Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII

by Loades, David

  2. Letters and Papers, III, no. 2958. The speech is printed in full in Merriman, Life and Letters, I, pp. 30–44. There is no conclusive evidence that it was ever delivered.

  3. Merriman, p. 30

  4. Ibid., p. 43.

  5. F. C. Dietz, English Government Finance (1964), pp. 94–5. P. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal (1990), p. 370.

  6. Ibid. Surrey’s raiding on the Scottish borders ran the risk of provoking war, but did not in fact do so. M. C. Fissel, English Warfare, 1511–1642 (2001), p. 22.

  7. P. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal, pp. 369–70. Ellis Griffiths was not alone in expressing the opinion that this was a ‘gentleman’s war’, in which ordinary people had no interest. G. W. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion in Early Tudor England (1986), p. 5.

  8. For the manner in which Wolsey extracted this peace from the complexities of Henry’s foreign policy, see J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 138–41.

  9. L & P, IV, Appendix, no. 238. The letter is printed in full in Merriman, pp. 67–8.

  10. L & P, III, no. 3249.

  11. It was a sign of his coming eclipse that Henry was persuaded to call what would be known as the ‘Reformation Parliament’ on 9 August 1529.

  12. L & P, III, no. 3015. That Robinson was a friend of Cromwell’s is evident from other letters which passed between them.

  13. Ibid., no. 3530.

  14. The passages were closed to all normal merchandise, and this concession must have been due to the fact that Hanseatic goods were involved.

  15. L & P, IV, nos 106, 695.

  16. Ibid., no. 3157.

  17. Checkyng was very defensive of his reputation as a tutor, although it does not seem to have been intended that Gregory should take any degree. Hilary Mantel is of the opinion that Gregory was much brighter than he is represented as being, pointing to his successful career at court. I do not necessarily agree with her (though I do in part), because intellectual ability was no particular advantage at court, and the evidence for his dullness at this stage seems conclusive. (Hilary Mantel, personal communication.)

  18. It would have been normal at that time for the sons of a gentleman to have spent a year or two at either Oxford or Cambridge to improve their cultural awareness. L & P, IV, no. 5757. Checkyng was claiming 40s for the bedding which Christopher had destroyed, and Cromwell may well have thought this excessive.

  19. It does not seem that Cromwell carried out his threat, because Checkyng wrote again in November 1530 in terms which make it clear that the boys were still with him, although one of Gregory’s companions had departed. He declares that Gregory will be ‘loaded with Latin’ before he sees his father again, and refers to a visit which Cromwell had paid to Cambridge six weeks earlier. The tone of the letter is friendly, and it seems that their financial disagreements had been resolved.

  20. L & P, IV, no. 1732. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, p. 23.

  21. According to Foxe, Cromwell was ‘in the wars of the Duke of Bourbon at the siege of Rome’. This would have been at the sack of Rome in May 1527, but there is no supporting evidence for such a presence, and it is difficult to fit in with his other known commitments. Schofield, p. 26.

  22. See, for example, L & P, IV, nos 1833–4, 2365, 5117, 5145.

  23. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal, p. 481.

  24. Schofield, p. 24.

  25. Reginald Pole, Apologia ad Carolum Quintum Ceasarem. Epistolarum pars 1 (1744).

  26. L & P, IV, nos 990, 1137.

  27. Ibid., nos 1409, 1834.

  28. Merriman, Life and Letters, p. 51. This story also comes from Pole.

  29. Henry Lacy to Cromwell, 30 April 1527. L & P, IV, no. 3079.

  30. Ibid., nos 2538, 2738. Wolsey’s total income at this point has been calculated at approximately £30,000 a year.

  31. Ibid., nos 3461, 3676.

  32. Ibid., no. 3536. Wolsey was to regret importing scholars from Cambridge, because by the following year several of them were in trouble for heresy. Gwyn, King’s Cardinal, pp. 495–6.

  33. Dated at Orvieto, 12 June 1528. L & P, IV, no. 4365.

  34. Ibid., no. 4778.

  35. Ibid., no. 5186.

  36. For example on 12 April 1529 he was written to by the Guild of Our Lady, thanking him for letters which he had written on their behalf. L & P, IV, no. 5460.

  37. Ibid., no. 5330.

  38. Ibid., no. 5772. The document is printed in full by Merriman in Life and Letters, I, pp. 56–63. The date is altered from 1528 in the clerk’s hand. All the other amendments (including the deletion of his daughters) were made subsequently by Cromwell, so we do not know exactly when they died.

  39. Merriman, p. 56.

  40. Ibid., p. 61. Foxe is mainly responsible for the image of Cromwell as the patron of the Reformation, and he did not know of the existence of this document.

  41. Ibid., p. 59. It is not known how long Mercy Prior lived after this, but commendations were still being sent to her in 1531.

  42. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion, pp. 60–66.

  43. D. Loades, The Boleyns (2011), pp. 82–3.

  44. For the full story of this deteriorating relationship see E. W. Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (2004), pp. 102–4.

  45. Ibid., pp. 118–9. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal, p. 525. Wolsey may have had his suspicions of Campeggio’s intentions, but he had no option but to proceed with the trial.

  46. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 228–30. Wolsey was under attack both from above and below.

  47. The charge was absurd because, far from wielding his ecclesiastical jurisdiction without the king’s consent, his status, both as cardinal and legate, had been actively sought by Henry.

  48. Cavendish’s ‘Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey’, in Two Early Tudor Lives, ed. R. S. Sylvester and D. P. Harding (1962), p. 108.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid., pp. 109–13.

  51. L & P, IV, Appendix 238. Merriman, pp. 57–8.

  52. Bindoff, House of Commons, 1509–1558.

  53. L & P, IV, no. 6076.

  54. Wolsey never in fact forfeited York, because the praemunire was suspended before it was pardoned. He was, however, deprived of some of its properties which were restored with his reinstatement.

  55. L & P, IV no. 6061.

  56. See for example, ibid., nos 6076, 6080.

  57. Ibid., no. 6335.

  58. Ibid., nos 6226, 6263.

  59. Ibid., nos 6196, 6326.

  60. Ibid., no. 6185.

  61. It is impossible at this distance to tell what that illness was, but sickness and diarrhoea were among the symptoms. He also predicted the time of his death with great accuracy, which gives rise to the suspicion that he hastened his end by self-poisoning. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal, p. 637.

  62. Cromwell to Wolsey, 18 August 1530. L & P, IV, no. 6571.

  63. For a full discussion of these manoeuvres, see Gwyn, pp. 607–10.

  64. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, p. 43.

  65. L & P, IV, no. 3149.

  66. For instance, the letter of Edward Johns, the rector of Northrewly, to Cromwell on 18 May 1529, complaining of a non-payment by the Bishop of Bangor (Thomas Skevington), who had not been in his diocese for fourteen years. L & P, IV, no. 3533.

  67. Ibid., no. 6420. Russell’s hint was not wasted.

  68. Ibid., no. 6748.

  3 The King’s Servant, 1533–1536

  1. G. R. Elton, ‘The Commons’ Supplication of 1532: Parliamentary Manoeuvres in the Reign of Henry VIII’, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, II, 1974, pp. 107–36. The original version of this paper was published in the English Historical Review for 1951, and attacked by J. P. Cooper in the EHR for 1957. This version is Elton’s response.

  2. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, p. 44.

  3. Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government (1953), pp. 90–91.

  4. Graham Nicholson, ‘The Act of Appeals and the English Reformation’, Law and Government under the Tudors, ed. Cross, Loades and Scar
isbrick (1988), pp. 19–30.

  5. On the use of the privilegium regni, see Nicholson, p. 20.

  6. In a document entitled ‘Quaedem pertinencia ad Regis officium’, TNA SP1/236, f. 204.

  7. The relevant text is 2 Chronicles, 19. Nicholson, ‘Act of Appeals’, p. 22.

  8. Ibid., p. 23.

  9. Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, IV, p. 460.

  10. Merriman, Life and Letters, I, p. 334. Cromwell to Wolsey, 21 October 1530. Cromwell expressed his scepticism of this praemunire, writing that ‘the prelates shall not appear in the praemunire … there is another way devised…’

  11. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (1982), p. 330.

  12. ‘An act concerning the pardon granted to the king’s spiritual subjects’, 22 Henry VIII, c. 15. Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 334–8.

  13. D. Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (1737), III, p. 756.

  14. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, pp. 47–50.

  15. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations (1964), I, pp. 181–6, 193–7.

  16. Elton, Tudor Revolution, pp. 94–5.

  17. David Daniell, William Tyndale: a Biography (1994), p. 201. L & P, IV, no. 5823.

  18. Vaughn to Cromwell, 26 January 1531, L & P, V, no. 65. Amended copy of a letter also sent to Henry VIII.

  19. L & P, V, no. 153.

  20. Schofield, p. 50, Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 299.

  21. Wilkins, Concilia, III, pp. 725, 746–7. Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, p. 117.

  22. Cromwell to Stephen Vaughn, 20 May 1531. L & P, V, no. 248.

  23. Ibid., no. 247.

  24. Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 206–7. Schofield, p. 51.

  25. L & P, V, Appendix, no. 18. Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 184–5.

  26. Korey D. Maas, The Reformation and Robert Barnes (2010).

  27. Vaughn to Cromwell, 9 December 1531, L & P, V, no. 574.

  28. Schofield, pp. 52–3.

  29. According to Scarisbrick, ‘Henry was never a Catholic in any but a conventional way’, but this does rather less than justice to his tenacious adherence to the mass. Henry VIII, p. 248. For a full examination of Henry’s doctrinal convictions, see G. W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation (2005).

  30. The supplication is printed in full in Merriman, Life and Letters, I, pp. 104–11.

  31. Elton, ‘The Commons Supplication’, pp. 109–14, where the processing of the various drafts is discussed.

  32. Merriman, Life and Letters, p. 105

  33. Ibid., p. 106.

  34. Glyn Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic: the Life of Stephen Gardiner (1990).

  35. Elton, ’The Commons Supplication’, p. 135. ODNB.

  36. D. Loades, The Tudors (2012), p. 27.

  37. For a full discussion of this meeting and its significance, see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 305–8.

  38. Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, IV, nos 820, 824. Schofield, p. 74.

  39. Scarisbrick, p. 309 and note.

  40. Nicholson, ‘The Act of Repeals’, pp. 29–30. In January 1531, acting on the king’s behalf, he gave Eustace Chapuys a lesson in church history. Cal. Span., 1531–33, no. 598.

  41. Cranmer and Chapuys both accepted the date of 25 January, but Cranmer by his own confession was not present, and Chapuys was relying on court gossip. D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, pp. 637–8. Edward Hall accepted the November date. Hall, Chronicle, p. 794.

  42. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, pp. 55–60. Guy Bedouelle, ‘Le recours aux Universités et ses implications’ in Bedouelle and Le Gal, Le ‘Divorce’ du Roi Henry VIII (1987), p. 49.

  43. Henry in fact found out about Cranmer’s marriage, but never let it trouble him in spite of his general insistence upon a celibate clergy. MacCulloch, Cranmer, pp. 320–22.

  44. Ibid., pp. 88–9.

  45. ‘An Act that the appeals in such cases as have been used to be pursued to the see of Rome shall not from henceforth [be] used but within this realm.’ Statute 24 Henry VIII, c. 12. Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 427–9.

  46. Ibid.

  47. That being the day upon which the session ended.

  48. ‘The Noble Triumphant Coronation of Queen Anne, wife to the most noble King Henry VIII’ (1533). Reprinted in A. F. Pollard, Tudor Tracts (1903), p. 15.

  49. J. E. Paul, Catherine of Aragon and her Friends (1966), p. 123.

  50. Robert Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell (2007), p. 60.

  51. L &P, V, nos 458, 1185. The latter shows him handling council business on the king’s behalf.

  52. Ibid., no. 773.

  53. Ibid., nos 38, 86, 168, 181, 182.

  54. Ibid., nos 323, 371.

  55. Ibid., nos 621, 708.

  56. It was Kildare’s unsatisfactory performance as deputy that led to his summons to London, and subsequently to the revolt of his son, Thomas, Lord Offaly. S. G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland (1985), pp. 123–6.

  57. L & P, V, nos 840, 926.

  58. Ibid., nos 1040, 1100.

  59. Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell, p. 53. Cromwell’s first inventory of Jewel House holdings is TNA E36/85.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Cromwell’s holding of the office of the Wards is something of a mystery, because William Paulet held that position. Perhaps he only held it for a short while. For Cromwell’s reputation as a taker of bribes, see Merriman, Life and Letters, I, passim. This interpretation is now largely discredited, see G. R. Elton, Thomas Cromwell (ed. 2008).

  62. For an interpretation of that strategy, which had subsequently been challenged in general terms, see Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government, Chapter three, ‘The reform of the agencies of finance’, pp. 160–258.

  63. L & P,V, nos 359, 496.

  64. Ibid., no. 1136

  65. Various letters of Margaret Vernon are calendared in L & P, V, nos 15–23.

  4 The Royal Supremacy, 1533–1536

  1. Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, pp. 206–7.

  2. For example the statute of 1497, 12 Henry VII, c. 7, which prohibited those not in major orders from claiming benefit for misprision of treason.

  3. G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution, pp. 236–7.

  4. Statute 24 Henry VIII, c. 12. Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 427–9.

  5. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 250–52.

  6. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, pp. 88–90. A. Neame, The Holy Maid of Kent; the Life of Elizabeth Barton, 1506–1534 (1975).

  7. Schofield, loc. cit.

  8. BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, f. 75.

  9. Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell, p. 62. Neame, The Holy Maid.

  10. Christopher Hales to Cromwell, 25 September 1533, L & P, VI, no. 1149. Thomas Wright, Three Chapters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Society, 1843), p. 29.

  11. The text of his sermon is printed in L. E. Whatmore, ‘The sermon against the Holy Maid of Kent and her Adherents…’, English Historical Review, 58, 1943, pp. 463–75.

  12. Sir Henry Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History (1846), II, pp. 315–8.

  13. Unless it was a matter of extreme urgency, all Acts received the royal assent at the close of the session.

  14. G. Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, (1841), I, ii, p. 115.

  15. BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, f. 85. Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell, p. 64.

  16. Elton, Policy and Police, p. 58.

  17. Ibid., p. 60. Less fortunate was John Dobson, the vicar of Marston in Yorkshire who was executed in Lent 1538 at York for possessing an incriminating roll of such prophecies. Elton, Policy and Police, p. 61.

  18. Statute 25 Henry VIII, c. 6. Homosexual acts were frequently alleged against the occupants of male religious houses, and some may well have been true, but there is no suggestion that Cromwell was fiercer on this type of immorality than on ordinary fornication.

  19. Statute 25 Henry VIII, c. 19, ‘And for lack of justice at or in any of the courts of the Archbishops of this realm … it shall be lawful to the
parties grieved to appeal to the King’s Majesty in the King’s court of Chancery…’

  20. Statute 25 Henry VIII, c. 20, iii. Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 462–4.

  21. Statute 25 Henry VIII, c. 21. Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 464–71.

  22. For a full discussion of the king’s consistency in respect of heresy, see G. Bernard, The King’s Reformation (2005).

  23. On Wingfield, see S. T. Bindoff, The House of Commons, 1509–1558 (1982).

  24. Henry Brandon, Earl of Lincoln, was a mere child who was to die in 1534, while James V was a foreigner, born ‘out of the realm’ whose father had been James IV, killed at Flodden in 1513.

  25. Statute 25 Henry VIII, c. 22. Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 471–4.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, p. 120. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, p. 90.

  28. For a full discussion of Gardiner’s difficult temperament, see Glyn Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic; the life of Stephen Gardiner (1990).

  29. Elton, Tudor Revolution, pp. 298–315.

  30. Elton, Policy and Police, passim. L & P, VI, nos 711, 717, 724, 742, 746 etc.

  31. E. W. Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (2004), pp. 291–318.

  32. For instance Thomas Wriothesley undertook several missions to Calais, and one or two to France on Cromwell’s behalf. L & P, VI, nos 1306, 1400.

  33. Elton, Tudor Revolution, pp. 259–60. Ibid., Tudor Constitution, pp. 117–28.

  34. Statute 27 Henry VIII, c. 21. Elton, Tudor Revolution, p. 270.

  35. Ibid., pp. 276–97.

  36. Elton, Tudor Constitution, p. 118.

  37. Statute 26 Henry VIII, c. 1. Statutes of the Realm, III, p. 492.

  38. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1583) p. 1122.

  39. Statute 26 Henry VIII, c. 3. Statutes of the Realm, III, pp. 493–9. Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, pp. 206–7.

  40. Ibid., p. 207.

  41. Statute 26 Henry VIII, c. 6. Elton, Tudor Constitution, pp. 202–3. P. Williams, The Council in the Marches of Wales under Elizabeth (1958) also covers this earlier period.

  42. The Marcher Lordships were abolished and the whole area reduced to ‘shire ground’ by the Franchises Act of 1536 (27 Henry VIII, c. 24).

  43. J. G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in the Later Middle Ages (1970).

  44. D. Loades, Politics and the Nation, 1450–1660 (1999), p. 24.