Thomas Wolsey’s galero

Cardinals appear to be invading this blog and colonising a corner of it for themselves. In recent weeks there have been the five contemporary members of the Sacred College who submitted their Dubia to the Pope and following in their wake have been Cardinal Newman, Cardinal Pole and Cardinal Allen. They have now been joined by probably their most famous English colleague, Cardinal Wolsey.

He slipped in as I was preparing last Friday to record a podcast video with Dr Sarah Morris, the excellent Tudor Travel Guide. In it we talked about sixteenth century Oxford and what can still be seen both in terms of buildings and artifacts from that era. One thing I wanted to mention was what is held to be Cardinal Wolsey’s red hat - his galero - which is now the property of Christ Church. I am tempted to say that is not as well known as it deserves to be and, kept as it normally is in the College Library, is not on the route for visitors to see. When I looked it up on the internet I found the hat has been in Wolsey’s home town of Ipswich as part of the Wolsey 550 exhibition to mark what is believed to be the anniversary of his birth in 1473. The exhibition website from Suffolk Archives can be seen at wolseysipswich

The Christ Church website features the hat and its loan to Ipswich at Cardinal Wolsey's Hat in Ipswich

The BBC News website reports on the hat at Trumpets blare for the arrival of... a red hat as does the East Anglian Daily Times at 

Wolsey's hat comes to Ipswich for the first time after more than 500 years

I have posted previously about Wolsey and his  hat. From 2011 there is Cardinal Wolsey's red hat and from 2015 Wolsey receives the Red Hat