Gibbons, Geoffrey (1999) The political career of Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl of Southampton, 1505-1550. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The introduction to the thesis gives an overview of the life and career of Thomas
Wriothesley and considers the primary and secondary sources which provide the
material upon which the thesis is based. It is followed by a detailed consideration of
Wriothesley's sixteen years in the service of Wolsey. and Cromwell, recording his
growing competence and authority in the administrative machinery of mid-Tudor
government and in his influence in the day to day management of state affairs as
Cromwell's secretary.
The third section concentrates on Wriothesley's four years as the king's
secretary, referring to his work in the financial field in obtaining funds to finance the
king's wars. It examines his growing status in the court and privy council, and reviews
his work as an ambassador for Henry after 1530. Henry's confidence in him ensured
his occasional employment as a special, rather than resident ambassador to the imperial
court, and his work in this specialist field is investigated.
Wriothesley held the office of lord chancellor for only three years and in that
period made a limited impact in a judicial sense, in part due to his restricted
professional expertise. His principal function over those years, of finding means to
financing the high costs of Henry's military campaigns, and putting in order the chaotic
condition of the monetary system, is closely examined. Wriothesley's growing
involvement as lord chancellor in the developing factional struggles that encompassed
the privy chamber and the council mostly, but not only, in religious matters is also
assessed. His role in other aspects of the office of lord chancellor, in parliament, in
framing proclamations and as the senior member of the government dealing with
foreign ambassadors,is considered in detail.
Perhaps the most important feature of the last years of Wriothesley's career
was his deep involvement in the political and religious turmoils of the latter years of
Henry's reign and the first two years of Edward's. In the period between 1544 and
1550, perhaps for the only occasions in his life, serious misjudgement of events put him
in real peril of his life and property, lost him the office of lord chancellor and
effectively sidelined him for most of the last two years of his life. In his efforts to ruin
Queen Catherine Parr, his harassment of reformers, and in his mistaken view during the
last three months of the Protectorate that Warwick was really a Henrician catholic in
disguise, Thomas Wriothesley showed a surprising degree of self-deception. His
actions suggest that his political instinct failed him at the most crucial points in his
career.
Substantial rewards, which usually followed a period of valuable royal service
or successful military achievement, were in Wriothesley's case gathered in a relatively
short lifetime of determined endeavour. We examine in Appendix 1, the many financial
benefits and landed property he secured and retained successfully, the offices he
gathered and consider the extent of his authority and influence in his home county of
Hampshire. In Appendices 2 and 3 we look briefly at Titchfield Place, Wriothesley's
home in Hampshire and the detailed provisions of his Will.
The thesis concludes with an assessment of the life, administrative and political
career of Thomas Wriothesley, in the context of the mid-Tudor period.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Southampton, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of, 1509-1550, Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1509-1547, Politicians -- Great Britain -- Biography
Official Date:	March 1999
Dates:	Date Event March 1999 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Marshall, Peter, 1964-
Extent:	vii, 334 leaves
Language:	eng

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