Wolf Hall: Part 1: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Despite the warmth of the April night, Stephen Gardiner is dressed in black furs that “look like oily and dense black feathers” that he gathers around him “like black angel’s wings.” He tells Thomas Cromwell that he is late. Cromwell says it is because the boatmen were drunk and Gardiner wonders why he didn’t row himself over since he must have surely “done some river work” as a boy. Gardiner likes to always bring up Cromwell’s low birth since he himself is “the king’s unacknowledged cousin” who was discreetly brought up by some people in the wool trade. Gardiner resents his own upbringing, and he dislikes the fact that Cromwell knows many people in the wool trade and must therefore know everything about Gardiner’s past. Gardiner is also annoyed that Cromwell will be having a private meeting with their boss, Cardinal Wolsey, to whom Gardiner is confidential secretary.

Cardinal Wolsey warmly welcomes Cromwell with food and wine. Cromwell thinks that “If you had interrupted him every night for ten years, and sat sulking and scowling at him on each occasion, you would still be his honored guest.” Wolsey “makes a great, deep, smiling sigh, like a leopard settling in a warm spot,” and rests his “large, white, beringed hand” on his ample belly.

Wolsey is the king’s Lord Chancellor and is also the Archbishop of York, though he has never been to Yorkshire. Cromwell has just returned from there and gives him his report of the place, saying it is “filthy” and filled with “heathens.” He says that the cardinal’s project of merging some small monasteries in York is greatly disliked, and as a result, Cromwell, who is Wolsey’s lawyer and general “man of business,” even received some death threats. Wolsey wishes to use the revenue from these monasteries to start two colleges, one at Oxford and one at Ipswich. He says that Cromwell will have to take armed guards with him when he travels there next, which troubles the cardinal because he has an “instinct for decorum and pleasure.”

Next, the cardinal tells Cromwell that he would like more spies in Queen Katherine’s court since she will soon be told that the king will marry another woman who can give him a son. Cromwell says his Spanish isn’t very good, so he wouldn’t be able to arrange for that.

Wolsey admits that he, too, has a son—“[a] weakness of the flesh.” His son, Thomas Winter, seems to have chosen a scholarly life, while his young daughter, Dorothea, has been placed in a convent. The cardinal says that he knows that Cromwell has one legitimate son but jokes that he might have others from the time when he ran away from home. Cromwell says he hopes not, since he was only 15 then.

Cardinal Wolsey says that he and Cromwell and everyone else has sons, but the king doesn’t—which is, no doubt, Wolsey’s fault. He tells Cromwell that he tried to dissuade the king from getting an annulment, but he failed. Since Queen Katherine had once been married to King Henry’s brother, Arthur, Henry claims that their marriage is invalid since it is incestuous—he says he has been sleeping with his “sister” the entire time. Henry wants to use this idea to get an annulment. Wolsey admits that he thinks Henry’s idea is “preposterous,” though he doesn’t want his opinion to leave the room.

Wolsey plans to send Gardiner to Rome to talk to the Pope and other papal delegates about the king’s wishes. Wolsey is aware that Cromwell and Gardiner are rivals—that, “dissatisfied with their original parentage, they are fighting to be his favorite son.”  He tells Cromwell that Gardiner is well-grounded in canon law and is also very persuasive, despite what Cromwell might think of him. Cromwell warns Wolsey to send Gardiner with a full purse as there will be many cardinals there whom he’ll have to bribe. Wolsey jokes that he should probably send Cromwell instead, and that Cromwell would be able to arrange a loan for Pope Clement. Cromwell agrees, and thinks that it is very possible that he would actually be able to manage this.

Wolsey already has several alternatives for how the king’s decision to leave his wife could play out. First, he plans to gather a delegation and confront Henry “in a shocked fashion,” and tell him that his relationship with Katherine appears to be unlawful. Wolsey thinks it is possible that Henry, who doesn’t like to be in the wrong, might shout at him and return to Katherine and her Spanish-Imperial family. If not, Wolsey thinks he might have Henry marry a French princess after his marriage to Katherine is annulled, which would then open up diplomatic relations with France. Cromwell knows that “everything that comes to pass will pass by God’s design, a design reenvisaged and redrawn, with helpful emendations, by the cardinal.”

Cromwell wonders where Katherine will go after she is cast off, and Wolsey says she will probably end up in a convent. He recounts how Katherine had been a beauty of 16 when she arrived from Spain to marry Arthur, 27 years ago. Henry had been a boy of 10 then, and after Arthur’s death, Henry married Katherine when he turned 18. He had been in love with her, but now that is all gone. Wolsey knows that King Henry wants his own way, but he suspects that Queen Katherine “will be hard to move.”

Cromwell gets set to leave Wolsey and go home with his clerk Rafe Sadler, who has lived in the Cromwell household ever since he was a little boy of seven and who is now 21 years old. Rafe Sadler has had a secure childhood with Cromwell and has a “tidy mind.” Cromwell is now a little over 40 years old, and while his face is usually unreadable, the only expression that people can interpret on it is one of “stifled amusement.” He is “at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop’s palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury.”