if he at least entertained the thought of that final step to head of the Church, Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Christ.
Only two conclaves took place during Wolsey’s time as a cardinal: from December 1521 to January 1522 following the death of Leo X; and from October to November 1523, after Adrian VI’s short and largely unsuccessful reign. At that time, Wolsey was the only English cardinal, Christopher Bainbridge, Wolsey’s predecessor as Archbishop of York, having died of poisoning in July 1514. He was murdered by a member of his household, Fr Rinaldo de Modena, and it has been suggested they were lovers.
In 1513, Bainbridge had become the first English cardinal to participate in a conclave since Stephen Cardinal Langham in 1370. He received two votes himself on the first scrutiny, perhaps acts of kindness or mischief, but was never a contender, either in his mind or in anyone else’s. Indeed, that first scrutiny, so far as we can tell, gave no indications of anything at all. Twenty-five of the 31 living cardinals took part in the conclave, and the first snapshot of their opinion, so to speak, saw Jaime Cardinal Serra, Bishop of Albano and an ally of the late Pope Alexander VI, win 13 votes, with Leonardo Cardinal Grosso della Rovere, who was Major Penitentiary, and Pietro Cardinal Accolti, Bishop of Ancona, some way behind. Bainbridge’s two votes were essentially meaningless, but on that first scrutiny they did put him one vote ahead of Giovanni Cardinal de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent: the 37-year-old Florentine had been carried into the conclave in a sedan chair, unable to walk because of the pain from an anal fistula which had to be operated on in the conclave. On the second scrutiny, de’ Medici was elected Pope and became Leo X.
Bainbridge is supposed to have voted for Domenico Cardinal del Carretto, Archbishop of Tours and papal legate in France, though one historian suggests he gave his support to the cardinal’s younger brother, Fabrizio del Carretto, Bailiff of the Langue of Italy and Admiral of the Order of St John of Jerusalem but not a cardinal. This may be a misreading, although he had been a close ally of the late Pope Julius II.
An unexpected vacancy
In the second half of 1521, Henry VIII and the Emperor Charles V had signed the secret Treaty of Bruges, which laid down the terms for England and the Empire combining to defeat France. It was negotiated by Wolsey and Margaret of Austria, Governor General of the Netherlands and Charles V’s aunt, and as well as various other provisions and guarantees of mutual and co-ordinated military aid, it committed the Emperor to supporting Wolsey and the Anglo-Imperial candidate for Pope at the next conclave. At that time, the Pope, Leo X, was only 45; his health had never been good, and he was particularly plagued by a recurrent and agonising anal fistula (see above). Nevertheless, it cannot have been anticipated when the treaty was signed that the pontiff would be dead within months. Late in the year, Leo contracted bronchopneumonia and died on 1 December, his end coming so suddenly that there was not even time for him to receive Extreme Unction.
Thirty-nine cardinal electors entered the conclave on 28 December 1521. Thirty-six of them were Italian, with two Spaniards (Guillén-Ramón Cardinal de Vich y de Vallterra, Bishop of Barcelona, and Bernardino Cardinal López de Carvajal, Dean of the College of Cardinals) and one Swiss (Matthäus Cardinal Schiner, Bishop of Catania). Ten cardinals, including Wolsey, did not attend, and of those only one was Italian. As usual in mediaeval and early modern conclaves, proximity was proving a significant factor.
Henry VIII pressed Wolsey’s candidacy, and expected Charles V to do the same in accordance with the Treaty of Bruges. The early favourite was Alessandro Cardinal Farnese, Bishop of Parma; his sister had been the assumed mistress of Pope Alexander VI, leading him to be nicknamed Cardinale Fregnese, or Cardinal Cunt, by curial gossips. He was supported by Giuliano Cardinal de’ Medici, then acting as Gran Maestro of Florence, a temporary ruler after the death of Lorenzo II, but de’ Medici himself was regarded as papabile, and would have been acceptable to Henry VIII. If Farnese was believed to be the front runner by those in the church hierarchy, the bookmakers in Rome made a subtly different assessment. Although they were offering odds of 5/1 on Farnese, their favourite was de’ Medici, at 4/1.
King François I of France wanted a sympathetic candidate, not necessarily one of the French cardinals, but showed signs of indecision. At various points he seems to have favoured Franciotto Cardinal Orsini, a nephew of the late Pope and Archpriest of St Peter’s Basilica, as well as the cardinals from Venice, with which France was allied in the conflict in northern Italy: Domenico Cardinal Grimani, although he was ill; Marco Cardinal Cornaro, Bishop of Padua, who disliked Grimani; and Francesco Cardinal Pisani, only in his late 20s but from an old and wealthy patrician family in Venice. François’s essential criterion was that the imperial candidate, whoever that transpired to be, should not be elected and that Charles V should not have an ally on the throne of St Peter.
Reconstructing the results of the first scrutiny, on 30 December, is necessarily speculative: there are several different accounts from a variety of sources including the ambassadors of Venice and Florence; cardinals indicated preferences so could vote for several candidates, the intention being to find a candidate with broad support; but as a result the total number of votes is much higher than the number of cardinals, and varies from ballot to ballot. Marino Sanuto, the Venetian historian, was an avid collector of facts and figures, and in his Diarii, he recorded the results of all the scrutinies of the conclave, so let us use those figures as at least indicative.
The two leading candidates at that first stage were Grimani and Niccolò Cardinal Fieschi, a Genoese aristocrat and former Archbishop of Ravenna, with 10 votes apiece. Both were very much in the French camp. De Carvajal, the Dean of the College, received nine votes, while Domenico Cardinal Giacobazzi, the oldest cardinal at 77, Administrator of Cassano all’Jonio and an eminent canon lawyer, received seven. It was an unpromising start for the favourites; de’ Medici had only three votes (although the Venetian ambassador reported him as winning “the most”), and Farnese received two.
The conclave proceeded slowly, with only one scrutiny each day, but the cardinals seemed unable to approach any consensus at first. The second scrutiny saw Francesco Cardinal Soderini, Bishop of Vicenza and an enemy of the Medici, top the ballot, the third was headed by Carvajal, the fourth by Lorenzo Cardinal Pucci, a Florentine who was Major Pententiary, and the fifth by Soderini again. On that fifth scrutiny, Wolsey suddenly found himself with six or seven votes; it was some way off the leaders, Soderini and Fieschi, and they would turn out to be the only votes he won. Meanwhile, Farnese was finding it hard to amass more than two or three votes, and de’ Medici was a solid middle-scorer: three, four, seven, four, six.
There had by this stage apparently been no serious negotiations between the cardinals, hence the seemingly random results. The sixth scrutiny confused the picture even more, with Carvajal and Fieschi on nine votes and Pucci, Giacobazzi, the Swiss Schiner and Cristoforo Cardinal Numai, an Observant Franciscan from Forlì in northern Italy, all receiving eight. Fieschi then headed the the seventh scrutiny.
After 10 scrutinies it seemed no-one could pick up any momentum. At most, de’ Medici knew that with the Emperor’s leverage he could amass 15 votes, not nearly enough, and in any case he was unacceptable to the King of France; François made it known that if de’ Medici were chosen, neither he nor anyone in France would obey the instructions of the papacy and effectively there would be a schism. This did not faze Charles V (who, it might be worth remembering, was still nearly two months shy of his 22nd birthday, more than five years younger than François); if he could not have de’ Medici elected, he had other options. The English ambassador, John Clerk, recorded that a deal was then concluded to install Farnese, but there is no other evidence to suggest Farnese was ever favoured by the Emperor.
The eleventh scrutiny took place on 9 January, but before the cardinals voted, the Emperor played his wild card: he had given instructions to Tommaso Cardinal de Vio Cajetan, a Dominican friar from the Kingdom of Naples and a leading theologian who had challenged Martin Luther at the Reichstag of Augsburg in 1518 and drafted the papal bull, Decet Romanum Pontificem, which had excommunicated the German reformer in 1519. Cajetan addressed the cardinals and gave an impassioned speech in favour of the candidate the Emperor had named if de’ Medici’s bid should fail. That candidate was not even present at the conclave: the Emperor wanted Adriaan Florensz Cardinal Boeyens. Born in Utrecht, Boeyens had been an adviser to Margaret of Savoy, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, then tutor to the young Charles before he became King of Spain or Holy Roman Emperor, and subsequently Bishop of Tortosa, Grand Inquisitor of Aragon and Castile and Regent of Spain.
This was controversial for all sorts of reasons. Boeyens was a Netherlander, and, with the exception of the two Spanish Borjas, Pope Callixtus III (1455-58) and his nephew Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), there had not been a non-Italian pontiff since the Frenchman Gregory XI (1370-78), the last of a series of seven French popes. Moreover, Boeyens was not present at the conclave, usually fatal to any candidates chances, and, indeed, he had never been to Rome. Finally, for any cardinals who wavered even slightly between the French and imperial camps, Boeyens was not just the Emperor’s choice but could hardly have been closer to him, his tutor, emissary and all-purpose chief minister. Achille Cardinal Grassi, the Bishop of Bologna and a trusted ambassador of Julius II, declared he could not support Boeyens, while Antonio Cardinal del Monte San Savino expressed grave reservations.
The numbers, however, were decisive. Cardinal de’ Medici whipped the imperial party behind Boeyens, and while de Carvajal held out in support of del Monte’s candidacy for a time, there was no credible alternative. The cardinals invoked the process of accessus, whereby they could change their votes if the leading candidate fell short of a two-thirds majority, writing on their ballots “Accedo domino Cardinali…” with the name of the cardinal to whom they were transferring their support. Boeyens reached 28 votes and was elected Pope, and the result was announced to the people of Rome at 1.00 pm on 9 January by Cardinal Cornaro as senior cardinal deacon. Boeyens, who was in Vitoria, received formal notification of his election on 9 February, though he had known for at least a week, but would not reach Rome until 28 August. Unusually, he kept his baptismal name as his papal name, and Pope Adrian VI was crowned on 31 August.
Wolsey: a papal non-starter
Wolsey had never been a factor in the conclave. Absence usually made any candidacy a non-starter—the election of Adrian VI was exceptional in many ways—and since Wolsey was the only English cardinal, he had no natural constituency on which he might rely. And yet we can speculate what might have been if the Emperor had abided more faithfully by the terms of the Treaty of Bruges: his ability to secure the election of Boeyens, absent in Spain and virtually unknown in Rome, demonstrates that he could wield enormous influence over the conclave, and there is no reason to think that Wolsey was a less credible candidate than Boeyens. Wolsey was slightly senior in the College of Cardinals to Boeyens, and was an archbishop and papal legate; and this was a period of warm relations between England and the Holy Roman Empire. Queen Katharine was Charles V’s aunt, he had made a state visit to England in 1520 and later in 1522 Princess Mary, Henry VIII’s six-year-old daughter and heir, would be betrothed to Charles, though the commitment did not last.
Perhaps that is the point. There was a path to the papacy for Wolsey in 1521-22, but it was wholly reliant on the patronage of the Emperor. Neither he nor his sovereign, Henry VIII, had the weight to place him on the throne of St Peter themselves. At this point, it seems both King and Archbishop would have been happy for Wolsey to be Pope, though he generally seems to have made the kind of dismissive and self-deprecatory noises required of any senior ecclesiastic. In any event, he was still not 50 years old.
The Dutch period and its abrupt end
Adrian VI did not prove immediately successful in the papacy. He was an erudite, moderate man who accepted that there was much in the Church which needed reform, particularly in terms of corruption, absenteeism, pluralism and simony (of most of which Cardinal Wolsey was impressively guilty). He came to the papacy less than a year after the Edict of Worms had declared Martin Luther a heretic and proscribed his works, after which the German reformer had been spirited to safety by the Elector of Saxony, Frederick III, known as “the Wise”. Adrian was implacably opposed to Luther’s course of action, and when the Reichstag reconvened in Nuremberg in the spring of 1522 to discuss how to deal with Luther, the Pope sent Francesco Chieregati as his nuncio.
The message Chieregati carried from Adrian was a complex and nuanced one which was thoughtful and well-intentioned but politically ineffectual. The Edict of Worms, the Pope said, should be enforced and punitive action should be taken against Luther and his adherents on the grounds of their heresy. He compared Luther to Mohammed, and condemned his followers as not merely heterodox in terms of doctrine but as politically dangerous. And yet he also, with extraordinary and unprecedented frankness, admitted the Church’s failings, said that these abuses had spread outwards from the Curia like a disease from the head to the body and limbs, and suggested that Luther’s heresy was divine punishment for the corruption. Essentially this was the formula of ecumenical councils throughout the 15th century: practical and procedural abuses were rife and needed urgent reform, but there was no compromise or concession to be made on doctrine.
The German princes assembled in Nuremberg drafted a response in February 1523 which declined to pursue Luther as a matter of urgency, and laid the responsibility for this squarely on the tone of the Pope’s entreaty. They could not, they said, appear “as though they wished to oppress evangelical truth and assist unchristian and evil abuses”. Adrian, meanwhile, whom many had feared would be the unquestioning tool of the Emperor, proved instead to be a prisoner of the College of Cardinals. A stranger in Rome and without significant allies or protectors, he was paralysed. The imperial ambassador, Juan Manuel de Villena y de la Vega, Señor de Belmonte, wrote to his master:
The Pope is ‘deadly afraid’ of the College of Cardinals. He does whatever two or three cardinals write to him in the name of the college.
Adrian attempted to reform the Curia but the vested interests of the Italian clergy were powerful, and although he worked hard—he was a pious and austere man, who kept monastic hours in the Apostolic Palace and shunned grand ceremony—he could make no headway on any of his priorities. On 14 September 1523, after a papacy of 20 months, of which he had spent only a year in Rome, he died aged somewhere in his mid-sixties. As was almost routine, poisoning was at first suspected, but he had been suffering from intermittent fevers since May, and it was more likely to have been a combination of exhaustion, overwork, the unhealthy atmosphere of Rome, especially in the summer months, a kidney ailment and possible blood poisoning.
The Curia was not sorry to see his papacy. The Italian clerics had referred to him dismissively as il Fiammingo, mai non visto e senza nome, “the Fleming whom no-one had ever seen and of whom no-one had ever heard” (and they would not let the papacy out of Italian hands again until 1978). Adrian VI’s death meant another conclave and another papal election, and with unexpected swiftness it was another opportunity, perhaps, for Wolsey finally to make the last step up the ladder he had chosen and become the successor of St Peter.
Let’s try that one again
The conclave began on 2 October 1523, with 32 of the 45 cardinals present. Once again, Wolsey did not attend, though he might have been encouraged by Adrian’s election the previous year despite being absent. He regarded the process with some optimism: as in 1521-22, he believed he had the support of the Emperor, and Henry VIII had written to the imperial ambassador, the Duke of Sessa, pressing the case for Wolsey’s candidacy. Sessa had replied with positive but vague and non-committal noises, but it was early in the process, and there was a great deal of negotiating and bargaining yet to be done. Wolsey seems also to have assumed he would receive the support of Giulio Cardinal de’ Medici, who had spent the time since his failure to be elected Pope partly in Rome advising Adrian VI, and partly in Florence where he was still acting as Gran Maestro, ruling after the death of his kinsman Lorenzo II. The Cardinal had after all from 1514 until January of that year been Cardinal-protector of England, the King’s representative at consistory and head of the English diplomatic presence at the Holy See.
Although the conclave began on 2 October, those opposed to the imperial faction demanded that the voting be delayed; it was known that the three French cardinals were travelling to Rome and if the process began before their arrival it would be that much easier for the Emperor to have his way. On 6 October, François Cardinal de Clermont-Lodève, Bishop of Valence, Louis Cardinal de Bourbon-Vendôme, Bishop of Laon, and Jean Cardinal de Lorraine, Bishop of Terouanne, finally reached the Curia. (They were an exceptionally young trio, at 43, 30 and 23.)
As had been the case at the previous conclave, the underlying struggle was between France and the Empire; again, the conclave was overwhelmingly Italian. Until the arrival of the French cardinals, only three non-Italians were present, the Spaniards de Carvajal and Guillermo Raimundo Cardinal de Vich y de Vallterra, Bishop of Barcelona, and the only cardinal whom Adrian VI had created, four days before his death: Willem Cardinal van Enckevoirt, a Dutchman like his patron and his successor as Bishop of Tortosa.
François I had made public his unwillingness to accept de’ Medici’s election as Pope. It was, after all, less than two years since the previous conclave had begun, and the political landscape had not changed in seismic terms. If he was aware of it, Wolsey must have been encouraged by the King of France’s apparent veto on the Florentine cardinal, since, prima facie, the obvious course of action for the Emperor would be to put his support behind Wolsey as a replacement imperial candidate.
The French candidate, since, once again, François was not so ambitious as to expect a French cardinal to be elected, was Fieschi, the former Archbishop of Ravenna who had gathered some early support in the 1521-22 conclave. The imperial faction seems at first to have promoted de Carvajal as a stalking horse; he was approaching 70, Dean of the College of Cardinals, and had been raised to the cardinalate 30 years before by his countryman Alexander VI. This was his fifth conclave, and it is hard to believe that any of his fellow electors regarded him as a plausible candidate. That said, he was the same age as Adrian VI, who had been rather less plausible, as a cardinal who did not attend the conclave and had never been to Rome; de Carvajal had spent 40 years in the Eternal City. But it was only the early stages, and the factions within the College were testing themselves and each other.
We have less detailed records of this conclave than the one which preceded it. The Duke of Sessa wrote a slightly jumbled and fragmentary account of the conclave to Charles V which is not always clear in meaning, but he recorded that the process began with 19 older cardinals who were opposed to de’ Medici’s candidacy on one side, and 13 younger cardinals, all created by Leo X, on the other. At some early point there was a scrutiny in which del Monte San Salvino received 16 votes, with another three under accessus, and de’ Medici had promised him three more votes as well as his own. If all of those 23 votes had been secured, del Monte would have been elected, but de’ Medici did not deliver, instead claiming, reportedly, that he had promised his support if del Monte already had 18 votes before accessus was factored in. This seems to have proved counter-productive when it became known: the older cardinals who opposed de’ Medici now went further and said they would not vote for anyone within his faction either, while four cardinals who had previously pledged to support de’ Medici now withdrew their backing; de Carvajal, Farnese, Giacobazzi and Ferdinando Cardinal Ponzetti, Bishop of Grosseto.
Francesco Cardinal Armellini Pantalassi de’ Medici, a Perugian who had been adopted as a son by Leo X and was by now Cardinal Camerlengo, suddenly found himself with 13 votes on 9 October. This may have been a rather rogue scrutiny, as it seems that the younger cardinals created by Leo X withheld their votes altogether, presumably by submitting ballots bearing the word Nemini (“No-one”) on them. After that the conclave seemed to have entered a similar phase to its predecessor, with a handful of candidates commanding substantial support but not enough to cross the threshold for election, while actively seeking to deny the election to their rivals.
Stasis
The situation looked something like this. Giuliano Cardinal de’ Medici could rely on 16 votes, but also faced seemingly implacable opponents. He therefore made it known that if his own candidacy was impossible, he would be willing to endorse one of four fellow Italians: Andrea Cardinal della Valle, Bishop of Crotone; Accolti, the Bishop of Ancona, who had been a bit-part player in the previous conclave’s scrutinies; Egidio Cardinal Antonini, a respected Augustinian friar and papal nuncio; and Lorenzo Cardinal Campeggio, a Milanese nobleman who had taken holy orders after the death of his wife and had succeeded de’ Medici as Cardinal-protector of England in January.
Neither Fieschi nor de Carvajal could get above their ceiling of a dozen votes. The anti-de’ Medici faction seemed to be trying to promote one cardinal after another in stubborn desperation, but none had anything close to enough support. Four of the cardinals—del Monte, de Clermont, Pompeo Cardinal Colonna, a friend of the Emperor’s but bitterly opposed to de’ Medici, and Cornaro, the senior cardinal deacon—seem to have approached de’ Medici as a negotiating committee at this stage, accepting the truth that even if he could not carry his own candidacy he had an effective veto so long as his 16 votes cohered.
One might imagine that this stasis, with the frustrations of the previous conclave playing out again less than two years later, might have opened the door for a compromise candidate, a man towards whom the Emperor was well disposed, to whom he might even have promised his support. This is where the partial nature of the evidence is frustrating.
On 24 October, the English ambassadors in Rome—John Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Richard Pace, the King’s Secretary, and Thomas Hannibal, Wolsey’s secretary—wrote to Wolsey, their communication preserved in the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic. Their description of events at the conclave hint at the sense of frustration and deadlock, but there is a strong suggestion running through it that Wolsey, as a dark horse-cum-compromise candidate, was almost on the verge of the papacy.
From the 9th to the 12 [October] it was evident that there was great dissension, which put them in great hope for Wolsey’s election, and all of Rome was in a great rumour thereof… Armelinus [Cardinal Armellini de’ Medici]… said all they desired was to choose a Pope to content the people, and begged them to have patience, or they might be compelled to do as at the last election, and choose an absentee; adding, that if they could be content with an absentee, they were almost ready to choose one in England. At this they made a great exclamation, that at any rate someone present should be chosen. A similar answer was made by cardinal Colonna the day after, so that it was thought that Wolsey would be elected to break the strife.
Any performatively humble argument that Wolsey did not seek the office of pontiff is given the lie.
Have been with De Medici’s agents, and told them that the King and Wolsey had written to the College in his behalf, and that Wolsey hoped, if De Medicis could not obtain the dignity for himself, he would do what he could for Wolsey. They said, if they possibly could, they would advertise him of it in the conclave… Colonna is now against [de’ Medici], and has got up a rumor in Rome, that by his means, at the last conclave, the Cardinals elected a barbarian and a Fleming [Adrian VI], and are now endeavoring to elect an Englishman.
To read this account, one would think Wolsey had one arm in the papal cassock already, that, certainly, the notion of his elevation was being used as a threat, but that it was a threat on which some of the cardinals were willing to follow through. As mentioned above, this made a great deal of sense on a theoretical abstract reading. Wolsey seemed to have the vital quality in situations like these of being no-one’s bête noire or last choice, even if he was also no-one’s first choice.
A letter from the Earl of Surrey to Wolsey on 30 October which included the words “Has written that Wolsey or de’ Medici will be Pope, to discourage the Duke’s party”.
Writing to Wolsey on 18 October, Clerk made an extraordinary claim.
The 16th day of this month of October a friend of mine sent to me a secret servant, and told me that your grace had twenty-two voices in that scrutiny. I beseech God send you four more; and then I have quod semper optavi, quod semper concupivi [that which I had always wished for, that which I had always desired].
This fragment has been the foundation for many accounts of Wolsey’s papal ambitions and chances of success. If Wolsey amassed 22 votes in any of the scrutinies, it would be an astonishing result, because, if as other sources suggest the conclave comprised 39 cardinal electors, the requisite two-thirds majority to be elected would be 26 (“twenty-two voices… four more”). This “secret servant” had therefore delivered news that, not only was Wolsey tantalisingly close to being elected, but he was substantially closer to victory than any other cardinal had come. Del Monte had won 16 votes (see above) and had the promise of three more on accessus, but that was still behind Wolsey, according to this report.
The difficulty is that there is not a shred or hint of corroboration anywhere. Sessa, the imperial ambassador, who was as meticulous as he could be in recording the fortunes of the candidates as the conclave proceeded, makes no mention of Wolsey receiving any votes at all at any point. Even in the unpredictable early scrutinies of 1523, for any cardinal, let alone one who was absent, suddenly to attract enough support to come agonisingly close to winning, seems implausible.
It was not that Wolsey had not been warned. For all their buoyancy and optimism once the conclave was underway, Clerk and Hannibal had tried to manage the Cardinal’s expectations beforehand. In September, they had written to Wolsey saying that de’ Medici, de Carvajal and Campeggio were “substanciall fryends, and by thaym many moo fraynds”, regarding the Englishmen as an ally and colleague. But they warned against making too much of this once it came to the matter of actually casting their votes.
We must shewe your Grace the worst. Many of owr cortyers and also Cardynalles cannot abyde the heryng that any one absent shold be chosyn, for feare of translatyng the See, and other sondry inconvenyentes, whiche ded ensue by the last election; whiche obstakyll we have movyd to your 3 foren [amyd] fryndes, to here there opynyons; who answeryd us quod in [hac] tam recenti plaga suffred by the long absence of the late Elect, your Graces absence semyd to be a great obstakyll: notwithstondyng they sayd that if ther shold be suche discention in the Conclave, so that the cowd not agre upon no man preesent (the lyke wherof was at the last election), then shuld they be fayne to condescend and chose absentem, and wold as lytll regarde the inconvenyentes affore expressyd now, the they dyd at the last election. And fynally, as farre as we can perceyve, the Cardinall of Medices hath a great hope for hymself, and is advised by his fryndes to attempt the fortune for hymself, and so intendith to doo. Next hymself he wyll do for your Grace all that he can, accordyng unto his promes.
This was as clear as it could diplomatically be. The College of Cardinals was unlikely to elect someone who was not present, unless by some chance it was the only way of breaking a deadlock as it had been the year before; and, for all that Cardinal de’ Medici was to be regarded as an ally, he had his own papal ambitions and intended, at the encouragement of his friends, to pursue them. He would only work actively to secure Wolsey’s election if he himself had no hope of ascending to the papacy.
It was true that the conclave seemed to have reached a stalemate. The Conservatori of Rome, the three magistrates responsible for civic government, came to the door of the conclave to lament the slow progress and to warn that this delay was damaging the Church. But inside, it seems, there was no sign of a breakthrough; Sessa told the Emperor that the cardinals had entered a stage of casting their votes again and again without coalescing behind someone who could win. On 25 October, Cristoforo Cardinal Numai, a Franciscan friar who was Bishop of Alatri and a former Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, won 22 votes and for a moment seemed a plausible candidate. If the imperial party backed him he would easily exceed the required two-thirds majority. But he was tainted in their eyes by his association with France; he had been awarded his doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris, and was confessor to the French king’s mother, Louise of Savoy, who wielded considerable influence and had acted as regent of France while François I had been absent on campaign. Those were unacceptably close ties, and Numai was effectively vetoed.
Another unexpected name emerged on 3 November, when Giacobazzi, the oldest cardinal and now 79, found himself with 10 votes. Still nothing happened, and three days later Foscari, the Venetian ambassador, wrote with weariness “I cardinali non hanno fatto nulla. Fano scrutinii, ma non pasano ire voti” (“The cardinals have done nothing. They do scrutinies, but no votes pass”).
Eventually cracks began to appear. On 12 November, de Carvajal, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, met a group of leading Romans at the door, and carried their message back to abide by the canons of the Church and choose a new Pope. That was the second external intervention: the cardinals were hardly in the kind of isolation in which a conclave was supposed to be held, but rather aware at every moment of growing unrest in the city outside. This was explicit, if unfocused, pressure.
By now de’ Medici must have regarded his own chances as diminishing, but he was growing frustrated by the obstinacy of Colonna, his determined opponent. Accordingly he announced his intention to propose Franciotto Cardinal Orsini, nephew of Leo X, a potential French candidate at the previous conclave and still favoured by François I. The effect was electrifying: the Colonna and the Orsini had been enemies since the 13th century, and although Julius II had formally ended the feud in 1511 with the papal bull Pax Romana, Colonna was not going to go as far as to put an Orsini on the throne of St Peter. Faced with that invidious choice, he revised his preferences, and, without controlling enough votes to obstruct a candidate, decided it would be the lesser evil to support de’ Medici.
That seems to have tipped the balance. If de’ Medici had his own 16 votes, and could add Colonna and Giacobazzi to them, it was the beginning of momentum, and through the night of 17/18 November, others joined them, including Armellini, until de’ Medici had 23 votes. Rising to 27 by accessus, that was enough, and Sessa wrote to the Emperor that day, 18 November, informing him of de’ Medici’s election. The new Pope took the name Clement VII.
In official and semi-official records, the narrative was maintained that Wolsey had been a very serious candidate. On 1 December, Campeggio, the Cardinal-protector of England, wrote to Henry VIII and claimed that Wolsey had always been in the mind of the College as a compromise candidate.
It had been determined among those who favored De Medici to propose Wolsey if they failed in obtaining his election, but they knew it would be most difficult to elect an absentee. It is the general opinion that De Medic will restore and increase the dignity of the Church.
Wolsey himself, writing to the King on 6 December in the grandly formal third person, reinforced this depiction of himself as the potential alternative to de’ Medici if the Florentine had been unacceptable. He also took the opportunity to register the appropriately humble gratitude that suhc an onerous responsibility had not in the end fallen on him, but we can safely discount that as a ritual form of words.
After many altercations the Cardinals resolved to elect De Medici or Wolsey. When this came to the knowledge of the Italian nobles, they made sundry great exclamations at the conclave window, affirming that the affairs of Italy would be in great danger if an absent person were chosen; on which the Cardinals, though principally bent upon Wolsey, elected De Medici on the 19th. “Of which good and fortunate news, Sir, your highness hath much cause to thank Almighty God, forasmuch as not only he is a perfect and faithful friend to the same, but that also much the rather by your means he hath attained to this dignity. And for my part, as I take God to record, I am more joyous thereof than if it had fortuned upon my person, knowing his excellent qualities most meet for the same, and how great and sure a friend your grace and the Emperor be like to have of him, and I so good a father.”
Again, the message that Campeggio and Wolsey were sending made theoretical sense. The conclave had been bitterly divided, and at one point it had certainly seemed that Cardinal de’ Medici had enough influence to block any candidate, but too much opposition to secure his own election. Under those circumstances, and if one were to take the promises of support from Charles V at face value, there is every reason Wolsey should have become Pope. He was eminent, experienced and had none of the divisive reputation of de’ Medici (or Farnese, or Orsini, or…), but the politics of the conclave made it very unlikely.
On 2 December, Clerk, Pace and Hannibal wrote to Wolsey with a slightly frenetic account of the sudden end of the conclave.
Colonna, thinking he was assured of the French party, went to De Medici, and demanded of him “whether he intended to tarry ever still in that prison, or no.” De Medici answered he would never yield to the French faction. Colonna proposed to him Jacobatius [Giacobazzi], saying he was an Imperialist, and wanted only four voices. De Medici asked leisure to deliberate, and finding upon inquiry that the party of Jacobatius must fail for want of two or three voices demanded on the next meeting with Colonna, “percase he should give unto Jacobatius four voices of his band, which he required, what he would give for him again percase the election of the cardinal Jacobatius should not take effect.” Colonna, making himself sure of his purpose, promised De Medici as many voices in return. When the French heard that Colonna had been with De Medici, fearing to be deceived, on the scrutiny Jacobatius had but 18 voices, and 4 from De Medici; on which Colonna, being disgusted, remonstrated, and they excused themselves that Jacobatius was not for their master’s purpose. “Bien,” answered Colonna, “je vous en ferai un bon Pape pour le Roi votre maitre;” and immediately went over to De Medici, and thus made up the requisite number, aliis minus cogitantibus.The conclusion was made up for De Medici on the 17th, “four hours within night,” notwithstanding the opposition of the French and Soderino. One difficulty only remained;—how they should be released from the oath they had taken never to assent to De Medici’s election. At last they all went into a chapel together, and, after long debate, relaxarunt sibi invicem jurata. Attempts were made by Wolsey’s friends for his preferment, sed parum feliciter; they would not hear of it, and even abused those who said anything about it.
It is impossible, because of the nature of conclaves and historical records, to know exactly how much of this account is wholly accurate, but, in a sense, it doesn’t matter. The final sentence is the one which counts: de’ Medici had all but been elected when Wolsey’s “friends” pressed the case for his “preferment”, but the other cardinals “would not hear of it”.
The blame game: never at the races
No-one knew it, of course, but Wolsey had seen his last chance of the papacy disappear. The newly elected Pope Clement VII was only 45, a skilled diplomatist with powerful supporters and no notable health problems; it could hardly have been foreseen that imperial troops would sack Rome in within four years, that the Pope would become a prisoner of the Emperor or that he would suddenly age rapidly and die at the age of 56 in 1534. By that time, however, Wolsey had himself been dead for nearly four years, Thomas Cranmer was Archbishop of Canterbury and had annulled the King’s marriage to Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII had married Anne Boleyn and Parliament was well on its way to formalising the break with Rome, passing the Act of Supremacy 1534 six weeks after Clement’s death.
Wolsey’s chances of becoming Pope were fleeting and spectral for two reasons. The first was institutional; as we’ve seen all along, the chances of an English cardinal succeeding to the papacy were slender because he had few natural geographical allies. There was generally only English cardinal at any one time: before Wolsey, the last overlap had been between 1439 and 1447, when Henry Cardinal Beaufort, the Bishop of Winchester, and John Cardinal Kemp, the Archbishop of York, had held the dignity; the next would be the brief period between 1557 and 1558, when Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been joined by William Cardinal Peto, the elderly former Provincial of the Observant Franciscans in England. There would not be two English cardinals simultaneously again until the 1870s.
In addition to that, most English cardinals immediately before the Reformation were based in England, with Bainbridge the exception for his last few years. The red hat was an honour to bestow on archbishops and courtiers: Beaufort, Kemp, Bourchier, Morton and Wolsey all served as Lord Chancellor, and Bainbridge had been Master of the Rolls and a member of the Privy Counsellor. That meant they were far less well known to the other cardinal electors, but, as we have seen, the Curial cardinals were simply disinclined to choose a colleague who was not present, with the exception of Adrian VI (and by the time of his death few cardinals looked on his papacy as a successful experiment).
The other factor was that Wolsey and Henry VIII seem to have taken on trust reassurances of support by the Emperor and his ambassador that never materialised nor, if examined with rigour and realism, made much sense. It was true that the Treaty of Bruges (1521) committed Charles V to supporting Wolsey’s case in a papal conclave, but it was signed at a time when there was no reason to think such an event might be imminent (though it turned out to be so), and support for a candidate in even the leaky atmosphere of a 16th century conclave was very difficult to measure, to prove or disprove. There were far more important aspects to the treaty, and Henry VIII should have applied the same unease and scepticism to that aspect of his alliance with Charles as he did to his general relationship with the Spanish monarchy. He had not forgotten that Charles’s grandfather, King Ferdinand II of Aragon, had let him down badly after the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in 1511, failing to support an English move against France in 1512 and undermining Henry’s military campaign.
How likely was it, after all, that Charles V would devote his energies to Wolsey’s appointment? His context was, as always, the struggle for power with the King of France, and a pliant Pope was part of that. Adrian VI, his former tutor, seemed to match that description, and Clement VII had been reliably anti-French since the mid-1510s. Wolsey was not an imperial subject and was the creation of Henry VIII’s patronage. If the Emperor wanted an instrument, a puppet or a stooge, there were other cardinals to whom he could turn before Wolsey came to the top of his list.
In short, Wolsey could have been Pope had every star aligned and every circumstance been at its most favourable. But it was not, yet he and the King seemed to ignore that. His direct influence in England was much greater as Lord Chancellor and papal legate a latere, and if he was dependent on the King’s continuing favour, that was not much less true of anyone else at the court of Henry VIII. Few had truly independent power bases.
All the same, there would be one more occasion when it did seem as if the improbably might happen, and an Englishman might be placed on the throne of St Peter. But that is a tale for the second part.