Thomas Wolsey

Written in the 1550s by George Cavendish, Wolsey's gentleman-usher, this is a first-hand life of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Cavendish follows the Ipswich butcher's son through service to Henry VII and Henry VIII, the accumulation of church offices, Hampton Court, and the peak of power as lord chancellor. He then recounts the failure to secure the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Wolsey's arrest, the journey north, and his death at Leicester Abbey. Dialogue, household detail, and set-piece interviews with the king occupy much of the narrative. The book is a Tudor memoir of rise and fall, not a modern archive biography.

Bound in purple buckram blocked with a gilt design. Grey slipcase.