Joan Larke

Joan Larke was an English woman best known for her relationship with Thomas Wolsey before or during his early clerical career. She was the mother of Wolsey’s acknowledged children, including Thomas Wynter, for whom the cardinal secured education and church benefices. Surviving evidence about Joan’s origins and later life is limited, and much of what is repeated about her depends on hostile or retrospective accounts of Wolsey’s failure to observe clerical celibacy.

Joan is occasionally included in historical fiction about the young Wolsey or Henry VIII’s court, but she has not become the subject of a widely known novel. Writers can use her story to reveal the private households and dependants hidden behind formal ecclesiastical careers. The lack of documentation requires restraint, particularly when assigning motives or describing her relationship with Wolsey.

Alison Weir’s The Cardinal’s Daughter places Joan Larke within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty, political ambition and government, and exploration, travel and cultural encounter.