How did George Cavendish portray Cardinal Wolsey’s rise and fall?

George Cavendish’s Life of Cardinal Wolsey is a landmark work in the biography genre, notable for its shift toward concrete observation of behavior, gesture, and speech to create a vivid, lifelike portrait of its subject.1

Cavendish, who served as Wolsey’s gentleman usher, provided an eyewitness account of the cardinal’s career, from the height of his power to his rapid downfall under Henry VIII. In his narrative, Cavendish frames Wolsey’s trajectory through the lens of medieval tragedy, viewing the rise and fall as governed by the turning of "Fortune’s wheel".1

Despite this traditional thematic framework, the work is significant for moving away from the convention that biographies should be reserved exclusively for saints or royalty. By documenting the cardinal's "crumbling magnificence" in his final days, Cavendish aimed to provide a truthful, firsthand report of a complex historical figure, ultimately influencing later historians such as John Stow and Raphael Holinshed.1