Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII

by Loades, David

  Faced with this criticism, Elton reiterated his interpretation, only slightly modified, in Reform and Reformation in 1977. He might, he admitted, have been overly dismissive of the court. The Privy Chamber retained an independent role, and although Cromwell succeeded in placing some of his own men in it, they did not dominate. It was predominantly the king’s own context, and he alone appointed its members. He also conceded that the financial reorganisation could be interpreted as a personal bid by Cromwell to control the royal money, because Augmentations did not endure as a separate institution. It was absorbed into a reformed Exchequer in 1554.43 On the centralisation and bureaucratisation of government, however, he retained his position, pointing out that although the secretaryship lost some of its power when Cromwell surrendered it, it did not return to its earlier household status. It remained central to the administration of the state, to be picked up and augmented further by Sir William Cecil. Above all, he held his ground over the relative importance of Parliament, re-emphasising that the ecclesiastical supremacy, although personal to the king, made it a sovereign legislative body. This was new, and in accordance with Cromwell’s vision of the state. These views he also defended in a series of trenchant papers, most notably ‘The Political Creed of Thomas Cromwell’, which appeared originally in 1956 and was reprinted in his Studies in Tudor and Stuart Government and Politics in 1974.44 Others meanwhile had entered the fray on his side. In Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation (1959), Geoffrey Dickens went further in the direction which Elton had indicated, arguing that the secretary was indeed a covert Protestant, and the success of the reformation after Henry’s death owed a great deal to the foundations which he had been able to lay. Henry had accepted his concept of a ‘middle way’ for the English Church, but differed from him in where to draw the line, a difference which was exploited by his enemies in order to destroy him in 1540. It was, however, above all in his patronage of the English Bible that Cromwell had laid the foundations for ultimate Protestant success, creating a taste for Bible reading which remained popular throughout the changes which took place in 1547–58. It was he who had facilitated the shift in reform from a Lollard base to a Lutheran one, and thus laid the doctrinal foundations which were to be developed after 1547.45 He had not been a sacramentary, but he had been close to being a Lutheran; far too close for Henry’s comfort as he never relaxed his hostility to the German reformer. In 1978 B. W. Beckingsale summed up the debate as it had developed by that time, expressing a cautious support for Elton’s interpretation. His Thomas Cromwell, Tudor Minister, based largely on published works, was judicious but added little that was original. He was inclined to believe that his subject had indeed been the brains behind the Henrician Reformation, both in its political and its religious aspects, although admitting that the evidence was not altogether clear, being based mainly on Cromwell’s own archive, which had been confiscated at the time of his fall. In 1990 Glyn Redworth, in his study of Stephen Gardiner, denied that Gardiner had been a party to any conspiracy against the minister at the time of his fall, thus removing a minor plank from Elton’s platform and placing the responsibility firmly and only on the king.46 This had the effect of reviving the debate of King or Minister, but only in respect of the end of Cromwell’s career.

  In 1991, just three years before his death, Geoffrey Elton expressed his final thoughts on the man who had dominated so much of his academic career:

  These issues are here important because they must be fundamental to any assessment of Thomas Cromwell’s role and achievement. He exercised at least a great measure of authority for not more than eight years; if ever he was influential it was between 1532 and 1540. Now it is plain that that period coincided with the main unfolding of dramatic change, even if much of that change had signalled its coming before 1532 and continued to work itself out after 1540. On these grounds I long ago concluded that the peculiar character of the years in question must be ascribed to the particular work of the man who operated in high office at that time and no other, while the reign of Henry VIII before Cromwell’s arrival and after his departure bore noticeably different features.47

  Much evidence had emerged since he originally wrote, but he remained convinced that the 1530s were Cromwell’s decade. That did not necessarily justify the extreme respect which he had once bestowed upon him as the creative statesman who was single-handedly responsible for the transformation. The only view which he continued to regard as wholly mistaken was that nothing of great significance happened in the 1530s at all.

  The creation of a national church under a layman as Supreme Head, the insertion into the system of a sovereign law-making Parliament, the consolidation of diverse members of the commonwealth into a unitary state, and indeed the recasting of the central administration which replaced government by the king by government under the king – all these, with their tenuous prehistory and their shaky aftermaths characterise the age of Thomas Cromwell and make it an age of change sufficient to permit thoughts of revolution.48

  So Elton stood by his original thesis, although without the thumping affirmatives which had originally characterised it. The emerging evidence had undermined certain aspects of his proposition, but had confirmed others. Perhaps Cromwell had not been wholly responsible for the emergence of the Privy Council, and perhaps his regime had been highly personal. He had, on the other hand, reformed the household, streamlining it and making it more effective for the king’s service, and nothing had touched his idea that Cromwell’s initiatives had transformed the role of Parliament in the government of a centralised state. Henry’s principal minister thus remains supreme. A man ruthless in pursuit of his chosen objectives, but extremely careful of the niceties of the law, and a humane man even to those who stood in his way, like Thomas More.49 A bon viveur, and a man of humour and wit, who impressed his contemporaries with the quality and quantity of his hospitality. Above all, a man of faith, who may not have been always certain where his doctrinal sympathies lay but who honestly professed himself to be a Christian and a follower of scriptural precepts.

  The biographies which have emerged since Elton wrote, Robert Hutchinson’s in 2007, John Schofield’s in 2008 and J. P. Coby’s in 2012, although carefully researched, have not significantly modified his last considered opinion. Hutchinson is relatively unsympathetic to his subject, following Merriman in portraying him as a harsh man and incurably avaricious, but the others are more judicious, accepting Elton’s revised judgement of the man and of his achievements.50 A word should also be said about the fictitious Cromwell portrayed in Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies. These are naturally concerned with him as a man rather than as a public figure, portraying his relationships with his son, his servants and his friends in a lively and realistic fashion. They are careful to respect the known facts about his career, and steer carefully between the conflicting theories about his role, operating (as it were) in the interstices of the established evidence. Together they constitute a fictional tour de force, but do not amount to a biography. The Cromwell they present is humane, intelligent and devout, closer to the man portrayed by Elton than to Merriman’s austere and corrupt figure, but they are essentially concerned with his private life, about which the authentic record is usually and infuriatingly silent.

  1. Henry VIII by Holbein.

  2. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second and most controversial wife. Cromwell showed the king how to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order to achieve the desired union with Anne.

  3. Arthur, Henry VII’s first son and Henry VIII’s elder brother, from a nineteenth-century stained-glass window in St Laurence’s church, Ludlow. Arthur was briefly married to Catherine of Aragon but died young.

  4. Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Cromwell advocated this short-lived marriage.

  5. Anne Boleyn’s father, Thomas Boleyn, the Earl of Wiltshire. Cromwell replaced him in the office of Lord Privy Seal after Anne’s fall.

  6. Henry VII.


  7. Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife, who gave Henry the son he so desired.

  8. Edward, Henry VIII’s son by Jane Seymour. He would later succeed to the throne as Edward VI (r. 1547–53).

  9. Erasmus in an iconic woodcut by Dürer. Cromwell spoke French, Spanish and Italian and had a good working knowledge of Latin, which he appears to have developed by memorising chunks of the Erasmian translation of the New Testament.

  10. An Allegory of the Tudor Succession depicting the family of Henry VIII.

  11. Statue of Catherine of Aragon. By 1529 Catherine was past childbearing age and had produced only one living child, a daughter named Mary.

  12. Thomas Wolsey from a drawing by Jacques le Boucq. Cromwell was Wolsey’s servant from 1524 to 1530.

  13. Tomb of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and uncle to both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Norfolk was a personal enemy of Cromwell.

  14. Thomas Cranmer from a painting by Gerhard Flicke. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer presided over the court that finalised Henry’s divorce from Catherine. He worked closely with Cromwell on religious reform following the break with Rome.

  15. Thomas Wyatt, poet and friend of Cromwell. On Cromwell’s death, he penned an eloquent epitaph.

  16. A view of the Tudor palace at Greenwich where Henry married Anne of Cleves at Cromwell’s recommendation and much to the king’s distaste.

  17. The Tower of London. Cromwell was arrested at three o’clock on 10 June 1540, stripped of the insignia of the Garter and taken to the Tower.

  18. Following his arrest, Cromwell was conveyed by boat to the Tower and would have entered through the Traitor’s Gate.

  19. After his downfall, Cromwell’s head was placed on a spike on London Bridge.

  20. A plan of Westminster Palace, showing the Great Hall, the Abbey and the two Houses of Parliament. Cromwell effectively ran the House of Commons from 1532, and the House of Lords from 1536.

  21. A view of Westminster, c. 1550, by Anthony van Wyngaerde. Westminster was the seat of the royal courts of justice and the meeting place of Parliament.

  22. Whitehall Palace, c. 1550, also by van Wyngaerde. Whitehall had been extensively rebuilt by Cardinal Wolsey. It came into the king’s hands on the fall of Wolsey in 1529 and was further rebuilt. It was used as a principal royal residence until largely destroyed by fire in the 1690s.

  23. A drawing for the painting of Sir Thomas More and his family by Hans Holbein, c. 1527. Thomas More waged a fierce war on heretics while Cromwell had an increasing number of dealings with Continental Lutherans.

  24. Windsor Castle, a royal palace and home of the Knights of the Garter.

  25. A copy of Pope Clement VII’s ‘definitive sentence’ in favour of Catherine of Aragon and against Henry VIII, issued on 23 March 1534. It was ignored in England.

  26. Henry VIII in council. This appears to be a formal session, with the king seated under his ‘cloth of estate’. In practice, the council normally met without the king, and attendance was usually about a dozen.

  27. Title page from the Great Bible, printed by Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch, 1539. Enthroned as God’s vicar, Henry symbolically hands out the Word of God to the spiritual and temporal hierarchies of his realm, headed by Thomas Cranmer on his right and Thomas Cromwell on his left.

  NOTES

  1 The Making of a Man, c. 1485–1522

  1. Bodley MS Dods, xxvi, p. 97. R. B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (1902/68), p. 2.

  2. John Cromwell’s wife was the sister of one William Smyth, described as an armourer. There is no tangible evidence that Walter ever practised the trade of blacksmith. Merriman, Life and Letters, p. 3.

  3. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wimbledon, cited by Merriman, pp. 3–4, n. 3.

  4. There is no record of the death of Walter Cromwell.

  5. This story originated in a conversation with Chapuys in 1534, apropos of the age of Catherine of Aragon, who was forty-nine at that point. Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1534–5, p. 468.

  6. Robert Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell (2007), p. 268.

  7. Neither the exact date nor the method of his flight are recorded. Bandello later wrote that he was ‘fleeing from his father’. M. Bandello, Novella XXIV, p. 251. It was possible for a father to have his son imprisoned at that time without legal process.

  8. Bandello, loc. cit.

  9. It was not until 1539 that Lord Morley sent Cromwell a copy of The History of Florence in Italian, although Reginald Pole claimed that he had read The Prince ten years earlier (before it was published). John Schofield, Thomas Cromwell (2008), pp. 265–6. Machiavelli was a senior servant of the republican government at the time of Cromwell’s stay in Florence.

  10. Cromwell’s service in the English house in Antwerp is something of a mystery. Merriman supposes that he was ‘either a merchant or a clerk to a merchant’, and the latter is probably more likely. As such he would have needed knowledge of Flemish law rather than English, and that he could have picked up on the spot.

  11. He is supposed to have passed the time on his second visit to Rome in this fashion. During his years in power he was to be a great promoter of the English Bible.

  12. According to Foxe, ‘Cromwell, observing his time accordingly, as the Pope was newly come from hunting into his pavilion, he with his companion approached with his presents brought in with a three man song (as we call it) in the English tongue and after the English fashion …’, J. Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1583).

  13. Elyot’s letter was written in June 1536, and related to the ‘honour of God’, suggesting that Cromwell’s reforming qualities had been manifest as early as 1512. However, there is no contemporary evidence for that. Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, X, no. 1218.

  14. Merriman, Life and Letters, pp. 12, 17–18.

  15. Letters and Papers, III, no. 2447; a power of attorney granted 18 August 1522.

  16. A ‘Mistress Prior’ and a ‘Master Prior’ both had rooms in Cromwell’s house at Austin Friars in 1527. Mr Prior presumably died at some point between then and 1529. L and P, IV, no. 3157.

  17. Wolsey had been translated from Lincoln to York in August 1514, and appointed Lord Chancellor in succession to Warham on 24 December 1515. Peter Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal (1990). He had been the king’s chief minister since 1512.

  18. There is a large grey area relating to Cromwell’s service to Wolsey, but it presumably relates to his work as an attorney. The evidence is circumstantial, and relies mainly on later memories. The first record evidence is in a letter dated 18 October 1520, but by then the connection was obviously well established. L & P, III, no. 1026.

  19. L & P, III, no. 1026.

  20. Ibid., no. 2447. Power granted by Perpetuus Deonantur in a suit against George Byrom of Salford. The document names several members of Wolsey’s household.

  21. Creke to Cromwell, 17 July 1522. L & P, III, no. 2394. The messenger who delivered the letter presumably had more precise directions!

  22. 14 August 1522, L & P, III, no. 2437. For Wolsey’s earlier relationship with the Marquis, see Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal, pp. 2–3, and J. P. Coby, Thomas Cromwell (2012), p. 33.

  23. Cromwell appears to have been frequently absent from London on the cardinal’s business, but these journeys seldom occupied more than a few days. Chawffer to Cromwell, 15 August 1522. L & P, III, no. 2441. For Wolsey’s itinerary during these years, see N. Samman, The Court of Henry VIII, 1509–1530 (forthcoming).

  24. Lacy to Cromwell, 18 August 1522. L & P, III, no. 2445. In June the king had asked London for £20,000, and the mayor ‘sent for none but men of substance’. Mr Ellderton was one such, and although ‘the crafts sold much of their plate … the sum was paid’. Edward Hall, Chronicle (1809), I, p. 258.

  25. Hutchinson, Cromwell, p. 12. ODNB.

  26. 23 August 1522. L & P, III, no. 2461.

  27. Ibid., no. 2577.

  28. The nature of the commission requested is unclear;
it was probably one of investigation. L & P, III, no. 2557.

  29. That Cromwell made a conscious decision to give up the clothing business is a supposition, but it was almost certainly the result of the death of his father-in-law, which seems to have occurred in 1524. Twesell’s letter is dated 20 October 1522. L & P, III, no. 2624.

  30. Merriman says that ‘the spirit of the Italy of Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia stamped itself deeply upon his youthful character’, but there is no indication that any of his contemporaries noticed.

  31. Robert ap Reynolds of Calais claimed that he owed him 47 angels (£17 13s), ‘with opprobrious words’. Hutchinson, p. 12. This might have been an attempt to blackmail one who by then stood high in the king’s favour.

  32. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, p. 22.

  2 The Cardinal’s Servant, 1523–1530

  1. S. T. Bindoff, The House of Commons, 1509–1558 (1982).