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The ‘Expulsion of the Minions’ of 1519 Reconsidered*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Greg Walker
Greg Walker
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Abstract

In recent years the word ‘faction’ has come to dominate study of the early modern period. Despite various reservations concerning precisely what is denoted by the term, historians have begun enthusiastically to look beyond the external appearances of political events to identify the hidden, factional, motives which are assumed to have prompted them. Owing in large part to the pioneering work of Drs D. R. Starkey and E. W. Ives, the reign of Henry VIII has been seen as particularly prone to faction, as various ambitious individuals or coalitions intrigued to manipulate the peculiarly pliable character of the king in their favour and to thwart the ambitions of their rivals.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 See, for example, the series in History Today (October/December 1982, October/December 1983), chronicling political faction from 1485 to 1714.

2 Starkey, D. R., ‘From Feud to Faction’, History Today, (10 1982), 16–22Google Scholar, andThe reign of Henry VIII: personalities and politics (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Ives, E. W., Faction in Tudor England (Historical Association, 1979, 2nd edn, 1987), and Anne Boleyn (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 Starkey, D. R., ‘The king's privy chamber, 1485–1547’, Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 1975. PP. 97–108Google Scholar.

4 Brown, Rawdon et al. , eds., Calendar of State Papers Venetian (1864–1940)Google Scholar [hereafter CSPV], II, 1220, 1230.

5 Starkey, , ‘Privy chamber’, pp. 108–14Google Scholar, and Reign of Henry VIII, pp. 75–81.

6 Hall, E., Chronicle (London, 1809), pp. 597–8Google Scholar, see below, pp. 8, 10–16.

7 For expositions of all, or part, of the following, see Starkey, , Reign of Henry VIII, pp. 78–80Google Scholar; Starkey, D. R., ‘Court and government’, in Starkey, and Coleman, C., eds., Revolution reassessed (Oxford, 1986), pp. 39–40Google Scholar; and Elton, G. R., Reform and Reformation (London, 1977), pp. 79–80Google Scholar.

8 The draft proposals for these reforms, drawn up in Henry's name during 1519, can be found in British Library MS Titus B I, fos. 188–90 (Brewer, J. S. et al. , eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (1862–1932)Google Scholar [hereafter LP], III (i), (576).

9 Brown, Rawdon, Four years at the Court of Henry VIII (2 vols., London, 1854), II, 271)Google ScholarVen. Cal., II, 1220, LP III (i), 235).

10 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 270–1Google Scholar.

11 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 270–1Google Scholar, my italics.

12 CSPV, II, 1230.

13 CSPV, II, 1235.

14 Starkey, , Reign of Hemy VIII, p. 77Google Scholar.

15 LP, Addenda, I (i), 196; LP, II (i), 1116, Hall, pp. 511, 517, 581.

16 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 271Google Scholar; Starkey, , Reign of Hemy VIII, pp. 77–8Google Scholar.

17 For the situation in 1515–16, see Scarisbrick, J. J., Henry VIII (London, 1968), pp. 50–100Google Scholar. For that of 1519, see Gwyn, P. J., ‘Wolsey's foreign policy: the conferences at Calais and Bruges reconsidered’, Historical Journal, XXIII (1980), 755–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 The term is Giustinian's, Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 270Google Scholar.

19 LP, III (i), 152.

20 S. J. Gunn, ‘Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk; a magnate among minions?’, I am grateful to Dr Gunn for the opportunity to read and cite this, as yet unpublished, paper.

21 Starkey, , ‘Court and government’, p. 33Google Scholar.

22 LP, I (i), 1123 (35).

23 LP, II (ii), 1507, 2567.

24 LP, II (ii), 3100.

25 LP, I (i) 54 (69–71); 94 (104); 158; 357; 448 (96); 563 (12–13); 804 (3).

26 Gairdner, J., ed., Letters and papers illustrative of the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII (2 vols., London, 1861), II, 89Google Scholar.

27 P.R.O., Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Henry VII, II, 109Google Scholar, 122, 354; LP, I (ii), 2684 (98). See also, 1 (i), 1176, 132, 218, 546.

28 Starkey, , ‘Privy chamber’, p. 112Google Scholar.

29 B.L., Cotton MS, Titus B I, fos. 188–90.

30 Hall, p. 598.

31 Starkey, , ‘Court and government’, pp. 39–40Google Scholar.

32 Starkey, , ‘Privy chamber’, p. 121Google Scholar.

33 Starkey, , ‘Privy chamber’, p. 121Google Scholar.

34 P.R.O., S.P. 1/159 fo. 47, printed in Bell, H. E., An introduction to the history and records of the court of wards and liveries (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 187–9Google Scholar. For the implementation of these proposals, see ibid. pp. 6–9.

35 State papers, Henry VIII (London, 1830–1852), II, 51Google Scholar.

36 For analyses of Surrey's mission, see Ellis, S. G., Tudor Ireland: community and the conflict of cultures, 1470–1603 (London, 1985), pp. 109–16Google Scholar; Bradshaw, B., The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 58–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Quinn, D. B., ‘Henry VIII and Ireland, 1509–34’, Irish Historical Studies, XII, no. 48 (1961), 318–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 B.L., Cotton MS, Titus B I, fo. 188.

38 Note his sudden and enthusiastic commitment to the idea of a crusade, also during 1519, LP, III (i), 432. That the reforms were Henry's own suggestion was suggested in Elton, G. R., The Tudor revolution in government (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 37–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Walker, G., John Skelton and the politics of the 1520s (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

40 Hall, p. 598.

41 CSPV, II, 1230.

42 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 266Google Scholar.

43 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 268Google Scholar.

44 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 269–70Google Scholar.

45 See, for example, LP, III (i), 809; in (ii), 1502, 1803; CSPV, II, 908, 950.

46 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 268Google Scholar.

47 The mission of Richard Pace to the German Princes involved in the Imperial election seems the most likely alternative topic for debate. Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 269–70Google Scholar.

48 From the records preserved in the Ellesmere MSS in the Huntington Library, we know only that the Council met on 19 and 24 May and 6 and 7 June, 1519. The only business recorded for 19 May, the meeting closest to when the decision to approach Henry must have been made, was the despatch of one Richard Coryton to the Fleet for a forcible entry. This need not, of course, exclude the possibility of other unrecorded business, or of other unrecorded meetings. Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, Ellesmere MS [hereafter El.] 2652, fos. 3–5, 7–8, 10–11. The only extant attendance list for this period relates to 7 June, when Wolsey was present, as were Thomas Ruthal, Bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstal, Master of the Rolls, John Veysey, Dean of the Chapel Royal, Lord Treasurer Norfolk, Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, Lord Admiral Surrey, the Earls of Northumberland and Worcester, Chief justicejohn Fineux, Justice John Kently, Sir Thomas Lovell, Sir Henry Marney, Sir Thomas Neville, Sir Edward Belknap, Sir Richard Wingfield, Sir Maurice Berkley, Sir William Sandes, Justice Humphrey Conningsby and Sir John Cutt. Of these, the only men likely to have been both temperamentally inclined and in a position to approach Henry on so delicate an issue as privy chamber discipline would seem to be Wolsey himself, Norfolk and Suffolk. If Wolsey was indeed absent from the Council at the time of the ‘delegation’ to Henry, and the attendance remained otherwise the same, the two Dukes seem the most likely instigators of such an action. I am very grateful to Dr J. A. Guy for supplying this last reference, and a transcript of the presence list, and to Dr G. W. Bernard, for making available to me his microfilm and transcripts of the Ellesmere MS.

49 Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 270–1Google Scholar.

50 LP, III (i), 246.

51 Hall, pp. 597 and 598.

52 Kipling, G., The triumph of honour (The Hague, 1977)Google Scholar.

53 For the association between Frenchness, fashion and vanity, see More's, ThomasEpigram concerning the frenchified dandy in Marsden, J. H., Philomorus: notes on the Latin poems of Thomas More (London, Second Edition, 1878), p. 223Google Scholar. For the association with bragging, see Whiting, B. J., Proverbs, sentences, and proverbial phrases from English writings mainly before 1500 (London, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The French can yelp well’. In the play Wisdom, the connexion between France and vice is drawn most obviously. Immediately upon their corruption by Satan, the characters Understanding, Mind and Will, who had previously used only English and Latin, begin to sprinkle their conversation with French phrases, adopt ‘French’ vices, and consequently consider themselves ‘courtly persons’. ‘[Understanding:] We woll be fresche, hamp, la plu joly!// Farewell penance./ [Mind:] To worshyppys, I wyll my mynde a plye …/ [Will:] And I in lustis of lechery, / As was sumtyme gyse of Frawnce.’ (Furnivall, F. J. and Pollard, A. W., eds., The macro plays (London, 1904), p. 52Google Scholar. Note the proverbial origins of this notion; ‘Frenshe men synne in lechery, and Englys men yn envye’ (Whiting). This association between Frenchmen and lechery explains why venereal disease was, in English parlance, the ‘French Pox’. The satirist Thomas Nashe summarized traditional attitudes later in the century in the observation, ‘What is there in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenry, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear “ Ah par la mort Dieu”, when a man's hams are scabbed’, The unfortunate traveller (1587) (McKerrow, R. B., ed., The works of Thomas Nashe (5 vols., Oxford, 1958), II, 300)Google Scholar

54 Guy, J. A., The cardinal's court (Hassocks, 1977)Google Scholar. That the Council was not entirely hamstrung on political questions, most notably those relating to foreign policy, is demonstrated by the numerous references to debates on these issues in Bergenroth, G. A. et al. , eds., Calendar of State Papers Spanish, Further supplement to volumes 1 and 2, pp. 14–15Google Scholar, 123, and 233 pp. I owe this point to P. J. Gwyn.

55 Such resentment seems evident in the complaint attributed to Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, that Henry was giving rewards not to noblemen but to boys. B. L. Harleian MS 283, fo. 70 (LP, III (i), 1284 (3)). But, how far Buckingham's resentments reflect wider noble attitudes is unclear. I am grateful to Dr G. W. Bernard for his reference.

56 CSPV, II, 1230; Brown, Rawdon, Four years, II, 271Google Scholar. The swift return of a number of the minions to court (Bryan and Carew were receiving breakfasts in the royal household again by October 1519, LP III (i), 491) demonstrates that a ‘short, sharp, shock’ to amend their behaviour was what was intended by their dismissal, rather than any more fundamental political neutralization.