Fortitude, inflicting on her severe loss and damage. The Tower was, however, shortly afterwards captured by a landing party under the command of Wolseley. A few days later he was moved into the Impérieuse, which went home in the end of the year. He had hoped to be again appointed to her; but he was recommended by Hood, and to some extent shared in the ill-feeling of the admiralty towards the discarded admiral, so that for nearly five years he was left unemployed.
Towards the end of 1795 he married Jane, daughter of John Moore of Clough House, co. Down—grandson of a Scottish officer, Colonel Muir, who had served in Ireland under William III and obtained a grant of land. He took a little place near Clough House, and lived there in retirement except during the rebellion of 1798, when he commanded a company of volunteers which took part in the ‘battle’ of Ballynahinch. Early in 1799 he was appointed to the 74-gun ship Terrible, one of the Channel fleet under Lord Bridport, and in 1800 under Lord St. Vincent. In December 1800 he was moved into the St. George, but on that ship being selected as the flagship of Lord Nelson, in February 1801, Wolseley was transferred to the San Josef, which was paid off on the signing of the peace of Amiens. He afterwards had command of the sea fencibles of the Shannon district till his promotion to the rank of rear-admiral on 23 April 1804. He was then appointed to the command of the sea fencibles of all Ireland, from which he retired towards the end of 1805. He had no further employment, but was made vice-admiral on 25 Oct. 1809 and admiral on 12 Aug. 1819.
In the spring of 1842 the old wound received sixty years before at the storming of Fort Ostenberg opened and would not heal. The surgeons came to the conclusion that something must have remained in the wound, and, as the result of an operation, extracted a jagged piece of lead and a fragment of cloth. The wound, however, would not heal. Gradually losing strength, he died in London on 7 June 1842. He was then the senior admiral of the red. His wife had died several years before, leaving issue two sons and two daughters. His portrait, painted in Paris, in 1840, by Jules Laur, belongs to his granddaughter.
[A memoir of William Wolseley, admiral of the red squadron, by his granddaughter, Mary C. Innes, with a reproduction of the portrait by Laur (1895). This is written mainly from memoranda and fragments of autobiography dictated by Wolseley in his old age, and is often inaccurate in facts and especially in dates (the story, for instance, of Wolseley's relations with William IV, when a midshipman, is difficult to reconcile with known facts and dates). Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. i. 249; Service Book in the Public Record Office.]
WOLSEY, THOMAS (1475?–1530), cardinal and statesman, was, according to his gentleman usher, George Cavendish [q. v.], ‘an honest poor man's son’—report said, son of a butcher. But his father, Robert Wulcy (or Wolsey) of Ipswich, whether butcher or no, was, as his will shows, the possessor of lands and tenements in the parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Mary Stoke there. His mother's christian name was Joan. The date of his birth is commonly given as 1471, probably from the fact recorded by Cavendish that he washed fifty-nine poor men's feet at his maundy in 1530. But in a letter written to Wolsey himself the abbot of Winchcombe in August 1514 congratulates him on having been promoted to an archbishopric before he was forty. It would seem probable also that he was not quite of age to take orders in 1496, when his father made his will, providing among other things that if his son Thomas became a priest within a year after his decease he should sing masses for him and his friends at a salary of ten marks. His father must have died just after he made this will; for it was proved eleven days later, and it appears that Wolsey was ordained a priest by the bishop of Lydda, a suffragan of Salisbury, at Marlborough on 10 March 1497–8 (Engl. Hist. Review, ix. 709). He would be competent to take priest's orders at twenty-four, or by dispensation at twenty-three, and we may presume that he was born in 1475, or perhaps late in 1474. No other son or daughter is mentioned in his father's will; but Giustinian in 1519 speaks of the cardinal as having two brothers, one of whom held a benefice and the other was pushing his fortunes.
He was sent early to Oxford, where he graduated B.A. at fifteen, and was called ‘the boy bachelor,’ was elected fellow of Magdalen about 1497, and, soon after graduating M.A., was appointed master of the school adjoining that college. He was also junior bursar in 1498–9, and senior bursar in 1499–1500 (Macray, Reg. Magdalen, i. 29, 30, 133–4), but was compelled to resign for applying funds to the completion of the great tower without sufficient authority. Having had three sons of Thomas Grey, first marquis of Dorset [q. v.], under his care at Magdalen College school, their father presented him to the rectory of Limington in Somerset, to which he was instituted on 10 Oct. 1500.
