Posted on Jun 29, 2020
Thomas Cromwell - Facts, Death Information & Biography
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On June 29, 1540, former Lord Privy Seal and Chancellor of the Exchequer of England Thomas Cromwell was indicted as a heretic. From the article:
"Thomas Cromwell - Facts, Death Information & Biography
Thomas Cromwell – Facts & Biography Information
born c.1485 in Putney
executed 28 July 1540 in London
“A good household manager, but not fit to meddle in the affairs of kings.”
May 1538, Henry VIII describes Cromwell to the French ambassador
Thomas Cromwell Biography
Thomas Cromwell was as great a statesman as England has ever seen and, in his decade of power, permanently changed the course of English history. Unlike his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell was not a priest or a papist. He was a lawyer determined to impose his own character – methodical, detached, and calculating – upon government.
Cromwell wanted government to be effective and efficient; to achieve this, he had to end the chaos of feudal privilege and ill-defined jurisdictions. He was blessed with a logical mind in an age sadly devoid of them. And unlike his royal master, he did not let his emotions interfere with his position. He was the ideal statesman for Tudor England and, just months after his execution in 1540, Henry VIII was bemoaning his loss.
Cromwell was introduced to government service as a secretary for Cardinal Wolsey. His abilities won him the older man’s respect and soon Cromwell was his most trusted servant and principal secretary. But Cromwell managed to distance himself from Wolsey immediately after the Cardinal fell from grace and soon had taken his place as Henry’s most valuable advisor. Before entering Wolsey’s service, Cromwell lived an adventurous life. His father had been a brewer and blacksmith known for permanent drunkenness and illegal activities. From this inauspicious beginning, his son went on to indulge his curiosity and practical nature by traveling through Europe. Over the course of several years, he was a soldier in Europe, a banker in Italy, clerk in the Netherlands, and a lawyer in London. Like so many ambitious men, he was in Wolsey’s service in the mid-1520s. His most important work was the suppression of 29 religious houses whose monies Wolsey used to endow colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. When Wolsey fell from grace in 1529, Cromwell was hurriedly elected burgess for Taunton so he could remain in government service.
There were striking similarities between the two men – both managed to remain favorites of the mercurial Henry VIII for years; both were despised by the older nobility who coveted their influence with the king; both sought to reform the creaky medieval bureaucracy of Tudor government; both were highly intelligent and well-versed in international affairs. And both, ultimately, fell from Henry’s favor with spectacular speed. In the end, the king preferred to listen to the old nobility.
But Cromwell and Wolsey were also markedly different in many ways. Cromwell was the man responsible for the Henrician reformation while Wolsey fell because he served two masters, the king of England and the Pope. Though Henry had ejected Rome from his nation, he still practiced the Roman Catholic religion. The king’s religious tendencies were never reformist and many historians have made the mistake of painting him as one of the first Protestant kings. Henry was never a Protestant and he wrote treatises vilifying Martin Luther for which he was titled ‘Defender of the Faith’ by the Pope. Rather, he was an opportunist who disliked papal authority and interference in his realm and wanted some of the vast wealth the English church possessed. For Henry, often desperately short of money, it was near-blasphemy for his subjects to pay taxes directly to Rome; he wanted the money for his government. He also wanted an annulment from a devoutly Catholic wife, Katharine of Aragon, and when the Pope, held hostage by the Holy Roman Emperor, refused to rule in his favor, he found it most expedient to simply disregard the papacy. But throughout it all, Henry was unaware of the forces he had unleashed when he declared himself head of the English church. Trained for the church as a child, he remained staunchly Catholic for his entire life though the Catholic church deemed him a heretic.
a discussion of the Henrician reformation
It is important to remember that during Henry’s reign, at least half of his subjects were under the age of eighteen. Henry’s court swarmed with young people – pages, scullery maids, and the like. English culture celebrated youth; tournaments, hunts, glorious warfare were all the province of the young and strong. And while Henry was young, he joined these events with a gusto sadly lacking in his father or son. But time does not stop, not even for a despotic monarch determined to have his way in all things. During his ‘great matter’, Henry was in his thirties and changing from ‘Bluff King Hal’ into an overweight and balding hypochondriac. He had rid himself of Rome to gain wealth and a son. He gained both and, once he had, continually toyed with the idea of making peace with the pope. He didn’t relish excommunication and it is likely that he persuaded himself that he wasn’t disobeying Christ’s vicar but rather the Emperor’s puppet.
But he misjudged the mood of his people, particularly his nobles. Educated and by nature inquisitive and acquisitive, the new Protestant teachings intrigued them; they also sought the vast monastic lands which Henry planned to sell. This was the paradox of the Henrician reformation. It was motivated by greed and genuine religious turmoil. As time passed, the new generation of nobles were Protestant because it was expedient and philosophically appealing. And with each year, more Englishmen were born who were further and further away from the old days of Roman domination. Henry, in his forties, could remember the papist ways but, as the years passed, fewer and fewer of his subjects did.
In terms of the practical effect the reformation had on everyday Englishmen, the situation is more difficult to gauge. Unlike the wealthy noblemen, they couldn’t bid on the seized monastic properties. And in many towns and villages, the parish church was the community center, where births, weddings, and deaths were officiated over by a priest. But they undoubtedly enjoyed not paying their tax to Rome. Once again, a paradox emerged – an excommunicated nation which found itself torn between loyalty to the sovereign and loyalty to the papacy. Also, since Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn could only be recognized if one accepted his annulment from Katharine – which in itself meant a rejection of papal authority – and it was treason to not recognize his marriage to Anne, then many people were swayed by the threat of execution. In other words, accept Henry’s decisions or die. Of course, I cannot discuss all aspects of the reformation at this site; I recommend L.B. Smith’s Henry VIII which studies Henry’s own theological beliefs.
There was opposition to the reformation which probably had more to do with the attendant loss of independence in north England. In 1536, a northern uprising which came to be called the Pilgrimage of Grace, gathered over 40,000 men and marched through England. It eventually destroyed itself by internal division and lack of clear purpose but one of the rebels’ demands was a warning for Cromwell – they want their king to be advised by noble councilors who understand the people’s wishes, not common men like Cromwell. Henry was angry at their presumption – how dare his ignorant subjects rebel and then tell him how to run the country! – but he was persuaded to show mercy and pardon those involved. And he continued to listen to Cromwell.
The Pilgrimage of Grace was largely motivated not by religious concerns but by Cromwell’s determination to dissolve the monasteries and improve the royal tax collecting methods. For example, the movement began in Louth, in Lincolnshire, and began with the murder of two tax collectors, one of whom was hanged and the other sewn into a sack and thrown to a pack of hungry dogs!
So the common people might grumble somewhat but they were ultimately more influenced by practical matters. Had Henry’s excommunication been followed by a terrible harvest or bad weather, it may have been otherwise. During his daughter Mary’s reign, such signs were taken to mean God was angry with her for attempting to reinstate Catholicism. But not only did Henry enjoy good weather, he had a brilliant servant. Cromwell was the one who gave force to Henry’s grand declarations. The king declared that Rome had no authority in England and Cromwell instituted the reforms which would make it so. The king declared that all monastic lands were forfeit and Cromwell set out to close the monasteries, assess their value, and sell them to the highest bidder. For a decade, this partnership worked marvelously.
Also, Henry and Cromwell both recognized a fundamental truth of the English people; the government could do what it liked as long as traditional religious views were not upset too much. Certainly, Henry did not upset his own. The name of the pope was omitted in their prayers but not much else. Henry’s break with Rome was really a legal reformation rather than one of real religious content. England practiced Catholicism without a pope and, in his place, was their king. This situation suited Cromwell. Like many, he recognized that the Church had lost its way, remaining a ponderous medieval institution concerned with wealth and influence. But Europe was no longer medieval; countries were becoming nation-states, patriotic and immune to the cultural unity which Rome promoted. The pope envisioned a collection of nations joined beneath the cloak of Christendom with him at its head; but, particularly in xenophobic England, there were mutterings that the church was dominated by other nations. Also, the church claimed authority over its subjects; no priest or cleric could be tried by their sovereign nation. They would answer only to Rome. This problem had angered Henry II centuries before and resulted in Thomas Becket’s murder. In Henry’s time, it had grown worse. Also, as king, he believed himself ruler of all his subjects, priest and commoner alike.
One must also mention the corruption of the church, sadly evident to everyone. Certainly there were Godly men who struggled to enforce the tenets of their faith. But there were also bishops and cardinals more interested in business and finance than theology. The church preached that the surest path to heaven was through good works, particularly at a monastery or abbey, but every Englishmen knew that only the wealthy could afford to endow or board at them. Furthermore, an increasing number of churchmen were absent from their posts. Cardinal Wolsey embodied this avaricious streak; he was bishop, archbishop, abbot, and cardinal yet the affairs of state kept him from his duties. Instead of tending to his flock, he tended to his purse. He sired illegitimate children and collected nearly 50,000 pds a year from his vast holdings.
Wolsey represented the church as it had become; certainly such abuses may not have turned most Englishmen from their faith. But when confronted with the forces of Protestantism, the church found precious few willing to die for their beliefs. After all, why would anyone die for a faith they didn’t respect? When the king styled himself head of the church, many were perhaps relieved. Henry made no claim to a holy life, not like the churchman Wolsey; he also was shrewd enough to endow his monarchy with papal apparatus. From the 1530s on, the Tudor dynasty was even more divine and the machinery of state could enforce its divinity.
Cromwell’s revolution in government
Cromwell’s rise to power was extraordinary and occurred just when Henry needed a minister of great administrative imagination and genius, uninterested in the squabbles of his council and determined to empower the machinery of state. Cromwell entered royal service in early 1530 and, from then on, rose rapidly. In late 1530 he was sworn into the King’s Council and, just a year later, began to attract unfavorable attention from Wolsey’s old rivals. These were Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, and Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. Gardiner had worked with Wolsey but, like Norfolk and Suffolk, viewed the Cardinal’s fall as a chance to take his place. From 1529 to about 1533, they enjoyed the king’s confidence even as Cromwell rose to overtake them all. His career progressed as follows:
1531 – member of the privy council
1532 – Master of Court of Wards and Master of Jewel House
1533 – Chancellor of the Exchequer
1534 – King’s Secretary and Master of the Rolls
1535 – Vicar-General
1536 – Lord Privy Seal and Baron Cromwell of Oakham
1537 – Knight of the Garter and Dean of Wells
1539 – Lord Great Chamberlain
1540 – created Earl of Essex
As the above list shows, Henry never forgot the fallen Wolsey. He had heaped honors upon him with extravagant generosity and had written to the pope recommending religious promotion. In the end, Henry believed himself betrayed. Not only had Wolsey accumulated obscene wealth, but he had grown arrogant and eventually treasonous. And so Cromwell, despite his years of diligence and genius, was eventually rewarded with an earldom but only a short time before his execution.
His influence upon the 1530s, one of the most influential and vital decades in English history, was enormous. One needs only to study the 1540s to realize how the loss of Cromwell affected Tudor government. He also came to power during Anne Boleyn’s ascendancy. It was a symbolic changing of the guard – the old Katharine of Aragon thrust aside for the young, ambitious Anne Boleyn and Wolsey disgraced and replaced by his protégé Cromwell. Cromwell supported Anne until she, like Wolsey, became a liability. Among his immediate accomplishments were the following:
1 – the dissolution of the monasteries and establishment of the royal supremacy
2 – founded the ministries of Augmentations and First Fruits to handle income from the dissolution
3 – founded the two courts of Wards and Surveyors which allowed more efficient taxation and leasing
4 – politically integrated the kingdom by extending sovereign authority into northern England, Wales & Ireland (actions which angered the great feudal lords)
5 – used the power of that relatively new invention, the printing-press and thus spearheaded the first propaganda campaign in English history.
In the 1530s, he had instituted reforms of the English government which earned enmity from the nobility. Cromwell recognized the basic inefficiency of feudal government and, from it, struggled to create a more logical system. Instead of offices held solely because of birth, he wanted trained servants with expertise in their field. He built a bureaucracy of professionals outside the royal household. He began the first era of parliamentary control of England, using the institution to dissolve the monasteries which made up a quarter of all arable land and validate his other decisions.
From the above list, one will note that most of the ‘accomplishments’ were motivated by financial need. Like his predecessors in government ministry, Cromwell needed to provide secure and regular income. This alone necessitated an assault on the church’s wealth. Cromwell also developed a novel, and very unpopular idea – in the past, taxes were created to support warfare; in 1534, he developed a new tax. It’s basis? The king’s maintenance of peace. These measures did not help his reputation but, by 1547, had brought nearly 2,000,000 pounds to Henry’s treasury. Of course, Henry would use the entire windfall to finance his increasingly complicated foreign policy. At the time of Henry’s death, all the wealth Cromwell had accumulated was gone and Edward VI was left with debased currency and massive debts.
In 1534, however, Henry was prepared to reap the benefits of his new anti-clerical policies. He had appointed his friend Thomas Cranmer to the venerable and powerful position of Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer was like Cromwell in many ways – both owed their rise to prominence entirely to Henry’s mercurial favor; both came from humble backgrounds; both were despised by the traditional nobility. Cranmer had come to Henry’s attention by first suggesting a solution to the divorce problem – petition learned churchmen for their opinion, assuming they agreed with Henry. Like Cromwell, Cranmer benefited directly from the fall of Katharine of Aragon and the Imperial alliance and the rise of Anne Boleyn and her Norfolk relations. Henry’s midlife crisis provided fertile ground for ambitious men. Cranmer and Cromwell liked one another and became friends, though Cranmer was careful to distance himself once Cromwell’s ruin was assured.
In 1535, Henry appointed Cromwell Vicar General and, over the next five years, the honors increased – Lord Privy Seal, titled Baron Cromwell of Oakham, Knight of the Garter and Dean of Wells, and finally Lord Great Chancellor and ennoblement as Earl of Essex. The last was Cromwell’s greatest ambition and long before justified by his superior service to the crown. During the accumulation of these honors, however, Cromwell began to recognize the flaws in his success.
First, he had accompanied Anne Boleyn on her rise to power; yet, in 1536, he helped engineer her disgrace and execution on charges of adultery, incest, and witchcraft. Why? Cromwell recognized Henry’s dissatisfaction with the marriage – after several years, Anne’s sharp tongue had offended many and, even worse, she had not produced a male heir. Furthermore, Henry had become infatuated with Anne’s lady-in-waiting, Mistress Jane Seymour. Tiring of his wife, he wanted to be rid of her. Divorce was only briefly considered before being pushed aside. As he had with Katharine of Aragon, Henry became convinced his marriage was invalid, only this time because of adultery, and he retained his absolute conviction in her guilt even as he truly believed his and Katharine’s marriage was invalid. To rid himself of Anne, he turned to the ever-ready Cromwell. Soon enough, Anne was on trial with her brother and two male servants. They were all executed, despite spirited defenses and the widely-held belief that it was judicial murder.
Cromwell betrayed his former patron because she no longer held the king’s favor. In the rough world of Tudor politics, friendships were lost in the struggle for prestige and survival. And now Cromwell turned to Mistress Jane Seymour and her relatively obscure family for support. The Seymours, however, never warmed to Cromwell as had the Boleyns, largely because they didn’t trust him or his influence over the king. Cromwell was careful to press Jane’s cause to the king though Henry needed little urging. Just days after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Jane Seymour became his third wife, dying eighteen months later after delivering the longed-for son, Prince Edward. Cromwell busied himself with auctioning off church properties to various noblemen and further reforming the archaic machinery of Tudor government. In doing so, he continued to ignore Henry’s council of noble peers. When the council did meet, Cromwell dominated the meetings and disregarded most suggestions. To his credit, he was right on most counts; the nobility was quite distanced from the changing nature of government. They were fiercely protective of their own ‘inalienable’ rights as landowners and peers and notoriously difficult when these rights were impugned (this conflict between the nobility and monarchy was centuries-old – simply remember the 13th century Magna Carta, when the nobles forced King John I to recognize their ‘natural’ rights.)
As discussed earlier, the nobility resented Cromwell’s influence with the king and his pro-monarchy, anti-nobility policy. And while many of the nobles benefited from the sale of clerical lands, many others had relatives dedicated to religious service. Also, reverence for the church and its servants was as deeply-held as reverence for the monarchy. Henry’s attacks upon the church struck many as unnatural and wrong; since they could not turn on the king, they turned on Cromwell and blamed him for every unpopular policy. Henry VIII, who relished his popularity, allowed his faithful servant to be impugned. Thus, Henry could meet with his nobles, listen to their complaints, and even agree with them since many were his dearest friends. The king remained popular while his chief minister became increasingly despised and isolated. It is worth noting that one of Cromwell’s friends, Richard Moryson, argued that merit and not birth should be the only qualification for entry into the privy council. Moryson eventually became a member himself.
It is also important to note that years of listening to anti-Cromwell gossip eventually affected Henry. Even the king did not exist in a vacuum and, as his temper became increasingly erratic, he was easily swayed by inflamed opinion. Thus, Cromwell suffered from a lapse in Henry’s temper and one which the king almost immediately regretted. Chief among Cromwell’s enemies were the highest nobles in the land, once Wolsey’s great enemies and led by the dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk. These men had pushed Wolsey from favor after years of effort and were determined to do the same to his protégé. The perfect opportunity arrived when Queen Jane died two weeks after childbirth, in October 1537. Henry VIII was genuinely bereaved at her death but almost immediately the search began for a new queen. After all, Jane had delivered a son but one male heir was not enough in the sixteenth century. Henry’s council began to search for a new consort with the king’s enthusiastic support.
For Cromwell, this was a chance to further extend his influence while thwarting the English nobility. Henry’s second and third wives had been English noblewomen whose families directly profited from their rise to power. The influence of these families naturally troubled Cromwell. As their influence rose, his own suffered – so he was opposed to the idea of another English wife. Also, as an intelligent statesman, he recognized the diplomatic power of royal marriages. Henry’s troublesome foreign policy could be soothed if he chose a foreign wife – a princess or duchess of one of the great European families. Kings were meant to marry other royalty and Cromwell immediately searched for possible candidates.
While searching, he was careful to avoid Catholic candidates. Cromwell’s rise to power was directly connected to the fall of Catholicism in England and he wanted to keep England on the path of Protestantism. Therefore, he sought a Protestant ally for Henry VIII. Naturally, his gaze turned to the Protestant states of Germany, birthplace of the Lutheran revolution. Meanwhile, Henry VIII was concerned with more aesthetic matters, sending artists (most famously, Hans Holbein the Younger) to France and Milan to paint potential brides. Among those painted was Christina, Duchess of Milan and niece of the Holy Roman Emperor; she famously remarked that she would be happy to marry Henry – if she had two heads! Henry also considered Marie de Guise, a widowed cousin of the French king. Marie, however, chose to marry Henry’s nephew, James V of Scotland, thus creating a French-Scottish alliance along Henry’s troublesome northern border. Their only surviving child is famous in history as the tragic Mary Queen of Scots.
Cromwell was well aware that if France and the Holy Roman Empire ended hostilities, as seemed likely, England would be left out in the diplomatic cold. He was quite happy when the French and Imperial marriage negotiations fell apart. But as the search wound on, Henry became increasingly desperate for a wife. No doubt he was lonely; also, his court needed a queen to be complete. A king was not meant to be a bachelor, as every European monarch knew. Finally, Cromwell found a Protestant ally with two available sisters – the Duke of Cleves, whose lands were strategically located and wealthy. He had two sisters not yet wed called Anne and Amelia. As the eldest, Anne was chosen as the possible bride and Holbein immediately went to Cleves to paint her portrait. This painting would become of paramount importance in the coming year. Henry was determined to have a beautiful wife and specifically asked his various ambassadors probing questions – does Marie de Guise have wide hips for childbearing? is Christina of Milan pock-marked? does Anne of Cleves play the lute? Holbein’s famous portrait of Anne cannot be adequately judged in our time; after all, standards of beauty have changed. However, it is amusing to note that she – so maligned in her own time as the ugliest of Henry’s wives – is the most attractive by twentieth-century standards.
Holbein’s portrait showed a perfectly attractive young woman – and, on that basis, Cromwell was able to secure the marriage alliance with a Protestant ally. Anne set sail for England, little realizing what lay ahead. The king, meanwhile, was ecstatic that after almost three years as a widower he would be a husband again, able to play one of his favorite roles. The entire country was thrilled at the news, in fact, and after Anne arrived, Cromwell finally secured his greatest ambition – an earldom. He was titled earl of Essex by Henry VIII on 18 April 1540 after the marriage treaty was finalized.
During this time, he also attempted to placate the nobility by redistributing lands to the great magnates, providing them with near-autonomous controls of great sections of land. For example, the duke of Suffolk traded East Anglian lands for lands in Lincolnshire – the duke of Norfolk already held lands in Anglia while Lincolnshire needed a strong leader. Earlier, Cromwell had attempted to befriend Henry’s oldest child, the stubbornly Catholic Princess Mary. She rebuffed his attention, largely on religious grounds.
Two years of marriage-brokering were often interrupted by rumors of rebellion. The Pilgrimage of Grace had made Henry more sensitive to popular sentiment. While Cromwell searched for a wife, rumors spread that the king planned new taxes. Also, the last remnants of the legitimate Plantagenet line – the Nevilles, Poles, and Courtenays – were suspected of encouraging rebellionn and Henry used this convenient excuse to order more executions. But popular unrest needed to be assuaged in some manner so Cromwell engineered the passing of the Six Articles at Parliament in April 1539. These articles attempted to stamp a more conservative gloss on the Henrician reformation, thus placating conservative European nobles – and the Catholic nations in Europe, now forced to concede Henry was not so great a heretic after all. It was a supreme example of Cromwell’s talent for diffusing domestic tension. In effect, it was all talk and no action; it didn’t alter the course of the reformation one bit.
Finally, on 6 October 1539, the marriage treaty with Cleves was finalized just two months after Holbein delivered his portrait. Princess Anne, once betrothed to the duke of Lorraine, was now destined to be queen of England. It was the fulfillment of Cromwell’s domestic and foreign policies. On 11 December, Anne was at Calais waiting for a favorable wind to carry her to Dover. She was there for almost two weeks while Henry waited at Greenwich. Finally, on 27 December she landed at Deal and then traveled to Dover and Canterbury before arriving at Rochester on 1 January 1540. Henry, desperate to see his bride in person, rushed in disguise to meet her ‘to thus nourish love’, he told Cromwell. Their comical first meeting is described at the Primary Sources section.
The meeting was an unmitigated disaster and the beginning of Cromwell’s end. The New Year gifts Henry had brought for Anne were delivered the next day by a courier with a brief note of welcome. ‘I am ashamed that men have so praised her as they have done, and I like her not’, the king said ominously; he told Cromwell that Anne was ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of’ and, if he had known the truth of her appearance, she would never have come to England. The next day, his betrothed arrived in Greenwich and the marriage, scheduled for that day, was delayed for two days while Henry sought escape. But there was none to be had – the Holy Roman Emperor was in Paris meeting with the French king and Henry, locked out by those two great powers, could not risk offending the German princes who approved the union with Anne. They were, after all, his only allies at the moment. So Anne was not sent back and Henry moaned that he must ‘put my neck in the yoke’. He wrote to Cromwell, ‘My lord, if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do that I must do this day for none earthly thing’.
Poor Anne of Cleves – barely able to speak English, in a foreign land, and despised by her intended husband! The confused woman was led to a private marriage ceremony at Greenwich and, then, to her equally humiliating marriage-bed. The union was not consummated, a subject upon which Henry never wavered. He spoke openly of how disgusted he was by Anne’s appearance; ‘struck to the heart’ by distaste, he ‘left her as good a maid as he found her’. They lay together for the entire length of their marriage but were never physically intimate. After a few months had passed, the French-Imperial alliance showed signs of cooling and Henry’s natural boldness had returned. He wanted out of this fourth marriage and told Cromwell to arrange it.
What were Cromwell’s options? There were two ways to nullify the marriage (in essence, arrange a divorce) – Henry had not consented to the marriage (this was proved by his failure to consummate it) and Anne had not consented to the marriage (this was proved by Anne’s precontract to the duke of Lorraine.) Henry had long been concerned with the latter problem – but had been assured that the contract was completely repudiated. Still, the day before his marriage to Anne, he called the Clevian ambassadors to him and raised the issue. They were astonished, and rightly so, and offered to remain as prisoners in England until the formal repudiation papers were delivered from Cleves. Meanwhile, Thomas Cranmer told the king that Anne could simply swear that the betrothal had been repudiated – no official documents were necessary. His friend Cromwell ‘travailed on him [Henry] to pass the matter over’; he hoped that once Henry was married to Anne, the king would resign himself to the marriage.
But instead Henry turned to the precontract when his distaste could not be overcome. On 9 July, Parliament declared the marriage null and void and Anne, surprising Henry and the court, was content to be called ‘sister’ and receive a handsome income and household in England. She had no desire to return to Cleves, where she would remain under her brother’s thumb and perhaps married again. It is also possible she found Henry as unattractive as he found her. Henry was so pleased with this unexpected docility that he gave her status second only to his daughters, Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom came to befriend Anne. Anne’s letter to Henry, in which she accepts the dissolution of their marriage, can be read at ‘Letters of the Six Wives of Henry VIII’.
However, the time had come to search for a convenient scapegoat – the person responsible for the disastrous union. Henry railed against his ambassadors who had so misled him with descriptions of her beauty – though, in truth, the ambassador’s descriptions had been honest. It was soon alleged that Cromwell had kept them from the king, for fear of discouraging the union. Now, Cromwell was arrested on 10 June 1540, at 3pm on a Saturday, while at a Privy Council meeting. This was a full month before the marriage was nullified. Henry and Cromwell’s enemies were in the midst of finding scapegoats for the marriage, while not yet assured of its outcome. Henry, in a fit of temper and pique, complained bitterly that his minister had betrayed him while trying to further his own influence; the nobility were only too happy to encourage such thoughts. They urged Henry to arrest Cromwell and teach the upstart his final lesson – namely, that it does not pay to mislead a king.
So the captain of the guard arrived at the council chamber and arrested Cromwell, while a table of his enemies looked on. The moment the guard entered the room, Cromwell recognized the danger – and threw his hat upon the table in rage. Norfolk and Southampton stripped his decorations from his robe of state and Cromwell was then escorted to a barge – and, then, the Tower of London. The events which follow are far from clear – Cromwell’s fall and execution are among the most mysterious events of Henry VIII’s reign and cannot be easily understood. I have yet to read a history which offers an adequate explanation. In truth, Henry became increasingly mercurial and tempermental in his later years, and Cromwell was just one of many victims of the king’s ever-changing whims.
First, if Cromwell fell from favor because of the Cleves marriage, as most believe, why did Henry title him earl of Essex in April 1540 – months after the marriage had been finalized and while negotiations for divorce were underway? Second, if Cromwell was executed because his government policies angered the king, as has been alleged, why did Henry give his voluntary approval to all of Cromwell’s legislation? Third, is his enemies were in the ascendancy, why had Henry only recently shown the duke of Norfolk (Cromwell’s great enemy) open favor? After all, Norfolk had just been sent abroad on diplomatic work – away from the king.
What are we left with? The charges eventually listed in Cromwell’s attainder did not list the above – Cromwell was not accused of misleading Henry on matters of policy, he was not held responsible for the disastrous marriage, and he was not charged with leading England into an unwanted Lutheran alliance. Instead, he was charged with selling export licenses illegally, granting passports and commissions without royal knowledge, freeing people suspected of treason and – of course – that he, base-born and ignoble, had usuurped and deliberately misused royal power. Most significantly, however, he was charged with heresy – this charge was the bulk of his attaindder and apparently swayed Henry decisively. Norfolk, allied with the Catholic bishops Cromwell had forced from power, engineered this charge. Cromwell, they charged, had encouraged and spread heretical literature, allowed heretics to preach, released them from prison, and allied himself against their enemies. Significantly, it was reported that in March 1539 Cromwell said that, even if Henry turned from Protestantism, ‘yet I would not turn, and if the king did turn, and all his people, I would fight in this field in mine own person, with my sword in my hand against him and all other’. That was treason.
Shortly after his arrest, incriminating letters to Lutherans were found in Cromwell’s home, placed there by agents of the duke of Norfolk; they were so inflammatory that the king was outraged. Cromwell’s name, Henry swore, would be abolished forever. Cromwell wrote two desperate letters from the Tower; the one that survives is in tatters. He assured his monarch that he was a good, loyal servant and a faithful Christian. But Henry, surrounded by Cromwell’s enemies and – more significantly – newly infatuated with Norfolk’s niece, Catherine Howard, would hear nothing. Furthermore, Norfolk was shrewd enough to create a Lutheran conspiracy; three popular reformers, Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret, and William Jerome, were executed just days after Cromwell. None of the men were allowed an open trial. That would allow the public opportunity for them to dispute the false charges. Instead, they were condemned by Act of Attainder, a parliamentary tool which dispensed with justice in favor of speed.
The executed men were also neighbors of Cromwell, which was their only link to the earl. And they were as innocent as Cromwell of the charges against them – as evidenced by the confusion of contemporary chroniclers. Edward Hall, one of the great chroniclers of Tudor England, could find no real evidence against them although he ‘searched to know the truth’.
So Cromwell was executed privately on Tower Green on 28 July 1540, still protesting his innocence. He died with dignity – but the whole sordid affair of his death would not rest. For the volatile Henry VIII was soon despairing of his loss, just a few months after he allowed the execution. He raged at his council, accusing them of lying and deliberately destroying his ‘most faithful servant’. Cromwell’s destruction had been engineered on ‘light pretexts’ and against the king’s wishes. In truth, Henry was a victim as well – of a determined group of nobles and clerics, led by Norfolk, who hated Cromwell and carried the king along on their path of destruction. Events were rapid and deliberately confused. By the time Henry realized what had happened, it was too late. He could only bemoan his loss, while never understanding exactly why it happened.
This was no comfort to Thomas Cromwell, however; after a lifetime of dedicated service, he met his end by execution and all of Henry’s regrets could not bring him back to life."
"Thomas Cromwell - Facts, Death Information & Biography
Thomas Cromwell – Facts & Biography Information
born c.1485 in Putney
executed 28 July 1540 in London
“A good household manager, but not fit to meddle in the affairs of kings.”
May 1538, Henry VIII describes Cromwell to the French ambassador
Thomas Cromwell Biography
Thomas Cromwell was as great a statesman as England has ever seen and, in his decade of power, permanently changed the course of English history. Unlike his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell was not a priest or a papist. He was a lawyer determined to impose his own character – methodical, detached, and calculating – upon government.
Cromwell wanted government to be effective and efficient; to achieve this, he had to end the chaos of feudal privilege and ill-defined jurisdictions. He was blessed with a logical mind in an age sadly devoid of them. And unlike his royal master, he did not let his emotions interfere with his position. He was the ideal statesman for Tudor England and, just months after his execution in 1540, Henry VIII was bemoaning his loss.
Cromwell was introduced to government service as a secretary for Cardinal Wolsey. His abilities won him the older man’s respect and soon Cromwell was his most trusted servant and principal secretary. But Cromwell managed to distance himself from Wolsey immediately after the Cardinal fell from grace and soon had taken his place as Henry’s most valuable advisor. Before entering Wolsey’s service, Cromwell lived an adventurous life. His father had been a brewer and blacksmith known for permanent drunkenness and illegal activities. From this inauspicious beginning, his son went on to indulge his curiosity and practical nature by traveling through Europe. Over the course of several years, he was a soldier in Europe, a banker in Italy, clerk in the Netherlands, and a lawyer in London. Like so many ambitious men, he was in Wolsey’s service in the mid-1520s. His most important work was the suppression of 29 religious houses whose monies Wolsey used to endow colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. When Wolsey fell from grace in 1529, Cromwell was hurriedly elected burgess for Taunton so he could remain in government service.
There were striking similarities between the two men – both managed to remain favorites of the mercurial Henry VIII for years; both were despised by the older nobility who coveted their influence with the king; both sought to reform the creaky medieval bureaucracy of Tudor government; both were highly intelligent and well-versed in international affairs. And both, ultimately, fell from Henry’s favor with spectacular speed. In the end, the king preferred to listen to the old nobility.
But Cromwell and Wolsey were also markedly different in many ways. Cromwell was the man responsible for the Henrician reformation while Wolsey fell because he served two masters, the king of England and the Pope. Though Henry had ejected Rome from his nation, he still practiced the Roman Catholic religion. The king’s religious tendencies were never reformist and many historians have made the mistake of painting him as one of the first Protestant kings. Henry was never a Protestant and he wrote treatises vilifying Martin Luther for which he was titled ‘Defender of the Faith’ by the Pope. Rather, he was an opportunist who disliked papal authority and interference in his realm and wanted some of the vast wealth the English church possessed. For Henry, often desperately short of money, it was near-blasphemy for his subjects to pay taxes directly to Rome; he wanted the money for his government. He also wanted an annulment from a devoutly Catholic wife, Katharine of Aragon, and when the Pope, held hostage by the Holy Roman Emperor, refused to rule in his favor, he found it most expedient to simply disregard the papacy. But throughout it all, Henry was unaware of the forces he had unleashed when he declared himself head of the English church. Trained for the church as a child, he remained staunchly Catholic for his entire life though the Catholic church deemed him a heretic.
a discussion of the Henrician reformation
It is important to remember that during Henry’s reign, at least half of his subjects were under the age of eighteen. Henry’s court swarmed with young people – pages, scullery maids, and the like. English culture celebrated youth; tournaments, hunts, glorious warfare were all the province of the young and strong. And while Henry was young, he joined these events with a gusto sadly lacking in his father or son. But time does not stop, not even for a despotic monarch determined to have his way in all things. During his ‘great matter’, Henry was in his thirties and changing from ‘Bluff King Hal’ into an overweight and balding hypochondriac. He had rid himself of Rome to gain wealth and a son. He gained both and, once he had, continually toyed with the idea of making peace with the pope. He didn’t relish excommunication and it is likely that he persuaded himself that he wasn’t disobeying Christ’s vicar but rather the Emperor’s puppet.
But he misjudged the mood of his people, particularly his nobles. Educated and by nature inquisitive and acquisitive, the new Protestant teachings intrigued them; they also sought the vast monastic lands which Henry planned to sell. This was the paradox of the Henrician reformation. It was motivated by greed and genuine religious turmoil. As time passed, the new generation of nobles were Protestant because it was expedient and philosophically appealing. And with each year, more Englishmen were born who were further and further away from the old days of Roman domination. Henry, in his forties, could remember the papist ways but, as the years passed, fewer and fewer of his subjects did.
In terms of the practical effect the reformation had on everyday Englishmen, the situation is more difficult to gauge. Unlike the wealthy noblemen, they couldn’t bid on the seized monastic properties. And in many towns and villages, the parish church was the community center, where births, weddings, and deaths were officiated over by a priest. But they undoubtedly enjoyed not paying their tax to Rome. Once again, a paradox emerged – an excommunicated nation which found itself torn between loyalty to the sovereign and loyalty to the papacy. Also, since Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn could only be recognized if one accepted his annulment from Katharine – which in itself meant a rejection of papal authority – and it was treason to not recognize his marriage to Anne, then many people were swayed by the threat of execution. In other words, accept Henry’s decisions or die. Of course, I cannot discuss all aspects of the reformation at this site; I recommend L.B. Smith’s Henry VIII which studies Henry’s own theological beliefs.
There was opposition to the reformation which probably had more to do with the attendant loss of independence in north England. In 1536, a northern uprising which came to be called the Pilgrimage of Grace, gathered over 40,000 men and marched through England. It eventually destroyed itself by internal division and lack of clear purpose but one of the rebels’ demands was a warning for Cromwell – they want their king to be advised by noble councilors who understand the people’s wishes, not common men like Cromwell. Henry was angry at their presumption – how dare his ignorant subjects rebel and then tell him how to run the country! – but he was persuaded to show mercy and pardon those involved. And he continued to listen to Cromwell.
The Pilgrimage of Grace was largely motivated not by religious concerns but by Cromwell’s determination to dissolve the monasteries and improve the royal tax collecting methods. For example, the movement began in Louth, in Lincolnshire, and began with the murder of two tax collectors, one of whom was hanged and the other sewn into a sack and thrown to a pack of hungry dogs!
So the common people might grumble somewhat but they were ultimately more influenced by practical matters. Had Henry’s excommunication been followed by a terrible harvest or bad weather, it may have been otherwise. During his daughter Mary’s reign, such signs were taken to mean God was angry with her for attempting to reinstate Catholicism. But not only did Henry enjoy good weather, he had a brilliant servant. Cromwell was the one who gave force to Henry’s grand declarations. The king declared that Rome had no authority in England and Cromwell instituted the reforms which would make it so. The king declared that all monastic lands were forfeit and Cromwell set out to close the monasteries, assess their value, and sell them to the highest bidder. For a decade, this partnership worked marvelously.
Also, Henry and Cromwell both recognized a fundamental truth of the English people; the government could do what it liked as long as traditional religious views were not upset too much. Certainly, Henry did not upset his own. The name of the pope was omitted in their prayers but not much else. Henry’s break with Rome was really a legal reformation rather than one of real religious content. England practiced Catholicism without a pope and, in his place, was their king. This situation suited Cromwell. Like many, he recognized that the Church had lost its way, remaining a ponderous medieval institution concerned with wealth and influence. But Europe was no longer medieval; countries were becoming nation-states, patriotic and immune to the cultural unity which Rome promoted. The pope envisioned a collection of nations joined beneath the cloak of Christendom with him at its head; but, particularly in xenophobic England, there were mutterings that the church was dominated by other nations. Also, the church claimed authority over its subjects; no priest or cleric could be tried by their sovereign nation. They would answer only to Rome. This problem had angered Henry II centuries before and resulted in Thomas Becket’s murder. In Henry’s time, it had grown worse. Also, as king, he believed himself ruler of all his subjects, priest and commoner alike.
One must also mention the corruption of the church, sadly evident to everyone. Certainly there were Godly men who struggled to enforce the tenets of their faith. But there were also bishops and cardinals more interested in business and finance than theology. The church preached that the surest path to heaven was through good works, particularly at a monastery or abbey, but every Englishmen knew that only the wealthy could afford to endow or board at them. Furthermore, an increasing number of churchmen were absent from their posts. Cardinal Wolsey embodied this avaricious streak; he was bishop, archbishop, abbot, and cardinal yet the affairs of state kept him from his duties. Instead of tending to his flock, he tended to his purse. He sired illegitimate children and collected nearly 50,000 pds a year from his vast holdings.
Wolsey represented the church as it had become; certainly such abuses may not have turned most Englishmen from their faith. But when confronted with the forces of Protestantism, the church found precious few willing to die for their beliefs. After all, why would anyone die for a faith they didn’t respect? When the king styled himself head of the church, many were perhaps relieved. Henry made no claim to a holy life, not like the churchman Wolsey; he also was shrewd enough to endow his monarchy with papal apparatus. From the 1530s on, the Tudor dynasty was even more divine and the machinery of state could enforce its divinity.
Cromwell’s revolution in government
Cromwell’s rise to power was extraordinary and occurred just when Henry needed a minister of great administrative imagination and genius, uninterested in the squabbles of his council and determined to empower the machinery of state. Cromwell entered royal service in early 1530 and, from then on, rose rapidly. In late 1530 he was sworn into the King’s Council and, just a year later, began to attract unfavorable attention from Wolsey’s old rivals. These were Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, and Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. Gardiner had worked with Wolsey but, like Norfolk and Suffolk, viewed the Cardinal’s fall as a chance to take his place. From 1529 to about 1533, they enjoyed the king’s confidence even as Cromwell rose to overtake them all. His career progressed as follows:
1531 – member of the privy council
1532 – Master of Court of Wards and Master of Jewel House
1533 – Chancellor of the Exchequer
1534 – King’s Secretary and Master of the Rolls
1535 – Vicar-General
1536 – Lord Privy Seal and Baron Cromwell of Oakham
1537 – Knight of the Garter and Dean of Wells
1539 – Lord Great Chamberlain
1540 – created Earl of Essex
As the above list shows, Henry never forgot the fallen Wolsey. He had heaped honors upon him with extravagant generosity and had written to the pope recommending religious promotion. In the end, Henry believed himself betrayed. Not only had Wolsey accumulated obscene wealth, but he had grown arrogant and eventually treasonous. And so Cromwell, despite his years of diligence and genius, was eventually rewarded with an earldom but only a short time before his execution.
His influence upon the 1530s, one of the most influential and vital decades in English history, was enormous. One needs only to study the 1540s to realize how the loss of Cromwell affected Tudor government. He also came to power during Anne Boleyn’s ascendancy. It was a symbolic changing of the guard – the old Katharine of Aragon thrust aside for the young, ambitious Anne Boleyn and Wolsey disgraced and replaced by his protégé Cromwell. Cromwell supported Anne until she, like Wolsey, became a liability. Among his immediate accomplishments were the following:
1 – the dissolution of the monasteries and establishment of the royal supremacy
2 – founded the ministries of Augmentations and First Fruits to handle income from the dissolution
3 – founded the two courts of Wards and Surveyors which allowed more efficient taxation and leasing
4 – politically integrated the kingdom by extending sovereign authority into northern England, Wales & Ireland (actions which angered the great feudal lords)
5 – used the power of that relatively new invention, the printing-press and thus spearheaded the first propaganda campaign in English history.
In the 1530s, he had instituted reforms of the English government which earned enmity from the nobility. Cromwell recognized the basic inefficiency of feudal government and, from it, struggled to create a more logical system. Instead of offices held solely because of birth, he wanted trained servants with expertise in their field. He built a bureaucracy of professionals outside the royal household. He began the first era of parliamentary control of England, using the institution to dissolve the monasteries which made up a quarter of all arable land and validate his other decisions.
From the above list, one will note that most of the ‘accomplishments’ were motivated by financial need. Like his predecessors in government ministry, Cromwell needed to provide secure and regular income. This alone necessitated an assault on the church’s wealth. Cromwell also developed a novel, and very unpopular idea – in the past, taxes were created to support warfare; in 1534, he developed a new tax. It’s basis? The king’s maintenance of peace. These measures did not help his reputation but, by 1547, had brought nearly 2,000,000 pounds to Henry’s treasury. Of course, Henry would use the entire windfall to finance his increasingly complicated foreign policy. At the time of Henry’s death, all the wealth Cromwell had accumulated was gone and Edward VI was left with debased currency and massive debts.
In 1534, however, Henry was prepared to reap the benefits of his new anti-clerical policies. He had appointed his friend Thomas Cranmer to the venerable and powerful position of Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer was like Cromwell in many ways – both owed their rise to prominence entirely to Henry’s mercurial favor; both came from humble backgrounds; both were despised by the traditional nobility. Cranmer had come to Henry’s attention by first suggesting a solution to the divorce problem – petition learned churchmen for their opinion, assuming they agreed with Henry. Like Cromwell, Cranmer benefited directly from the fall of Katharine of Aragon and the Imperial alliance and the rise of Anne Boleyn and her Norfolk relations. Henry’s midlife crisis provided fertile ground for ambitious men. Cranmer and Cromwell liked one another and became friends, though Cranmer was careful to distance himself once Cromwell’s ruin was assured.
In 1535, Henry appointed Cromwell Vicar General and, over the next five years, the honors increased – Lord Privy Seal, titled Baron Cromwell of Oakham, Knight of the Garter and Dean of Wells, and finally Lord Great Chancellor and ennoblement as Earl of Essex. The last was Cromwell’s greatest ambition and long before justified by his superior service to the crown. During the accumulation of these honors, however, Cromwell began to recognize the flaws in his success.
First, he had accompanied Anne Boleyn on her rise to power; yet, in 1536, he helped engineer her disgrace and execution on charges of adultery, incest, and witchcraft. Why? Cromwell recognized Henry’s dissatisfaction with the marriage – after several years, Anne’s sharp tongue had offended many and, even worse, she had not produced a male heir. Furthermore, Henry had become infatuated with Anne’s lady-in-waiting, Mistress Jane Seymour. Tiring of his wife, he wanted to be rid of her. Divorce was only briefly considered before being pushed aside. As he had with Katharine of Aragon, Henry became convinced his marriage was invalid, only this time because of adultery, and he retained his absolute conviction in her guilt even as he truly believed his and Katharine’s marriage was invalid. To rid himself of Anne, he turned to the ever-ready Cromwell. Soon enough, Anne was on trial with her brother and two male servants. They were all executed, despite spirited defenses and the widely-held belief that it was judicial murder.
Cromwell betrayed his former patron because she no longer held the king’s favor. In the rough world of Tudor politics, friendships were lost in the struggle for prestige and survival. And now Cromwell turned to Mistress Jane Seymour and her relatively obscure family for support. The Seymours, however, never warmed to Cromwell as had the Boleyns, largely because they didn’t trust him or his influence over the king. Cromwell was careful to press Jane’s cause to the king though Henry needed little urging. Just days after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Jane Seymour became his third wife, dying eighteen months later after delivering the longed-for son, Prince Edward. Cromwell busied himself with auctioning off church properties to various noblemen and further reforming the archaic machinery of Tudor government. In doing so, he continued to ignore Henry’s council of noble peers. When the council did meet, Cromwell dominated the meetings and disregarded most suggestions. To his credit, he was right on most counts; the nobility was quite distanced from the changing nature of government. They were fiercely protective of their own ‘inalienable’ rights as landowners and peers and notoriously difficult when these rights were impugned (this conflict between the nobility and monarchy was centuries-old – simply remember the 13th century Magna Carta, when the nobles forced King John I to recognize their ‘natural’ rights.)
As discussed earlier, the nobility resented Cromwell’s influence with the king and his pro-monarchy, anti-nobility policy. And while many of the nobles benefited from the sale of clerical lands, many others had relatives dedicated to religious service. Also, reverence for the church and its servants was as deeply-held as reverence for the monarchy. Henry’s attacks upon the church struck many as unnatural and wrong; since they could not turn on the king, they turned on Cromwell and blamed him for every unpopular policy. Henry VIII, who relished his popularity, allowed his faithful servant to be impugned. Thus, Henry could meet with his nobles, listen to their complaints, and even agree with them since many were his dearest friends. The king remained popular while his chief minister became increasingly despised and isolated. It is worth noting that one of Cromwell’s friends, Richard Moryson, argued that merit and not birth should be the only qualification for entry into the privy council. Moryson eventually became a member himself.
It is also important to note that years of listening to anti-Cromwell gossip eventually affected Henry. Even the king did not exist in a vacuum and, as his temper became increasingly erratic, he was easily swayed by inflamed opinion. Thus, Cromwell suffered from a lapse in Henry’s temper and one which the king almost immediately regretted. Chief among Cromwell’s enemies were the highest nobles in the land, once Wolsey’s great enemies and led by the dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk. These men had pushed Wolsey from favor after years of effort and were determined to do the same to his protégé. The perfect opportunity arrived when Queen Jane died two weeks after childbirth, in October 1537. Henry VIII was genuinely bereaved at her death but almost immediately the search began for a new queen. After all, Jane had delivered a son but one male heir was not enough in the sixteenth century. Henry’s council began to search for a new consort with the king’s enthusiastic support.
For Cromwell, this was a chance to further extend his influence while thwarting the English nobility. Henry’s second and third wives had been English noblewomen whose families directly profited from their rise to power. The influence of these families naturally troubled Cromwell. As their influence rose, his own suffered – so he was opposed to the idea of another English wife. Also, as an intelligent statesman, he recognized the diplomatic power of royal marriages. Henry’s troublesome foreign policy could be soothed if he chose a foreign wife – a princess or duchess of one of the great European families. Kings were meant to marry other royalty and Cromwell immediately searched for possible candidates.
While searching, he was careful to avoid Catholic candidates. Cromwell’s rise to power was directly connected to the fall of Catholicism in England and he wanted to keep England on the path of Protestantism. Therefore, he sought a Protestant ally for Henry VIII. Naturally, his gaze turned to the Protestant states of Germany, birthplace of the Lutheran revolution. Meanwhile, Henry VIII was concerned with more aesthetic matters, sending artists (most famously, Hans Holbein the Younger) to France and Milan to paint potential brides. Among those painted was Christina, Duchess of Milan and niece of the Holy Roman Emperor; she famously remarked that she would be happy to marry Henry – if she had two heads! Henry also considered Marie de Guise, a widowed cousin of the French king. Marie, however, chose to marry Henry’s nephew, James V of Scotland, thus creating a French-Scottish alliance along Henry’s troublesome northern border. Their only surviving child is famous in history as the tragic Mary Queen of Scots.
Cromwell was well aware that if France and the Holy Roman Empire ended hostilities, as seemed likely, England would be left out in the diplomatic cold. He was quite happy when the French and Imperial marriage negotiations fell apart. But as the search wound on, Henry became increasingly desperate for a wife. No doubt he was lonely; also, his court needed a queen to be complete. A king was not meant to be a bachelor, as every European monarch knew. Finally, Cromwell found a Protestant ally with two available sisters – the Duke of Cleves, whose lands were strategically located and wealthy. He had two sisters not yet wed called Anne and Amelia. As the eldest, Anne was chosen as the possible bride and Holbein immediately went to Cleves to paint her portrait. This painting would become of paramount importance in the coming year. Henry was determined to have a beautiful wife and specifically asked his various ambassadors probing questions – does Marie de Guise have wide hips for childbearing? is Christina of Milan pock-marked? does Anne of Cleves play the lute? Holbein’s famous portrait of Anne cannot be adequately judged in our time; after all, standards of beauty have changed. However, it is amusing to note that she – so maligned in her own time as the ugliest of Henry’s wives – is the most attractive by twentieth-century standards.
Holbein’s portrait showed a perfectly attractive young woman – and, on that basis, Cromwell was able to secure the marriage alliance with a Protestant ally. Anne set sail for England, little realizing what lay ahead. The king, meanwhile, was ecstatic that after almost three years as a widower he would be a husband again, able to play one of his favorite roles. The entire country was thrilled at the news, in fact, and after Anne arrived, Cromwell finally secured his greatest ambition – an earldom. He was titled earl of Essex by Henry VIII on 18 April 1540 after the marriage treaty was finalized.
During this time, he also attempted to placate the nobility by redistributing lands to the great magnates, providing them with near-autonomous controls of great sections of land. For example, the duke of Suffolk traded East Anglian lands for lands in Lincolnshire – the duke of Norfolk already held lands in Anglia while Lincolnshire needed a strong leader. Earlier, Cromwell had attempted to befriend Henry’s oldest child, the stubbornly Catholic Princess Mary. She rebuffed his attention, largely on religious grounds.
Two years of marriage-brokering were often interrupted by rumors of rebellion. The Pilgrimage of Grace had made Henry more sensitive to popular sentiment. While Cromwell searched for a wife, rumors spread that the king planned new taxes. Also, the last remnants of the legitimate Plantagenet line – the Nevilles, Poles, and Courtenays – were suspected of encouraging rebellionn and Henry used this convenient excuse to order more executions. But popular unrest needed to be assuaged in some manner so Cromwell engineered the passing of the Six Articles at Parliament in April 1539. These articles attempted to stamp a more conservative gloss on the Henrician reformation, thus placating conservative European nobles – and the Catholic nations in Europe, now forced to concede Henry was not so great a heretic after all. It was a supreme example of Cromwell’s talent for diffusing domestic tension. In effect, it was all talk and no action; it didn’t alter the course of the reformation one bit.
Finally, on 6 October 1539, the marriage treaty with Cleves was finalized just two months after Holbein delivered his portrait. Princess Anne, once betrothed to the duke of Lorraine, was now destined to be queen of England. It was the fulfillment of Cromwell’s domestic and foreign policies. On 11 December, Anne was at Calais waiting for a favorable wind to carry her to Dover. She was there for almost two weeks while Henry waited at Greenwich. Finally, on 27 December she landed at Deal and then traveled to Dover and Canterbury before arriving at Rochester on 1 January 1540. Henry, desperate to see his bride in person, rushed in disguise to meet her ‘to thus nourish love’, he told Cromwell. Their comical first meeting is described at the Primary Sources section.
The meeting was an unmitigated disaster and the beginning of Cromwell’s end. The New Year gifts Henry had brought for Anne were delivered the next day by a courier with a brief note of welcome. ‘I am ashamed that men have so praised her as they have done, and I like her not’, the king said ominously; he told Cromwell that Anne was ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of’ and, if he had known the truth of her appearance, she would never have come to England. The next day, his betrothed arrived in Greenwich and the marriage, scheduled for that day, was delayed for two days while Henry sought escape. But there was none to be had – the Holy Roman Emperor was in Paris meeting with the French king and Henry, locked out by those two great powers, could not risk offending the German princes who approved the union with Anne. They were, after all, his only allies at the moment. So Anne was not sent back and Henry moaned that he must ‘put my neck in the yoke’. He wrote to Cromwell, ‘My lord, if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do that I must do this day for none earthly thing’.
Poor Anne of Cleves – barely able to speak English, in a foreign land, and despised by her intended husband! The confused woman was led to a private marriage ceremony at Greenwich and, then, to her equally humiliating marriage-bed. The union was not consummated, a subject upon which Henry never wavered. He spoke openly of how disgusted he was by Anne’s appearance; ‘struck to the heart’ by distaste, he ‘left her as good a maid as he found her’. They lay together for the entire length of their marriage but were never physically intimate. After a few months had passed, the French-Imperial alliance showed signs of cooling and Henry’s natural boldness had returned. He wanted out of this fourth marriage and told Cromwell to arrange it.
What were Cromwell’s options? There were two ways to nullify the marriage (in essence, arrange a divorce) – Henry had not consented to the marriage (this was proved by his failure to consummate it) and Anne had not consented to the marriage (this was proved by Anne’s precontract to the duke of Lorraine.) Henry had long been concerned with the latter problem – but had been assured that the contract was completely repudiated. Still, the day before his marriage to Anne, he called the Clevian ambassadors to him and raised the issue. They were astonished, and rightly so, and offered to remain as prisoners in England until the formal repudiation papers were delivered from Cleves. Meanwhile, Thomas Cranmer told the king that Anne could simply swear that the betrothal had been repudiated – no official documents were necessary. His friend Cromwell ‘travailed on him [Henry] to pass the matter over’; he hoped that once Henry was married to Anne, the king would resign himself to the marriage.
But instead Henry turned to the precontract when his distaste could not be overcome. On 9 July, Parliament declared the marriage null and void and Anne, surprising Henry and the court, was content to be called ‘sister’ and receive a handsome income and household in England. She had no desire to return to Cleves, where she would remain under her brother’s thumb and perhaps married again. It is also possible she found Henry as unattractive as he found her. Henry was so pleased with this unexpected docility that he gave her status second only to his daughters, Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom came to befriend Anne. Anne’s letter to Henry, in which she accepts the dissolution of their marriage, can be read at ‘Letters of the Six Wives of Henry VIII’.
However, the time had come to search for a convenient scapegoat – the person responsible for the disastrous union. Henry railed against his ambassadors who had so misled him with descriptions of her beauty – though, in truth, the ambassador’s descriptions had been honest. It was soon alleged that Cromwell had kept them from the king, for fear of discouraging the union. Now, Cromwell was arrested on 10 June 1540, at 3pm on a Saturday, while at a Privy Council meeting. This was a full month before the marriage was nullified. Henry and Cromwell’s enemies were in the midst of finding scapegoats for the marriage, while not yet assured of its outcome. Henry, in a fit of temper and pique, complained bitterly that his minister had betrayed him while trying to further his own influence; the nobility were only too happy to encourage such thoughts. They urged Henry to arrest Cromwell and teach the upstart his final lesson – namely, that it does not pay to mislead a king.
So the captain of the guard arrived at the council chamber and arrested Cromwell, while a table of his enemies looked on. The moment the guard entered the room, Cromwell recognized the danger – and threw his hat upon the table in rage. Norfolk and Southampton stripped his decorations from his robe of state and Cromwell was then escorted to a barge – and, then, the Tower of London. The events which follow are far from clear – Cromwell’s fall and execution are among the most mysterious events of Henry VIII’s reign and cannot be easily understood. I have yet to read a history which offers an adequate explanation. In truth, Henry became increasingly mercurial and tempermental in his later years, and Cromwell was just one of many victims of the king’s ever-changing whims.
First, if Cromwell fell from favor because of the Cleves marriage, as most believe, why did Henry title him earl of Essex in April 1540 – months after the marriage had been finalized and while negotiations for divorce were underway? Second, if Cromwell was executed because his government policies angered the king, as has been alleged, why did Henry give his voluntary approval to all of Cromwell’s legislation? Third, is his enemies were in the ascendancy, why had Henry only recently shown the duke of Norfolk (Cromwell’s great enemy) open favor? After all, Norfolk had just been sent abroad on diplomatic work – away from the king.
What are we left with? The charges eventually listed in Cromwell’s attainder did not list the above – Cromwell was not accused of misleading Henry on matters of policy, he was not held responsible for the disastrous marriage, and he was not charged with leading England into an unwanted Lutheran alliance. Instead, he was charged with selling export licenses illegally, granting passports and commissions without royal knowledge, freeing people suspected of treason and – of course – that he, base-born and ignoble, had usuurped and deliberately misused royal power. Most significantly, however, he was charged with heresy – this charge was the bulk of his attaindder and apparently swayed Henry decisively. Norfolk, allied with the Catholic bishops Cromwell had forced from power, engineered this charge. Cromwell, they charged, had encouraged and spread heretical literature, allowed heretics to preach, released them from prison, and allied himself against their enemies. Significantly, it was reported that in March 1539 Cromwell said that, even if Henry turned from Protestantism, ‘yet I would not turn, and if the king did turn, and all his people, I would fight in this field in mine own person, with my sword in my hand against him and all other’. That was treason.
Shortly after his arrest, incriminating letters to Lutherans were found in Cromwell’s home, placed there by agents of the duke of Norfolk; they were so inflammatory that the king was outraged. Cromwell’s name, Henry swore, would be abolished forever. Cromwell wrote two desperate letters from the Tower; the one that survives is in tatters. He assured his monarch that he was a good, loyal servant and a faithful Christian. But Henry, surrounded by Cromwell’s enemies and – more significantly – newly infatuated with Norfolk’s niece, Catherine Howard, would hear nothing. Furthermore, Norfolk was shrewd enough to create a Lutheran conspiracy; three popular reformers, Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret, and William Jerome, were executed just days after Cromwell. None of the men were allowed an open trial. That would allow the public opportunity for them to dispute the false charges. Instead, they were condemned by Act of Attainder, a parliamentary tool which dispensed with justice in favor of speed.
The executed men were also neighbors of Cromwell, which was their only link to the earl. And they were as innocent as Cromwell of the charges against them – as evidenced by the confusion of contemporary chroniclers. Edward Hall, one of the great chroniclers of Tudor England, could find no real evidence against them although he ‘searched to know the truth’.
So Cromwell was executed privately on Tower Green on 28 July 1540, still protesting his innocence. He died with dignity – but the whole sordid affair of his death would not rest. For the volatile Henry VIII was soon despairing of his loss, just a few months after he allowed the execution. He raged at his council, accusing them of lying and deliberately destroying his ‘most faithful servant’. Cromwell’s destruction had been engineered on ‘light pretexts’ and against the king’s wishes. In truth, Henry was a victim as well – of a determined group of nobles and clerics, led by Norfolk, who hated Cromwell and carried the king along on their path of destruction. Events were rapid and deliberately confused. By the time Henry realized what had happened, it was too late. He could only bemoan his loss, while never understanding exactly why it happened.
This was no comfort to Thomas Cromwell, however; after a lifetime of dedicated service, he met his end by execution and all of Henry’s regrets could not bring him back to life."
Thomas Cromwell - Facts, Death Information & Biography
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Tudors Dynasty Podcast: Caroline Angus on Thomas Cromwell
For years you have been asking me to do a podcast about Thomas Cromwell. Even though I had read quite a bit about his life, I had never felt like I could do ...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on "June 29, 1540, former Lord Privy Seal and Chancellor of the Exchequer of England Thomas Cromwell was indicted as a heretic."
Tudors Dynasty Podcast: Caroline Angus on Thomas Cromwell
My guest today is author Caroline Angus. Caroline is one of the leading authorities on Thomas Cromwell. Her research on him has been so extensive that she has published a trilogy called The Queenmaker Series. Today, Caroline will help us better understand Thomas Cromwell.
Painted as an evil-mastermind, Thomas Cromwell’s reputation, like Thomas Seymour’s has not done them any favors. Yet, authors like Hilary Mantel have returned him to his human form. Thomas Cromwell, the man. Let’s chat with Caroline Angus about the man, the myth, the legend….Thomas Cromwell.
https://youtu.be/3A7NpyBztOM?t=163
Images:
1. Brewer’s son - Thomas Cromwell, after Hans Holbein the Younger, engraving, 17th century.
2. The dissolution of the monasteries during the Reformation. Photograph - Rischgitz_Getty Images
3. A copy of Hans Holbein's original painting of Thomas Cromwell (c. 1533)
4. Title page of the second 'Great Bible', 1540. Thomas Cromwell's injunctions of September 1538 required every parish to purchase a copy of an English Bible and place it in 'some convenient place' for all to see and read. To meet this demand, the Great Bible, so called because of its size, was put into production. This particular Bible with its coloured title page was probably Henry VIII’s personal copy. © British Library
Biographies
1. spartacus-educational.com/TUDcromwell.htm
2. historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/cromwell-thomas-1485-1540]
1. Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/TUDcromwell.htm]}
Thomas Cromwell was born in London, in about 1485. His father, Walter Cromwell, was a blacksmith, fuller, and cloth merchant, as well as the owner of both a hostelry and a brewery.
Walter Cromwell's success in business resulted in him being appointed as a constable in Putney. "Walter Cromwell's modest success as a tradesman is reflected by his frequent service as a juryman and his appointment as constable of Putney in 1495. He secured good marriages to local men for his daughters: the elder, Katherine, married Morgan Williams, an aspiring Welsh lawyer; her younger sister, Elizabeth, married a farmer, William Wellyfed. Katherine and Morgan's son Richard changed his name to Cromwell and worked in his uncle's service." (1) Richard's great-grandson was Oliver Cromwell, the lord protector.
Walter Cromwell developed a drink problem and was fined 6d. by the manor court on forty-eight occasions for breaches of the assize of ale, and he was also often reprimanded for allowing his cattle to graze too freely on public land. On another occasion he was convicted of assault and fined 20d. This seemed to have an impact on Thomas and later admitted that in his youth he was a "ruffian" and was said to be imprisoned for a short while.
In his late teens Cromwell travelled to Italy. He became a soldier and fought at the Battle of Garigliano on 28th December 1503. The following year he joined the household of the merchant banker Francesco Frescobaldi. (2) The Italian novelist Matteo Bandello tells how the destitute Cromwell confronted Frescobaldi in Florence, begging for his assistance. "Frescobaldi is said instantly to have taken pity on him and invited him to stay in his household, where he provided clothes and money. Bandello also records that when Cromwell decided to return to England, Frescobaldi gave him sixteen gold ducats and a strong horse." (3)
Thomas Cromwell - Cloth Merchant
Cromwell did not go home and instead went to the Netherlands, where he worked as a cloth merchant. Over the next couple of years Cromwell certainly visited leading mercantile centres as Antwerp and Bruges. There he learned his trade living among the English merchants and was able to develop an important network of contacts, as well as learning several languages, including German, French and Italian. (4)
Cromwell returned to England and worked as a cloth merchant. He also studied law during this period. (5) Wolsey married Elizabeth Wykys in about 1515. Over the next few years she gave birth to three children, Gregory, Anne and Grace. (6) Cromwell's father-in-law, Henry Wyckes, had served Henry VII as a gentleman usher. He was also a good business contact and was a significant figure in the cloth trade in London. By 1520 Cromwell was firmly established in London mercantile and legal circles. In 1521 he was employed by the London bakers' guild to draft petitions to the government. (7) A contemporary described him as a "a short, stoutly built man, with a large face, smooth shaven, with close-cropped hair, and a heavy double chin, with a small and cruel mouth, an extraordinary long upper lip, and a pair of gray eyes set closely together, and moving restlessly under his light eyebrows." (8)
In 1523 Cromwell became a member of the House of Commons. In one speech he advises against war against France. He argued that he is as committed as anyone to reclaiming France for the king, but claimed that the venture would be too expensive. He pointed out that the cost of the previous French War (1512-1514) had been enormous. It is estimated that most of the wealth Henry VIII inherited from his father had been used to finance the war. This had resulted in Parliament having to grant a tax upon every adult male, a measure that proved unpopular and difficult to collect and had caused public disorder. (9) Instead he suggested conquering Scotland, whose union with England will in turn make France more submissive.
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey
Thomas Cromwell was appointed a subsidy commissioner in Middlesex. In 1524 he carried out legal work for John Aleyn, a London alderman and a senior member of the Mercers' Company. During this work he came into contact with Thomas Heneage, a close associate of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Heneage was impressed with Cromwell and recommended him to Wolsey and later that year he was carrying out work for the king's Lord Chancellor. (10)
Thomas Wolsey decided in 1525 to establish Cardinal College (now Christ Church) in Oxford. In order to pay for this he dissolved twenty-nine monasteries on the grounds that they were greedy and uncaring landlords. It was also claimed that the monks had been corrupted by the wealth obtained from renting their land. The college was built on the land owned by the Priory of St Frideswide. (11) Wolsey selected Thomas Cromwell to arrange the selling the lands and goods owned by the monasteries. (12) Cromwell wrote to Wolsey praising his achievement: "The magnificent buildings of your noble college... in every man's judgement has never been seen." (13)
In 1528 Thomas Cromwell's wife, Elizabeth, and their two daughters, Anne and Grace, died during an epidemic of sweating sickness. Peter Ackroyd has pointed out: "Sweating sickness... was a fever, accompanied by a profuse and foul-smelling sweat, began its progress. It was accompanied by sharp pains in the back and shoulders before moving to the liver; lethargy and drowsiness ensued, with a sleep that often led to death. Swift and merciless, it became known as the sweat or the sweating sickness." (14)
Cromwell was now recognized as one of the cardinal's most senior and trusted advisers, as well as managing to maintain a prosperous private legal practice. However, Wolsey was having serious problems with his relationship with Henry VIII who wanted a divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. The historian, Eric William Ives, has argued: "At first, however, Henry had no thought of marriage. He saw Anne as someone to replace her sister, Mary (wife of one of the privy chamber staff, William Carey), who had just ceased to be the royal mistress. Certainly the physical side of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was already over and, with no male heir, Henry decided by the spring of 1527 that he had never validly been married and that his first marriage must be annulled.... However, Anne continued to refuse his advances, and the king realized that by marrying her he could kill two birds with one stone, possess Anne and gain a new wife." (15)
After two years of careful diplomatic negotiation a trial opened at Blackfriars on 18th June 1529 to prove the illegality of the marriage, presided over by Wolsey and Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio. Catherine made a spirited defence of her position. George Cavendish was an eyewitness in the court. He quotes her saying: "Sir, I beseech you, for all the loves that hath been betrayed us, and for the love of God, let me have justice and right. Take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman and a stranger born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friend, and much less indifferent counsel. I flee to you as the head of justice within this realm. Alas, Sir, where have I offended you? Or what occasion have you of displeasure, that you intend to put me from you? I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. I have been pleased and contented with all things wherein you had delight and dalliance. I never grudged a word or countenance, or showed a spark of discontent. I loved all those whom you loved only for your sake, whether I had cause or no, and whether they were my friends or enemies. This twenty years and more I have been your true wife, and by me you have had many children, though it hath pleased God to call them out of this world, which hath been no fault in me." (16)
The trial was adjourned by Campeggi on 30th July to allow Catherine's petition to reach Rome. This caused serious problems for Wolsey: "This instantly and considerably weakened Wolsey's position, giving the hostile coterie of courtiers who flocked around Anne the leverage they needed to topple him. Nevertheless he fought hard to retain office, and the king's evident reluctance to lose his services enabled him to cling to power until the autumn. It was not until 18th October that Wolsey resigned the great seal, and even then Henry protected him against complete ruin." (17) With the encouragement of Anne Boleyn, Henry became convinced that Wolsey's loyalties lay with the Pope. (18)
Thomas Cromwell & Henry VIII
Thomas Cromwell feared that he would suffer for being so closely associated with Wolsey. He received a letter from his friend, Stephen Vaughan, who had written to him from Antwerp to console him following Wolsey's fall from power, assuring him: "You are more hated for your master's sake than for anything which I think you have wrongfully done against any man". (19) However, he still had some good contacts and with the help of Sir William Paulet he managed to obtain the seat for Taunton in the House of Commons.
Wolsey's palaces and colleges were confiscated by the crown as a punishment for his offences, and he retired to his home in York. He began secretly negotiating with foreign powers in an attempt to get their support in persuading Henry to restore him to favour. Thomas Cromwell, warned him that his enemies knew what he was doing. He was arrested and charged with high treason. Wolsey died on 29th November 1530 before he could be brought to trial. (20)
Cromwell still had friends who were close to Henry VIII. This included Bishop Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Heneage. The attorney-general, Sir Christopher Hales, was also a great admirer of Cromwell and suggested to the King that he could be of use to the government. By 1531 Cromwell had taken control of the supervision of the King's legal and parliamentary affairs. His work included the sale and receipt of land for the king; the supervising of building works at Westminster and the Tower of London; and involvement in various matters of law enforcement, such as hearing appeals and deciding the fate of prisoners and felons brought before him. (21)
Thomas Cromwell made contact with Robert Barnes, a close associate of Martin Luther in the summer of 1531. Cromwell asked him to discover Luther's opinion on the divorce proceedings between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Luther's response was unfavourable to the king, but Barnes's seemed to be willing to compromise his views in order to return to England. He produced Supplication unto King Henry VIII and sent a copy to Cromwell who then showed it to Henry.
In early 1532 Barnes travelled to London under the protection of Cromwell and was granted a private audience with the king. As David Loades, the author of Thomas Cromwell (2013) has pointed out: "Although his supplication was offensive to the monarch in the sense that it advocated justification by faith alone, it also explained a number of Lutheran tenents in terms which were acceptable to his sovereign. The king would have been looking for some endorsement of his position on his marriage, and over that it is likely that Barnes was non-committal." (22)
Sir Thomas More considered Barnes a heretic and protested about his meeting with the king. He pointed out that in Barnes's writings he had said that if his king ordered him to violate God's law, he must disobey and passively suffer martyrdom, though even then he must not resist the king by force. Barnes had also said that if the king ordered a man to burn his copy of the Bible, he would be justified in disobeying. More argued that Henry had ordered the burning of Bibles in English and therefore he was acting in a seditious manner. Barnes was in danger of being arrested and so he returned to Antwerp. (23)
Thomas Cromwell developed a reputation for the leading expert in drafting legislation in Parliament. In January 1532 Cromwell called into question the right of the Church to make laws of its own. His main opponent was Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, who argued that the Church's right to make its own laws was "grounded upon the Scripture of God and determination of Holy Church, which must also be a rule and square to try the justice of all laws, as well spiritual as temporal." (24)
John Guy, the author of Tudor England (1986) has argued that Cromwell was a natural orator. "He made a formidable adversary in debate, sharp enough to defeat More, John Fisher, and Stephen Gardiner in verbal tussles. But his manner was usually relaxed and always engaging. When speaking, his face lit up; his conversation sparkled; and he cast roguish oblique glances when striking aphorisms. Most important, his talent for managing men and institutions was instinctive. Of course, for all his ease of manner, accessibility, and capacity for friendship, Cromwell had a dangerous edge. He was a politician who got things done. A degree of ruthlessness was the corollary of his single-mindedness." (25)
Henry VIII insisted that the Church should abandon its claim to make laws without royal permission. Thomas Cromwell fully supported the king in the House of Commons and successfully manipulated the mood of the members by encouraging their anti-clerical grievances. "There is little doubt that in his support for the royal supremacy Cromwell was influenced by genuine evangelical convictions. He was probably also acting with the enthusiasm of a recent convert." (26)
William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made comments suggesting that he was willing to follow the example of Thomas Becket, and resist the king's demands. However, he was now over eighty and lacking in both health and strength, and eventually submitted to the king's will. Sir Thomas More, the man who replaced Thomas Wolsey as Lord Chancellor, remained opposed to the idea and resigned from office.
Archbishop Warham died in August 1532, and was replaced by Thomas Cranmer. He was the ideal man for Henry, since he believed in royal supremacy over the Church. In March 1533, Cranmer was formally consecrated, but immediately before the ceremony he read aloud a statement declaring that while he was willing to take the customary oaths of allegiance to the Pope it would be with the reservation that his duty to the King came first. Cranmer obtained a licence from Henry authorising him to try the case of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He set up his court at Dunstable and on 23rd May pronounced judgement that Henry's so-called marriage with Catherine had never been valid and that the King must stop living in sin with this woman who was not his wife. (27)
Cromwell was rewarded in his role in acquiring the divorce by being appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He also arranged for the arrest of Elizabeth Barton and her supporters. Barton had been having visions of the future since 1525. Her predictions were popular and she developed a large following. However, in 1532, she began claiming that if Henry remarried, he would die shortly thereafter, and said she had seen the place in Hell where he would go. Barton was later executed to show the English public that Henry would not allow any dissent concerning his marriage. (28)
Anne Boleyn was pregnant. As it was important that the child should not be classed as illegitimate, arrangements were made for Henry and Anne to get married. King Charles V of Spain threatened to invade England if the marriage took place, but Henry ignored his threats and the marriage went ahead. Anne was crowned queen on 1st June, 1533. It was very important to Henry that his wife should give birth to a male child. Without a son to take over from him when he died, Henry feared that the Tudor family would lose control of England.
Elizabeth was born on 7th September, 1533. Henry expected a son and selected the names of Edward and Henry. While Henry was furious about having another daughter, the supporters of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon were delighted and claimed that it proved God was punishing Henry for his illegal marriage to Anne. (29) Retha M. Warnicke, the author of The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) has pointed out: "As the king's only legitimate child, Elizabeth was, until the birth of a prince, his heir and was to be treated with all the respect that a female of her rank deserved. Regardless of her child's sex, the queen's safe delivery could still be used to argue that God had blessed the marriage. Everything that was proper was done to herald the infant's arrival." (30)
Thomas Cromwell - Chief Minister
Henry VIII formed a high opinion of Cromwell's abilities. It has been argued that the king "had many able diplomats, he had no administrator and political manager of Cromwell's calibre." (36) In December 1533 Henry gave Cromwell permission to unleash all the resources of the state in discrediting the papacy. "In one of the fiercest and ugliest smear campaigns in English history the minister showed his mastery of propaganda techniques as the pope was attacked throughout the nation in sermons and pamphlets. In the new year another session of parliament was summoned to enact the necessary legislation to break formally the remaining ties which bound England to Rome, again under Cromwell's meticulous supervision." (37)
In March 1534 Pope Clement VII eventually made his decision. He announced that Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn was invalid. Henry reacted by declaring that the Pope no longer had authority in England. In April 1534 Henry confirmed Cromwell as his principal secretary and chief minister, a position he had held in all but name for some time. In November 1534, Parliament passed an act that stated that Henry VIII was now the Head of the Church of England.
Thomas Cromwell was sympathetic towards the radical reformers such as Robert Barnes and Hugh Latimer. (38) He had been prosecuted under Thomas Wolsey and had fled to Antwerp where he associated with Martin Luther. Cromwell invited him to return to England where he wrote pamphlets in the defence of the royal supremacy. "He also argued that the Catholic Church, with its elaborate hierarchy, its shrines, pilgrimages, relics and indulgences, was irrelevant to the human condition." (39)
In January 1535, Thomas Cromwell was appointed as Vicar-General. This made him the King's deputy as Supreme Head of the Church. On 3rd June he sent a letter to all the bishops ordering them to preach in support of the supremacy, and to ensure that the clergy in their dioceses did so as well. A week later he sent further letters to Justices of Peace ordering them to report any instances of his instructions being disobeyed. In the following month he turned his attention to the monasteries. In September he suspended the authority of every bishop in the country so that the six canon lawyers he had appointed as his agents could complete their surveys of the monasteries. (40)
The survey revealed that the total annual income of all the monasteries was about £165,500. The eleven thousand monks and nuns in this institutions also controlled about a quarter of all the cultivated land in England. The six lawyers provided detailed reports on the monasteries. According to David Starkey: "Their subsequent reports concentrated on two areas: the sexual failings of the monks, on which subject the visitors managed to combine intense disapproval with lip-smacking detail, and the false miracles and relics, of which they gave equally gloating accounts." (41)
A Parliament was called in February 1536 to discuss these reports. With the encouragement of Cromwell they agreed to pass the Act for the Dissolution of Monasteries. This stated that all religious houses with an annual income of less than £200 were to be "suppressed". A total of 419 monastic houses were obliged to close but the abbots made petitions for exemptions, and 176 of the monasteries were allowed to stay open. It is believed that Cromwell was bribed in money and goods to reach this agreement. (42) Monastery land was seized and sold off cheaply to nobles and merchants. They in turn sold some of the lands to smaller farmers. This process meant that a large number of people had good reason to support the monasteries being closed. Thomas Fuller, the author of The Church History of Britain: Volume IV (1845) has argued that dissolution of the monasteries was of great personal benefit to Thomas Cromwell, Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley, Solicitor-General Richard Rich and Richard Southwell. (43)
Anne Boleyn was one of those who complained about Cromwell's treatment of the monasteries. As Eric William Ives has pointed out: "The fundamental reason for this was disagreement over the assets of the monasteries: Anne's support for the redeployment of monastic resources directly contradicted Cromwell's intention to put the proceeds of the dissolution into the king's coffers. The bill dissolving the smaller monasteries had passed both houses of parliament in mid-March, but before the royal assent was given Anne launched her chaplains on a dramatic preaching campaign to modify royal policy.... Cromwell was pilloried before the whole council as an evil and greedy royal adviser from the Old Testament, and specifically identified as the queen's enemy. Nor could the minister shrug off this declaration of war, even though, in spite of Anne's efforts, the dissolution act became law." (44)
Anne Boleyn
Henry VIII continued to try to produce a male heir. Anne Boleyn had two miscarriages and was pregnant again when she discovered Jane Seymour sitting on her husband's lap. Anne "burst into furious denunciation; the rage brought on a premature labour and was delivered of a dead boy" in late January or early February, 1536. (45) What is more, the baby was badly deformed. (46) This was a serious matter because in Tudor times Christians believed that a deformed child was God's way of punishing parents for committing serious sins. Henry VIII feared that people might think that the Pope Clement VII was right when he claimed that God was angry because Henry had divorced Catherine and married Anne.
Henry now approached Thomas Cromwell about how he could get out of his marriage with Anne. Cromwell decided to take this opportunity to remove the influence of Anne and her friends. Cromwell's biographer, Howard Leithead, has pointed out: "Anne Boleyn was well known for conducting herself with her courtiers in an informal and flirtatious manner, and Cromwell calculated that he could twist the language of courtly love to support an accusation of adultery." (47)
Cromwell suggested that one solution to this problem was to claim that he was not the father of this deformed child. On the king's instruction Cromwell was ordered to find out the name of the man who was the true father of the dead child. Philippa Jones has argued: "Cromwell was careful that the charge should stipulate that Anne Boleyn had only been unfaithful to the King after the Princess Elizabeth's birth in 1533. Henry wanted Elizabeth to be acknowledged as his daughter, but at the same time he wanted her removed from any future claim to the succession." (48)
In April 1536, a Flemish musician in Anne's service named Mark Smeaton was arrested. He initially denied being the Queen's lover but later confessed, perhaps tortured or promised freedom. (49) Another courtier, Henry Norris, was arrested on 1st May. Sir Francis Weston was arrested two days later on the same charge, as was William Brereton, a Groom of the King's Privy Chamber. Anne's brother, George Boleyn was also arrested and charged with incest. (50)
Anne was arrested and was taken to the Tower of London on 2nd May, 1536. Thomas Cromwell took this opportunity to destroy her brother, George Boleyn. He had always been close to his sister and in the circumstances it was not difficult to suggest to Henry that an incestuous relationship had existed. George was arrested on 2nd May, 1536, and taken to the Tower of London. David Loades has argued: "Both self control and a sense of proportion seem to have been completely abandoned, and for the time being Henry would believe any evil that he was told, however farfetched." (51)
On 12th May, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, as High Steward of England, presided over the trial of Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton at Westminster Hall. (52) Except for Smeaton they all pleaded not guilty to all charges. Thomas Cromwell made sure that a reliable jury was empanelled, consisting almost entirely of known enemies of the Boleyns. "These were not difficult to find, and they were all substantial men, with much to gain or lose by their behaviour in such a conspicuous theatre". (53)
Few details survive of the proceedings. Witnesses were called and several spoke of Anne Boleyn's alleged sexual activity. One witness said that there was "never such a whore in the realm". The evidence for the prosecution was very weak, but "Cromwell managed to contrive a case based on Mark Smeaton's questionable confession, a great deal of circumstantial evidence, and some very salacious details about what Anne had allegedly got up to with her brother." (54) At the end of the trial the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the four men were condemned by Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley to be drawn, hanged, castrated and quartered. Eustace Chapuys claimed that Brereton was "condemned on a presumption, not by proof or valid confession, and without any witnesses." (55)
George and Anne Boleyn were tried two days later in the Great Hall of the Tower. In Anne's case the verdict already pronounced against her accomplices made the outcome inevitable. She was charged, not only with a whole list of adulterous relationships going back to the autumn of 1533, but also with poisoning Catherine of Aragon, "afflicting Henry with actual bodily harm, and conspiring his death." (56)
George Boleyn was charged with having sexual relations with his sister at Westminster on 5th November 1535. However, records show she was with Henry on that day in Windsor Castle. Boleyn was also accused of being the father of the deformed child born in late January or early February, 1536. (57) This was a serious matter because in Tudor times Christians believed that a deformed child was God's way of punishing parents for committing serious sins. Henry VIII feared that people might think that the Pope Clement VII was right when he claimed that God was angry because Henry had divorced Catherine and married Anne. (58)
Eustace Chapuys reported King Charles V that Anne Boleyn "was principally charged with... having cohabited with her brother and other accomplices; that there was a promise between her and Norris to marry after the King's death, which it thus appeared they hoped for... and that she had poisoned Catherine and intrigued to do the same to Mary... These things, she totally denied, and gave a plausible answer to each." She admitted to giving presents to Francis Weston but this was not an unusual gesture on her part. (59)
George and Anne Boleyn were both found guilty of all charges. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, who presided over the trial left it to the King to decide whether Anne should be beheaded or burned alive. Between sentence and execution, neither admitted guilt. Anne declared herself ready to die because she had unwittingly incurred the King's displeasure, but grieved, as Eustace Chapuys reported, for the innocent men who were also to die on her account." (60)
On 17th May, 1536, George Boleyn and the other four condemned men were executed on Tower Hill, their sentences commuted from being hung, drawn and quartered. Boleyn exercised the condemned man's privilege of addressing the large crowd which always gathered for public executions. "Masters all, I am come hither not to preach and make a sermon but to die, as the law hath found me, and to the law I submit me."
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer declared Anne's marriage to Henry null and void on 17th May 1536, and according to the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, the grounds for the annulment included the king's previous relationship with Mary Boleyn. However, this information has never been confirmed. (61)
Anne Boleyn went to the scaffold at Tower Green on 19th May, 1536. The Lieutenant of the Tower reported her as alternately weeping and laughing. The Lieutenant assured her she would feel no pain, and she accepted his assurance. "I have a little neck," she said, and putting her hand round it, she shrieked with laughter. The "hangman of Calais" had been brought from France at a cost of £24 since he was a expert with a sword. This was a favour to the victim since a sword was usually more efficient than "an axe that could sometimes mean a hideously long-drawn-out affair." (62)
Anne Boleyn's last words were: "Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the King, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign Lord.... And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me." (63)
Privy Council
Under Henry VIII the Royal Council was at the heart of the administration. However, it was very large and Thomas Cromwell developed an inner circle that was called the Privy Council. It had nineteen members and including representatives of all the leading noble families and senior religious leaders. Henry and Cromwell decided matters of policy but it was the Privy Council that dealt with a wide range of government business - receiving ambassadors, drafting despatches, discussing foreign affairs and issuing administrative orders. Henry rarely attended these meetings and this gave Cromwell the power to run the government. Cromwell brought Ralph Sadler into the Privy Council to help him run the country.
Cromwell was not only Lord Chancellor but was the King's Secretary (Secretary of State). This gave him control of every aspect of government. The most important of these was the royal finances. This included the Exchequer, which collected and controlled the revenues of the crown as well as the profits of justice. Roger Lockyer has pointed out: "While he was a man of an orderly cast of mind, who enjoyed tidying up the royal administration and creating new institutions where necessary, he never intended that any institution, old and new, should become a barrier to the exercise of his own power." (64)
In this position Cromwell had to deal with a serious political crisis. In 1536, a lawyer named Robert Aske formed an army to defend the monasteries in Yorkshire. Another outbreak of public disorder took place in Lincolnshire. The rebels were joined by priests carrying crosses and banners. Leading nobles in the area also began to give their support to the rebellion. The rebels marched to York and demanded that the monasteries should be reopened. This march, which contained over 30,000 people, became known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was sent to Lincolnshire to deal with the rebels. In an age before a standing army, loyal forces were not easy to raise. (65) "Appointed the king's lieutenant to suppress the Lincolnshire rebels, he advanced fast from Suffolk to Stamford, gathering troops as he went; but by the time he was ready to fight, the rebels had disbanded. On 16th October he entered Lincoln and began to pacify the rest of the county, investigate the origins of the rising, and prevent the southward spread of the pilgrimage, still growing in Yorkshire and beyond. Only two tense months later, as the pilgrims dispersed under the king's pardon, could he disband his 3600 troops and return to court." (66)
Henry VIII's army was not strong enough to fight the rebels in Norfolk. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, negotiated peace with Aske. Howard was forced to promise that he would pardon the rebels and hold a parliament in York to discuss their demands. The rebels were convinced that this parliament would reopen the monasteries and therefore went back to their homes. (67) However, as soon as the rebel army had dispersed. Cromwell ordered the arrest of the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace. During his interrogation on 19th April 1537, Thomas Darcy accused Cromwell of "the very original and chief causer of all this rebellion and mischief". (68) About 200 people were executed for their part in the rebellion. This included Darcy, Robert Aske, William Thirsk and Lady Margaret Bulmer, who were burnt at the stake in June 1537. Abbots of the four largest monasteries in the north were also executed.
Bishop Stephen Gardiner, the leading religious conservative in the Privy Council, accepted these decisions but suggested that Henry followed a new policy of making concessions to his subjects. Cromwell disagreed and so did Henry. He accused Gardiner of returning to his old opinions, and complained that a faction was seeking to win him back to their "naughty" views. (69)
Religious Shrines
Thomas Cromwell continued with his religious reforms. He decreed that every church must possess and display a copy of the Bible in the native tongue and it had to be chained in an open place, where anyone could consult it. The edition used was that of Miles Coverdale, an edition that was a reworking of the one produced by William Tyndale. Therefore, the man who had been denounced as a heretic and ordered to be burnt at the stake by Henry VIII eleven years before, was now one of the most important figures in English religious life. (70)
In January 1538 Thomas Cromwell turned his attention to religious shrines in England. For hundreds of years pilgrims had visited shrines that contained important religious relics. Wealthy pilgrims often gave expensive jewels and ornaments to the monks that looked after these shrines. Cromwell persuaded Henry to agree that the shrines should be closed down and the wealth that they had created given to the crown. Commissioners were sent round the country to seize relics and shrines.
The Pope and the Catholic church in Rome were horrified when they heard the news that Henry commissioners had destroyed St. Thomas Becket's Shrine in September. It is claimed that chests of jewels were carried away so heavy that "six or eight strong men" were needed to carry each chest. (71) The previous year Henry VIII had visited the shrine in order to pray for the birth of a healthy son. (72) On 17th December 1538, the Pope announced to the Christian world that Henry VIII had been excommunicated from the Catholic church.
Marie de Guise & Christina of Denmark
Since the death of Jane Seymour in October 1537, Henry had shown little interest in finding a fourth wife. One of the reasons is that he was suffering from impotence. Anne Boleyn had complained about this problem to George Boleyn as early as 1533. His general health was also poor and he was probably suffering from diabetes and Cushings Syndrome. Now in his late 40s he was also obese. His armour from that period reveals that he measured 48 inches around the middle. (73)
However, when Thomas Cromwell told him that he should consider finding another wife for diplomatic reasons, Henry agreed. "Suffering from intermittent and unsatisfied lust, and keenly aware ofhis advancing age and copulence" he thought that a new young woman in his life might bring back the vitality of his youth. (74) As Antonia Fraser has pointed out: "In 1538 Henry VIII wanted - no, he expected - to be diverted, entertained and excited. It would be the responsibility of his wife to see that he felt like playing the cavalier and indulging in such amorous gallantries as had amused him in the past." (75)
Cromwell's first choise was Marie de Guise, a young widow who had already produced a son. Aged only 22 she had been married to Louis, Duke of Longueville before his early death in June 1537. He liked the reports that he received that she was a tall woman pleased him. He was "big in person" and he had need of "a big wife". In January 1538 he sent a ambassador to see her. (76) When Marie was told that Henry found her size attractive she is reported to have replied that she might be a big woman, but she had a very little neck. Marie rejected the proposal and married King James V of Scotland on 9th May 1538. (77)
The next candidate was Christina of Denmark, the sixteen-year-old widowed Duchess of Milan. She married Francesco II Sforza, the Duke of Milan at the age of twelve. However, he died the following year. Christina was very well connected. Her father was the former King Christian II of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Her mother, Isabella of Austria, was the sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Henry VIII received a promising report from John Hutton. "She is not pure white as (Jane Seymour) but she hath a singular good contenance, and, when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks, and one in her chin, the witch becometh her right excellently well." He also compared her to Margaret Shelton, one of Henry's former mistresses. (78)
Impressed by Hutton's description, Henry VIII sent Hans Holbein to paint her. He arrived in Brussels on 10th March 1538 and the following day sat for the portrait for three hours wearing mourning dress. However, Christina was disturbed by Henry's treatment of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn and apparently told Thomas Wriothesley, "If I had two heads, one should be at the King of England's disposal." (79) Wriothesley told Cromwell that he should look for a bride "in some such other place". Henry was very disappointed as he loved the painting and looked at it on a regular basis. (80)
Anne of Cleves
In 1539 Thomas Cromwell sent Robert Barnes to Copenhagen to discuss Anglo-Danish relations, in particular the prospect of an anti-papal alliance that might involve Henry VIII marrying Anne of Cleves, the daughter of John III. (81) He thought this would make it possible to form an alliance with the Protestants in Saxony. An alliance with the non-aligned north European states would be undeniably valuable, especially as Charles V of Spain and François I of France had signed a new treaty on 12th January 1539. (82) In March 1539 Nicholas Wotton was one of a three-man delegation sent to Cleves, to negotiate a marriage between Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves and to establish a defensive league with the German princes. (83)
As David Loades has pointed out: "Cleves was a significant complex of territories, strategically well placed on the lower Rhine. In the early fifteenth century it had absorbed the neighbouring country of Mark, and in 1521 the marriage of Duke John III had amalgamated Cleves-Mark with Julich-Berg to create a state with considerable resources... Thomas Cromwell was the main promoter of the scheme, and with his eye firmly on England's international position, its attractions became greater with every month that passed." (84)
John III died on 6th February, 1539. He was replaced by Anne's brother, Duke William. In March, Nicholas Wotton, began the negotiations at Cleves. He reported to Thomas Cromwell that "she (Anne of Cleves) occupieth her time most with the needle... She can read and write her own language but of French, Latin or other language she hath none... she cannot sing, nor play any instrument, for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke and an occasion of lightness that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music." (85)
Cromwell was desperate for the marriage to take place but was aware that Wotton's reported revealed some serious problems. The couple did not share a common language. Henry VIII could speak in English, French and Latin but not in German. Wotton also pointed out that she "had none of the social skills so prized at the English court: she could not play a musical instrument or sing - she came from a culture that looked down on the lavish celebrations and light-heartedness that were an integral part of King Henry's court". (86)
Wotton was frustrated by the stalling tactics of William. Eventually he signed a treaty in which the Duke granted Anne a dowry of 100,000 gold florins. (87) However, Henry refused to marry Anne until he had seen a picture of her. Hans Holbein arrived in April and requested permission to paint Anne's portrait. The 23-year-old William, held Puritan views and had strong ideas about feminine modesty and insisted that his sister covered up her face and body in the company of men. He refused to allow her to be painted by Holbein. After a couple of days he said he was willing to have his sister painted but only by his own court painter, Lucas Cranach. (88)
Henry was unwilling to accept this plan as he did not trust Cranach to produce an accurate portrait. Further negotiations took place and Henry suggested he would be willing to marry Anne without a dowry if her portrait, painted by Holbein pleased him. Duke William was short of money and agreed that Holbein should paint her picture. He painted her portrait on parchment, to make it easier to transport in back to England. Nicholas Wotton, Henry's envoy watched the portrait being painted and claimed that it was an accurate representation. (89)
Holbein's biographer, Derek Wilson, argues that he was in a very difficult position. He wanted to please Thomas Cromwell but did not want to upset Henry VIII: "If ever the artist was nervous about the reception of a portrait he must have been particularly anxious about this one... He had to do what he could to sound a note of caution. That meant that he was obliged to express his doubts in the painting. If we study the portrait of Anne of Cleves we are struck by an oddity of composition.... Everything in it is perfectly balanced: it might almost be a study in symmetry - except for the jewelled bands on Anne's skirt. The one on her left is not complemented by another on the right. Furthermore, her right hand and the fall of her left under-sleeve draw attention to the discrepancy. This sends a signal to the viewer that, despite the elaborateness of the costume, there is something amiss, a certain clumsiness... Holbein intended giving the broadest hint he dared to the king. Henry would not ask his opinion about his intended bride, and the painter certainly could not venture it. Therefore he communicated unpalatable truth through his art. He could do no more." (90)
Unfortunately, Henry VIII did not understand this coded message. As Alison Weir, the author of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) has pointed out, the painting convinced Henry to marry Anne. "Anne smiles out demurely from an ivory frame carved to resemble a Tudor rose. Her complexion is clear, her gaze steady, her face delicately attractive. She wears a head-dress in the Dutch style which conceals her hair, and a gown with a heavily bejewelled bodice. Everything about Anne's portrait proclaimed her dignity, breeding and virtue, and when Henry VIII saw it, he made up his mind at once that this was the woman he wanted to marry." (91)
Anne of Cleves arrived at Dover on 27th December 1539. She was taken to Rochester Castle and on 1st January, Sir Anthony Browne, Henry's Master of the Horse, arrived from London. At the time Anne was watching bull-baiting from the window. He later recalled that the moment he saw Anne he was "struck with dismay". Henry arrived at the same time but was in disguise. He was also very disappointed and retreated into another room. According to Thomas Wriothesley when Henry reappeared they "talked lovingly together". However, afterwards he was heard to say, "I like her not". (92)
The French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, described Anne as looking about thirty (she was in fact twenty-four), tall and thin, of middling beauty, with a determined and resolute countenance". He also commented that her face was "pitted with the smallpox" and although he admitted there was some show of vivacity in her expression, he considered it "insufficient to counterbalance her want of beauty". However, as Alison Plowden, the author of Tudor Women (2002) has pointed out "Holbein's miniature is by no means without charm, and compared with, say, the portrait of Queen Jane Seymour, her successor would seem to have little to be ashamed of." (93)
Execution of Thomas Cromwell
Henry VIII asked Thomas Cromwell to cancel the wedding treaty. He replied that this would cause serious political problems. Henry married Anne of Cleves on 6th January 1540. He complained bitterly about his wedding night. Henry told Thomas Heneage that he disliked the "looseness of her breasts" and was not able to do "what a man should do to his wife".
Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley opened the 1540 Parliament. Thomas Cromwell attempted to explain the government's religious policies: "The king's majesty desires nothing more than concord... he knows there are those who would stir up strife, and in places in his field tares have sprung up to harm the wheat. The forwardness and carnal lust of some, the inveterate corruption and superstitious tenacity of opinion of other excite disputation and quarrels most horrible in so good Christian men; one side calls the other papists, and the other calls them heretics, both naughty and not to be borne... They twist God's sacred gift, now into heresy and now into superstition." (94)
Two of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, and Eleanor Manners, Countess of Rutland, asked Anne about her relationship with her husband. It became clear that she had not received any sex education. "When the King comes to bed he kisses me and taketh me by the hand, and biddeth me good night... In the morning he kisses me, and biddeth me, farewell. Is not this enough?" She enquired innocently." Further questioning revealled that she was completely unaware of what had been expected of her. (95)
Henry VIII was angry with Thomas Cromwell for arranging the marriage with Anne of Cleves. The conservatives, led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, saw this as an opportunity to remove him from power. Gardiner considered Cromwell a heretic for introducing the Bible in the native tongue. He also opposed the way Cromwell had attacked the monasteries and the religious shrines. Gardiner pointed out to the King that it was Cromwell who had allowed radical preachers such as Robert Barnes to return to England.
Barnes was clearly in danger but on 28th February, 1540, he preached a sermon attacking Bishop Gardiner. On 5th March, Barnes was summoned to appear before Henry VIII and Gardiner. Barnes begged forgiveness but continued to preach against the religious conservatives. On 3rd April, he was arrested along with two of his followers, William Jerome and Thomas Garrard, and taken to the Tower of London. (96)
Thomas Cromwell retaliated by arresting Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester and Nicholas Wotton, staunch conservatives in religious matters. He then began negotiating the release of Barnes. However, this was unsuccessful and it was now clear that Cromwell was in serious danger. (97) The French ambassador reported on 10th April, 1540, that Cromwell was "tottering" and began speculating about who would succeed to his offices. Although he he resigned the duties of the secretaryship to his protégés Ralph Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley he did not lose his power and on 18th April the King granted him the earldom of Essex.
Quarrels in the Privy Council continued and Charles de Marillac reported to François I on 1st June, 1540, that "things are brought to such a pass that either Cromwell's party or that of the Bishop of Winchester must succumb". On 10th June, Cromwell arrived slightly late for a meeting of the Privy Council. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, shouted out, "Cromwell! Do not sit there! That is no place for you! Traitors do not sit among gentlemen." The captain of the guard came forward and arrested him. Cromwell was charged with treason and heresy. Norfolk went over and ripped the chains of authority from his neck, "relishing the opportunity to restore this low-born man to his former status". Cromwell was led out through a side door which opened down onto the river and taken by boat the short journey from Westminster to the Tower of London. (98)
On 12th June, Thomas Cranmer wrote a letter to Henry VIII saying he was amazed that such a good servant of the king should be found to have committed treason. He pointed out that he had shown "wisdom, diligence, faithfulness and experience as no prince in the realm ever had". Cranmer told Henry that he loved Cromwell as a friend, "but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace singularly above all others. But now if he be a traitor, I am sorry that ever I loved him or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason has been discovered in time. But yet again I am very sorrowful, for whom should your grace trust hereafter." (99)
Thomas Cromwell was convicted by Parliament of treason and heresy on 29th June and sentenced him to be hung, drawn and quartered. He wrote to Henry VIII soon afterwards and admitted "I have meddled in so many matters under your Highness that I am not able to answer them all". He finished the letter with the plea, "Most gracious prince I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy." Henry commuted the sentence to decapitation, even though the condemned man was of lowly birth. (100)
On 28th July, 1540, Cromwell walked out onto Tower Green for his execution. In his speech from the scaffold he denied that he had aided heretics, but acknowledged the judgment of the law. He then prayed for a short while before placing his head on the block. The executioner bungled his work, and took two strokes to sever the neck of Cromwell. He suffered a particularly gruesome execution before what was left of his head was set upon a pike on London Bridge. (101)
According to the French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, on 3rd March, 1541, Henry VIII was quoted as saying: "under pretext of some slight offences which he had committed, they had brought several accusations against him, on the strength of which he had put to death the most faithful servant he ever had." (102)
References
(1) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(2) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 38
(3) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(4) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 423
(5) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 38
(6) John Schofield, The Rise & Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant (2011) page 16
(7) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(8) Goldwin Smith, The North American Review (Volume 176, No. 557, 1903)
(9) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 12
(10) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(11) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 79
(12) Sybil M. Jack, Thomas Wolsey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(13) Thomas Cromwell, letter to Thomas Wolsey (2nd April 1528)
(14) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 20
(15) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(16) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 200
(17) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) pages 430-433
(18) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(19) Stephen Vaughan, letter to Thomas Wolsey (29th October, 1529)
(20) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 17
(21) Sybil M. Jack, Thomas Wolsey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(22) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 67
(23) Jasper Ridley, The Statesman and the Fanatic (1982) page 268
(24) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 17
(25) John Guy, Tudor England (1986) page 155
(26) Sybil M. Jack, Thomas Wolsey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(27) Alison Plowden, Tudor Women (2002) page 66
(28) Philip Hughes, A Popular History of the Reformation (1957) page 177
(29) Patrick Collinson, Queen Elizabeth I : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(30) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 168
(31) Roy Strong, The Burlington Magazine (Volume 109, No. 770, 1967)
(32) Joan Acocella, The New Yorker (19th October, 2009)
(33) Peter Erickson and Clark Hulse, Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England (2000) page 167
(34) Waldermar Januszczak, Holbein: Eye of the Tudors (24th January, 2015)
(35) Hilary Mantel, The Daily Telegraph (17th October, 2012)
(36) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 196
(37) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(38) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 168
(39) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 49
(40) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(41) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 529
(42) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 90
(43) Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain: Volume IV (1845) pages 358
(44) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(45) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 191
(46) G. W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (2011) pages 174-175
(47) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(48) Philippa Jones, Elizabeth: Virgin Queen (2010) page 25
(49) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(50) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 81
(51) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(52) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(53) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(54) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(55) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(56) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(57) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(58) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(59) Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (May, 1536)
(60) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 253
(61) Jonathan Hughes, Mary Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(62) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(63) Anne Boleyn, statement on the scaffold at Tower Green (19th May, 1536). Quoted by Edward Hall, in his book, History of England (1548) page 268-269
(64) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 66
(65) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 271
(66) S. J. Gunn, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(67) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 58
(68) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(69) C. D. C. Armstrong, Stephan Gardiner : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(70) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 294
(71) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 131
(72) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 362
(73) Philippa Gregory, The Daily Mail (2nd February, 2009)
(74) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 115
(75) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 288
(76) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 383
(77) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 289
(78) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 618
(79) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 288
(80) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 618
(81) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 194
(82) Alison Plowden, Tudor Women (2002) page 87
(83) Michael Zell, Nicholas Wotton : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(84) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 109
(85) Nicholas Wotton, report to Thomas Cromwell (March, 1539)
(86) Kelly Hart, The Mistresses of Henry VIII (2009) page 151
(87) Retha M. Warnicke, Anne of Cleves : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(88) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 388
(89) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 300
(90) Derek Wilson, Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man (1996) page 259-260
(91) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 388
(92) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 305
(93) Alison Plowden, Tudor Women (2002) page 87
(94) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 210
(95) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 148
(96) Carl R. Trueman, Robert Barnes : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(97) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(98) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(99) Thomas Cranmer, letter to Henry VIII (12th June, 1540)
(100) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 79
(101) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(102) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)"
2. Background from {[https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/cromwell-thomas-1485-1540]}
"CROMWELL, Thomas (by 1485-1540), of London.
Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
CROMWELL, Thomas (by 1485-1540)CROMWELL, Thomas (by 1485-1540)
b. by 1485, o.s. of Walter Cromwell alias Smith of Putney, Surr. m. by 1516, Elizabeth, da. of Henry Wykes of Putney, wid. of Thomas Williams, 1s. Gregory 2da.; 1da. illegit. Kntd. 18 July 1536; KG nom. 5 Aug., inst. 26 Aug. 1537; cr. Baron Cromwell 9 July 1536, Earl of Essex 17 Apr. 1540.3
Offices Held
Member, household of Cardinal Wolsey c.1516-30, of his council by 1519, sec. by 1529; commr. subsidy, London 1524, Kent 1534, for printing of Bible 1539, for sale of crown lands 1539, 1540; Councillor by Jan. 1531; master of King’s jewels 14 Apr. 1532, jt. (with Sir John Williams) c.1535-d.; clerk of the hanaper 16 July 1532, jt. (with Ralph Sadler) Apr. 1535-d.; chancellor, the Exchequer 12 Apr. 1533- d. ; recorder, Bristol 1533-d., steward, Westminster abbey 12 Sept. 1533, jt. (with Robert Wroth) 14 Feb. 1534-May 1535, lordships of Edmonton and Sayesbery, Mdx. May 1535, of Havering-atte-Bower, Essex Dec. 1537, manor of Writtle, Essex June 1536, honor of Rayleigh, Essex Sept. 1539; jt. (with Sir William Paulet) surveyor, the King’s woods by 1533; principal sec. c. Apr. 1534-Apr. 1540; master of the rolls 8 Oct. 1534-10 July 1536; jt. (with Richard Cromwell alias Williams*) constable, Hertford castle, Herts. 1534-d., Berkeley castle, Glos. 1535-d., sole, Leeds castle, Kent 4 Jan. 1539-d.; visitor-gen. monasteries 21 Jan. 1535; steward, duchy of Lancaster, Essex, Herts. and Mdx. 12 May 1535-d., steward, Savoy manor May 1535-d.; chancellor, high steward and visitor, Camb. univ. 1535-d.; j.p. Bristol, Kent, Mdx., Surr. 1535-d.; Essex 1536-d., Derbys., Westmld. 1537-d., all counties 1538-d.; prebendary, Salisbury May 1536-d.; receiver of petitions in the Lords, Parlt. of 1536, trier, Parlt. of 1539; ld. privy seal 2 July 1536-d.; vicar-gen. and vicegerent of the King in spirituals 18 July 1536; dean, Wells 1537-d.; warden and c.j. in eyre, N. of Trent 30 Dec. 1537-d.; gov. I.o.W. 2 Nov. 1538-d.; gt. chamberlain 17 Apr. 1540; numerous minor offices.4
Biography
Thomas Cromwell was the son of a Putney cloth-worker and alehouse keeper but the obscurity of his early life owes less to his humble origin than to the varied and exotic character of his pursuits. While still in his teens he was compelled, in circumstances which remain unknown, to leave the country. Passing through the Netherlands, he is said to have found employment in Italy, first as a soldier (he is reputed to have fought at the Garigliano in 1503) and then with the Venetian banking house of Frescobaldi. He was in Rome early in 1514 but in the course of that year he returned to the Netherlands and soon afterwards came back to England, where he married a widow and settled in London. He was to go to Italy again in 1517-18 to help the town of Boston obtain a bull of indulgence from Pope Leo X. On this journey he is supposed to have learned by heart Erasmus’s translation of the New Testament. His earlier travels had made him fluent in Italian and probably in French; he also knew Latin and perhaps had some Greek.5
Cromwell followed a business career in London, dealing in cloth and lending money, but he also picked up enough law to establish the successful practice which is first glimpsed about 1518. Although by then a servant of Wolsey he continued to have other clients throughout his years with the cardinal and even after he entered the royal service. Who or what brought him to Wolsey’s notice is not known. The intermediary could have been the 2nd Marquess of Dorset, although the only surviving evidence of Cromwell’s connexion with the Grey family dates from 1522, and the dowager marchioness’s description of him as her son’s servant may mean no more than that he was one of Dorset’s lawyers. Another possible agent is the Robert Cromwell who was vicar of Battersea and overseer of works there for Wolsey. It may even be that Cromwell had brought a recommendation on his return from Antwerp, perhaps to the Luccese merchant Antonio Bonvisi, whose friendship he was to share with Thomas More and whose customers included Wolsey. Cromwell, like More, had a talent for friendship and he had already a wide acquaintanceship.6
It was doubtless to Wolsey that Cromwell owed his election to the Parliament of 1523, the only one summoned during the 14 years of the chancellorship. Wolsey could have nominated his servant for almost any seat, but as he held the bishopric of Bath and Wells in commendam until shortly before the Parliament met, when he was succeeded by his chaplain John Clerke, the city of Bath is a distinct possibility, with Cromwell’s interest in the cloth trade an additional recommendation. That Cromwell was a Member appears from his statement in a letter of 17 Aug. that he and others had ‘endured a Parliament which continued by the space of 17 whole weeks’, although this was to ignore its three-week prorogation. He also prepared—the draft survives in the hand of one of his clerks—and may have delivered a speech against the war with France which the Parliament had been summoned to finance; he maintained that France could not be successfully invaded because of logistic difficulties and that the better plan was to conquer Scotland and unite it with England. Strange as such arguments may appear emanating from a servant of Wolsey, they might be explained, as has been recently suggested, if Wolsey himself was sufficiently opposed to the aggressive foreign policy favoured by the King to look to Parliament to frustrate it by refusing supply. Given the country’s hostility to an excessive subsidy, what was needed was to give the Commons its head by means of the liberty of speech claimed by Speaker More. Cromwell’s own epitaph on the Parliament shows how widely the debates ranged: we communed of war, peace, strife, contentation, debate, murmur, grudge, riches, poverty, perjury, truth, falsehood, justice, equity, deceit, oppression, magnanimity, activity, force, attemperance, treason, murder, felony, conciliation and also how a commonwealth might be edified. However, in conclusion we have done as our predecessors have been wont to do, that is to say, as well as we might and left where we began.7
Later in 1523 Cromwell served on the inquest of wardmote in Broadstreet ward. In the following year he was included in the London subsidy commission, was admitted to Gray’s Inn and at Wolsey’s direction embarked on the suppression of some 30 smaller monastic communities for the benefit of the cardinal’s educational foundations at Ipswich and Oxford. He was to be involved at every stage of this project and according to George Cavendish his continued interest in it after Wolsey’s attainder was the occasion of his access to the King, ‘by means whereof and by his witty demeanour he grew continually into the King’s favour’. After Wolsey’s withdrawal from the court, first to Esher and then to York, Cromwell remained his factotum and partisan. Although he had no option but to assist the crown in preparing the charge of praemunire against Wolsey he did his best for his old master. When a bill of articles was introduced into the Parliament of 1529 condemning Wolsey of treason it was he who ‘inveighed’ against it ‘so discreetly, with such witty persuasions and deep reasons, that the same bill could take there no effect’.8
Cromwell’s return to that Parliament has provoked much discussion, and understandably so, for the circumstances are far from clear. It was not until the end of October, within a few days of the opening, that he seems to have made a bid for a seat. The reason for such untypical slowness can scarcely have been other than his doubt whether, as Wolsey’s right hand man, he could procure one without falling foul of authority. That is why, when he resolved to do so, his first step was to obtain, with the help of his clerk Ralph Sadler, Sir John Gage and the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, the King’s agreement to his election, albeit on condition that he should conduct himself in the House according to royal instructions. That obstacle removed, on 1 Nov., he still had to find a seat. With but two days left the prospect of finding a vacant one was negligible; the only hope was to replace someone already elected who could be persuaded to stand down.9
How this was contrived has to be deduced from two prime pieces of evidence. The first, and more direct, is Cavendish’s statement that Cromwell replaced the son of his friend Thomas Rush; the second is Sadler’s promise to obey Cromwell’s instruction to ‘require’ Sir William Paulet to release a seat for one of the boroughs belonging to Wolsey as bishop of Winchester. The fact that Cromwell did come in for one of these boroughs, Taunton, whereas Sadler seems to imply that the vacancy created by the withdrawal of Rush’s son would be at Orford, has given rise to the impression that these were alternative openings and hence to the conclusion that Paulet was turned to only after the Orford plan failed. The confusion has been thickened by the failure to identify Rush’s ‘so’ as his stepson Thomas Alvard; the eldest of Rush’s sons by the widowed Anne Alvard could have been only in his early twenties at the time of the election, when Alvard was at least 36 and, like his stepfather, a man of consequence in Wolsey’s entourage and a friend of Cromwell.10
That it was not Alvard whom Cromwell might have replaced at Orford is clear from the election there of two other men. Yet one of those men, Erasmus Paston, was such as Rush might have tried to supplant; the seat which he took had probably come by 1529 under the patronage of the Duke of Suffolk, with whom Rush had long been associated, while Rush’s own standing at Orford could have counted for something. Thus if it was at Orford that Rush was expected to intervene it could not have been at the expense of his stepson, who was not elected there, and Cavendish’s statement, if it is to be accepted, must apply to a different borough. The obvious first choice is Ipswich, where Rush’s influence was at its strongest and where he himself was to take the senior seat; but although Rush may well have hoped that his stepson would be his fellow-Member (as Alvard was later to become, by way of a by-election) the issue had been decided three weeks earlier when Thomas Hayward, the Ipswich common clerk, had been elected. With Orford and Ipswich thus ruled out there appears to be only one way of reconciling Cavendish’s statement with the rest of the evidence, namely, by concluding that it was at Taunton that Cromwell replaced Alvard. It is not hard to imagine that if Rush had failed to find Alvard a seat nearer home he should have turned to one of Wolsey’s boroughs, where Paulet as steward evidently handled the nominations; nor would it be surprising if, once Cromwell had gained the King’s consent to his own election, Rush and Alvard had yielded to his superior claim and Paulet had substituted his name on the return. Whether the King or Norfolk brought any pressure to bear it is impossible to say.
Upwards of two years were to elapse before this last-minute scramble into the Commons was to issue in an unprecedented mastery of that assembly. Cromwell was probably admitted to the Council shortly after Wolsey’s death in November 1530: he is first mentioned as a Councillor early in the following January. He soon made himself the Council’s expert on parliamentary matters. It looks as though he assumed this role during the second session (January-March 1531) of the Parliament of 1529. By the summer of 1531 it was commonly believed in London that ‘Mr. Cromwell penned certain matters in the parliament house, which no man gainsaid’, and when the session ended he removed the 29 bills which were then left unfinished to the safety of his counting house. In the autumn Henry VIII directed him to co-operate with members of the King’s legal council in preparing bills for treason, sewers and apparel in readiness for the next session, and at the close of that session in May 1532 he again removed the unfinished bills, 16 in number. His remembrances often include topics to be legislated on and occasionally mention bills in progress, as when in 1534 the bills for faculties and for dairy produce were due to be engrossed. From 1532, at least, he used a group recruited by himself to compile a programme of reform for embodiment in statutes, while others not in his employ, like John Rastell, submitted their own proposals for his consideration. Corporations, monastic houses and private individuals sought his advice and approval for measures they wanted to see enacted, and to that end plied him with gifts. To judge from the requests emanating from these quarters he seems to have been consulted in 1532 mainly as a legal adviser, but later the mounting demands of the crown left him little time for such private business. He took great care over the drafting of bills; corrections in his hand appear at different stages of those for tinworks and harbours in Devon and Cornwall (23 Hen. VIII, c.8), for restraint of appeals (24 Hen. VIII, c.12) and for pewterers (25 Hen. VIII, c.9). In 1536 he had included in the Act (27 Hen. VIII, c.47) making the King heir to the 5th Earl of Northumberland’s lands a proviso protecting an annuity given him by the earl.11
By the spring of 1532 Cromwell was in a position to supervise a sizeable change in the composition of the House. Having first established, by means of an annotated copy of the Crown Office list, the vacancies created by deaths or elevations to the Lords since the Parliament began, he initiated a series of by-elections. This was prefaced by the compilation by Thomas Wriothesley of a further list on which, out of 29 vacancies recorded, 17 were accompanied by the names of those recommended to fill them and a further eight by the names of the personages entitled to nominate, these being the King (for four seats), the attorney-general, the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the lord warden of the Cinque Ports. The fact that for the most part each vacancy is accompanied by two names implies that Wriothesley either took it on himself, or was told, to furnish such a choice. What then befell the document was clearly Cromwell’s doing: it was he who placed a small circle against one out of each pair of names (or when both seats were vacant two out of three) as well as adding six vacancies and in four of these cases entering a single name. This is not to say that Cromwell was alone responsible for these choices, in which the King may have had a hand. Nor in the absence of by-election returns is there much evidence to show whether the persons so designated were successful. Only Sir John Neville II and John Scudamore are known to have come in for their respective shires; Sir Francis Bryan and Sir Henry Long were by-elected, although not for certain as knights of the shire; and the balance of probability is that Sir Thomas Cheyne, Sir Arthur Hopton, Sir John St. John and William Skipwith joined them in the House. On the other hand, Richard Sapcote seems to have been dismayed by Audley’s and Cromwell’s instructions to solicit support for his own election for Huntingdonshire, where Thomas Hall II (q.v.) was already in the field.12
Although this list reflects Cromwell’s interest in the recruitment of Members, it reveals little effort on his part to introduce his own dependants or associates. The great majority of the names are those of men of independent standing in their localities, and Cromwell’s—if they were his own—choices between them are scarcely revealing. But as yet he was standing only on the threshold of supremacy; the year that followed shows him wielding increasing influence on behalf of particular individuals. The loss of so many returns puts out of the question any measurement of his intervention: out of some 40 by-elections known or presumed to have been held from the beginning of 1533 to the close of the Parliament, 16 produced Members whose names have not survived. Yet the names which are known include those of several men who stood close to Cromwell, among them Thomas Alvard, Sir Francis Bigod, David Broke, Sir Roger Cholmley, Thomas Derby, John Goodall and Robert Southwell.
Of Cromwell’s technique for controlling the House only fragments of evidence exist. The most interesting is furnished by two documents believed to date from 1533. The first is a list of 36 names (originally at least 37, the first being lost through the tearing of the paper), all of men known or presumed to have been Members at that time. Against A. F. Pollard’s suggestion that the list was a sounding board of parliamentary opinion it may be urged that from what is known of the outlook of the men concerned the majority of them were unsympathetic to the breach with the pope and that this was why their names were thus brought together on the list. Again, the most likely occasion of its production was the passage through the House of the bill against appeals to Rome, the outstanding measure of the fourth session. Evidence of opposition to this bill is not lacking, and it includes the stand taken, albeit temporarily, by Sir George Throckmorton, whose name heads the list in its present form. That the list is of official provenance is shown by the order in which the names appear; they were clearly derived from a scrutiny of the Crown Office list. If the list may be taken to represent an effort by authority, doubtless in the person of Cromwell, to identify the Members most likely to give trouble, the use, if any, to which it was put remains a matter for speculation. We do not know of any Member other than Throckmorton who was taken to task, but the addition to 18 of the names on the list of the person’s domicile (in some cases seemingly of his diocese) prompts the thought that some local action may have been contemplated.13
Of quite another character is the second list, which contains the names of 50 Members. Unlike those of the first, its names are arranged in no discernible order save that as originally set down they began with five holders of high office, Cromwell himself standing first as ‘Mr Secretary’. This official group is followed by 16 knights of the shire and 22 Members for cities and boroughs, the constituencies of the remaining seven Members being uncertain or unknown. Both the ratio between knights and borough Members, and the wide geographical spread of their constituencies, make this assemblage a fair sample of the House, and this in turn suggests that the names are those of a committee, although whether operative or merely intended remains unknown. In the absence of the Journal nothing can be learned of the use of committees during this Parliament, but it is reasonable to assume that they were resorted to only for bills of importance and then only if these gave rise to difficulty. Outstanding among such bills was the treasons bill passed in the seventh session, and the evident disquiet which it aroused in the House could well have led to its committal to this group of Members. In that event, the chief interest of the list would lie in its apparent counterbalancing of the ‘official’ group by a number of Members likely to be critical, among them seven or eight of those named in the earlier list. Although the names of several of Cromwell’s close associates are to be found on it, the list can in no way be construed as a product of official packing.14
Cromwell’s management of this Parliament doubtless included the timing of its recurrent prorogations, which matched the vicissitudes of the political and religious scene, and of its eventual dissolution. In retrospect this final act was to prove a blunder, for within two weeks of the dissolution a fresh Parliament had to be summoned in consequence of the King’s decision to make away with his second Queen. It was with the intention of making the new Parliament in effect yet another and concluding session of the previous one that the King caused the writs to be accompanied by a request for the re-election of the same Members; the device had been used once before in the reign, in respect of the Parliament of 1515. In theory, therefore, the Parliament of 1536 furnished no opportunity to Cromwell to intervene in the elections, which should have been predetermined. In fact, the outcome was somewhat different. Of the 312 Members presumed to have been returned the names of over two thirds are irrecoverably lost; of the 68 whose names are known 47 had certainly and a further four had probably sat in the previous Parliament, while 15 had certainly not and two had probably not done so. If these Members were roughly representative of the whole, it follows that approximately three quarters of the Commons of 1536 were old Members and one quarter fresh ones, and that the royal request met with less than universal compliance. Some degree of change would have been unavoidable: old age, sickness or death, and in one or two cases appointment to debarring office, must have excluded some former Members from reelection, but the majority of those who did not reappear probably found other reasons or were officially discouraged or eliminated.
Cromwell’s role in the matter has to be gauged from the only two known examples of his intervention. The first is his notorious insistence that the city of Canterbury, which had elected—perhaps in ignorance of the King’s request—two new Members, should set them aside in favour of its previous ones. The second, which has attracted less notice, is his imposition of two nominees in place of the previous Members for Buckingham. This departure from the general requirement is best explained by the presumption that the two men so displaced were unacceptable by reason of their connexion with the doomed Queen. Whether Cromwell took steps to exclude other similar undesirables cannot be known, nor is there more than a hint that he promoted the election of men of his own choosing, although both Richard Pollard and Ralph Sadler owed their nominations to him.15
It is not even clear whether Cromwell’s own election accorded with the royal request. Although there can be little doubt that he was returned for a shire, its identity remains a matter of guesswork, with Kent as the probable favourite in view of his recent acquisition of property there. In that case he could have been re-elected, for the death of Sir Henry Guildford in May 1532 had created a vacancy which Cromwell may have filled by exchanging Taunton for the more prestigious knighthood of a shire. The importance of his presence in the House was to be implicitly recognized by the circumstances of his ennoblement. Although this took place in the middle of the session, his patent exempted him from taking his seat in the Lords for the remainder of the Parliament and he did so only in the afternoon of the day of dissolution. One of the Acts of this Parliament (28 Hen. VIII, c.50) established his title to the manor of Wimbledon and other properties recently granted to him by the King. Throughout the session he was a frequent bearer of bills to the Lords.16
In June 1538 John Hull II, the collector of customs at Exeter, wrote to Cromwell to enlist his support for a bill which the city wished to introduce in the Parliament then thought imminent, but another nine months elapsed before the writs were issued. Cromwell was then to assure the King that he ‘and other your dedicate Councillors be about to bring all things so to pass that your majesty had never had more tractable Parliament’, and went on to describe the work of Sir William Fitzwilliam I, Earl of Southampton, in Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex. The Duke of Norfolk sent the minister a list of the boroughs in his control and ended ‘In all the shires of my commission [as commander in the north], save Lancashire, I have put such order that such shall be chosen as I doubt not shall serve his highness according to his pleasure; and likewise I did in Norfolk and Suffolk before my last coming here’. Only in the instances of the earl and the duke is there documentary evidence to bear out Cromwell’s assertion that other members of the Council played an active part in the period before the elections, but analysis of the men returned to the Parliament and of their connexions suggests that other Councillors were equally diligent. The letters from earl and duke to King and minister, together with Cromwell’s own statement, leave little doubt that the decision to influence the elections was a conciliar one and that the decision was put into effect by the whole Council with Cromwell acting as coordinator.17
Of Cromwell’s own, more direct, part in the election of 1539 there are a few tantalizing glimpses. In Hampshire he seems not to have trusted Bishop Gardiner of Winchester to manage the shire election in the crown’s interest as he himself wrote to the freeholders on behalf of Thomas Wriothesley and John Kingsmill: Kingsmill being sheriff, the election was postponed until the King’s pleasure became known, when Wriothesley was returned with Cromwell’s servant Richard Worsley. On Cromwell’s instructions the cellarer of the Household, Richard Hill of Hartley Wintney, had rallied his neighbours and tenants to ensure the return of the minister’s nominees against opposition from Gardiner. In Norfolk Cromwell obtained the support of Sir Edmund Knyvet in persuading his friends to vote for Edmund Wyndham and Richard Southwell as knights of the shire, but then upset Knyvet who at the election offered himself as an alternative to Southwell. At Norwich the election for the city’s Members had already been held when Cromwell’s nomination of John Godsalve arrived, but the city obliged the minister by asking for a new writ to warrant a second election and then by returning Godsalve. Cromwell also obtained a nomination at Gatton after it had been promised to another. Whom he sponsored there is not recorded, but for such an undistinguished borough it is unlikely to have been Richard Morison, the pamphleteer selected as a government spokesman during the Parliament whose nomination by himself the minister singled out for mention to the King.18
Two weeks before the opening of Parliament Cromwell contracted a fever which still troubled him on 4 May, but he was sufficiently recovered six days later to take his place in the Lords. That when he did so he took his place as vicegerent, with precedence before all save the King, not as Baron Cromwell sitting with the rest of the barons, creates a strong presumption that he delayed his recovery until the bill regulating seating in the Lords had been passed and put into effect. The gravity of his illness can be gauged by his failure to have ready for introduction into Parliament the legislative programme outlined by him in the previous March, in particular ‘a device ... for the unity in religion’. The measure to give proclamations greater effect met with opposition and its passage through Parliament diverted Cromwell’s attention from the committee under his chairmanship to establish uniformity. This enabled Norfolk to accuse him of slothfulness as vicegerent and to present the Lords with six major doctrinal issues in the form of questions so framed as to demand strictly traditional answers. Although outmanoeuvred Cromwell continued to pursue a line of moderation until the King announced his own support for Norfolk’s orthodoxy. The bill introduced in the second session and passed as the Act of Six Articles (31 Hen. VIII, c.14) reflected the beliefs of men unsympathetic towards reform and the vicegerent. Yet despite these setbacks Cromwell remained the King’s chief minister. The Act changing the custom of gavelkind in Kent (31 Hen. VIII, c.3) names Cromwell first among its beneficiaries: this subsumed a private bill settling certain lands on himself and his heirs which passed through both Houses but never received the assent.19
During the prorogation Cromwell pressed ahead with reform of the Household and concluded a treaty of marriage and defence between England and Cleves, but Henry VIII took against his new Queen. After two postponements Parliament reassembled on 12 Apr. 1540. Cromwell opened the session with a speech on the need for unity and concord in religion, but in the event he obtained only a short enabling Act (32 Hen. VIII, c.26) looking to future decisions from two committees of bishops ordered to formulate a definition of doctrine and to draw up a book of authorized ceremonies. The greater part of the government legislation inaugurated by him fared better. On 17 Apr. Cromwell was raised to the earldom of Essex and given the office of chamberlain, resigning his secretaryship in favour of Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir Thomas Wriothesley. The King’s infatuation with Catherine Howard and decision to divorce Anne of Cleves to marry Catherine left Cromwell with the task of putting asunder the union that he had long promoted, and thus reviving the Howard interest at court. In late May he had arrested the deputy of Calais and the bishop of Chichester on charges of intrigue with Cardinal Pole, but on 10 June after a morning in the House of Lords he himself was arrested at a council meeting in the afternoon and accused of heresy and treason. Taken to the Tower and his possessions seized, Cromwell was condemned without a trial. His sentence was confirmed by an Act of attainder (32 Hen. VIII, no.52) but he was allowed to languish in captivity as long as his testimony about the King’s repugnance for Anne of Cleves was of use in the royal divorce proceedings. The divorce completed, Cromwell was executed on Tower Hill on 28 July. A parliamentary bill confirming an exchange of lands between himself and the King was killed by his downfall. Copies of his portrait by Holbein survive but not the original.20
Ref Volumes: 1509-1558
Author: S. T. Bindoff
Notes
1.LP Hen. VIII, iii. 3249.
2.Ibid. xi. 34.
3.Date of birth estimated from marriage. This biography rests on the numerous writings of Prof. G.R. Elton and on B. W. Beckingsale, Thomas Cromwell. DNB; CP.
4.Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, lxviii. 193; LP Hen. VIII, iv-xiii; Somerville, Duchy, i. 604, 606, 614; Bristol AO, 04026/2/202; Westminster abbey reg. 2, ff. 288, 298; LJ, i. 84, 103.
5.Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, lxviii. 193-5.
6.Ibid. lxviii. 194; M. L. Robertson, ‘Cromwell’s servants’ (Univ. California Los Angeles Ph.D. thesis, 1975), 44-45; LP Hen. VIII, ii-iv.
7.LP Hen. VIII, iii. 2958, 3249; R. L. Woods, ‘Pol. and precedent: Wolsey’s Parlt. of 1523’, HLQ, xl. 297-312; Merriman, Cromwell, i. 30-44.
8.LP Hen. VIII, iii, iv; J. Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 27-29; J. E. Oxley, Ref. in Essex, 70-81; G. Cavendish, Wolsey (EETS ccxliii), 112-13, 123-7, 129-32.
9.LP Hen. VIII, iv; A. J. Slavin, Pol. and Profit, 19-20.
10.Cavendish, 112; Slavin, 19.
11.LP Hen. VIII, iv-xi, xiv, xv; Elton, Reform and Renewal, 78-97 passim; Policy and Police, 101; ‘Parlty. drafts 1529-40’, Bull. IHR, xxv. 117-32; xxvii. 198-200; ‘The evolution of a parlty. statute’, EHR, lxiv. 174-94; ‘The Commons supplication of 1532’, EHR, lxvi. 507-34; ‘An early Tudor poor law’, Econ. Hist. Rev. (ser. 2), vi. 55-67.
12.LP Hen. VIII, vii vii. 56 citing SP1/82, ff. 59-62; A. F. Pollard, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s parlty. lists’, Bull. IHR, ix. 31-43.
13.LP Hen. VIII, vii. 1522(ii) citing SP1/87, f. 106v; ix. 1077 citing SP1/99, p. 234; Bull. IHR, ix. 31-43.
14.LP Hen. VIII, vii. 1522(ii) citing SP1/87, f. 106v; Bull. IHR, ix. 31-43.
15.LP Hen. VIII, x. 40(ii) citing Cott. Otho C10, f. 218.
16.Elton, Eng. under the Tudors, 175; LJ, i. 88, 95, 97-101.
17.LP Hen. VIII, x, xiv.
18.Ibid. xiv; Norwich mayors’ ct. bk. f. 152 ex inf. Dr. J. Miklovich.
19.LP Hen. VIII, xiv; LJ, i. 103-25.
20.LP Hen. VIII, xv; LJ, i. 128-43; Elton, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s decline and fall’, Camb. Hist. Jnl. x. 150-85; R. C. Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraiture, 112-14."
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Tudors Dynasty Podcast: Caroline Angus on Thomas Cromwell
My guest today is author Caroline Angus. Caroline is one of the leading authorities on Thomas Cromwell. Her research on him has been so extensive that she has published a trilogy called The Queenmaker Series. Today, Caroline will help us better understand Thomas Cromwell.
Painted as an evil-mastermind, Thomas Cromwell’s reputation, like Thomas Seymour’s has not done them any favors. Yet, authors like Hilary Mantel have returned him to his human form. Thomas Cromwell, the man. Let’s chat with Caroline Angus about the man, the myth, the legend….Thomas Cromwell.
https://youtu.be/3A7NpyBztOM?t=163
Images:
1. Brewer’s son - Thomas Cromwell, after Hans Holbein the Younger, engraving, 17th century.
2. The dissolution of the monasteries during the Reformation. Photograph - Rischgitz_Getty Images
3. A copy of Hans Holbein's original painting of Thomas Cromwell (c. 1533)
4. Title page of the second 'Great Bible', 1540. Thomas Cromwell's injunctions of September 1538 required every parish to purchase a copy of an English Bible and place it in 'some convenient place' for all to see and read. To meet this demand, the Great Bible, so called because of its size, was put into production. This particular Bible with its coloured title page was probably Henry VIII’s personal copy. © British Library
Biographies
1. spartacus-educational.com/TUDcromwell.htm
2. historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/cromwell-thomas-1485-1540]
1. Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/TUDcromwell.htm]}
Thomas Cromwell was born in London, in about 1485. His father, Walter Cromwell, was a blacksmith, fuller, and cloth merchant, as well as the owner of both a hostelry and a brewery.
Walter Cromwell's success in business resulted in him being appointed as a constable in Putney. "Walter Cromwell's modest success as a tradesman is reflected by his frequent service as a juryman and his appointment as constable of Putney in 1495. He secured good marriages to local men for his daughters: the elder, Katherine, married Morgan Williams, an aspiring Welsh lawyer; her younger sister, Elizabeth, married a farmer, William Wellyfed. Katherine and Morgan's son Richard changed his name to Cromwell and worked in his uncle's service." (1) Richard's great-grandson was Oliver Cromwell, the lord protector.
Walter Cromwell developed a drink problem and was fined 6d. by the manor court on forty-eight occasions for breaches of the assize of ale, and he was also often reprimanded for allowing his cattle to graze too freely on public land. On another occasion he was convicted of assault and fined 20d. This seemed to have an impact on Thomas and later admitted that in his youth he was a "ruffian" and was said to be imprisoned for a short while.
In his late teens Cromwell travelled to Italy. He became a soldier and fought at the Battle of Garigliano on 28th December 1503. The following year he joined the household of the merchant banker Francesco Frescobaldi. (2) The Italian novelist Matteo Bandello tells how the destitute Cromwell confronted Frescobaldi in Florence, begging for his assistance. "Frescobaldi is said instantly to have taken pity on him and invited him to stay in his household, where he provided clothes and money. Bandello also records that when Cromwell decided to return to England, Frescobaldi gave him sixteen gold ducats and a strong horse." (3)
Thomas Cromwell - Cloth Merchant
Cromwell did not go home and instead went to the Netherlands, where he worked as a cloth merchant. Over the next couple of years Cromwell certainly visited leading mercantile centres as Antwerp and Bruges. There he learned his trade living among the English merchants and was able to develop an important network of contacts, as well as learning several languages, including German, French and Italian. (4)
Cromwell returned to England and worked as a cloth merchant. He also studied law during this period. (5) Wolsey married Elizabeth Wykys in about 1515. Over the next few years she gave birth to three children, Gregory, Anne and Grace. (6) Cromwell's father-in-law, Henry Wyckes, had served Henry VII as a gentleman usher. He was also a good business contact and was a significant figure in the cloth trade in London. By 1520 Cromwell was firmly established in London mercantile and legal circles. In 1521 he was employed by the London bakers' guild to draft petitions to the government. (7) A contemporary described him as a "a short, stoutly built man, with a large face, smooth shaven, with close-cropped hair, and a heavy double chin, with a small and cruel mouth, an extraordinary long upper lip, and a pair of gray eyes set closely together, and moving restlessly under his light eyebrows." (8)
In 1523 Cromwell became a member of the House of Commons. In one speech he advises against war against France. He argued that he is as committed as anyone to reclaiming France for the king, but claimed that the venture would be too expensive. He pointed out that the cost of the previous French War (1512-1514) had been enormous. It is estimated that most of the wealth Henry VIII inherited from his father had been used to finance the war. This had resulted in Parliament having to grant a tax upon every adult male, a measure that proved unpopular and difficult to collect and had caused public disorder. (9) Instead he suggested conquering Scotland, whose union with England will in turn make France more submissive.
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey
Thomas Cromwell was appointed a subsidy commissioner in Middlesex. In 1524 he carried out legal work for John Aleyn, a London alderman and a senior member of the Mercers' Company. During this work he came into contact with Thomas Heneage, a close associate of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Heneage was impressed with Cromwell and recommended him to Wolsey and later that year he was carrying out work for the king's Lord Chancellor. (10)
Thomas Wolsey decided in 1525 to establish Cardinal College (now Christ Church) in Oxford. In order to pay for this he dissolved twenty-nine monasteries on the grounds that they were greedy and uncaring landlords. It was also claimed that the monks had been corrupted by the wealth obtained from renting their land. The college was built on the land owned by the Priory of St Frideswide. (11) Wolsey selected Thomas Cromwell to arrange the selling the lands and goods owned by the monasteries. (12) Cromwell wrote to Wolsey praising his achievement: "The magnificent buildings of your noble college... in every man's judgement has never been seen." (13)
In 1528 Thomas Cromwell's wife, Elizabeth, and their two daughters, Anne and Grace, died during an epidemic of sweating sickness. Peter Ackroyd has pointed out: "Sweating sickness... was a fever, accompanied by a profuse and foul-smelling sweat, began its progress. It was accompanied by sharp pains in the back and shoulders before moving to the liver; lethargy and drowsiness ensued, with a sleep that often led to death. Swift and merciless, it became known as the sweat or the sweating sickness." (14)
Cromwell was now recognized as one of the cardinal's most senior and trusted advisers, as well as managing to maintain a prosperous private legal practice. However, Wolsey was having serious problems with his relationship with Henry VIII who wanted a divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. The historian, Eric William Ives, has argued: "At first, however, Henry had no thought of marriage. He saw Anne as someone to replace her sister, Mary (wife of one of the privy chamber staff, William Carey), who had just ceased to be the royal mistress. Certainly the physical side of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was already over and, with no male heir, Henry decided by the spring of 1527 that he had never validly been married and that his first marriage must be annulled.... However, Anne continued to refuse his advances, and the king realized that by marrying her he could kill two birds with one stone, possess Anne and gain a new wife." (15)
After two years of careful diplomatic negotiation a trial opened at Blackfriars on 18th June 1529 to prove the illegality of the marriage, presided over by Wolsey and Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio. Catherine made a spirited defence of her position. George Cavendish was an eyewitness in the court. He quotes her saying: "Sir, I beseech you, for all the loves that hath been betrayed us, and for the love of God, let me have justice and right. Take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman and a stranger born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friend, and much less indifferent counsel. I flee to you as the head of justice within this realm. Alas, Sir, where have I offended you? Or what occasion have you of displeasure, that you intend to put me from you? I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. I have been pleased and contented with all things wherein you had delight and dalliance. I never grudged a word or countenance, or showed a spark of discontent. I loved all those whom you loved only for your sake, whether I had cause or no, and whether they were my friends or enemies. This twenty years and more I have been your true wife, and by me you have had many children, though it hath pleased God to call them out of this world, which hath been no fault in me." (16)
The trial was adjourned by Campeggi on 30th July to allow Catherine's petition to reach Rome. This caused serious problems for Wolsey: "This instantly and considerably weakened Wolsey's position, giving the hostile coterie of courtiers who flocked around Anne the leverage they needed to topple him. Nevertheless he fought hard to retain office, and the king's evident reluctance to lose his services enabled him to cling to power until the autumn. It was not until 18th October that Wolsey resigned the great seal, and even then Henry protected him against complete ruin." (17) With the encouragement of Anne Boleyn, Henry became convinced that Wolsey's loyalties lay with the Pope. (18)
Thomas Cromwell & Henry VIII
Thomas Cromwell feared that he would suffer for being so closely associated with Wolsey. He received a letter from his friend, Stephen Vaughan, who had written to him from Antwerp to console him following Wolsey's fall from power, assuring him: "You are more hated for your master's sake than for anything which I think you have wrongfully done against any man". (19) However, he still had some good contacts and with the help of Sir William Paulet he managed to obtain the seat for Taunton in the House of Commons.
Wolsey's palaces and colleges were confiscated by the crown as a punishment for his offences, and he retired to his home in York. He began secretly negotiating with foreign powers in an attempt to get their support in persuading Henry to restore him to favour. Thomas Cromwell, warned him that his enemies knew what he was doing. He was arrested and charged with high treason. Wolsey died on 29th November 1530 before he could be brought to trial. (20)
Cromwell still had friends who were close to Henry VIII. This included Bishop Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Heneage. The attorney-general, Sir Christopher Hales, was also a great admirer of Cromwell and suggested to the King that he could be of use to the government. By 1531 Cromwell had taken control of the supervision of the King's legal and parliamentary affairs. His work included the sale and receipt of land for the king; the supervising of building works at Westminster and the Tower of London; and involvement in various matters of law enforcement, such as hearing appeals and deciding the fate of prisoners and felons brought before him. (21)
Thomas Cromwell made contact with Robert Barnes, a close associate of Martin Luther in the summer of 1531. Cromwell asked him to discover Luther's opinion on the divorce proceedings between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Luther's response was unfavourable to the king, but Barnes's seemed to be willing to compromise his views in order to return to England. He produced Supplication unto King Henry VIII and sent a copy to Cromwell who then showed it to Henry.
In early 1532 Barnes travelled to London under the protection of Cromwell and was granted a private audience with the king. As David Loades, the author of Thomas Cromwell (2013) has pointed out: "Although his supplication was offensive to the monarch in the sense that it advocated justification by faith alone, it also explained a number of Lutheran tenents in terms which were acceptable to his sovereign. The king would have been looking for some endorsement of his position on his marriage, and over that it is likely that Barnes was non-committal." (22)
Sir Thomas More considered Barnes a heretic and protested about his meeting with the king. He pointed out that in Barnes's writings he had said that if his king ordered him to violate God's law, he must disobey and passively suffer martyrdom, though even then he must not resist the king by force. Barnes had also said that if the king ordered a man to burn his copy of the Bible, he would be justified in disobeying. More argued that Henry had ordered the burning of Bibles in English and therefore he was acting in a seditious manner. Barnes was in danger of being arrested and so he returned to Antwerp. (23)
Thomas Cromwell developed a reputation for the leading expert in drafting legislation in Parliament. In January 1532 Cromwell called into question the right of the Church to make laws of its own. His main opponent was Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, who argued that the Church's right to make its own laws was "grounded upon the Scripture of God and determination of Holy Church, which must also be a rule and square to try the justice of all laws, as well spiritual as temporal." (24)
John Guy, the author of Tudor England (1986) has argued that Cromwell was a natural orator. "He made a formidable adversary in debate, sharp enough to defeat More, John Fisher, and Stephen Gardiner in verbal tussles. But his manner was usually relaxed and always engaging. When speaking, his face lit up; his conversation sparkled; and he cast roguish oblique glances when striking aphorisms. Most important, his talent for managing men and institutions was instinctive. Of course, for all his ease of manner, accessibility, and capacity for friendship, Cromwell had a dangerous edge. He was a politician who got things done. A degree of ruthlessness was the corollary of his single-mindedness." (25)
Henry VIII insisted that the Church should abandon its claim to make laws without royal permission. Thomas Cromwell fully supported the king in the House of Commons and successfully manipulated the mood of the members by encouraging their anti-clerical grievances. "There is little doubt that in his support for the royal supremacy Cromwell was influenced by genuine evangelical convictions. He was probably also acting with the enthusiasm of a recent convert." (26)
William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made comments suggesting that he was willing to follow the example of Thomas Becket, and resist the king's demands. However, he was now over eighty and lacking in both health and strength, and eventually submitted to the king's will. Sir Thomas More, the man who replaced Thomas Wolsey as Lord Chancellor, remained opposed to the idea and resigned from office.
Archbishop Warham died in August 1532, and was replaced by Thomas Cranmer. He was the ideal man for Henry, since he believed in royal supremacy over the Church. In March 1533, Cranmer was formally consecrated, but immediately before the ceremony he read aloud a statement declaring that while he was willing to take the customary oaths of allegiance to the Pope it would be with the reservation that his duty to the King came first. Cranmer obtained a licence from Henry authorising him to try the case of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He set up his court at Dunstable and on 23rd May pronounced judgement that Henry's so-called marriage with Catherine had never been valid and that the King must stop living in sin with this woman who was not his wife. (27)
Cromwell was rewarded in his role in acquiring the divorce by being appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He also arranged for the arrest of Elizabeth Barton and her supporters. Barton had been having visions of the future since 1525. Her predictions were popular and she developed a large following. However, in 1532, she began claiming that if Henry remarried, he would die shortly thereafter, and said she had seen the place in Hell where he would go. Barton was later executed to show the English public that Henry would not allow any dissent concerning his marriage. (28)
Anne Boleyn was pregnant. As it was important that the child should not be classed as illegitimate, arrangements were made for Henry and Anne to get married. King Charles V of Spain threatened to invade England if the marriage took place, but Henry ignored his threats and the marriage went ahead. Anne was crowned queen on 1st June, 1533. It was very important to Henry that his wife should give birth to a male child. Without a son to take over from him when he died, Henry feared that the Tudor family would lose control of England.
Elizabeth was born on 7th September, 1533. Henry expected a son and selected the names of Edward and Henry. While Henry was furious about having another daughter, the supporters of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon were delighted and claimed that it proved God was punishing Henry for his illegal marriage to Anne. (29) Retha M. Warnicke, the author of The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) has pointed out: "As the king's only legitimate child, Elizabeth was, until the birth of a prince, his heir and was to be treated with all the respect that a female of her rank deserved. Regardless of her child's sex, the queen's safe delivery could still be used to argue that God had blessed the marriage. Everything that was proper was done to herald the infant's arrival." (30)
Thomas Cromwell - Chief Minister
Henry VIII formed a high opinion of Cromwell's abilities. It has been argued that the king "had many able diplomats, he had no administrator and political manager of Cromwell's calibre." (36) In December 1533 Henry gave Cromwell permission to unleash all the resources of the state in discrediting the papacy. "In one of the fiercest and ugliest smear campaigns in English history the minister showed his mastery of propaganda techniques as the pope was attacked throughout the nation in sermons and pamphlets. In the new year another session of parliament was summoned to enact the necessary legislation to break formally the remaining ties which bound England to Rome, again under Cromwell's meticulous supervision." (37)
In March 1534 Pope Clement VII eventually made his decision. He announced that Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn was invalid. Henry reacted by declaring that the Pope no longer had authority in England. In April 1534 Henry confirmed Cromwell as his principal secretary and chief minister, a position he had held in all but name for some time. In November 1534, Parliament passed an act that stated that Henry VIII was now the Head of the Church of England.
Thomas Cromwell was sympathetic towards the radical reformers such as Robert Barnes and Hugh Latimer. (38) He had been prosecuted under Thomas Wolsey and had fled to Antwerp where he associated with Martin Luther. Cromwell invited him to return to England where he wrote pamphlets in the defence of the royal supremacy. "He also argued that the Catholic Church, with its elaborate hierarchy, its shrines, pilgrimages, relics and indulgences, was irrelevant to the human condition." (39)
In January 1535, Thomas Cromwell was appointed as Vicar-General. This made him the King's deputy as Supreme Head of the Church. On 3rd June he sent a letter to all the bishops ordering them to preach in support of the supremacy, and to ensure that the clergy in their dioceses did so as well. A week later he sent further letters to Justices of Peace ordering them to report any instances of his instructions being disobeyed. In the following month he turned his attention to the monasteries. In September he suspended the authority of every bishop in the country so that the six canon lawyers he had appointed as his agents could complete their surveys of the monasteries. (40)
The survey revealed that the total annual income of all the monasteries was about £165,500. The eleven thousand monks and nuns in this institutions also controlled about a quarter of all the cultivated land in England. The six lawyers provided detailed reports on the monasteries. According to David Starkey: "Their subsequent reports concentrated on two areas: the sexual failings of the monks, on which subject the visitors managed to combine intense disapproval with lip-smacking detail, and the false miracles and relics, of which they gave equally gloating accounts." (41)
A Parliament was called in February 1536 to discuss these reports. With the encouragement of Cromwell they agreed to pass the Act for the Dissolution of Monasteries. This stated that all religious houses with an annual income of less than £200 were to be "suppressed". A total of 419 monastic houses were obliged to close but the abbots made petitions for exemptions, and 176 of the monasteries were allowed to stay open. It is believed that Cromwell was bribed in money and goods to reach this agreement. (42) Monastery land was seized and sold off cheaply to nobles and merchants. They in turn sold some of the lands to smaller farmers. This process meant that a large number of people had good reason to support the monasteries being closed. Thomas Fuller, the author of The Church History of Britain: Volume IV (1845) has argued that dissolution of the monasteries was of great personal benefit to Thomas Cromwell, Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley, Solicitor-General Richard Rich and Richard Southwell. (43)
Anne Boleyn was one of those who complained about Cromwell's treatment of the monasteries. As Eric William Ives has pointed out: "The fundamental reason for this was disagreement over the assets of the monasteries: Anne's support for the redeployment of monastic resources directly contradicted Cromwell's intention to put the proceeds of the dissolution into the king's coffers. The bill dissolving the smaller monasteries had passed both houses of parliament in mid-March, but before the royal assent was given Anne launched her chaplains on a dramatic preaching campaign to modify royal policy.... Cromwell was pilloried before the whole council as an evil and greedy royal adviser from the Old Testament, and specifically identified as the queen's enemy. Nor could the minister shrug off this declaration of war, even though, in spite of Anne's efforts, the dissolution act became law." (44)
Anne Boleyn
Henry VIII continued to try to produce a male heir. Anne Boleyn had two miscarriages and was pregnant again when she discovered Jane Seymour sitting on her husband's lap. Anne "burst into furious denunciation; the rage brought on a premature labour and was delivered of a dead boy" in late January or early February, 1536. (45) What is more, the baby was badly deformed. (46) This was a serious matter because in Tudor times Christians believed that a deformed child was God's way of punishing parents for committing serious sins. Henry VIII feared that people might think that the Pope Clement VII was right when he claimed that God was angry because Henry had divorced Catherine and married Anne.
Henry now approached Thomas Cromwell about how he could get out of his marriage with Anne. Cromwell decided to take this opportunity to remove the influence of Anne and her friends. Cromwell's biographer, Howard Leithead, has pointed out: "Anne Boleyn was well known for conducting herself with her courtiers in an informal and flirtatious manner, and Cromwell calculated that he could twist the language of courtly love to support an accusation of adultery." (47)
Cromwell suggested that one solution to this problem was to claim that he was not the father of this deformed child. On the king's instruction Cromwell was ordered to find out the name of the man who was the true father of the dead child. Philippa Jones has argued: "Cromwell was careful that the charge should stipulate that Anne Boleyn had only been unfaithful to the King after the Princess Elizabeth's birth in 1533. Henry wanted Elizabeth to be acknowledged as his daughter, but at the same time he wanted her removed from any future claim to the succession." (48)
In April 1536, a Flemish musician in Anne's service named Mark Smeaton was arrested. He initially denied being the Queen's lover but later confessed, perhaps tortured or promised freedom. (49) Another courtier, Henry Norris, was arrested on 1st May. Sir Francis Weston was arrested two days later on the same charge, as was William Brereton, a Groom of the King's Privy Chamber. Anne's brother, George Boleyn was also arrested and charged with incest. (50)
Anne was arrested and was taken to the Tower of London on 2nd May, 1536. Thomas Cromwell took this opportunity to destroy her brother, George Boleyn. He had always been close to his sister and in the circumstances it was not difficult to suggest to Henry that an incestuous relationship had existed. George was arrested on 2nd May, 1536, and taken to the Tower of London. David Loades has argued: "Both self control and a sense of proportion seem to have been completely abandoned, and for the time being Henry would believe any evil that he was told, however farfetched." (51)
On 12th May, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, as High Steward of England, presided over the trial of Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton at Westminster Hall. (52) Except for Smeaton they all pleaded not guilty to all charges. Thomas Cromwell made sure that a reliable jury was empanelled, consisting almost entirely of known enemies of the Boleyns. "These were not difficult to find, and they were all substantial men, with much to gain or lose by their behaviour in such a conspicuous theatre". (53)
Few details survive of the proceedings. Witnesses were called and several spoke of Anne Boleyn's alleged sexual activity. One witness said that there was "never such a whore in the realm". The evidence for the prosecution was very weak, but "Cromwell managed to contrive a case based on Mark Smeaton's questionable confession, a great deal of circumstantial evidence, and some very salacious details about what Anne had allegedly got up to with her brother." (54) At the end of the trial the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the four men were condemned by Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley to be drawn, hanged, castrated and quartered. Eustace Chapuys claimed that Brereton was "condemned on a presumption, not by proof or valid confession, and without any witnesses." (55)
George and Anne Boleyn were tried two days later in the Great Hall of the Tower. In Anne's case the verdict already pronounced against her accomplices made the outcome inevitable. She was charged, not only with a whole list of adulterous relationships going back to the autumn of 1533, but also with poisoning Catherine of Aragon, "afflicting Henry with actual bodily harm, and conspiring his death." (56)
George Boleyn was charged with having sexual relations with his sister at Westminster on 5th November 1535. However, records show she was with Henry on that day in Windsor Castle. Boleyn was also accused of being the father of the deformed child born in late January or early February, 1536. (57) This was a serious matter because in Tudor times Christians believed that a deformed child was God's way of punishing parents for committing serious sins. Henry VIII feared that people might think that the Pope Clement VII was right when he claimed that God was angry because Henry had divorced Catherine and married Anne. (58)
Eustace Chapuys reported King Charles V that Anne Boleyn "was principally charged with... having cohabited with her brother and other accomplices; that there was a promise between her and Norris to marry after the King's death, which it thus appeared they hoped for... and that she had poisoned Catherine and intrigued to do the same to Mary... These things, she totally denied, and gave a plausible answer to each." She admitted to giving presents to Francis Weston but this was not an unusual gesture on her part. (59)
George and Anne Boleyn were both found guilty of all charges. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, who presided over the trial left it to the King to decide whether Anne should be beheaded or burned alive. Between sentence and execution, neither admitted guilt. Anne declared herself ready to die because she had unwittingly incurred the King's displeasure, but grieved, as Eustace Chapuys reported, for the innocent men who were also to die on her account." (60)
On 17th May, 1536, George Boleyn and the other four condemned men were executed on Tower Hill, their sentences commuted from being hung, drawn and quartered. Boleyn exercised the condemned man's privilege of addressing the large crowd which always gathered for public executions. "Masters all, I am come hither not to preach and make a sermon but to die, as the law hath found me, and to the law I submit me."
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer declared Anne's marriage to Henry null and void on 17th May 1536, and according to the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, the grounds for the annulment included the king's previous relationship with Mary Boleyn. However, this information has never been confirmed. (61)
Anne Boleyn went to the scaffold at Tower Green on 19th May, 1536. The Lieutenant of the Tower reported her as alternately weeping and laughing. The Lieutenant assured her she would feel no pain, and she accepted his assurance. "I have a little neck," she said, and putting her hand round it, she shrieked with laughter. The "hangman of Calais" had been brought from France at a cost of £24 since he was a expert with a sword. This was a favour to the victim since a sword was usually more efficient than "an axe that could sometimes mean a hideously long-drawn-out affair." (62)
Anne Boleyn's last words were: "Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the King, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign Lord.... And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me." (63)
Privy Council
Under Henry VIII the Royal Council was at the heart of the administration. However, it was very large and Thomas Cromwell developed an inner circle that was called the Privy Council. It had nineteen members and including representatives of all the leading noble families and senior religious leaders. Henry and Cromwell decided matters of policy but it was the Privy Council that dealt with a wide range of government business - receiving ambassadors, drafting despatches, discussing foreign affairs and issuing administrative orders. Henry rarely attended these meetings and this gave Cromwell the power to run the government. Cromwell brought Ralph Sadler into the Privy Council to help him run the country.
Cromwell was not only Lord Chancellor but was the King's Secretary (Secretary of State). This gave him control of every aspect of government. The most important of these was the royal finances. This included the Exchequer, which collected and controlled the revenues of the crown as well as the profits of justice. Roger Lockyer has pointed out: "While he was a man of an orderly cast of mind, who enjoyed tidying up the royal administration and creating new institutions where necessary, he never intended that any institution, old and new, should become a barrier to the exercise of his own power." (64)
In this position Cromwell had to deal with a serious political crisis. In 1536, a lawyer named Robert Aske formed an army to defend the monasteries in Yorkshire. Another outbreak of public disorder took place in Lincolnshire. The rebels were joined by priests carrying crosses and banners. Leading nobles in the area also began to give their support to the rebellion. The rebels marched to York and demanded that the monasteries should be reopened. This march, which contained over 30,000 people, became known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was sent to Lincolnshire to deal with the rebels. In an age before a standing army, loyal forces were not easy to raise. (65) "Appointed the king's lieutenant to suppress the Lincolnshire rebels, he advanced fast from Suffolk to Stamford, gathering troops as he went; but by the time he was ready to fight, the rebels had disbanded. On 16th October he entered Lincoln and began to pacify the rest of the county, investigate the origins of the rising, and prevent the southward spread of the pilgrimage, still growing in Yorkshire and beyond. Only two tense months later, as the pilgrims dispersed under the king's pardon, could he disband his 3600 troops and return to court." (66)
Henry VIII's army was not strong enough to fight the rebels in Norfolk. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, negotiated peace with Aske. Howard was forced to promise that he would pardon the rebels and hold a parliament in York to discuss their demands. The rebels were convinced that this parliament would reopen the monasteries and therefore went back to their homes. (67) However, as soon as the rebel army had dispersed. Cromwell ordered the arrest of the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace. During his interrogation on 19th April 1537, Thomas Darcy accused Cromwell of "the very original and chief causer of all this rebellion and mischief". (68) About 200 people were executed for their part in the rebellion. This included Darcy, Robert Aske, William Thirsk and Lady Margaret Bulmer, who were burnt at the stake in June 1537. Abbots of the four largest monasteries in the north were also executed.
Bishop Stephen Gardiner, the leading religious conservative in the Privy Council, accepted these decisions but suggested that Henry followed a new policy of making concessions to his subjects. Cromwell disagreed and so did Henry. He accused Gardiner of returning to his old opinions, and complained that a faction was seeking to win him back to their "naughty" views. (69)
Religious Shrines
Thomas Cromwell continued with his religious reforms. He decreed that every church must possess and display a copy of the Bible in the native tongue and it had to be chained in an open place, where anyone could consult it. The edition used was that of Miles Coverdale, an edition that was a reworking of the one produced by William Tyndale. Therefore, the man who had been denounced as a heretic and ordered to be burnt at the stake by Henry VIII eleven years before, was now one of the most important figures in English religious life. (70)
In January 1538 Thomas Cromwell turned his attention to religious shrines in England. For hundreds of years pilgrims had visited shrines that contained important religious relics. Wealthy pilgrims often gave expensive jewels and ornaments to the monks that looked after these shrines. Cromwell persuaded Henry to agree that the shrines should be closed down and the wealth that they had created given to the crown. Commissioners were sent round the country to seize relics and shrines.
The Pope and the Catholic church in Rome were horrified when they heard the news that Henry commissioners had destroyed St. Thomas Becket's Shrine in September. It is claimed that chests of jewels were carried away so heavy that "six or eight strong men" were needed to carry each chest. (71) The previous year Henry VIII had visited the shrine in order to pray for the birth of a healthy son. (72) On 17th December 1538, the Pope announced to the Christian world that Henry VIII had been excommunicated from the Catholic church.
Marie de Guise & Christina of Denmark
Since the death of Jane Seymour in October 1537, Henry had shown little interest in finding a fourth wife. One of the reasons is that he was suffering from impotence. Anne Boleyn had complained about this problem to George Boleyn as early as 1533. His general health was also poor and he was probably suffering from diabetes and Cushings Syndrome. Now in his late 40s he was also obese. His armour from that period reveals that he measured 48 inches around the middle. (73)
However, when Thomas Cromwell told him that he should consider finding another wife for diplomatic reasons, Henry agreed. "Suffering from intermittent and unsatisfied lust, and keenly aware ofhis advancing age and copulence" he thought that a new young woman in his life might bring back the vitality of his youth. (74) As Antonia Fraser has pointed out: "In 1538 Henry VIII wanted - no, he expected - to be diverted, entertained and excited. It would be the responsibility of his wife to see that he felt like playing the cavalier and indulging in such amorous gallantries as had amused him in the past." (75)
Cromwell's first choise was Marie de Guise, a young widow who had already produced a son. Aged only 22 she had been married to Louis, Duke of Longueville before his early death in June 1537. He liked the reports that he received that she was a tall woman pleased him. He was "big in person" and he had need of "a big wife". In January 1538 he sent a ambassador to see her. (76) When Marie was told that Henry found her size attractive she is reported to have replied that she might be a big woman, but she had a very little neck. Marie rejected the proposal and married King James V of Scotland on 9th May 1538. (77)
The next candidate was Christina of Denmark, the sixteen-year-old widowed Duchess of Milan. She married Francesco II Sforza, the Duke of Milan at the age of twelve. However, he died the following year. Christina was very well connected. Her father was the former King Christian II of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Her mother, Isabella of Austria, was the sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Henry VIII received a promising report from John Hutton. "She is not pure white as (Jane Seymour) but she hath a singular good contenance, and, when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks, and one in her chin, the witch becometh her right excellently well." He also compared her to Margaret Shelton, one of Henry's former mistresses. (78)
Impressed by Hutton's description, Henry VIII sent Hans Holbein to paint her. He arrived in Brussels on 10th March 1538 and the following day sat for the portrait for three hours wearing mourning dress. However, Christina was disturbed by Henry's treatment of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn and apparently told Thomas Wriothesley, "If I had two heads, one should be at the King of England's disposal." (79) Wriothesley told Cromwell that he should look for a bride "in some such other place". Henry was very disappointed as he loved the painting and looked at it on a regular basis. (80)
Anne of Cleves
In 1539 Thomas Cromwell sent Robert Barnes to Copenhagen to discuss Anglo-Danish relations, in particular the prospect of an anti-papal alliance that might involve Henry VIII marrying Anne of Cleves, the daughter of John III. (81) He thought this would make it possible to form an alliance with the Protestants in Saxony. An alliance with the non-aligned north European states would be undeniably valuable, especially as Charles V of Spain and François I of France had signed a new treaty on 12th January 1539. (82) In March 1539 Nicholas Wotton was one of a three-man delegation sent to Cleves, to negotiate a marriage between Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves and to establish a defensive league with the German princes. (83)
As David Loades has pointed out: "Cleves was a significant complex of territories, strategically well placed on the lower Rhine. In the early fifteenth century it had absorbed the neighbouring country of Mark, and in 1521 the marriage of Duke John III had amalgamated Cleves-Mark with Julich-Berg to create a state with considerable resources... Thomas Cromwell was the main promoter of the scheme, and with his eye firmly on England's international position, its attractions became greater with every month that passed." (84)
John III died on 6th February, 1539. He was replaced by Anne's brother, Duke William. In March, Nicholas Wotton, began the negotiations at Cleves. He reported to Thomas Cromwell that "she (Anne of Cleves) occupieth her time most with the needle... She can read and write her own language but of French, Latin or other language she hath none... she cannot sing, nor play any instrument, for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke and an occasion of lightness that great ladies should be learned or have any knowledge of music." (85)
Cromwell was desperate for the marriage to take place but was aware that Wotton's reported revealed some serious problems. The couple did not share a common language. Henry VIII could speak in English, French and Latin but not in German. Wotton also pointed out that she "had none of the social skills so prized at the English court: she could not play a musical instrument or sing - she came from a culture that looked down on the lavish celebrations and light-heartedness that were an integral part of King Henry's court". (86)
Wotton was frustrated by the stalling tactics of William. Eventually he signed a treaty in which the Duke granted Anne a dowry of 100,000 gold florins. (87) However, Henry refused to marry Anne until he had seen a picture of her. Hans Holbein arrived in April and requested permission to paint Anne's portrait. The 23-year-old William, held Puritan views and had strong ideas about feminine modesty and insisted that his sister covered up her face and body in the company of men. He refused to allow her to be painted by Holbein. After a couple of days he said he was willing to have his sister painted but only by his own court painter, Lucas Cranach. (88)
Henry was unwilling to accept this plan as he did not trust Cranach to produce an accurate portrait. Further negotiations took place and Henry suggested he would be willing to marry Anne without a dowry if her portrait, painted by Holbein pleased him. Duke William was short of money and agreed that Holbein should paint her picture. He painted her portrait on parchment, to make it easier to transport in back to England. Nicholas Wotton, Henry's envoy watched the portrait being painted and claimed that it was an accurate representation. (89)
Holbein's biographer, Derek Wilson, argues that he was in a very difficult position. He wanted to please Thomas Cromwell but did not want to upset Henry VIII: "If ever the artist was nervous about the reception of a portrait he must have been particularly anxious about this one... He had to do what he could to sound a note of caution. That meant that he was obliged to express his doubts in the painting. If we study the portrait of Anne of Cleves we are struck by an oddity of composition.... Everything in it is perfectly balanced: it might almost be a study in symmetry - except for the jewelled bands on Anne's skirt. The one on her left is not complemented by another on the right. Furthermore, her right hand and the fall of her left under-sleeve draw attention to the discrepancy. This sends a signal to the viewer that, despite the elaborateness of the costume, there is something amiss, a certain clumsiness... Holbein intended giving the broadest hint he dared to the king. Henry would not ask his opinion about his intended bride, and the painter certainly could not venture it. Therefore he communicated unpalatable truth through his art. He could do no more." (90)
Unfortunately, Henry VIII did not understand this coded message. As Alison Weir, the author of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) has pointed out, the painting convinced Henry to marry Anne. "Anne smiles out demurely from an ivory frame carved to resemble a Tudor rose. Her complexion is clear, her gaze steady, her face delicately attractive. She wears a head-dress in the Dutch style which conceals her hair, and a gown with a heavily bejewelled bodice. Everything about Anne's portrait proclaimed her dignity, breeding and virtue, and when Henry VIII saw it, he made up his mind at once that this was the woman he wanted to marry." (91)
Anne of Cleves arrived at Dover on 27th December 1539. She was taken to Rochester Castle and on 1st January, Sir Anthony Browne, Henry's Master of the Horse, arrived from London. At the time Anne was watching bull-baiting from the window. He later recalled that the moment he saw Anne he was "struck with dismay". Henry arrived at the same time but was in disguise. He was also very disappointed and retreated into another room. According to Thomas Wriothesley when Henry reappeared they "talked lovingly together". However, afterwards he was heard to say, "I like her not". (92)
The French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, described Anne as looking about thirty (she was in fact twenty-four), tall and thin, of middling beauty, with a determined and resolute countenance". He also commented that her face was "pitted with the smallpox" and although he admitted there was some show of vivacity in her expression, he considered it "insufficient to counterbalance her want of beauty". However, as Alison Plowden, the author of Tudor Women (2002) has pointed out "Holbein's miniature is by no means without charm, and compared with, say, the portrait of Queen Jane Seymour, her successor would seem to have little to be ashamed of." (93)
Execution of Thomas Cromwell
Henry VIII asked Thomas Cromwell to cancel the wedding treaty. He replied that this would cause serious political problems. Henry married Anne of Cleves on 6th January 1540. He complained bitterly about his wedding night. Henry told Thomas Heneage that he disliked the "looseness of her breasts" and was not able to do "what a man should do to his wife".
Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley opened the 1540 Parliament. Thomas Cromwell attempted to explain the government's religious policies: "The king's majesty desires nothing more than concord... he knows there are those who would stir up strife, and in places in his field tares have sprung up to harm the wheat. The forwardness and carnal lust of some, the inveterate corruption and superstitious tenacity of opinion of other excite disputation and quarrels most horrible in so good Christian men; one side calls the other papists, and the other calls them heretics, both naughty and not to be borne... They twist God's sacred gift, now into heresy and now into superstition." (94)
Two of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, and Eleanor Manners, Countess of Rutland, asked Anne about her relationship with her husband. It became clear that she had not received any sex education. "When the King comes to bed he kisses me and taketh me by the hand, and biddeth me good night... In the morning he kisses me, and biddeth me, farewell. Is not this enough?" She enquired innocently." Further questioning revealled that she was completely unaware of what had been expected of her. (95)
Henry VIII was angry with Thomas Cromwell for arranging the marriage with Anne of Cleves. The conservatives, led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, saw this as an opportunity to remove him from power. Gardiner considered Cromwell a heretic for introducing the Bible in the native tongue. He also opposed the way Cromwell had attacked the monasteries and the religious shrines. Gardiner pointed out to the King that it was Cromwell who had allowed radical preachers such as Robert Barnes to return to England.
Barnes was clearly in danger but on 28th February, 1540, he preached a sermon attacking Bishop Gardiner. On 5th March, Barnes was summoned to appear before Henry VIII and Gardiner. Barnes begged forgiveness but continued to preach against the religious conservatives. On 3rd April, he was arrested along with two of his followers, William Jerome and Thomas Garrard, and taken to the Tower of London. (96)
Thomas Cromwell retaliated by arresting Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester and Nicholas Wotton, staunch conservatives in religious matters. He then began negotiating the release of Barnes. However, this was unsuccessful and it was now clear that Cromwell was in serious danger. (97) The French ambassador reported on 10th April, 1540, that Cromwell was "tottering" and began speculating about who would succeed to his offices. Although he he resigned the duties of the secretaryship to his protégés Ralph Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley he did not lose his power and on 18th April the King granted him the earldom of Essex.
Quarrels in the Privy Council continued and Charles de Marillac reported to François I on 1st June, 1540, that "things are brought to such a pass that either Cromwell's party or that of the Bishop of Winchester must succumb". On 10th June, Cromwell arrived slightly late for a meeting of the Privy Council. Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, shouted out, "Cromwell! Do not sit there! That is no place for you! Traitors do not sit among gentlemen." The captain of the guard came forward and arrested him. Cromwell was charged with treason and heresy. Norfolk went over and ripped the chains of authority from his neck, "relishing the opportunity to restore this low-born man to his former status". Cromwell was led out through a side door which opened down onto the river and taken by boat the short journey from Westminster to the Tower of London. (98)
On 12th June, Thomas Cranmer wrote a letter to Henry VIII saying he was amazed that such a good servant of the king should be found to have committed treason. He pointed out that he had shown "wisdom, diligence, faithfulness and experience as no prince in the realm ever had". Cranmer told Henry that he loved Cromwell as a friend, "but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace singularly above all others. But now if he be a traitor, I am sorry that ever I loved him or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason has been discovered in time. But yet again I am very sorrowful, for whom should your grace trust hereafter." (99)
Thomas Cromwell was convicted by Parliament of treason and heresy on 29th June and sentenced him to be hung, drawn and quartered. He wrote to Henry VIII soon afterwards and admitted "I have meddled in so many matters under your Highness that I am not able to answer them all". He finished the letter with the plea, "Most gracious prince I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy." Henry commuted the sentence to decapitation, even though the condemned man was of lowly birth. (100)
On 28th July, 1540, Cromwell walked out onto Tower Green for his execution. In his speech from the scaffold he denied that he had aided heretics, but acknowledged the judgment of the law. He then prayed for a short while before placing his head on the block. The executioner bungled his work, and took two strokes to sever the neck of Cromwell. He suffered a particularly gruesome execution before what was left of his head was set upon a pike on London Bridge. (101)
According to the French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, on 3rd March, 1541, Henry VIII was quoted as saying: "under pretext of some slight offences which he had committed, they had brought several accusations against him, on the strength of which he had put to death the most faithful servant he ever had." (102)
References
(1) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(2) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 38
(3) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(4) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 423
(5) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 38
(6) John Schofield, The Rise & Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant (2011) page 16
(7) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(8) Goldwin Smith, The North American Review (Volume 176, No. 557, 1903)
(9) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 12
(10) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(11) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 79
(12) Sybil M. Jack, Thomas Wolsey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(13) Thomas Cromwell, letter to Thomas Wolsey (2nd April 1528)
(14) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 20
(15) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(16) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 200
(17) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) pages 430-433
(18) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(19) Stephen Vaughan, letter to Thomas Wolsey (29th October, 1529)
(20) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 17
(21) Sybil M. Jack, Thomas Wolsey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(22) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 67
(23) Jasper Ridley, The Statesman and the Fanatic (1982) page 268
(24) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 17
(25) John Guy, Tudor England (1986) page 155
(26) Sybil M. Jack, Thomas Wolsey : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(27) Alison Plowden, Tudor Women (2002) page 66
(28) Philip Hughes, A Popular History of the Reformation (1957) page 177
(29) Patrick Collinson, Queen Elizabeth I : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(30) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 168
(31) Roy Strong, The Burlington Magazine (Volume 109, No. 770, 1967)
(32) Joan Acocella, The New Yorker (19th October, 2009)
(33) Peter Erickson and Clark Hulse, Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England (2000) page 167
(34) Waldermar Januszczak, Holbein: Eye of the Tudors (24th January, 2015)
(35) Hilary Mantel, The Daily Telegraph (17th October, 2012)
(36) Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (1984) page 196
(37) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(38) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 168
(39) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 49
(40) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(41) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 529
(42) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 90
(43) Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain: Volume IV (1845) pages 358
(44) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(45) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 191
(46) G. W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (2011) pages 174-175
(47) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(48) Philippa Jones, Elizabeth: Virgin Queen (2010) page 25
(49) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(50) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 81
(51) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(52) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(53) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 324
(54) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(55) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(56) Eric William Ives, Anne Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(57) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(58) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 82
(59) Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, report to King Charles V (May, 1536)
(60) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 253
(61) Jonathan Hughes, Mary Boleyn : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(62) Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989) page 227
(63) Anne Boleyn, statement on the scaffold at Tower Green (19th May, 1536). Quoted by Edward Hall, in his book, History of England (1548) page 268-269
(64) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 66
(65) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 271
(66) S. J. Gunn, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(67) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 58
(68) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(69) C. D. C. Armstrong, Stephan Gardiner : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(70) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 294
(71) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 131
(72) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 362
(73) Philippa Gregory, The Daily Mail (2nd February, 2009)
(74) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 115
(75) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 288
(76) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 383
(77) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 289
(78) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 618
(79) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 288
(80) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003) page 618
(81) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 194
(82) Alison Plowden, Tudor Women (2002) page 87
(83) Michael Zell, Nicholas Wotton : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(84) David Loades, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 109
(85) Nicholas Wotton, report to Thomas Cromwell (March, 1539)
(86) Kelly Hart, The Mistresses of Henry VIII (2009) page 151
(87) Retha M. Warnicke, Anne of Cleves : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(88) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 388
(89) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 300
(90) Derek Wilson, Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man (1996) page 259-260
(91) Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2007) page 388
(92) Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) page 305
(93) Alison Plowden, Tudor Women (2002) page 87
(94) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 210
(95) Peter Ackroyd, Tudors (2012) page 148
(96) Carl R. Trueman, Robert Barnes : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(97) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(98) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
(99) Thomas Cranmer, letter to Henry VIII (12th June, 1540)
(100) Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain (1985) page 79
(101) David Loades, Thomas Cromwell (2013) page 226
(102) Howard Leithead, Thomas Cromwell : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)"
2. Background from {[https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/cromwell-thomas-1485-1540]}
"CROMWELL, Thomas (by 1485-1540), of London.
Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
CROMWELL, Thomas (by 1485-1540)CROMWELL, Thomas (by 1485-1540)
b. by 1485, o.s. of Walter Cromwell alias Smith of Putney, Surr. m. by 1516, Elizabeth, da. of Henry Wykes of Putney, wid. of Thomas Williams, 1s. Gregory 2da.; 1da. illegit. Kntd. 18 July 1536; KG nom. 5 Aug., inst. 26 Aug. 1537; cr. Baron Cromwell 9 July 1536, Earl of Essex 17 Apr. 1540.3
Offices Held
Member, household of Cardinal Wolsey c.1516-30, of his council by 1519, sec. by 1529; commr. subsidy, London 1524, Kent 1534, for printing of Bible 1539, for sale of crown lands 1539, 1540; Councillor by Jan. 1531; master of King’s jewels 14 Apr. 1532, jt. (with Sir John Williams) c.1535-d.; clerk of the hanaper 16 July 1532, jt. (with Ralph Sadler) Apr. 1535-d.; chancellor, the Exchequer 12 Apr. 1533- d. ; recorder, Bristol 1533-d., steward, Westminster abbey 12 Sept. 1533, jt. (with Robert Wroth) 14 Feb. 1534-May 1535, lordships of Edmonton and Sayesbery, Mdx. May 1535, of Havering-atte-Bower, Essex Dec. 1537, manor of Writtle, Essex June 1536, honor of Rayleigh, Essex Sept. 1539; jt. (with Sir William Paulet) surveyor, the King’s woods by 1533; principal sec. c. Apr. 1534-Apr. 1540; master of the rolls 8 Oct. 1534-10 July 1536; jt. (with Richard Cromwell alias Williams*) constable, Hertford castle, Herts. 1534-d., Berkeley castle, Glos. 1535-d., sole, Leeds castle, Kent 4 Jan. 1539-d.; visitor-gen. monasteries 21 Jan. 1535; steward, duchy of Lancaster, Essex, Herts. and Mdx. 12 May 1535-d., steward, Savoy manor May 1535-d.; chancellor, high steward and visitor, Camb. univ. 1535-d.; j.p. Bristol, Kent, Mdx., Surr. 1535-d.; Essex 1536-d., Derbys., Westmld. 1537-d., all counties 1538-d.; prebendary, Salisbury May 1536-d.; receiver of petitions in the Lords, Parlt. of 1536, trier, Parlt. of 1539; ld. privy seal 2 July 1536-d.; vicar-gen. and vicegerent of the King in spirituals 18 July 1536; dean, Wells 1537-d.; warden and c.j. in eyre, N. of Trent 30 Dec. 1537-d.; gov. I.o.W. 2 Nov. 1538-d.; gt. chamberlain 17 Apr. 1540; numerous minor offices.4
Biography
Thomas Cromwell was the son of a Putney cloth-worker and alehouse keeper but the obscurity of his early life owes less to his humble origin than to the varied and exotic character of his pursuits. While still in his teens he was compelled, in circumstances which remain unknown, to leave the country. Passing through the Netherlands, he is said to have found employment in Italy, first as a soldier (he is reputed to have fought at the Garigliano in 1503) and then with the Venetian banking house of Frescobaldi. He was in Rome early in 1514 but in the course of that year he returned to the Netherlands and soon afterwards came back to England, where he married a widow and settled in London. He was to go to Italy again in 1517-18 to help the town of Boston obtain a bull of indulgence from Pope Leo X. On this journey he is supposed to have learned by heart Erasmus’s translation of the New Testament. His earlier travels had made him fluent in Italian and probably in French; he also knew Latin and perhaps had some Greek.5
Cromwell followed a business career in London, dealing in cloth and lending money, but he also picked up enough law to establish the successful practice which is first glimpsed about 1518. Although by then a servant of Wolsey he continued to have other clients throughout his years with the cardinal and even after he entered the royal service. Who or what brought him to Wolsey’s notice is not known. The intermediary could have been the 2nd Marquess of Dorset, although the only surviving evidence of Cromwell’s connexion with the Grey family dates from 1522, and the dowager marchioness’s description of him as her son’s servant may mean no more than that he was one of Dorset’s lawyers. Another possible agent is the Robert Cromwell who was vicar of Battersea and overseer of works there for Wolsey. It may even be that Cromwell had brought a recommendation on his return from Antwerp, perhaps to the Luccese merchant Antonio Bonvisi, whose friendship he was to share with Thomas More and whose customers included Wolsey. Cromwell, like More, had a talent for friendship and he had already a wide acquaintanceship.6
It was doubtless to Wolsey that Cromwell owed his election to the Parliament of 1523, the only one summoned during the 14 years of the chancellorship. Wolsey could have nominated his servant for almost any seat, but as he held the bishopric of Bath and Wells in commendam until shortly before the Parliament met, when he was succeeded by his chaplain John Clerke, the city of Bath is a distinct possibility, with Cromwell’s interest in the cloth trade an additional recommendation. That Cromwell was a Member appears from his statement in a letter of 17 Aug. that he and others had ‘endured a Parliament which continued by the space of 17 whole weeks’, although this was to ignore its three-week prorogation. He also prepared—the draft survives in the hand of one of his clerks—and may have delivered a speech against the war with France which the Parliament had been summoned to finance; he maintained that France could not be successfully invaded because of logistic difficulties and that the better plan was to conquer Scotland and unite it with England. Strange as such arguments may appear emanating from a servant of Wolsey, they might be explained, as has been recently suggested, if Wolsey himself was sufficiently opposed to the aggressive foreign policy favoured by the King to look to Parliament to frustrate it by refusing supply. Given the country’s hostility to an excessive subsidy, what was needed was to give the Commons its head by means of the liberty of speech claimed by Speaker More. Cromwell’s own epitaph on the Parliament shows how widely the debates ranged: we communed of war, peace, strife, contentation, debate, murmur, grudge, riches, poverty, perjury, truth, falsehood, justice, equity, deceit, oppression, magnanimity, activity, force, attemperance, treason, murder, felony, conciliation and also how a commonwealth might be edified. However, in conclusion we have done as our predecessors have been wont to do, that is to say, as well as we might and left where we began.7
Later in 1523 Cromwell served on the inquest of wardmote in Broadstreet ward. In the following year he was included in the London subsidy commission, was admitted to Gray’s Inn and at Wolsey’s direction embarked on the suppression of some 30 smaller monastic communities for the benefit of the cardinal’s educational foundations at Ipswich and Oxford. He was to be involved at every stage of this project and according to George Cavendish his continued interest in it after Wolsey’s attainder was the occasion of his access to the King, ‘by means whereof and by his witty demeanour he grew continually into the King’s favour’. After Wolsey’s withdrawal from the court, first to Esher and then to York, Cromwell remained his factotum and partisan. Although he had no option but to assist the crown in preparing the charge of praemunire against Wolsey he did his best for his old master. When a bill of articles was introduced into the Parliament of 1529 condemning Wolsey of treason it was he who ‘inveighed’ against it ‘so discreetly, with such witty persuasions and deep reasons, that the same bill could take there no effect’.8
Cromwell’s return to that Parliament has provoked much discussion, and understandably so, for the circumstances are far from clear. It was not until the end of October, within a few days of the opening, that he seems to have made a bid for a seat. The reason for such untypical slowness can scarcely have been other than his doubt whether, as Wolsey’s right hand man, he could procure one without falling foul of authority. That is why, when he resolved to do so, his first step was to obtain, with the help of his clerk Ralph Sadler, Sir John Gage and the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, the King’s agreement to his election, albeit on condition that he should conduct himself in the House according to royal instructions. That obstacle removed, on 1 Nov., he still had to find a seat. With but two days left the prospect of finding a vacant one was negligible; the only hope was to replace someone already elected who could be persuaded to stand down.9
How this was contrived has to be deduced from two prime pieces of evidence. The first, and more direct, is Cavendish’s statement that Cromwell replaced the son of his friend Thomas Rush; the second is Sadler’s promise to obey Cromwell’s instruction to ‘require’ Sir William Paulet to release a seat for one of the boroughs belonging to Wolsey as bishop of Winchester. The fact that Cromwell did come in for one of these boroughs, Taunton, whereas Sadler seems to imply that the vacancy created by the withdrawal of Rush’s son would be at Orford, has given rise to the impression that these were alternative openings and hence to the conclusion that Paulet was turned to only after the Orford plan failed. The confusion has been thickened by the failure to identify Rush’s ‘so’ as his stepson Thomas Alvard; the eldest of Rush’s sons by the widowed Anne Alvard could have been only in his early twenties at the time of the election, when Alvard was at least 36 and, like his stepfather, a man of consequence in Wolsey’s entourage and a friend of Cromwell.10
That it was not Alvard whom Cromwell might have replaced at Orford is clear from the election there of two other men. Yet one of those men, Erasmus Paston, was such as Rush might have tried to supplant; the seat which he took had probably come by 1529 under the patronage of the Duke of Suffolk, with whom Rush had long been associated, while Rush’s own standing at Orford could have counted for something. Thus if it was at Orford that Rush was expected to intervene it could not have been at the expense of his stepson, who was not elected there, and Cavendish’s statement, if it is to be accepted, must apply to a different borough. The obvious first choice is Ipswich, where Rush’s influence was at its strongest and where he himself was to take the senior seat; but although Rush may well have hoped that his stepson would be his fellow-Member (as Alvard was later to become, by way of a by-election) the issue had been decided three weeks earlier when Thomas Hayward, the Ipswich common clerk, had been elected. With Orford and Ipswich thus ruled out there appears to be only one way of reconciling Cavendish’s statement with the rest of the evidence, namely, by concluding that it was at Taunton that Cromwell replaced Alvard. It is not hard to imagine that if Rush had failed to find Alvard a seat nearer home he should have turned to one of Wolsey’s boroughs, where Paulet as steward evidently handled the nominations; nor would it be surprising if, once Cromwell had gained the King’s consent to his own election, Rush and Alvard had yielded to his superior claim and Paulet had substituted his name on the return. Whether the King or Norfolk brought any pressure to bear it is impossible to say.
Upwards of two years were to elapse before this last-minute scramble into the Commons was to issue in an unprecedented mastery of that assembly. Cromwell was probably admitted to the Council shortly after Wolsey’s death in November 1530: he is first mentioned as a Councillor early in the following January. He soon made himself the Council’s expert on parliamentary matters. It looks as though he assumed this role during the second session (January-March 1531) of the Parliament of 1529. By the summer of 1531 it was commonly believed in London that ‘Mr. Cromwell penned certain matters in the parliament house, which no man gainsaid’, and when the session ended he removed the 29 bills which were then left unfinished to the safety of his counting house. In the autumn Henry VIII directed him to co-operate with members of the King’s legal council in preparing bills for treason, sewers and apparel in readiness for the next session, and at the close of that session in May 1532 he again removed the unfinished bills, 16 in number. His remembrances often include topics to be legislated on and occasionally mention bills in progress, as when in 1534 the bills for faculties and for dairy produce were due to be engrossed. From 1532, at least, he used a group recruited by himself to compile a programme of reform for embodiment in statutes, while others not in his employ, like John Rastell, submitted their own proposals for his consideration. Corporations, monastic houses and private individuals sought his advice and approval for measures they wanted to see enacted, and to that end plied him with gifts. To judge from the requests emanating from these quarters he seems to have been consulted in 1532 mainly as a legal adviser, but later the mounting demands of the crown left him little time for such private business. He took great care over the drafting of bills; corrections in his hand appear at different stages of those for tinworks and harbours in Devon and Cornwall (23 Hen. VIII, c.8), for restraint of appeals (24 Hen. VIII, c.12) and for pewterers (25 Hen. VIII, c.9). In 1536 he had included in the Act (27 Hen. VIII, c.47) making the King heir to the 5th Earl of Northumberland’s lands a proviso protecting an annuity given him by the earl.11
By the spring of 1532 Cromwell was in a position to supervise a sizeable change in the composition of the House. Having first established, by means of an annotated copy of the Crown Office list, the vacancies created by deaths or elevations to the Lords since the Parliament began, he initiated a series of by-elections. This was prefaced by the compilation by Thomas Wriothesley of a further list on which, out of 29 vacancies recorded, 17 were accompanied by the names of those recommended to fill them and a further eight by the names of the personages entitled to nominate, these being the King (for four seats), the attorney-general, the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the lord warden of the Cinque Ports. The fact that for the most part each vacancy is accompanied by two names implies that Wriothesley either took it on himself, or was told, to furnish such a choice. What then befell the document was clearly Cromwell’s doing: it was he who placed a small circle against one out of each pair of names (or when both seats were vacant two out of three) as well as adding six vacancies and in four of these cases entering a single name. This is not to say that Cromwell was alone responsible for these choices, in which the King may have had a hand. Nor in the absence of by-election returns is there much evidence to show whether the persons so designated were successful. Only Sir John Neville II and John Scudamore are known to have come in for their respective shires; Sir Francis Bryan and Sir Henry Long were by-elected, although not for certain as knights of the shire; and the balance of probability is that Sir Thomas Cheyne, Sir Arthur Hopton, Sir John St. John and William Skipwith joined them in the House. On the other hand, Richard Sapcote seems to have been dismayed by Audley’s and Cromwell’s instructions to solicit support for his own election for Huntingdonshire, where Thomas Hall II (q.v.) was already in the field.12
Although this list reflects Cromwell’s interest in the recruitment of Members, it reveals little effort on his part to introduce his own dependants or associates. The great majority of the names are those of men of independent standing in their localities, and Cromwell’s—if they were his own—choices between them are scarcely revealing. But as yet he was standing only on the threshold of supremacy; the year that followed shows him wielding increasing influence on behalf of particular individuals. The loss of so many returns puts out of the question any measurement of his intervention: out of some 40 by-elections known or presumed to have been held from the beginning of 1533 to the close of the Parliament, 16 produced Members whose names have not survived. Yet the names which are known include those of several men who stood close to Cromwell, among them Thomas Alvard, Sir Francis Bigod, David Broke, Sir Roger Cholmley, Thomas Derby, John Goodall and Robert Southwell.
Of Cromwell’s technique for controlling the House only fragments of evidence exist. The most interesting is furnished by two documents believed to date from 1533. The first is a list of 36 names (originally at least 37, the first being lost through the tearing of the paper), all of men known or presumed to have been Members at that time. Against A. F. Pollard’s suggestion that the list was a sounding board of parliamentary opinion it may be urged that from what is known of the outlook of the men concerned the majority of them were unsympathetic to the breach with the pope and that this was why their names were thus brought together on the list. Again, the most likely occasion of its production was the passage through the House of the bill against appeals to Rome, the outstanding measure of the fourth session. Evidence of opposition to this bill is not lacking, and it includes the stand taken, albeit temporarily, by Sir George Throckmorton, whose name heads the list in its present form. That the list is of official provenance is shown by the order in which the names appear; they were clearly derived from a scrutiny of the Crown Office list. If the list may be taken to represent an effort by authority, doubtless in the person of Cromwell, to identify the Members most likely to give trouble, the use, if any, to which it was put remains a matter for speculation. We do not know of any Member other than Throckmorton who was taken to task, but the addition to 18 of the names on the list of the person’s domicile (in some cases seemingly of his diocese) prompts the thought that some local action may have been contemplated.13
Of quite another character is the second list, which contains the names of 50 Members. Unlike those of the first, its names are arranged in no discernible order save that as originally set down they began with five holders of high office, Cromwell himself standing first as ‘Mr Secretary’. This official group is followed by 16 knights of the shire and 22 Members for cities and boroughs, the constituencies of the remaining seven Members being uncertain or unknown. Both the ratio between knights and borough Members, and the wide geographical spread of their constituencies, make this assemblage a fair sample of the House, and this in turn suggests that the names are those of a committee, although whether operative or merely intended remains unknown. In the absence of the Journal nothing can be learned of the use of committees during this Parliament, but it is reasonable to assume that they were resorted to only for bills of importance and then only if these gave rise to difficulty. Outstanding among such bills was the treasons bill passed in the seventh session, and the evident disquiet which it aroused in the House could well have led to its committal to this group of Members. In that event, the chief interest of the list would lie in its apparent counterbalancing of the ‘official’ group by a number of Members likely to be critical, among them seven or eight of those named in the earlier list. Although the names of several of Cromwell’s close associates are to be found on it, the list can in no way be construed as a product of official packing.14
Cromwell’s management of this Parliament doubtless included the timing of its recurrent prorogations, which matched the vicissitudes of the political and religious scene, and of its eventual dissolution. In retrospect this final act was to prove a blunder, for within two weeks of the dissolution a fresh Parliament had to be summoned in consequence of the King’s decision to make away with his second Queen. It was with the intention of making the new Parliament in effect yet another and concluding session of the previous one that the King caused the writs to be accompanied by a request for the re-election of the same Members; the device had been used once before in the reign, in respect of the Parliament of 1515. In theory, therefore, the Parliament of 1536 furnished no opportunity to Cromwell to intervene in the elections, which should have been predetermined. In fact, the outcome was somewhat different. Of the 312 Members presumed to have been returned the names of over two thirds are irrecoverably lost; of the 68 whose names are known 47 had certainly and a further four had probably sat in the previous Parliament, while 15 had certainly not and two had probably not done so. If these Members were roughly representative of the whole, it follows that approximately three quarters of the Commons of 1536 were old Members and one quarter fresh ones, and that the royal request met with less than universal compliance. Some degree of change would have been unavoidable: old age, sickness or death, and in one or two cases appointment to debarring office, must have excluded some former Members from reelection, but the majority of those who did not reappear probably found other reasons or were officially discouraged or eliminated.
Cromwell’s role in the matter has to be gauged from the only two known examples of his intervention. The first is his notorious insistence that the city of Canterbury, which had elected—perhaps in ignorance of the King’s request—two new Members, should set them aside in favour of its previous ones. The second, which has attracted less notice, is his imposition of two nominees in place of the previous Members for Buckingham. This departure from the general requirement is best explained by the presumption that the two men so displaced were unacceptable by reason of their connexion with the doomed Queen. Whether Cromwell took steps to exclude other similar undesirables cannot be known, nor is there more than a hint that he promoted the election of men of his own choosing, although both Richard Pollard and Ralph Sadler owed their nominations to him.15
It is not even clear whether Cromwell’s own election accorded with the royal request. Although there can be little doubt that he was returned for a shire, its identity remains a matter of guesswork, with Kent as the probable favourite in view of his recent acquisition of property there. In that case he could have been re-elected, for the death of Sir Henry Guildford in May 1532 had created a vacancy which Cromwell may have filled by exchanging Taunton for the more prestigious knighthood of a shire. The importance of his presence in the House was to be implicitly recognized by the circumstances of his ennoblement. Although this took place in the middle of the session, his patent exempted him from taking his seat in the Lords for the remainder of the Parliament and he did so only in the afternoon of the day of dissolution. One of the Acts of this Parliament (28 Hen. VIII, c.50) established his title to the manor of Wimbledon and other properties recently granted to him by the King. Throughout the session he was a frequent bearer of bills to the Lords.16
In June 1538 John Hull II, the collector of customs at Exeter, wrote to Cromwell to enlist his support for a bill which the city wished to introduce in the Parliament then thought imminent, but another nine months elapsed before the writs were issued. Cromwell was then to assure the King that he ‘and other your dedicate Councillors be about to bring all things so to pass that your majesty had never had more tractable Parliament’, and went on to describe the work of Sir William Fitzwilliam I, Earl of Southampton, in Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex. The Duke of Norfolk sent the minister a list of the boroughs in his control and ended ‘In all the shires of my commission [as commander in the north], save Lancashire, I have put such order that such shall be chosen as I doubt not shall serve his highness according to his pleasure; and likewise I did in Norfolk and Suffolk before my last coming here’. Only in the instances of the earl and the duke is there documentary evidence to bear out Cromwell’s assertion that other members of the Council played an active part in the period before the elections, but analysis of the men returned to the Parliament and of their connexions suggests that other Councillors were equally diligent. The letters from earl and duke to King and minister, together with Cromwell’s own statement, leave little doubt that the decision to influence the elections was a conciliar one and that the decision was put into effect by the whole Council with Cromwell acting as coordinator.17
Of Cromwell’s own, more direct, part in the election of 1539 there are a few tantalizing glimpses. In Hampshire he seems not to have trusted Bishop Gardiner of Winchester to manage the shire election in the crown’s interest as he himself wrote to the freeholders on behalf of Thomas Wriothesley and John Kingsmill: Kingsmill being sheriff, the election was postponed until the King’s pleasure became known, when Wriothesley was returned with Cromwell’s servant Richard Worsley. On Cromwell’s instructions the cellarer of the Household, Richard Hill of Hartley Wintney, had rallied his neighbours and tenants to ensure the return of the minister’s nominees against opposition from Gardiner. In Norfolk Cromwell obtained the support of Sir Edmund Knyvet in persuading his friends to vote for Edmund Wyndham and Richard Southwell as knights of the shire, but then upset Knyvet who at the election offered himself as an alternative to Southwell. At Norwich the election for the city’s Members had already been held when Cromwell’s nomination of John Godsalve arrived, but the city obliged the minister by asking for a new writ to warrant a second election and then by returning Godsalve. Cromwell also obtained a nomination at Gatton after it had been promised to another. Whom he sponsored there is not recorded, but for such an undistinguished borough it is unlikely to have been Richard Morison, the pamphleteer selected as a government spokesman during the Parliament whose nomination by himself the minister singled out for mention to the King.18
Two weeks before the opening of Parliament Cromwell contracted a fever which still troubled him on 4 May, but he was sufficiently recovered six days later to take his place in the Lords. That when he did so he took his place as vicegerent, with precedence before all save the King, not as Baron Cromwell sitting with the rest of the barons, creates a strong presumption that he delayed his recovery until the bill regulating seating in the Lords had been passed and put into effect. The gravity of his illness can be gauged by his failure to have ready for introduction into Parliament the legislative programme outlined by him in the previous March, in particular ‘a device ... for the unity in religion’. The measure to give proclamations greater effect met with opposition and its passage through Parliament diverted Cromwell’s attention from the committee under his chairmanship to establish uniformity. This enabled Norfolk to accuse him of slothfulness as vicegerent and to present the Lords with six major doctrinal issues in the form of questions so framed as to demand strictly traditional answers. Although outmanoeuvred Cromwell continued to pursue a line of moderation until the King announced his own support for Norfolk’s orthodoxy. The bill introduced in the second session and passed as the Act of Six Articles (31 Hen. VIII, c.14) reflected the beliefs of men unsympathetic towards reform and the vicegerent. Yet despite these setbacks Cromwell remained the King’s chief minister. The Act changing the custom of gavelkind in Kent (31 Hen. VIII, c.3) names Cromwell first among its beneficiaries: this subsumed a private bill settling certain lands on himself and his heirs which passed through both Houses but never received the assent.19
During the prorogation Cromwell pressed ahead with reform of the Household and concluded a treaty of marriage and defence between England and Cleves, but Henry VIII took against his new Queen. After two postponements Parliament reassembled on 12 Apr. 1540. Cromwell opened the session with a speech on the need for unity and concord in religion, but in the event he obtained only a short enabling Act (32 Hen. VIII, c.26) looking to future decisions from two committees of bishops ordered to formulate a definition of doctrine and to draw up a book of authorized ceremonies. The greater part of the government legislation inaugurated by him fared better. On 17 Apr. Cromwell was raised to the earldom of Essex and given the office of chamberlain, resigning his secretaryship in favour of Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir Thomas Wriothesley. The King’s infatuation with Catherine Howard and decision to divorce Anne of Cleves to marry Catherine left Cromwell with the task of putting asunder the union that he had long promoted, and thus reviving the Howard interest at court. In late May he had arrested the deputy of Calais and the bishop of Chichester on charges of intrigue with Cardinal Pole, but on 10 June after a morning in the House of Lords he himself was arrested at a council meeting in the afternoon and accused of heresy and treason. Taken to the Tower and his possessions seized, Cromwell was condemned without a trial. His sentence was confirmed by an Act of attainder (32 Hen. VIII, no.52) but he was allowed to languish in captivity as long as his testimony about the King’s repugnance for Anne of Cleves was of use in the royal divorce proceedings. The divorce completed, Cromwell was executed on Tower Hill on 28 July. A parliamentary bill confirming an exchange of lands between himself and the King was killed by his downfall. Copies of his portrait by Holbein survive but not the original.20
Ref Volumes: 1509-1558
Author: S. T. Bindoff
Notes
1.LP Hen. VIII, iii. 3249.
2.Ibid. xi. 34.
3.Date of birth estimated from marriage. This biography rests on the numerous writings of Prof. G.R. Elton and on B. W. Beckingsale, Thomas Cromwell. DNB; CP.
4.Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, lxviii. 193; LP Hen. VIII, iv-xiii; Somerville, Duchy, i. 604, 606, 614; Bristol AO, 04026/2/202; Westminster abbey reg. 2, ff. 288, 298; LJ, i. 84, 103.
5.Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, lxviii. 193-5.
6.Ibid. lxviii. 194; M. L. Robertson, ‘Cromwell’s servants’ (Univ. California Los Angeles Ph.D. thesis, 1975), 44-45; LP Hen. VIII, ii-iv.
7.LP Hen. VIII, iii. 2958, 3249; R. L. Woods, ‘Pol. and precedent: Wolsey’s Parlt. of 1523’, HLQ, xl. 297-312; Merriman, Cromwell, i. 30-44.
8.LP Hen. VIII, iii, iv; J. Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 27-29; J. E. Oxley, Ref. in Essex, 70-81; G. Cavendish, Wolsey (EETS ccxliii), 112-13, 123-7, 129-32.
9.LP Hen. VIII, iv; A. J. Slavin, Pol. and Profit, 19-20.
10.Cavendish, 112; Slavin, 19.
11.LP Hen. VIII, iv-xi, xiv, xv; Elton, Reform and Renewal, 78-97 passim; Policy and Police, 101; ‘Parlty. drafts 1529-40’, Bull. IHR, xxv. 117-32; xxvii. 198-200; ‘The evolution of a parlty. statute’, EHR, lxiv. 174-94; ‘The Commons supplication of 1532’, EHR, lxvi. 507-34; ‘An early Tudor poor law’, Econ. Hist. Rev. (ser. 2), vi. 55-67.
12.LP Hen. VIII, vii vii. 56 citing SP1/82, ff. 59-62; A. F. Pollard, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s parlty. lists’, Bull. IHR, ix. 31-43.
13.LP Hen. VIII, vii. 1522(ii) citing SP1/87, f. 106v; ix. 1077 citing SP1/99, p. 234; Bull. IHR, ix. 31-43.
14.LP Hen. VIII, vii. 1522(ii) citing SP1/87, f. 106v; Bull. IHR, ix. 31-43.
15.LP Hen. VIII, x. 40(ii) citing Cott. Otho C10, f. 218.
16.Elton, Eng. under the Tudors, 175; LJ, i. 88, 95, 97-101.
17.LP Hen. VIII, x, xiv.
18.Ibid. xiv; Norwich mayors’ ct. bk. f. 152 ex inf. Dr. J. Miklovich.
19.LP Hen. VIII, xiv; LJ, i. 103-25.
20.LP Hen. VIII, xv; LJ, i. 128-43; Elton, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s decline and fall’, Camb. Hist. Jnl. x. 150-85; R. C. Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraiture, 112-14."
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June 10 - Thomas Cromwell is arrested
On this day in Tudor history, 10th June 1540, King Henry VIII's right-hand man and 'fixer', Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was arrested. In today's "on this...
June 10 - Thomas Cromwell is arrested
On this day in Tudor history, 10th June 1540, King Henry VIII's right-hand man and 'fixer', Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was arrested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJb-gDqa5E
Image
1. A true and exact draught of the Tower Liberties, surveyed in the year 1597 by Gulielmus Haward and J. Gascoyne
2. Thomas Cromwell being taken to the Tower of London after being sentenced to death.
3. An execution in the 1550s
4. Walter Hungerford 1st baron Hungerford of Heytesbury executed right after Thomas Cromwell
Background from {[https://kimberlyevemusings.blogspot.com/2011/06/arrest-of-thomas-cromwell-machiavellian.html]}
1540: Thomas Cromwell
It was on this date in 1540 that Thomas Cromwell fell by the instrument he had wielded so ably against so many others. While Henry strove to get his end away, Thomas Cromwell made the Reformation, setting his energetic hand to the needfully violent reordering of England. In almost a decade as the king’s chief minister, he had dissolved so many monasteries, annulled so many noble prerogatives, backstabbed so many courtiers, and sent so many of every class to the scaffold that most at court had some reason to hate him. (Cranmer was the only one to (cautiously) object to his old partner’s arrest.)
Every matter of importance in 1530′s England concerned Cromwell. He raised and then destroyed Anne Boleyn; he managed the realm’s religious turmoil so fearsomely that his ouster was one of the demands of the Pilgrimage of Grace; he did what he had to do in the matter of Sir Thomas More.
“Who cannot be sorrowful and amazed that he should be a traitor against your majesty? He that was so advanced by your majesty, he whose surety was only by your majesty, he who loved your majesty, as I ever thought, no less than God; he who studied always to set forward whatsoever was your majesty’s will and pleasure; he that cared for no man’s displeasure to serve your majesty; he that was such a servant, in my judgment, in wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, and experience, as no prince in this realm ever had …
If he be a Traitor, I am sorry that ever I loved him, or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason is discovered in time; but yet again I am very sorrowful; for who shall your grace trust hereafter, if you might not trust him? Alas!”
-Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, writing to King Henry VIII upon news of the arrest of Thomas Cromwell
Though it may be, as Edward Hall recorded, that “many lamented but more rejoiced” at Cromwell’s fall from the very height of his power “and specially such as either had been religious men, or favoured religious persons; for they banqueted and triumphed together that night [of his execution], many wishing that that day had been seven year before” the reasons for it are murky.
The bedroom politics get all the press: Cromwell’s bit of marital statecraft arranging Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves was a famous dud, but negotiations to end it were well on their way by the time of Cromwell’s arrest.
Why, too, should the minister have been ennobled Duke of Essex in April 1540, months after the disastrous union? That Cromwell, whose own security rested upon the stability of the realm, was a radical Protestant promulgating inflammatory religious ideas and he was condemned for both treason and heresy, incidentally giving the king wide latitude for just how painfully to kill his former servant seems to beggar belief.
Once fallen, Cromwell was kept alive long enough to add testimony to the Cleves divorce; that much is clear. But then why keep him alive still three weeks more?
In the end, maybe it was inevitable that one in his position, at his time and place, had to follow to the scaffold the many he had sent thither, just the Tudor version of that familiar “bad advisors” trope: it were not treason to murmur against the aide whose ill counsel did wrong by His Majesty, and so Cromwell stood to accumulate the share of hostility that properly belonged to his sovereign. As an expert practitioner of the game of power politics, Thomas Cromwell could hardly be in a position to complain.
Oh, and by the way with the German princess on the outs, the king’s wandering eye had fallen upon a niece of Cromwell’s enemy. On the day that Cromwell lost his head, Henry married Catherine Howard. No matter your brilliance, in Henrican England you only had to lose at court politics once, even if the king would be lamenting this injudicious trade within months.
Henry gave his loyal servant the easiest death, beheading on Tower Hill (although it turned out to be a botched job) alongside a Walter Hungerford, the first person executed under the Buggery Act.
Here are the events of the day from a more 'objective' perspective; a Charles Carlton: A Study in Interrogation explains:
On the afternoon of Thursday, the 10th of June 1540, a squad of Yeoman of the guard burst into the Council Chamber in Westminster Hall, and arrested Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister. They escorted him out through a postern to a boat waiting at Westminster Steps, rowed him down the Thames, and through Traitors' Gate into the Tower of London. Within this gaunt prison Cromwell was held till the early morning of July 28th, when the Yeoman marched him to Tower Hill to be executed for treason, heresy, bribery,and misuse of power. He climbed the scaffold, and addressed the crowd. He had come here to die, he confessed, and not to justify himself. He was a grievous wretch, who sought God's pardon. He had offended the King, and asked the crowd to pray that Henry VIII would forgive him. Finally, Cromwell insisted that he would die a Catholic, and that he had never waivered in a single article of the Catholic faith. Then, after a short paryer commending his soul to the Almighty, Cromwell laid his head on the block, and, as John Foxe records, "patiently suffered the stroke of the axe" swung "by a ragged and butcherly miser (who) very ungodly performed the office."
Edward Hall records Cromwell playing ball with a fine entry in the scaffold-speech genre that kept his son in the peerage.
I am come hether to dye, and not to purge my self, as maie happen, some thynke that I will, for if I should do so, I wer a very wretche and miser: I am by the Lawe comdempned to die, and thanke my lorde God that hath appoynted me this deathe, for myne offence: For sithence the tyme that I have had yeres of discrecion, I have lived a synner, and offended my Lorde God, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes. And it is not unknowne to many of you, that I have been a great traveler in this worlde, and beyng but of a base degree, was called to high estate, and sithes the tyme I came thereunto, I have offended my prince, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes, and beseche you all to praie to God with me, that he will forgeve me. O father forgeve me. O sonne forgeve me, O holy Ghost forgeve me: O thre persons in one God forgeve me. And now I praie you that be here, to beare me record, I die in the Catholicke faithe, not doubtyng in any article of my faith, no nor doubtyng in any Sacrament of the Churche.* Many hath sclaundered me, and reported that I have been a bearer, of suche as hath mainteigned evill opinions, whiche is untrue, but I confesse that like as God by his holy spirite, doth instruct us in the truthe, so the devill is redy to seduce us, and I have been seduced: but beare me witnes that I dye in the Catholicke faithe of the holy Churche. And I hartely desire you to praie for the Kynges grace, that he maie long live with you, maie long reigne over you. And once again I desire you to pray for me, that so long as life remaigneth in this fleshe, I waver nothyng in my faithe.
And then made he his praier, whiche was long, but not so long, as bothe Godly and learned, and after committed his soule, into the handes of God, and so paciently suffered the stroke of the axe, by a ragged and Boocherly miser, whiche very ungoodly perfourmed the Office.
If Cromwell’s dying sentiment concealed any lasting bitterness for the crown, maybe his spirit would take some satisfaction a century later when another of his name and family rose high enough to behead a king.
So died one of England's greatest statesmen the architect of the Reformation and the Tudor Revolution Government. Just as his career has been the source of much historical debate, the events of the last seven weeks of his life, from his arrest to his execution,and his scaffold address especially, have been an irritant of contradiction and confusion.
SOURCES
Thomas Cromwell: A Study in Interrogation, Charles Carlton, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 116-127.
Edward Hall, The Union of the two noble and illustre families of York and Lancaster (London, 1548), pp. 246-47.
John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, ed. George Townsend, 8 vols. (London, 1834), V:402-03.
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On this day in Tudor history, 10th June 1540, King Henry VIII's right-hand man and 'fixer', Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was arrested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJb-gDqa5E
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1. A true and exact draught of the Tower Liberties, surveyed in the year 1597 by Gulielmus Haward and J. Gascoyne
2. Thomas Cromwell being taken to the Tower of London after being sentenced to death.
3. An execution in the 1550s
4. Walter Hungerford 1st baron Hungerford of Heytesbury executed right after Thomas Cromwell
Background from {[https://kimberlyevemusings.blogspot.com/2011/06/arrest-of-thomas-cromwell-machiavellian.html]}
1540: Thomas Cromwell
It was on this date in 1540 that Thomas Cromwell fell by the instrument he had wielded so ably against so many others. While Henry strove to get his end away, Thomas Cromwell made the Reformation, setting his energetic hand to the needfully violent reordering of England. In almost a decade as the king’s chief minister, he had dissolved so many monasteries, annulled so many noble prerogatives, backstabbed so many courtiers, and sent so many of every class to the scaffold that most at court had some reason to hate him. (Cranmer was the only one to (cautiously) object to his old partner’s arrest.)
Every matter of importance in 1530′s England concerned Cromwell. He raised and then destroyed Anne Boleyn; he managed the realm’s religious turmoil so fearsomely that his ouster was one of the demands of the Pilgrimage of Grace; he did what he had to do in the matter of Sir Thomas More.
“Who cannot be sorrowful and amazed that he should be a traitor against your majesty? He that was so advanced by your majesty, he whose surety was only by your majesty, he who loved your majesty, as I ever thought, no less than God; he who studied always to set forward whatsoever was your majesty’s will and pleasure; he that cared for no man’s displeasure to serve your majesty; he that was such a servant, in my judgment, in wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, and experience, as no prince in this realm ever had …
If he be a Traitor, I am sorry that ever I loved him, or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason is discovered in time; but yet again I am very sorrowful; for who shall your grace trust hereafter, if you might not trust him? Alas!”
-Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, writing to King Henry VIII upon news of the arrest of Thomas Cromwell
Though it may be, as Edward Hall recorded, that “many lamented but more rejoiced” at Cromwell’s fall from the very height of his power “and specially such as either had been religious men, or favoured religious persons; for they banqueted and triumphed together that night [of his execution], many wishing that that day had been seven year before” the reasons for it are murky.
The bedroom politics get all the press: Cromwell’s bit of marital statecraft arranging Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves was a famous dud, but negotiations to end it were well on their way by the time of Cromwell’s arrest.
Why, too, should the minister have been ennobled Duke of Essex in April 1540, months after the disastrous union? That Cromwell, whose own security rested upon the stability of the realm, was a radical Protestant promulgating inflammatory religious ideas and he was condemned for both treason and heresy, incidentally giving the king wide latitude for just how painfully to kill his former servant seems to beggar belief.
Once fallen, Cromwell was kept alive long enough to add testimony to the Cleves divorce; that much is clear. But then why keep him alive still three weeks more?
In the end, maybe it was inevitable that one in his position, at his time and place, had to follow to the scaffold the many he had sent thither, just the Tudor version of that familiar “bad advisors” trope: it were not treason to murmur against the aide whose ill counsel did wrong by His Majesty, and so Cromwell stood to accumulate the share of hostility that properly belonged to his sovereign. As an expert practitioner of the game of power politics, Thomas Cromwell could hardly be in a position to complain.
Oh, and by the way with the German princess on the outs, the king’s wandering eye had fallen upon a niece of Cromwell’s enemy. On the day that Cromwell lost his head, Henry married Catherine Howard. No matter your brilliance, in Henrican England you only had to lose at court politics once, even if the king would be lamenting this injudicious trade within months.
Henry gave his loyal servant the easiest death, beheading on Tower Hill (although it turned out to be a botched job) alongside a Walter Hungerford, the first person executed under the Buggery Act.
Here are the events of the day from a more 'objective' perspective; a Charles Carlton: A Study in Interrogation explains:
On the afternoon of Thursday, the 10th of June 1540, a squad of Yeoman of the guard burst into the Council Chamber in Westminster Hall, and arrested Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister. They escorted him out through a postern to a boat waiting at Westminster Steps, rowed him down the Thames, and through Traitors' Gate into the Tower of London. Within this gaunt prison Cromwell was held till the early morning of July 28th, when the Yeoman marched him to Tower Hill to be executed for treason, heresy, bribery,and misuse of power. He climbed the scaffold, and addressed the crowd. He had come here to die, he confessed, and not to justify himself. He was a grievous wretch, who sought God's pardon. He had offended the King, and asked the crowd to pray that Henry VIII would forgive him. Finally, Cromwell insisted that he would die a Catholic, and that he had never waivered in a single article of the Catholic faith. Then, after a short paryer commending his soul to the Almighty, Cromwell laid his head on the block, and, as John Foxe records, "patiently suffered the stroke of the axe" swung "by a ragged and butcherly miser (who) very ungodly performed the office."
Edward Hall records Cromwell playing ball with a fine entry in the scaffold-speech genre that kept his son in the peerage.
I am come hether to dye, and not to purge my self, as maie happen, some thynke that I will, for if I should do so, I wer a very wretche and miser: I am by the Lawe comdempned to die, and thanke my lorde God that hath appoynted me this deathe, for myne offence: For sithence the tyme that I have had yeres of discrecion, I have lived a synner, and offended my Lorde God, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes. And it is not unknowne to many of you, that I have been a great traveler in this worlde, and beyng but of a base degree, was called to high estate, and sithes the tyme I came thereunto, I have offended my prince, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgevenes, and beseche you all to praie to God with me, that he will forgeve me. O father forgeve me. O sonne forgeve me, O holy Ghost forgeve me: O thre persons in one God forgeve me. And now I praie you that be here, to beare me record, I die in the Catholicke faithe, not doubtyng in any article of my faith, no nor doubtyng in any Sacrament of the Churche.* Many hath sclaundered me, and reported that I have been a bearer, of suche as hath mainteigned evill opinions, whiche is untrue, but I confesse that like as God by his holy spirite, doth instruct us in the truthe, so the devill is redy to seduce us, and I have been seduced: but beare me witnes that I dye in the Catholicke faithe of the holy Churche. And I hartely desire you to praie for the Kynges grace, that he maie long live with you, maie long reigne over you. And once again I desire you to pray for me, that so long as life remaigneth in this fleshe, I waver nothyng in my faithe.
And then made he his praier, whiche was long, but not so long, as bothe Godly and learned, and after committed his soule, into the handes of God, and so paciently suffered the stroke of the axe, by a ragged and Boocherly miser, whiche very ungoodly perfourmed the Office.
If Cromwell’s dying sentiment concealed any lasting bitterness for the crown, maybe his spirit would take some satisfaction a century later when another of his name and family rose high enough to behead a king.
So died one of England's greatest statesmen the architect of the Reformation and the Tudor Revolution Government. Just as his career has been the source of much historical debate, the events of the last seven weeks of his life, from his arrest to his execution,and his scaffold address especially, have been an irritant of contradiction and confusion.
SOURCES
Thomas Cromwell: A Study in Interrogation, Charles Carlton, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 116-127.
Edward Hall, The Union of the two noble and illustre families of York and Lancaster (London, 1548), pp. 246-47.
John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, ed. George Townsend, 8 vols. (London, 1834), V:402-03.
FYI MSG Andrew White CWO3 (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC Greg Henning SGT Gregory Lawritson SP5 Mark Kuzinski LTC (Join to see)SPC Chris Bayner-Cwik TSgt David L.SSG Robert Mark Odom CWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell Col Carl WhickerSGT Robert R.PO3 Bob McCord 1SG Steven ImermanSSG Samuel KermonSP5 Geoffrey VannersonSSG Pete FishSFC Richard Williamson
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LTC Stephen F.
Thomas More trial and execution - Wolf Hall
Thomas More is sentenced to death for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy
Thomas More trial and execution - Wolf Hall
Thomas More is sentenced to death for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHY022jtZko
FYI SPC Randy ZimmermanSPC Richard (Rick) HenryLCDR Clark PatonFN Randy Bohlke1SG John Highfill
1SG Joseph DarteyLT Ed SkibaSgt Steven B Crane Ed-d-c-MBAMaj Scott Kiger, M.A.S.SGT James BowerSSG Miguel Angel RivasGySgt Gary CordeiroSGT Aaron Reed SGT Mark Anderson SGT Jim Arnold SSgt Terry P. MSG (Join to see)
Thomas More is sentenced to death for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHY022jtZko
FYI SPC Randy ZimmermanSPC Richard (Rick) HenryLCDR Clark PatonFN Randy Bohlke1SG John Highfill
1SG Joseph DarteyLT Ed SkibaSgt Steven B Crane Ed-d-c-MBAMaj Scott Kiger, M.A.S.SGT James BowerSSG Miguel Angel RivasGySgt Gary CordeiroSGT Aaron Reed SGT Mark Anderson SGT Jim Arnold SSgt Terry P. MSG (Join to see)
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