ABSTRACT
It would have been something to have obtained the highest ecclesiastical honour in England, but here fate was against him. When Cardinal Bainbridge died at Rome in 1514-of poison, it was said, but then every cardinal's death \vas at this time follo\ved by that rumour-Wolsey immediately obtained his see of York and a year later the cardinalate. But the road to Canterbury was blocked by Warham who, though born about 1450 and therefore due to die in an age when sixty years were a respectable limit to a man's life, in the end outlived Wolsey. But for this accident it is likely that Wolsey would have added Canterbury to York and thus created an unprecedented unification of the English Church by means of existing offices. Instead he was forced to resort to methods which involved him in objectionable innovation, conflict with the English clergy, uncalled-for dependence on papal authority, and ultimately the king's deadly displeasure. He decided to have himself made a permanent papal legate a [atere. Papal legates had always been of two kinds. Every archbishop was a legatus natus, exercising certain aspects of his authority by grant from Rome. In addition, the pope could send envoys with specific powers on separate occasions; these legat; a latere might be no more than ambassadors, or they might be sent with a commission superseding for a time all other ecclesiastical authority in the region affected. Wolsey turned the occasional expedient into regular practice and used an office ordinarily confined to genuine envoys from Rome to make himself the permanently resident ruler of the Church in England. His powers were circumscribed by the bulls granting them, and he was always, from the first grant of the legacy in 1518, appealing for renewals and extensions; but the limitations proved theoretical only, for pressure at Rome secured a steady enlargement of scope and, in 1524, a grant for life. His legateship made Wolsey what no one had ever been before: the ecclesiastical ruler of the two provinces of the Church which between them covered the realm of England.
