Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII

by Loades, David

  Many lamented but more rejoiced, especially such as had been religious men for, they banqueted and triumphed that night, many wishing that day had been seven years before [but] some fearing lest he should escape … could not be merry. Others who knew nothing but truth by him, both lamented him and heartily prayed for him. Of certain of the clergy he was detestably hated … for he was a man … [who] could not abide the snuffling pride of some prelates…71

  In the circumstances it is not surprising that hardly anyone wrote in defence of the accused man, or that those who did so should have veiled their opinions in incredulity and obsequious language. Richard Pate, writing from Bruges, was appalled to learn of the treason of one who had been his benefactor and patron. He should, he went on, have eschewed the reformers and followed the king in religious matters; he who had been so patient with those of the ‘adverse party’.72 Archbishop Cranmer also wrote on the 12th, a letter full of contradictory emotions. He had not been close to Cromwell personally, but was his firmest ally in political terms, and particularly in the reform of the Church. He was also amazed that so good a servant of the king should be found to have committed treason; one who had shown such ‘wisdom, diligence, faithfulness and experience as no prince in this realm ever had’. He had been so vigilant to protect the king from all treasons that he found it incredible that he should have fallen into that way himself. He had, he professed, 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…73

  This letter came within a touch of suggesting that Henry was mistaken, and that he had been bamboozled by the conservative faction, but it did not actually say so and concluded with a plea for mercy on the grounds of Cromwell’s record. Nevertheless it was a brave letter to have written, and gives a good indication as to why Crammer was kept away from Henry by his traditionalist ‘minders’ during the days immediately after the arrest. The reactions from abroad were predictable. Francis rejoiced, and wrote to congratulate his friend Henry on his narrow escape; the Emperor fell on his knees and thanked God; only the Lutheran princes mourned the passing of a friend, and they made little of their sympathy for fear of upsetting the king, with whom they still hoped for some kind of an understanding.74

  It did not take Henry long to realise that the best testimony to his lack of consent to his marriage with Anne would come from his imprisoned minister, to whom he had confided each step in his mounting frustration. He therefore suggested, via Sir William Paulet, that a letter of confession would be acceptable, or as Cromwell put it in his response dated 12 June, ‘that I should write to your most excellent highness such things as I thought meet to be written concerning my most miserable state and condition’. In that letter he confessed many things; on one occasion, prompted thereto by the king, he had spoken privily to her Lord Chamberlain ‘and others of the queen’s council, being with me in my Chamber at Westminster’ to suggest that they quietly advise her to be more agreeable to her husband. He had done this without naming the king as the source of his concern, for which he humbly sought pardon. He concluded,

  For my offences to your grace which God knoweth were neither malicious nor wilful, and that I never thought treason to your highness, your realm or posterity, so God help me … I appeal to your highness for mercy, grace and pardon…75

  Henry received this missive without recorded comment, but he was not satisfied, and he sent Norfolk, Audley and Southampton to examine Cromwell at the Tower, and to urge him ‘upon the extreme danger and damnation of [his] soul to say what [he] knew in the marriage and concerning the marriage between your highness and the queen’.76 This provoked a second and more explicit response from the prisoner on 30 June, in which he went into all the details which Henry had confided to him about his relationship with Anne, including feeling her breasts and being sure that she was no maid, and that ‘your heart could never consent to meddle with her carnally’.77 Realising perhaps that he had no more to say, and that his usefulness to Henry was coming to an end, he finished this epistle with the words, ‘Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy…’ Cromwell knew perfectly well that any attempt at self-justification would be counter-productive, implying as it would that the king was mistaken in his judgement. Henry did not make mistakes, and if mistakes were made in his name, there was always someone to blame. On the other hand a confession of guilt and an abject plea for pardon might just possibly touch a responsive chord in his egotistical heart.

  It was worth a try, but it did not work because others were on hand to make sure that it did not, and a Bill of Attainder was introduced into the Lords on 17 June, proceeding to the Commons on the 19th. There it seems to have stuck, not out of any sympathy for Cromwell but because a proviso was added to safeguard the property of the Deanery of Wells, which he also held and which would have been forfeit to the Crown along with the rest of his property.78 Ten days later the amended Bill was returned to the Lords and passed through all its stages in one day – clearly it was not controversial. Why his enemies decided to proceed against him by Act of Attainder instead of by trial before the Lord High Steward is not clear. Perhaps they did not care to face the defence which he could certainly have mounted against the charges which they had prepared against him. Perhaps it was considered to be an appropriate way to deal with a man who had used that method so often himself. Perhaps they did not want to acknowledge his new-found nobility, or perhaps it was simply because the king would have it so. The Act lamented the fact that one whom the king had raised from ‘very base and low degree’ to be one of his most trusty councillors ‘as well concerning your grace’s supreme jurisdiction ecclesiastical as your most high secret affairs temporal’ should have turned out to be a false and corrupt traitor.79 It then listed the charges against him. He had, it was alleged, on his own authority, released those who had been convicted of misprision of treason, and had issued licences for his own profit for the export of coin and various other prohibited commodities. ‘Elated and full of pride’, he had constituted commissions without the king’s knowledge or consent, and had claimed great power over Henry, ‘a thing which no subject should say of his prince’. Also on his own authority, and without the king’s consent, he had granted passports ‘to pass without search’, presumably a form of licensed smuggling. So far these charges had been of abuse of office rather than treason, but the Bill then proceeded to more serious accusations. ‘Being a damnable heretic’ he had caused heretical writings to be translated into English and spread abroad ‘to sow sedition and variance among your true and loving subjects’, and had abused his office as Viceregent in Spirituals to license other heretics to teach and preach.80 In the same way, falsely pretending the king’s consent, he had released imprisoned heretics and refused to listen to charges against them. The Bill then proceeded from the general to the specific, and Cromwell was accused of saying ‘on 31 March in the parish of St Peter Le Poor in the City of London’ that the teaching of Robert Barnes was good, and that if the king should turn against reform, yet he would not turn and would if necessary fight in the field against him.81 This was undoubtedly treason by the Act of 1534, and was the core of the charges against him, but might be difficult to prove. The remaining charge was one of scandalum magnatum rather than treason in that it related to his abusive reaction to those who reminded him of his humble origins.

  Cromwell’s defence against these accusations was circumstantial and detailed, and there is no doubt that the charges were a tissue of lies and exaggerations. However, that did not matter; Norfolk and Gardiner had succeeded in convincing the king, and he was the only person who needed to be convinced, because Parliament would follow him. Improbable as it may seem, Henry’s conviction was genuine, because he was seeing traitors in
all sorts of unlikely places, and heretics behind every bush.82 He had become more than a little neurotic about Cromwell, being well aware that he had trusted him too far in the days of his favour. Being anxious to avoid the drudgery of paperwork, he had allowed his minister to manage things in his own way, and was now uneasily aware that things had happened of which he would not have approved if he had been concentrating. So he had to exaggerate Cromwell’s duplicity in order to justify himself, and the Bill of Attainder was prepared with that in mind. The tactic worked and the Act received the royal assent on 24 July. It was only then, when the attainder became effective, that Thomas Cromwell ceased to be Earl of Essex. The Bill itself referred to him by that title and in all the correspondence which passed between him and the king and council, he is always so described. It was only in Marillac’s imagination that he became ‘Thomas Cromwell, shearman’ after his arrest.83 Perhaps the ambassador was hoping to see him executed in the manner appropriate to a treacherous shearman, by hanging, drawing and quartering, but if that was the case then he was disappointed. The former Lord Privy Seal was despatched by the axe on 28 July on Tower Green, as became his proper status. ‘My prayer,’ he had once said, ‘is that God give me no longer life than I shall be glad to use my office in edification and not in destruction’, and he seems to have come to his end with a quiet conscience. As was expected he made an address from the scaffold, although whether it was that recorded by Edward Hall is not known. ‘I am come hither to die,’ he is alleged to have told the crowd, ‘and not to purge myself as some think peradventure that I will do.’84 He acknowledged that he had offended God and the king, and asked forgiveness of both. ‘I die,’ he went on, ‘in the Catholic faith, not doubting any article of my faith … nor in any sacrament of the church.’ He probably used the word ‘Catholic’ in the same sense as Melanchthon had used it, but his statement about the sacraments disposes of any notion that he was a radical, or even a Lutheran, because the Augsburg Confession did not acknowledge four out of the traditional seven. His final prayer, on the other hand, does raise questions about justification by faith alone.

  Of sins and evil works I see, alas, a great heap … but through thy mercy I trust to be in the number of them to whom thou wilt not impute their sins, but will take and accept me for righteous and just, and to be the inheritor of everlasting life … Most merciful Saviour … Let thy blood cleanse and wash away the spots and foulness of my sins. Let thy righteousness hide and cover my unrighteousness. Let the merits of thy passion and blood shedding be satisfaction for my sins…85

  So Cromwell departed as he had lived, with unanswered questions about his religion, and it is probably wisest to assume that his evangelical sympathies embraced some aspects of Lutheranism, but not others, and that he was certainly not a sacramentary. Edward Hall was one of those who mourned his passing, but the most eloquent epitaph was penned by his friend and protégé Sir Thomas Wyatt:

  The pillar perished is whereto I leaned,

  The strongest stay of my unquiet mind,

  The like of it no man again can find –

  From East to West still seeking though he went –

  To mine unhap, for hap away hath rent

  Of all my joy the very bark and rind…86

  Two days later, three of Cromwell’s more obvious clients, who had been in prison since Barnes retracted his recantation on 30 March – Robert Barnes himself, William Jerome and Thomas Garrett – were burned at Smithfield. Barnes was certainly a Lutheran, but that had not prevented Cromwell from using him as a diplomatic agent no further back that the beginning of 1540. None of these men was guilty of the radical heresies with which they were charged, but it was deemed necessary as part of the campaign against Cromwell to represent him as the controlling force behind a dangerous heretical conspiracy — and these were the other conspirators, or some of them. Like him they were condemned by Act of Attainder, and Barnes at least proclaimed his innocence in his last speech to the crowd.87 He had never preached sedition or disobedience, and had used his learning against the Anabaptists. He did not know why he was condemned to die, but the true answer lay not in his own doings or beliefs, but in his association with Thomas Cromwell. At the same time three adherents of the old faith, Edward Powell. Richard Fetherstone and Thomas Abel, were executed as traitors for denying the Royal Supremacy. Their deaths must also be laid at the king’s door, but the true story again relates indirectly to Cromwell’s fall, because his enemies had to demonstrate that they were loyal subjects of the king, and had no sympathy with those papists against whom he had so rigorously set his face.88 They were every bit as zealous in the cause of the ecclesiastical supremacy as he had been. Not for the first time (or the last), the machinations of Henry’s servants left him with the responsibility for unnecessary and brutal executions. At the time, the king was much incensed against Cromwell, and ignored those who argued for his years of good service, but the mood did not last. In March 1541, when his leg was troubling him and he was feeling particularly sorry for himself, he berated his councillors for having deprived him of the best servant that he had ever had.89 Whether he was missing Cromwell’s expertise in affairs of state or his diligence in running the administrative machine is not clear, perhaps it was a little of both, but in any case his successors did not live up to the exacting standards which he had set. So alone among the victims of Henry’s whims and policies, Thomas Cromwell received a sort of posthumous pardon. No document to that effect survives, but his son Gregory was raised to a barony, notwithstanding his father’s attainder in December 1540, and so must have been restored in blood.

  8

  CROMWELL AND THE STATE

  Who is he that can think himself to have any vein of an honest man, that feareth not God, that loveth not his country, that obeyeth not his Prince…

  Sir Richard Morison

  Thomas Cromwell was not an intellectual, and wrote nothing specifically directed to any theory of the state, but what he believed can be deduced from his letters and from his acts of patronage. Reginald Pole’s famous description of him as a Machiavellian can be discounted, because it was written in the aftermath of his role in the destruction of Pole’s family, when the cardinal’s animus against him was obvious and understandable. It relates to a conversation which he had allegedly had with Cromwell several years previously in 1535, the last time when such an exchange would have been possible, and about three years after The Prince was published.1 Cromwell had explained that he had told the king, in an interview which did not in fact take place, that the distinction between right and wrong did not apply to kings, and that political morality was different from the ethics which applied to ordinary people. He had also said that no realm could have two masters, and that the headship of the Church was his by right, all of which was being wise after the event. They had also discussed the proper role of a councillor, and Cromwell had declared that the first concern of such a person must be to serve the honour and advantage of his prince, and if he does his work well, his master’s ambitions will be achieved without any sign of discord in his realm. However a show of moral virtue must be maintained, and only those inexperienced in the ways of the world (like Pole) would be shocked by such sentiments.2 All this could indeed be garnered from the pages of The Prince, but whether Cromwell had so gathered it is not known. Pole admitted that he had met Cromwell only the once, and was not acquainted with his circle. He also confessed that the secretary never put forward his ‘blasphemous’ ideas in public, but rather posed as a good Christian. In fact we have the testimony of Thomas Starkey, who knew them both, that they were ‘almost unacquainted and of small familiarity’.3 So Pole’s account of their alleged conversation in 1535 can be discounted as evidence of Cromwell’s actual opinions; it only reflects the way in which the cardinal thought that he should have been expressing himself.

  Thomas was interested in theories, however, and although he had little opinion of Plato, which he had obviously read, he thought better of other writings on the s
tate, noticeably those of Aristotle. He also knew his Bible, as is demonstrated by his refutation of Fisher’s use of Amos, and by his reproof to Shaxton for quoting the scriptures out of context, both of which citations are included in letters to the respective parties rather than in public utterances. He was sufficiently interested in legal theory to declare that the Divine Law was irrelevant to the affairs of England, an opinion again expressed in a private letter to Fisher, and not altogether consistent with his public pronouncements in Parliament.4 The best evidence of his interest in theory comes from the testimony of Thomas Starkey, who was an ideas man by profession and well known to the secretary, who says that he had many conversations with him ‘of God, of nature, and of other politic and worldly things’, including the writings of Aristotle. There was no reason why Starkey should have misrepresented these exchanges, and although they also took place in private, no particular pains were taken to conceal them.5 Taken in conjunction with his letters, they prove conclusively that Cromwell was no mere pragmatist, but made a conscience of what he did. As to his Machiavellianism, as Elton has rightly pointed out, The Prince is not so much a work of moral philosophy as a presentation of things as they are, and that it would be hard indeed to find any competent statesman of the sixteenth century who did not follow its advice at least to some extent.6 Richard Morison, who was certainly a member of Cromwell’s circle, knew the Florentine’s works by 1535, so it is reasonable to suppose that he understood his general drift, but whether the secretary ever read The Prince is not known.