Wolsey's Responsibility For His Own Downfall
Thomas Wolsey can be easily viewed as being responsible for his own
downfall. John Guy believes that Wolsey was “brilliant but flawed.”
His rise was based on luck, charm, intelligence and opportunism.
Wolsey had such high ambitions and gave Henry the idea he was capable
of getting him anything, so when Wolsey failed to get Henry a divorce,
it was seen as the final nail on the coffin to his downfall. His
policies are also a cause to his downfall; Wolsey’s foreign policy was
a success but also caused problems. On Wolsey’s rise he created
enemies, which lead to the lack of support and opposition in his years
as Chancellor. But it can also be viewed, on the other hand, that
Wolsey wasn’t entirely responsible for his downfall. His downfall can
be laid upon Henry VIII; his court known as the ‘lions court’. David
Starkey believes the ‘Boleyn Faction’ was a cause to Henry’s downfall;
Anne disliked Wolsey and wanted him removed. Wolsey having bad press
from the start, nobility were jealous of his power and wealth. One can
see that Wolsey was a successful and just administrator who succeed in
his aims making England a leading power. His rise was due to luck,
charm and his intelligence, but his fall was due to some of his fatal
characteristics and bad luck. But we can clearly see Wolsey alone
wasn’t entirely responsible for his downfall; there were many other
factors, which Wolsey couldn’t have helped that increased his
downfall.
Wolsey had some responsibility to his own downfall. His rise to power
was due to luck, charm, intelligence and opportunism. The reasons for
Wolsey’s fall can be spl...
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...land which
England was too narrow a field for his vast ambition. He aspired to be
the arbiter of Europe. He threw England’s influence on the side of the
Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, in the latter’s rivalry with Francis I
of France. He expected thereby to enlist the emperor’s aid for his own
aspirations to become pope.
Wolsey maintained the kings favour until he failed to secure an
annulment of Henry’s first marriage. From1527-1529, as Anne Boleyn’s
influence rose, Wolsey waned. She disliked the cardinal because of his
interference in her earlier engagement to Henry Percy. And both she
and King were increasingly impatient with the pope’s endless
prevarication. Torn between his secular and spiritual masters, Wolsey
chose Henry’s side-but it was too late. He was indicated for
praemunire; and later confessed guilt.
...The foreign support that Henry received was pivotal in starting Henry Tudor’s second attempt at invading England as otherwise he would never have been able to land and gather troops and support from domestic sources. However, once in England the support that Henry gained from welsh and English nobles and Barons meant that he was able to face Richard and defeat him at the Battle of Bosworth. Whilst support is vastly important in explaining Richard’s defeat, other factors such as Richard’s mistakes like policies that drained the Treasury (e.g. the war against Scotland) are to blame. This particular mistake prevented Richard from being able to stop Tudor from crossing the channel, and so it was left up to nobles Richard believed to be loyal to resist the invasion, this belief also backfired when Rhys ap Thomas joined Henry when he was promised the Lieutenancy of Wales.
When we look at Henry as a king we have to look in the context of
have come to England to meet the king unless it was as important as an
King Henry VIII is considerable the most controversial monarch Great Britain has ever had. He is commonly known for his ill-advised decisions, six wives, and splitting Great Britain from the Catholic Church to create the Church of England. King Henry VIII of England’s determination to guarantee his family line’s continuation in the throne caused many problems, such as religious tensions, economic hardships, and political adversaries that continued one long after his death.
Peter Gwyn also takes a historical perspective of Wolsey in his book, The King’s Cardinal. Unlike Cavendish, who heavily favored factions and the Boleyns as the makers of Wolsey’s demise, Gwyn does not put any merit in the idea that factions brought about Wolsey’s fall. He does not act like there were not tensions between Wolsey and the nobility, but from his perspective, “both as lord chancellor and as a leading royal councillor, he was bound to have to do things that would not be popular with them” (p 114). This is supposed to further his claim that Wolsey was solely following orders, because he was bound to do things by Henry. Gwyn’s account of Wolsey centers around the king and the claim that Henry used Wolsey’s fall from grace as a political statement, and that Henry was always in control of Wolsey’s actions. Also unlike Cavendish, who aimed to show Wolsey as a dedicated servant to both the king and the Church, Gwyn tries to show Wolsey as he was in all aspects, both good and bad, as a Cardinal, an advisor to the king, and a force to reckon with in terms of foreign relations. ...
After that, Wolsey asked More how he planned to give the king a male heir. More said that he would “pray for it daily” but Wolsey wanted to “secure a divorce” so that King Henry VIII could marry Anne Boleyn and most likely produce a male heir, which he felt would solve the issue immediately, since he was making the effort to do something, unlike More, who would rather pray for help.
When something bad happens, it’s easy to get angry, to point fingers; however, it eventually gets difficult to silence the sneaky voice in our heads whispering that it was all our own fault, that we deserved it. In this soliloquy, Wolsey is coming to terms with his own downfall, and he flies through this myriad of emotions. Shakespeare evokes the elements of allusion, figurative language, and tone to depict the full scope of Wolsey’s complicated, divided reaction to being removed from his job.
The nature of the tragic hero of ancient Greek tragedy was first discussed by Aristotle in Poetics in the fourth century BC. Using Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King as a model, Aristotle identified four characteristics necessary for a tragic hero: position (power, royalty, good intentions), tragic flaw (a character’s fault that leads to the hero’s downfall), reversal (the downfall itself), and recognition (the hero’s realization that he has caused his own downfall). In Antigone, another of Sophocles’ tragedies, King Creon becomes king of Thebes after the deaths of Oedipus’ sons Eteocles and Polyneices. As, the proud, stubborn Creon abandons the gods’ law and refuses to consider the advice of others, tragic consequences ensue. During his reign, Creon demonstrates all four characteristics of the tragic hero.
Who was Elie Wiesel? Elie was a Holocaust survivor; he received most of his fame from a widely known speech; The Perils of Indifference. He presented this speech in April of 1999, during the Millennium Lecture series. What is indifference, indifference means lack of interest. What I want to know is how much WWII could have been effected if the American soldiers were granted permission to attack earlier, or how many wars could have been different; for example, the Civil War. The point that I am trying to make is how I agree with Elie.
”Lie down on it! On your belly! I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip. One! Two! He took time between the lashes. Ten eleven! Twenty-three. Twenty four, twenty five! It was over. I had not realized it, but I fainted” (Wiesel 58). It was hard to imagine that a human being just like Elie Wiesel would be treating others so cruelly. There are many acts that Elie has been through with his father and his fellow inmates. Experiencing inhumanity can affect others in a variety of ways. When faced with extreme inhumanity, The people responded by becoming incredulous, losing their faith, and becoming inhumane themselves.
He was a human that had emotions, he experienced grief with the multiple miscarriages and deaths of his sons and the betrayals of his wife’s, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Also the death of Jane Seymour, the only wife to give him a male heir, brought him into a depression. These events changed Henry’s perspective of his own self, that he was without a legal heir, his health was horrendous and he was being betrayed by those closest to him. Lipscomb describes the transformation of Henry from the popular prince to the tyrant king know today. As shown, “the last decade of his reign, Henry VIII had begun to act as a tyrant. The glittering, brilliant monarch of the accession, toppled into old age by betrayal, aggravated into irascibility and suspicion as a result of ill health and corrupted by absolute power, had become a despot”. Henry is not thought of as the good Christian, but Lipscomb writes throughout this book that Henry was very serious about his religious affiliations. Lipscomb portrays Henry VIII as, “a man of strong feeling but little emotional intelligence, willful and obstinate but also fiery and charismatic, intelligent but blinkered, attempting to rule and preserve his honor against his profound sense of duty and heavy responsibility to fulfil his divinely ordained role”. In other words he was an emotional mess that did not know what to do with his feelings, so he bottled them up and south to seek
The American dream is still alive. One image comes to mind when thinking about the American dream,freedom and equality for all. It might be hard for some people who grew up in a poor community to get a good education or to even live a good lifestyle, but it’s up to you to make it with what you have.. Most people are given lots of opportunities and chances and don’t take advantage of them like they should. America still provides access to the American Dream because everyone is given freedom and freedom of religion and you have the choice to do whatever you want. In the book of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck there were two men who were set to have there own ranch and a life of their own. But once Lennie killed Curly’s wife it was over for Lennie but even in the situation they were in, they were still presented with the opportunity to achieve the American Dream. George said "With us it ain't like that. We got a
Henry II also controlled a lot of France at this time. William the Conqueror had been his great-grandfather and he had inherited his French territories as a result of this. When Henry was in France sorting out problems there, he left Becket in charge of England - such was his trust in him. Becket became Henry’s chancellor - the most important position in England after the king.
However, he didn't listen to the duke of york who desperately wanted a say. This could have been another reason for the outbreak of conflict because the people didn't think he always made the right decision and the duke of York didn't like not being listened to. Another problem was with patronage, as Henry was overgenerous, but only to some people, he would give lots of patronage to Somerset and Suffolk but none to York. This was even worse because he had borrowed from York and instead if paying him back, gave patronage to others. He gave away more and more money and land so that there wasn't much left for important times like war and to make people happy or come onto his side.
In ¨Hope, Despair, and Memory¨ a lecture by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel talks about a few significant memories. He is a holocaust survivor, he wrote this speech and won a Nobel Peace prize. He takes his readers back in time by using imagery. Some know, memory is a powerful tool, Wiesel uses this tool in this text. As you continue to read, think of where you would be without memory.