Thomas, is said to have been the son of a barber at Ipswich. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he formed an acquaintance with the learned Erasmus; and in the year 1500 he became rector of Lymington in Hampshire. He was afterwards made chaplain to King Henry VIII., and obtained several preferments. Having gradually acquired an entire ascendency over the mind of the king, he successively obtained several bishoprics, and at length was made archbishop of York, lord high chancellor of England, and prime minister, and was for several years the darling of Europe. Pope Leo X. created him cardinal in 1515, and made him legate a latere; and the emperor Charles V. and the French king Francis I. loaded him with favours, in order to gain him over to their interest; but after being first sided with the emperor, he deserted him to serve the interest of France. As his revenues were immense, his pride and ostentation were carried to the greatest height. He had 500 servants, among whom were nine or ten lords, fifteen knights, and forty esquires. His ambition to be pope, his pride, his exactions, and his political delay of Henry's divorce, occasioned his disgrace. In the earlier part of his life he seems to have been licentious in his manners. It was reported, that soon after his preferment to the bishopric of Lymington in Somersetshire, he was put into the stocks by Sir Amias Paulet, a neighbouring justice of the peace, for getting drunk and making a riot at a fair. This treatment Wolsey did not forget when he arrived at the high station of lord chancellor of England, but summoned his corrector up to London, and, after a severe reprimand, obliged him six years close confinement in the Temple. Whatever may have been his faults, there can be no doubt of their having been aggravated both by the zealous reformers and by the creatures of Henry VIII., who was himself neither Papist nor Protestant. Wolsey was the patron of learned men, a judge and munificent encourager of the polite arts, and ought to be considered as the founder of Christ Church College, Oxford, where, as well as in other places, many remains of his magnificent ideas in architecture still exist. He died on the 28th of November 1530.