8. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was once the second most powerful man in England but suffered the fate of a commoner.
For a short period of time at the beginning of the 16th century, Thomas Wolsey was quite probably the second-most powerful man in all of England, only behind King Henry VIII. In many ways, he was the king’s right-hand man. And he might have continued to be had it not been for the small matter of Henry’s quest for a male heir. Nothing was going to stand in the monarch’s way of having a son – not his wife, not the pope and certainly not a butcher’s son from Ipswich.
Wolsey was born into a relatively modest family in 1475. After graduating from Oxford University, he went into the church and his rise was swift. He rose to become chaplain to Henry VII and, upon his death, assumed the same role for Henry VIII. From 1515 to 1529, he was the king’s go-to man for advice. Above all, Wolsey, by that point a Cardinal, was trusted with taking care of foreign policy matters, and it was he who organized the famous meeting in the Field of the Cloth of Gold between Henry and Francis I of France. Unsurprisingly, Wolsey enjoyed all the trappings of power. He had a palace of his own and also enjoyed a life of luxury, despite being a man of the church.
Henry’s decision to split with Catherine of Aragon and take a wife who would give him a male heir promoted Wolsey’s downfall. Despite his position in the church, he could not convince the pope to annul the marriage. As a result, he was a dead man walking. In November 1530, he was arrested for treason and stripped of all his wealth and privileges. However, he didn’t live to stand trial as he died of natural causes while traveling back to London to face the king’s justice.