I feel that Wolsey’s domestic policies were disappointing as he did not go through with his word and did not have enough power to apply his authority over the nobles and other religious figures which were all below and also some above him. These people needed controlling. Source T agrees with the statement and says that, not only were his policies disappointing, but so was Wolsey himself. Source V has more of an negative view of Wolsey’s policies and they were disappointing but this was not Wolsey’s fault as his had a lot of work to do and Henry had no other trusted advisors.
Source V says that ‘there is a danger of judging by anachronistic standards’ which means that whilst we may see that the policies were ineffective as we are used to having ‘changes and improvements’ made, during Wolsey’s time it was more about seeking ‘stability and security’. This shows that during his time in office these policies were effective and we in the modern society are judging him too harshly, he was able to seek out stability financially by introducing a very modern taxation system in that if you earn more you paid more in tax, which was another dislike of the nobles. Also his justice policies especially brought about a more stable justice system, not only for the rich but for the poor too. However Source T disproves this theory as this was written at the time and shows that the whole country hated his policies. Source V aims to present an even argument for and against Wolsey’s policies, whereas Source T aims to criticise. So it is more likely that we in modern times, and in particular Polydore Vergil, are extremely harsh and don’t quite understand the aims of Wolsey’s policies.
Sources T and V say that Wolsey took on a lot of work and this greatly impacted the effectiveness of his policies, Source T blames Wolsey for this completely, whereas Source V claims that it was partly Henry’s fault for his lack of involvement. Both Sources T and V state that it brought about ineffective policies ‘He was indeed detested by everyone because he assumed he could undertake nearly all the offices of state by himself’ states source T, and to support this Source V states ‘His capacity for detailed hard work together with his creativity promised more than was delivered’. This suggests that his policies were disappointing as he did not have enough time to follow through on them because of his workload, as we already know Wolsey failed to carry through on a number of his policies such as enclosures as he got too distracted by Henry’s demands and other religious duties. They both show that there were such high expectations of Wolsey’s policies and they didn’t meet the standards set. Source T is from Polydore Vergil, a contemporary historian with a grudge against Wolsey because of Wolsey’s actions towards him, this makes his writings on Wolsey extremely unreliable as he would always want to portray Wolsey in a bad light and would never want to give him credit for any work that he had done. Whereas Source V is from a modern historian, Ian Dawson, the mood of this source is to portray a more open minded picture of Wolsey’s work, and whilst he did have faults in his policies they were to be expected with the amount of responsibility Henry gave to him, without actually giving Wolsey the power to make them effective. From this we can see that overall these sources do say that Wolsey’s policies are disappointing.
To conclude, I feel that Wolsey’s policies were not affective as he thought they were, but this was not always his fault. An example when he tried to carry out his policies on enclosures he was stopped from doing so as he had to accept that he could not exercise his power over the nobles. He was also restricted in his policies towards the church because of his loyalty to the Pope and ambition to one day become Pope himself. From the sources we can see that his justice policies were probably the most effective as each source suggest mostly hostility from the nobles, much of this would be because of actions taken against them.