Editing Thomas Wolsey (section)

===Rise to prominence===
[[File:Wolsey banner.jpg|thumb|Heraldic banner of Wolsey as Archbishop of York, showing the arms of the See of York impaling his personal arms, with a cardinal's hat above. The griffin supporter holds the Lord Chancellor's mace]] 
The primary counsellors Henry VIII inherited from his father were [[Richard Foxe]] ({{circa}} 1448–1528, Bishop of Winchester 1501–1528) and [[William Warham]] ({{circa}} 1450–1532, Archbishop of Canterbury 1503–1532). They were cautious and conservative, advising the king to act as a careful administrator like his father. Henry soon appointed to his Privy Council men more sympathetic to his own views and inclinations. Until 1511, Wolsey was adamantly antiwar, but when the king expressed his enthusiasm for an invasion of France, Wolsey adapted his views to the king's and gave persuasive speeches to the Privy Council in favour of war. Warham and Foxe, who did not share the king's enthusiasm for the [[Anglo-French War (1512–14)|French war]], fell from power (1515/1516), and Wolsey took over as the king's most trusted advisor and administrator. When Warham resigned as [[Lord Chancellor]] in 1515, probably under pressure from Wolsey, Henry appointed Wolsey in his place.{{sfn|Scarisbrick|2015}}

Wolsey made careful moves to destroy or neutralise other courtiers' influence. He helped cause the fall of [[Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham]] in 1521, and in 1527 he prosecuted, unsuccessfully, Henry's close friend [[William Compton (courtier)|William Compton]] and Henry's ex-mistress [[Anne Stafford, Countess of Huntingdon]], for adultery. In the case of [[Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk]], Wolsey adopted a different strategy, attempting to win Suffolk's favour by his actions after the duke secretly married Henry's sister [[Mary Tudor, Queen of France|Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France]], much to the king's displeasure. Wolsey advised the king not to execute the newlyweds but to embrace them; whether this was out of care for the couple or because of the threat they posed to his own safety remains unclear. The bride, both as sister to Henry and as Dowager Queen of France, had high royal status that could have threatened Wolsey had she so chosen.

Wolsey's rise to a position of great secular power paralleled his increasing status in the church. He became a [[canon of Windsor]] in 1511. In 1514 he was made [[Bishop of Lincoln]] and then Archbishop of York in the same year. [[Pope Leo X]] made him a cardinal in 1515, with the titular church of [[Santa Cecilia in Trastevere|St Cecilia in Trastevere]]. In 1518 he was appointed as abbot of St. Albans and bishop of Bath.<ref name="auto">{{cite book |last=Key |first=Newton |title=Early Modern England 1485–1714: A Narrative History |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2019 |edition=3rd |pages=57 }}</ref> Following the success of the English campaign in France and the peace negotiations that followed, Wolsey's ecclesiastical career advanced further: in 1523 he became [[Bishop of Durham]], a post with wide political powers, and thus became known as Prince-Bishop of Durham. In 1529 he moved on from the bishop position in Durham to become the Bishop of Winchester.<ref name="auto"/> With his roles in the church came great wealth and estates, and with the accumulation of his different roles in the church he made upwards of £35,000 a year.<ref>{{cite book |last=Key |first=Newton |title=Early Modern England 1485–1714: A Narrative History |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2019 |edition=3rd |pages=58 }}</ref>