No advisor to Henry VIII, not even Thomas Cromwell, was as important to Henry as Cardinal

Thomas Walsy. Walsy was a churchman from Suffolk, he rose to the King's attention because

of his brilliant organizational skills, his immense capacity for hard work and his evident

charisma. He became Lord Chancellor and Henry VIII's chief minister, enjoying the King's

special and constant favour for 15 years. The Venetian Ambassador observed that Henry

leaves everything in the charge of Cardinal Walsy, whilst Erasmus thought that Walsy governed

more really than the King himself. For on diplomats who negotiated with him and were

outmaneuvered by him, excused themselves by calling him a man as difficult as any in

the world, the most rascally beggar in the world and the most devoted to the interests

of his master. But his close attendant George Cavendish wrote of the power of Walsy's

words, he had a special gift for natural eloquence with a filed tongue, that he was able

with the same to persuade and allure all men to his purpose.

Walsy's most recent biographer joins me on the podcast today. Glenn Richardson is professor

of Early Modern History at St Mary's University Twickenham and the author of the field of

Coth of Gold which came out in 2014. His book Walsy was published by Routledge in 2020,

and he's now writing both the biography of Francis I for reaction books and a biography

of the Court of Henry VIII for OUP, plus he's preparing a study of the significance of

the Battle of Pavia for pen and sword. He's a busy man, so I was especially pleased

that Professor Richardson made time to talk to me about his thoughts on Thomas Walsy.

So the first thing that most people know about Thomas Walsy, or the first thing most

people learn is that in the biography of Walsy, that was written 30 years after his death

by his attendant George Cavendish, we get told that Thomas Walsy was an honest poor man's

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