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Duke of Suffolk/Charles Brandon
Cavendish is Cardinal Wolsey’s usher, who serves him faithfully even after his fall from grace. He tries to arrange for the cardinal’s every comfort even though the cardinal has no money left. After the cardinal’s death, it is Cavendish who fills Cromwell in on all the details of how Wolsey was arrested by Harry Percy.
George Cavendish Quotes in Wolf Hall
The Wolf Hall quotes below are all either spoken by George Cavendish or refer to George Cavendish. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 2: Chapter 1 Quotes
“Is it something to do with the English?” Cavendish asks earnestly. He’s still thinking of the uproar back there when they embarked; and even now, people are running along the banks, making obscene signs and whistling. “Tell us, Master Cromwell, you’ve been abroad. Are they particularly an ungrateful nation? […]”
“I don’t think it’s the English. I think it’s just people. They always hope there may be something better.”
“But what do they get by the change?” Cavendish persists. “One dog sated with meat is replaced by a hungrier dog who bites nearer the bone. […]”
He closes his eyes. The river shifts beneath them, dim figures in an allegory of Fortune. Decayed Magnificence sits in the center. Cavendish, leaning at his right like a Virtuous Councillor, mutters words of superfluous and belated advice […]; he, like a Tempter, is seated on the left […].
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Part 2: Chapter 2 Quotes
“All along, we were misled, […] because when the king said, Mistress Anne is not to marry into Northumberland, I think, I think, the king had cast his eye on her, all that long time ago.”
[…]
“I wonder,” he says, “how it can be that, though all these people think they know the king’s pleasure, the king finds himself at every turn impeded.” At every turn, thwarted: maddened and baffled. The Lady Anne, whom he has chosen to amuse him, while the old wife is cast off and the new wife brought in, refuses to accommodate him at all. How can she refuse? Nobody knows.
[…] “How has my lord cardinal…” Missed a trick, he wants to say. But that is not a respectful way to speak of a cardinal.
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George Cavendish Character Timeline in Wolf Hall
The timeline below shows where the character George Cavendish appears in Wolf Hall. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 2: Chapter 1: Visitation, 1529
...Cromwell denies this, saying that the cardinal will go to his residence in Esher. George Cavendish, the cardinal’s usher, anxiously says that the house in Esher is unfurnished and he also...
(full context)
...how the king could throw him out so ignominiously after 20 years of loyal service. Cavendish wonders if it is just the English who are “particularly an ungrateful nation,” but Cromwell...
(full context)
...put it in order, telling the staff that Wolsey might stay there awhile. He and Cavendish stay up late, planning out what all they might need to make the house comfortable...
(full context)
Cavendish wonders who will be the new Lord Chancellor, and Cromwell guesses it will be Thomas...
(full context)
Part 2: Chapter 2: An Occult History of Britain, 1521-1529
...his Esher residence, Cromwell thinks back to that night all those years ago and asks Cavendish what happened next with Harry Percy and Anne Boleyn. Cavendish pretends he is Percy and...
(full context)
Cavendish says that their biggest mistake was that they didn’t realize why the king had opposed...
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Part 2: Chapter 3: Make or Mar, All Hallows 1529
...grief “threatens to capsize him” as he thinks of Liz and his dead children. When Cavendish sees him crying, Cromwell says he is crying because his career will be ruined with...
(full context)
Cromwell tells Cavendish that he’s sent Rafe to Westminster to try and get a seat for him in...
(full context)
Part 3: Chapter 1: Three-Card Trick, Winter 1529-Spring 1530
Two days later, at Esher, Cavendish is amazed as he tells Cromwell that the king has sent them “four cartloads of...
(full context)
Part 3: Chapter 2: Entirely Beloved Cromwell, Spring-December 1530
...leans against the wall in a dark recess and finds himself crying. He hopes that Cavendish will not come by and see him, and then “write it down and make it...
(full context)
...dies. Cromwell thinks that before Wolsey, England was a “little offshore island, poor and cold.” Cavendish brings news of how Harry Percy arrived to arrest the cardinal for high treason as...
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Cavendish describes how the townspeople “knelt in the road and wept” as the cardinal was taken...
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Part 3: Chapter 3: The Dead Complain of Their Burial, Christmastide 1530
...to the day when the cardinal’s York Place was wrecked and about how he and Cavendish had stood by and watched as the cardinal’s luxurious clothes were pulled out of his...
(full context)
