In late 1522, the English poet John Skelton launched a poetic broadside against one of the most powerful men in the realm, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was Henry VIII’s chief minister:

Why come ye nat to court?
To which court?
To the king’s court?
Or to Hampton court?

Hampton Court was, of course, Wolsey’s grand palace on the Thames. At the height of his power, Wolsey was depicted as alter rex, the “second king,” by foreign envoys, because of his conspicuous displays of wealth and the latitude with which Henry allowed him to govern. While it is now accepted that Wolsey was always Henry’s loyal servant, rather than a puppet-master behind the throne, the dizzying rise of a butcher’s son from Ipswich to the height of English political power has long fascinated those familiar with this episode of English history.

A wrong, anachronistic engagement with this episode might cast Wolsey as a kind of ‘diversity’ candidate, given his low birth. Yet this would be false. His rise was not an aberration but typical of his age. Men learned in the law, gentlemen, clerics, and low-born clerks had long provided the administrative “brains” of English kings.

Still, the rise of Wolsey reveals something about the concept of ‘diversity’ in English, and by extension British politics down to our own time. Modern definitions of diversity tend to refer to whether institutions reflect the broader society in which they exist, ensuring no discrimination in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, age, disability, or class. In contemporary debates about ‘diversity’ in Britain, however, the more fundamental transformation—the gradual diversification of political power away from birth and toward ability—has largely been forgotten.

In the sixteenth century, Henry VIII possessed the absolute right to declare war and dictate the terms of peace. This authority stemmed from birth, and power flowed directly from him to those he chose to execute his will—most notably Wolsey for the first fifteen years of his reign. In the twenty-first century, this dynamic has been entirely reversed. Political power, exercised through Parliament, now flows through the prime minister—a “son of a toolmaker” of comparatively modest birth—who, in practice, directs the course of the nation, even in matters of war and peace.

It is therefore important to understand the underlying forces that drove this diversification of political power, for they offer profound insights into the meaning of ‘diversity’ in our own time. Sir John Fortescue, a councillor to Edward IV whose description of England as a mixed monarchy has been highly influential, provides an early articulation of this principle. Fortescue argued that the king’s council in the fifteenth century should exclude nobles who claimed a right to advise by virtue of birth alone—the consiliarii nati. Instead, he proposed a council composed of clerics and laymen chosen strictly on the basis of ability. The king’s councillors, he argued, should be “the wisest and best disposed men that can be found in all parts of the lands.”

In many ways, this anticipates the rise of powerful chief ministers under the Tudors, such as Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, and William Cecil. Henry VIII did not choose Wolsey simply to assemble a “diverse” council. He chose him—and later Cromwell—because they were effective in executing his will, and he was prepared to grant them wealth and authority that their birth alone would never have secured.

In modern, polarised debates about diversity, equity, and inclusion, particularly in politics, both the extreme right and the extreme left often hold caricatured views of what has long been an enduring feature of British political life. The extreme left tends to privilege equity and representation over meritocratic ability, while the extreme right views diversity as a recent imposition, tied primarily to demographic change. Yet the historical record suggests something different. The gradual diversification of power in British political life—especially in the period surrounding the English Civil War—was a response to the failure of a particular class to provide effective leadership.

The execution of Charles I, the rise of Parliament, and the Glorious Revolution were all manifestations of this shift: a movement away from a system determined by birth toward one in which ability increasingly mattered. As the English state evolved into the British Empire, this principle was further institutionalised, most notably through competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service and later the Northcote–Trevelyan reforms, which laid the foundations of the modern professional civil service.

Today, the British state is governed in significant part by individuals who are not of traditional English or European origin, even if they are British by birth. In retrospect, this should not be surprising. British political life has consistently adapted to changing conditions, often with an implicit preference for elevating ability over deterministic characteristics. Whether the barrier was class in the fifteenth century or race in the twenty-first, the underlying trajectory remains the same. It would be wrong to suggest that the elevation of meritocratic ability has eliminated patronage or privilege. A new political class—often drawn from similar educational and social backgrounds—has emerged, and elements of exclusion persist. Yet even this class differs markedly from its predecessors. The core institutions of the state have endured, but the types of individuals who rise through them have changed.

What this history ultimately reveals is that ‘diversity’, properly understood, has never been about representation for its own sake. It has been about the gradual redistribution of power away from fixed hierarchies and toward those deemed capable of exercising it effectively. That process has never been linear, nor has it been complete. But it has been continuous. The debate about diversity in British politics is not new. What is new is the tendency to detach it from the historical conditions that gave it meaning. Wolsey’s rise was not an early example of modern diversity politics. It was something more fundamental: an early indication that, even within a rigid hierarchy, the demands of governance could override deterministic constraints such as birth.