Do you agree with the suggestion that English foreign policy achieved relative success in the period 1509-1525?
A case can be made that that the English foreign policy was a failure because of Wolsey’s mishandlings of the finance. For example in source 1 it states that ‘greatest weakness lay in the realm of finance’. This shows us that Wolsey did not know what he was doing when it came to finance which would have helped English foreign policy. Wolsey mishandling of finance would have led to less to money to help Henry invade France and therefore make on this part of his foreign policy, which was to take over France and to redeem his title as king of France , a failure because he didn’t really take over the whole off France. The whole real parts that henry had taken over of France was Tournai and Therouanne, and these were of little significant to England which supports the idea that the foreign policy was a failure. We can also infer from another source which support the idea that English foreign policy was a failure. In source 3 it says ‘if he fortunate to win it’. This is referring to Henry to taking over France, and we can clearly see that the foreign policy was a failure because only luck could have helped Henry take over France. This all indicates that foreign policy was not a success owing it to Wolsey mishandling of finance which meant that Henry would not have sufficient amount of money to take over the whole of France. Once again in source 1 we can see that Wolsey had mishandled finance which led to the failure of the English foreign policy. It states in source one that Wolsey could not increase the revenue, ‘neither make do with the existing revenue nor effectively increase’. This suggests that Wolsey did not know what he was doing with the revenue, that he could not keep up with up which meant that there was no way of Wolsey increasing it, if anything