Wolsey Becomes Cardinal

1515

Thomas Wolsey, butcher's son from Ipswich, was elevated to cardinal and made Lord Chancellor of England. For the next fifteen years he would be Henry VIII's chief minister, building Hampton Court Palace, running the Tudor state, and eventually falling because he could not deliver the king's divorce from Catherine. His fall in 1529 demonstrated the precariousness of any minister whose fortune depended entirely on a monarch's favor.