Wolsey's Domestic Policies Analysis

From some perspectives, Wolsey 's domestic policies were a dramatic failure as it could be said that he was arrogant and used the position only to his own advantage whilst trying the impossible, to be king when he was not. He was also blindly hostile towards nobles and therefore caused great hostility towards himself. On the other hand, Wolsey seemed to cope with the enormous workload extremely well, as the large amounts of duties that he had to perform would have been impossible for most people to keep on top of, but Wolsey seemed to manage with great ability. Peter Gwyn argued that Wolsey was "able both physically and mentally to take [the workload] in his stride." He also said that "Wolsey was a man of enormous ability." and uses the evidence …show more content…
Elton then says that the only two things Wolsey did well were promoting himself and keeping "Henry satisfied". Like Gwyn, Elton did not personally know Wolsey as he is a (relatively) modern historian, and so his opinion on Wolsey is taken from evidence rather than from his first hand experience. The purpose of the source was a history book documenting the Tudors in general, and so it would appear to be in an unbiased context as it is not a book about Wolsey, one way or another. Wolsey was certainly good at appeasing Henry, as he often helped to raise taxes for Henry 's expensive wars against France, and helped him to cut costs in other areas with the Eltham Ordinances. He was also good at promoting himself, although this was primarily through his foreign policies. As Elton suggests it seems as if Wolsey ignored many …show more content…
Vergil was the only one, however, to know him personally and even then he had a strong dislike for him, so all the sources can only be trusted to a degree. However, it does appear that Wolsey failed in many areas in his domestic policies, particularly in the financial sense, with the failure of the Amicable Grant and his being unable to rectify the financial distress caused by Henry 's glory hunt. It also seems that his distrust for the nobility and parliament caused great tensions, and the fact that he only visited parliament once to demand taxes makes this strained relationship clear, and it is clear that anyone who is that heavily involved in politics should be much more involved with Parliament. On the other hand, he was very effective at obeying the King and he had a number of great successes in the legal system, creating fair justice for every level of society, indicating that he was successful in at least one area of domestic policy. So it can be established that although Wolsey 's successes in providing fair justice for all were great, he perhaps took on too many tasks to further his own power and perhaps due to his work in the legal system neglected other areas, meaning that on the whole, Wolsey 's domestic policies were