Thomas Winter

Thomas Wynter, commonly rendered Winter, was an English cleric born around 1510 and generally identified as the natural son of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Joan Larke. Wolsey took a close interest in his education, sending him to study in Paris and surrounding him with humanist tutors, while contemporaries at court and in diplomatic correspondence openly treated the young man as the cardinal’s son.

Wolsey used his extraordinary patronage to secure Wynter a succession of wealthy church offices while he was still young, including the archdeaconries of York and Richmond, the provostship of Beverley and the deanery of Wells. Much of this advancement collapsed with Wolsey’s fall in 1529–30, although Wynter continued to hold clerical positions later in life. His career is therefore a revealing example of how family interest, ecclesiastical wealth and political favour could overlap at the height of Wolsey’s power.

Alison Weir’s The Cardinal includes Thomas Winter as the natural son for whom Cardinal Wolsey uses wealth and ecclesiastical patronage to build a future, making the young cleric part of the private family concealed behind Wolsey’s public magnificence. In The Cardinal’s Daughter, the family story is viewed through Dorothy Clausey, presented as Wolsey’s daughter; Thomas therefore appears as her brother and as another child whose position becomes precarious when their father loses royal favour.