Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII

by Loades, David

  The clergy were not happy, but the convocations had already submitted to the king over the question of their legislative powers, and were in no position to resist this new assault. A less institutional means of expressing opposition therefore seemed to be called for, and this took the form of the prophesyings of a certain Elizabeth Barton, known as ‘the nun of Kent’. Elizabeth was by origin a serving maid, who had been born in about 1506. In 1525, at the age of nineteen, she was taken ill with what appear to have been epileptic fits, in the course of which she spoke in tongues, giving voice to sayings of ‘wondrous holiness in rebuke of sin and vice’, and strange-sounding prophecies. She thus became accepted as a charismatic mystic, and quickly acquired a popular following. This in turn attracted the attention of Dr Edward Bocking, a monk of Christchurch, Canterbury, who investigated her case and became convinced that she had experienced genuine religious ecstasy.6 He arranged for her to be admitted into the nunnery of St Sepulchre’s in Canterbury, where her special gifts would be better cared for. Under Bocking’s protection, her reputation spread, and she soon began to attract the attention of the great. She had audiences with Archbishop Warham and with Bishop John Fisher, both of whom were impressed by her sanctity, and by her utterances. She also met Cardinal Wolsey in 1528, and is alleged to have predicted his downfall. Sometime in 1529 she was seen by the king, although the story that she was offered a place at court by Anne Boleyn is probably a fabrication arising out of the fact that she was seen by Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter.7 She was not unique. At about the same time a Holy Maid existed in Ipswich and another in Leominster. However by 1530 her prophecies were beginning to take on a political edge and Catherine of Aragon wisely refused to see her. Thomas More, who was equally unhappy with the way in which policy was developing, likewise avoided her. By 1533 her clerical minders were obviously exploiting her. She claimed that an angel had appeared to her and commanded her to tell Henry that he ought to mend his ways and ‘take none of the Pope’s right or patrimony from him’. He ought also to destroy all men of the new learning, a politically loaded message if ever there was one.8 Worse was to follow. She, or her heavenly control, pronounced that if he married and took Anne to wife, the vengeance of God would light upon him and he would die a villain’s death. In support of her testimony, she claimed to possess a letter written from Heaven by Mary Magdalene, ‘in letters of gold’, but was unable to produce it as evidence of her veracity.9

  Such sayings were extremely dangerous, although not treasonable as the law then stood, and from the end of 1532 Cromwell was keeping a watching brief on the maid and her associates. Henry bided his time, and then with Anne safely crowned and visibly pregnant, he struck. Elizabeth Barton, Edward Bocking and several clerical members of her circle were arrested and thrown into the Tower to be interrogated by Cranmer and Cromwell. Since she belonged to Canterbury, she was under the archbishop’s jurisdiction, but Cromwell seems to have undertaken the bulk of the examination. He was under no illusions about the political importance of these utterances;

  If credence should be given to every such lewd person as would affirm himself to have revelations from God, what readier way were there to subvert all commonwealths and good order in the world…10

  His investigations quickly revealed that Elizabeth had maintained contacts with friends of the discarded Catherine, and that alone was suspicious. Through his associates in the world of London printing, he was able to seize all 700 copies of the Nuns Book before they could be distributed, and burned the lot, along with all the other writing about her that he could lay his hands on. In November 1533 there was talk of an indictment for high treason, and Fisher and More were accused of misprision for not revealing her guilt, but in the event what happened was less dramatic. On 23 November the nun and some of her associates were paraded at Paul’s Cross, where they were denounced as frauds by John Salcot, the Abbot of Hyde, Winchester. She was a vain whore who had been misled by her confessor, Bocking. Salcot seems to have succeeded in whipping up the crowd to a frenzy of derision, perhaps because he insinuated sexual misdemeanours as part of the heady brew of his rhetoric.11 This no doubt made a good show, but the substantial breakthrough was made by Cromwell in the course of relentless interrogation, when he asked her to reveal past events that she could not possibly have known about. At this she broke down and confessed that ‘all that she said was feigned of her own imagining, only to satisfy the minds of those who resorted to her, and to obtain worldly praise’, which prompted Cranmer to call them ‘mischievous visions … containing much sedition’.12 This was very satisfactory, but it left unanswered the question of what was to be done with them, because it was all verbal, and not directed against the king except in a very general sense. An indictment for high treason would be thrown out by a scrupulous jury, and that would not do at all. Perhaps this was a matter for the king, and one of Cromwell’s remembrances towards the end of the year reads, ‘To know what the king will have done with the nun and her accomplices.’ The king apparently willed an Act of Attainder, although it is difficult to imagine Henry coming up with that solution, because it has Cromwell’s fingerprints all over it. The nun and five of her minders were duly accused of high treason in a Bill that was presented in the House of Lords on 21 February, although, thanks to Cromwell’s manoeuvres, the Marchioness of Exeter was spared. It appears to have encountered no opposition, and received the royal assent at the end of the session, on 30 March.13 Having been given due notice of the end, they were executed at Tyburn on 20 April. According to Burnet, Elizabeth Barton made a ‘good end’, in words which it is difficult to imagine her inventing for herself:

  I am the cause not only of my own death, which most justly I have richly deserved, but of the deaths of all those persons who are going to suffer with me. Alas! I was poor wretch without learning, but the praise of the priests about me turned my brain…14

  Assuming that Burnet was quoting a genuine source, Thomas Cromwell’s influence is easily discernible here, because this is exactly what he would have wanted her to say. As a reward she was hanged rather than burned, which was the normal punishment for the female traitor. Her companions suffered the full penalties of high treason, being hanged, drawn and quartered. No one was left in any doubt about the fate which awaited anyone tempted to follow in her footsteps – which no one did.

  John Fisher was included in the Act, but escaped with a fine of £300. This may also be ascribed to Cromwell’s influence, who on 27 February, while the Bill was still in the House of Lords, had attempted to persuade the bishop to seek the king’s mercy for his misprision.

  If you beseech the king’s grace … to be your gracious lord and to remit unto you your negligence, oversight and offence committed against his highness … I dare undertake that his highness shall benignly accept you into his gracious favour, all matters of displeasure past before this time forgotten and forgiven.15

  Fisher had not yielded to this tempting offer, but the imprisonment and loss of goods to which he was in theory liable were not imposed. In effect the old man had escaped with a warning. Thomas More, whose name had also been mentioned in this connection, was not eventually included in the Bill at all, because not only had he avoided meeting the nun, he had also denounced her as a ‘lewd … and wicked woman’. He had, he admitted, originally believed her to be inspired, but had been deterred by talk of treason. It pained him, he wrote, that ever the king could have thought him guilty. Nevertheless, his exclusion from the Act was due to the friendly offices of Thomas Cromwell rather than to any generosity on Henry’s part. The king was not graciously inclined to one who had embarrassed him by resigning the chancellorship in order to protect his conscience. Hostile prophecy was in the air in the latter part of 1533 and early in 1534, but the accusations often seem to have been malicious or self-interested. Ralph Wendon, for instance, a Warwickshire priest, was alleged to have spoken of a prediction that a queen should be burned at Smithfield and ‘trusted that it might have been that whore and harlot
Queen Anne’.16 However, when Cromwell investigated he found plain evidence that his accuser had a grudge against Wendon, and the matter was dropped. In 1534 the parson of Chesterton in Huntingdonshire was accused by his curate of keeping a ‘false and abominable’ prophet, but it appeared on enquiry that the curate was after his job, and that case proceeded no further either. Even Mrs Amadas, the widow of Cromwell’s predecessor at the Jewel House, was apparently declaring that the king ‘was cursed with God’s own mouth’, and that before midsummer (1534) England would be conquered by the Scots. However, since she also accused Henry of having designs on her virtue, for which there was not a scrap of evidence, Mrs Amadas was judged to be unbalanced, and no action was taken against her.17 What is clear from these and other similar cases is that, once a matter was brought to his attention, and appeared to be serious, Cromwell would investigate, usually by interviewing one or both of the parties involved, and that in many cases no further action was taken. Although where an accusation was substantiated, he was quite willing to let the law take its course, he was very far from running a ‘reign of terror’ against suspected dissidents.

  One reason why he was willing to do this was that the law was substantially augmented in the course of 1534. It could be argued that the Buggery Act of 1533 was a part of this campaign, criminalising as it did any acts of homosexuality. This may well have been aimed at a celibate clergy, but equally it may have been a consequence of Henry’s somewhat prurient morality. The fact that Cromwell drafted it and saw it through does not prove that he had a part in originating it, and indeed there is little other evidence of any sensitivity on his part towards this kind of activity.18 The fierce language of the Act probably reflects one of the king’s less endearing prejudices. On the other hand the work of the first session of Parliament in 1534 was clearly directed towards clarifying and establishing the Royal Supremacy, and here his guiding hand can certainly be detected. The Act for the Submission of the Clergy basically gave statutory form to the surrender of the convocations in the summer of 1532. It confirmed the incompetence of the clerical assemblies to make any new canons without the king’s consent, and shifted the ultimate court of appeal in ecclesiastical causes to the king’s Court of Chancery, which effectively made such appeals a part of the royal equity jurisdiction.19 It also omitted the saving phrase ‘as far as the law of Christ allows’ from its description of the king’s title. It thus gave the existing canon law a statutory basis, which was revived by the Act of 1559 and remained in place until the creation of new canons for the English Church in 1604. The name of the Pope was of course to be everywhere deleted. The second Act in this sequence is that restraining the payment of annates to the Pope. This starts by reciting the statute of 1532, which the king had subsequently activated by letters patent, and then proceeds to lay down a procedure for the appointment of archbishops and bishops. Where hitherto the king had submitted a name to the Pope for confirmation, and had occasionally allowed the pontiff to provide one of his own servants to the vacancy, now a different method was decreed. The king was to suggest a name to the dean and chapter of the relevant cathedral, who were then expected to elect the nominated party. This was the so-called congé d’elire, or right to elect. The fact that it was a fiction was disclosed by the next paragraph, which declared that if the chapter failed to elect within a given time, the right of appointment reverted directly to the king.20

  And furthermore be it ordained and established by the authority aforesaid that at every avoidance of any archbishopric or bishopric within this realm … the king our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors may grant unto the prior and convent or dean and chapter of the cathedral churches or monasteries … a licence under the great seal, as of old time hath been accustomed, to proceed to an election of archbishop or bishop of the see so being void, with a letter missive containing the name of the person they shall elect and chose … and if they do defer or delay their election above 12 days next after such licence and letters missive to them delivered, that then for every such default, the King’s highness, his heirs and successors at their liberty and pleasure shall nominate and present, by their Letters Patent under their great seal such a person to the said office and dignity so being void as they shall think able and convenient for the same…

  The next statute in this sequence is that ‘for the exoneration of exactions paid to the see of Rome’, otherwise called the Dispensations Act, which transfers to the Crown in Parliament the right to grant all such dispensations as had hitherto been sought from Rome, and forbids the payment of any dues whatsoever to the Pope,

  provided always that this act nor any thing or things therein contained shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded that your Grace, your nobles and subjects intend by the same to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ’s church in any things concerning the very articles of the Catholic faith or Christendom; or in any other things declared by Holy Scripture and the word of God necessary for your or their salvation…21

  He was acting thus, he declared, ‘to repress vice and for good conservation of this realm in peace, unity, and tranquility’, not out of any desire to reform or amend the faith. So, early in his legislative campaign, he declared his quarrel to be jurisdictional, or even personal, against a particular Pope, and not implying any sympathy with the heretical ideas then current. Thomas Cromwell may well have drafted the Dispensations Act, but he knew better than to stray from the narrow path of orthodoxy which the king had laid down. When he was concentrating, Henry was very insistent upon this interpretation of his actions.22

  In spite of the king’s defensive language, these acts nevertheless transgressed the traditional boundaries between secular and spiritual law, although there is little sign that the members were aware of doing anything very new. Cromwell’s careful presentation, and management of the discussion through Humphrey Wingfield, the Speaker, carefully suppressed any talk of innovation. Not very much is known about Wingfield, who was a lawyer and a burgess for Yarmouth, but he must have been brought to the king’s attention by Cromwell, part of whose business it was to know the biographies of as many members as possible.23 The Act which most conspicuously broke new ground, however, did not involve the spiritual authorities, except by remote implication. This was the Succession Act, rendered necessary by the king’s second marriage, and by the fact he had a daughter by that marriage. The succession to the crown had hitherto been deemed to be determined by the will of God, through the mysterious workings of male primogeniture, but that could hardly apply in Henry’s case. In the absence of any siblings of his father, the nearest males to the throne were James V of Scotland and Henry Brandon, the sons of his sisters Margaret and Mary, both unacceptable, although for different reasons.24 When the king’s judges had been invited to decide a disputed succession in 1460, they had declared so high a mystery to be beyond their competence, and that of Parliament, but no such modesty seems to have afflicted the Lords in 1534. Without a qualm they decreed the obvious; that the succession would pass to any son born to his ‘dearly and entirely beloved wife, Queen Anne’ or to any subsequent wife. However in the absence of any such son, the crown was to pass to his daughter Elizabeth, the ‘issue female’ born to the said wife, and to the heirs of her body. In the absence of any such heirs, the next-born female should succeed, and so on.25 This was to distinguish the Crown from any private inheritance, because there the law was that all female children should inherit equally. In other words the inheritance was to be divided, which would clearly be inappropriate to the Crown. The purpose of the Act was stated to be the avoidance of a disputed succession, which had so afflicted the realm in the past; but also to obviate any possible claim by the Pope, who,

  contrary to the great and inviolable grants of jurisdiction given by God immediately to Emperors, Kings and Princes in succession to their heirs, hath presumed in times past to invest who it should please them to inherit in other men’s kingdoms and dominions, which thing we your most humble subjects both spiritua
l and temporal do most abhor and detest…26

  Mary was not mentioned, having been ruled illegitimate by the dissolution of Henry’s marriage to Catherine, and nor was Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond, equally a bastard and therefore incapable of succession. This was the first time that Parliament had given ‘a form of succession to the Crown’, and it was accepted without demur as being the only sensible way out of what was potentially a very difficult situation, but of course it was predicated upon the acceptability of the king’s second marriage, and the rejection of papal jurisdiction – neither of which had won universal acceptance.

  Thomas Cromwell had devised this, as well as the other Acts of the session, and his services to the king were beyond price. Partly in recognition of this, and partly of his general usefulness, shortly after the session ended, Henry appointed him to be his principal secretary in succession to Stephen Gardiner.27 Gardiner had disgraced himself in his master’s eyes by responding ill-advisedly to the Commons’ Supplication against the Ordinaries. He had subsequently redeemed that lack of judgement, in part at least, by writing a treatise on True Obedience, which said all the right things about the Royal Supremacy, but he never recovered the confidential relationship which he had enjoyed before the summer of 1531. As a result he had spent much of the last three years on diplomatic missions to France, where he did well enough although his efforts were not helped by a somewhat abrasive personality that he seemed to be unwilling or unable to control.28 He may have been lucky to retain his diocese of Winchester, and was undoubtedly fortunate to hang onto the secretaryship, especially as he was not around most of the time to discharge its duties. It appears that he was able to do that because he had in effect an assistant secretary in the person of Thomas Cromwell, who was discharging most of the duties of the office well before he was appointed to it. Cromwell rapidly turned the secretaryship into the great clearing house of Tudor government, but that was on account of the personal position which he already held rather than any institutional strength in the office.29 The king’s secretary had for years been an office of personal service. He was the man who wrote the king’s letters and drafted confidential memoranda, but he was not an officer of state. His position was one of potential influence because of his guaranteed access to the king, but it seems that Gardiner’s predecessors had not exploited that situation, and that he himself had only done so to a limited extent, perhaps because he spent so much time away from the court. Cromwell, who was already a councillor of state with a finger in many pies, conferred a new status on the office. ‘Master Secretary’ was the key man in the king’s administration, and across his desk passed every kind of business, important or trivial. It was he who decided whether the innumerable cases of sedition which reached him were worth pursuing or not, and to make arrangements for investigation when that was considered necessary.30 He corresponded with foreign envoys, conducted confidential dialogues with Eustace Chapuys, and brokered innumerable patronage deals. His judgement was usually sound, and he did not underestimate Henry’s intelligence or engagement with affairs. This was no easy task, because the king was erratic. Sometimes he was so absorbed by his hunting or other pastimes that he had to be pursued for days to sign important papers, but on other occasions he showed himself to be the master of the most intricate negotiations. Above all, he could never be taken for granted, not even by his wife, let alone his secretary.31 Fortunately Cromwell, like Wolsey, had a formidable work rate and an army of reliable servants and assistants, which enabled him to keep on top of this massive pile of paper. Ralph Sadler, Richard Williams and Thomas Wriothesley are just the most obvious members of this formidable team, men who could be relied upon to serve on commissions, and who performed delicate missions on the secretary’s behalf; mostly within England but overseas if necessary.32