Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII

by Loades, David

  62. Tanner, pp. 475–9. Statute 22 Henry VIII, c. 12. Statutes of the Realm, III, p. 328.

  63. Ibid., p. 558. Statute 27 Henry VIII, c. 25. Tanner, pp. 479–81.

  64. Ibid., para xiii.

  65. E. Hatcher, Plague, Population and the English Economy: 1348–1530 (1977). E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (1981). Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds (2000).

  66. By abolishing the office of Lord Chamberlain, and placing the Chamber and the Household together under the control of a Lord Great Master. This was a reform which lasted only three years, from 1540 to 1543. Loades, The Tudor Court (1986), pp. 203–4.

  67. G. R. Elton, ‘King or Minister? The Man behind the Henrician Reformation’, Studies, I, pp. 173–88.

  68. For example, Mary, Duchess of Richmond, wrote to Cromwell in April 1538, expressing her gratitude for all his kindness to her, and sending him a ‘small token’. L & P, XIII, i, no. 876.

  9 Historiography

  1. Richard Morison, A remedy for sedition (1536), RSTC 18113.5. Thomas Starkey, An exhortation to the people instructynge them to Unitie and Obedience (1536), RSTC 23236. Sir Thomas Elyot, Pasquil the playne (1533), RSTC 7672.

  2. Letters and Papers, IX, no. 862. Printed by Merriman in Life and Letters, I, pp. 17–18.

  3. For Chapuys’s attitude to Cromwell see Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, pp. 71–4.

  4. Epistolarum Reginaldi Poll, ed. A. M. Quirini (1744–57). For a full discussion of the Exeter Conspiracy, see Hazel Pierce, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (2003).

  5. For Henry’s reputation in Europe, see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 355–83.

  6. Hall, Chronicle, p. 838.

  7. L & P, XVI, no. 590.

  8. Bound volumes of printed broadsides, Volume I, Henry VIII to Elizabeth, folio 4. Society of Antiquaries of London. Hutchinson. Thomas Cromwell, p. 264.

  9. Broadsides, folio 5.

  10. One of the reasons why the nobility hated Cromwell was because he imitated the lifestyle of a peer long before he was created one. Beckingsale, Thomas Cromwell, pp. 61–5. His largesse far outdid that of the Bishop of Winchester’s house in Southwark. John Stow, Survey of London (ed. 1908), pp. 89, 91. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, p. 286.

  11. If these grants had been made on Cromwell’s personal initiative, there would have been some chance that they would have been invalidated by his fall. This did not happen because he was always careful to ensure that grants were made by royal warrant. However the anxiety remained. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, pp. 61–5.

  12. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1583), p. 1188. D. Loades, ‘Henry VIII and John Foxe’, The John Foxe Bulletin, I (2002), pp. 5–12

  13. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1177.

  14. Foxe was born into the middle-class establishment of Boston in the year 1517 and moved to Coningsby while he was still very young, but he stayed in touch with his Boston roots. It cannot be proved that he knew Geoffrey Chamber’s family, but it is a reasonable supposition, and would explain the interest which he showed in this event.

  15. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, p. 1181.

  16. Ibid., p. 1184

  17. Ibid., p. 1187

  18. Ibid., p. 1190. It seems that this prayer was taken from Hall, with whom it is almost identical.

  19. Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (ed. 1807–8), p. 818.

  20. RSTC 7204.5

  21. ‘Charles Dodds’ was the pseudonym of Hugh Tootel, and his work was probably published in London.

  22. William Stubbs, Lectures on Medieval and Modern History (1887), p. 281.

  23. J. A. Froude, History of England (1864), II, pp. 531–2. J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People (1874), pp. 331–2. The editions of Foxe were by S. R. Cattley and George Townsend (1837–41) and by Josiah Pratt (1870).

  24. R. B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (1902), I, passim.

  25. Ibid., pp. 85–6.

  26. Ibid., p. 86.

  27. Ibid. The two letters are printed as nos 163 and 180. G. R. Elton argued that they were both forgeries, but without citing his evidence. Elton, Thomas Cromwell (ed. 2008), p. 19.

  28. John, Abbot of Fountains, to Cromwell, 16 March 1536, L & P, X, no. 484. He was also, for instance, Warden of the forests north of the Trent, Dean of Wells and Recorder of Bristol. Beckingsale, Thomas Cromwell, p. 119

  29. Merriman, Life and Letters, I, pp. 112–46.

  30. G. R. Elton, Reform and Renewal, pp. 81–2.

  31. G. R. Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government, passim.

  32. Ibid., pp. 423–4.

  33. G. R. Elton, ‘Tudor Politics: the points of contact: 1. The Parliament’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 24, 1974, pp. 183–200.

  34. For example the first Chancellor was Richard Rich. Elton, The Tudor Revolution, pp. 215–9.

  35. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 471.

  36. Gerald Harriss and Penry Williams, ‘A Revolution in Tudor History?’, Past and Present, 25, 1963. Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (1979), pp. 41–2.

  37. Elton, Reform and Renewal, pp. 9–37.

  38. Ibid., pp. 122–6.

  39. D. Starkey, Revolution Reassessed (1986), particularly Chapter 2, and the introduction to his The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (1987). D. Starkey, ‘Intimacy and innovation; the rise of the Privy Chamber 1485–1547’, in The English Court, pp. 71–118.

  40. J. A. Guy, ‘The Privy Council; revolution or evolution?’ in Revolution Reassessed.

  41. G. R. Elton, Policy and Police, pp. 327–82.

  42. For a discussion of Cromwell’s doctrinal position, see A. G. Dickens, Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation (1959), pp. 141–53.

  43. Elton, Reform and Reformation (1977), pp. 5–6.

  44. Published originally in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, Volume 6, 1956, pp. 69–92, and reprinted in Studies, II, pp. 215–35.

  45. Dickens, Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation, p. 142.

  46. Glyn Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic; a life of Stephen Gardiner (1990), pp. 105–27.

  47. G. R. Elton, Thomas Cromwell (ed. 2008), p. 13.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Schofield. Thomas Cromwell, pp. 100–106.

  50. Robert Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell, pp. 264–70. Schofield, Thomas Cromwell, pp. 414–20. J. P. Coby, Thomas Cromwell (2012), pp. 232–5.

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