George Cavendish (1497 – ) was an English writer, best known as the biographer of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. His Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinall, his Lyffe and Deathe is described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as the "most important single contemporary source for Wolsey's life" which also offers a "detailed picture of early sixteenth-century court life and of political events in the 1520s, particularly the divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon.
Family
Cavendish was born in 1497, His position required him personally to attend the Cardinal at all times, as well as responsibilities for the lavish entertainments that Wolsey enjoyed. He writes with simplicity and vividness, rarely yielding to the rhetoric which governed the ordinary prose of his age.
Actor David Oakes portrays Cavendish in David Starkey's 2009 documentary series Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant.
Cavendish appears as a quiet and loyal servant in Frailty of Human Affairs by Caroline Angus. He is similarly portrayed in Cora Harrison's mystery novel, The Cardinal's Court (History Press, 2017)
Notes
Further reading
- Cavendish, George. The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey.