by Derek Wilson
(Marguerite of Navarre to the king, her brother, July 1540)
The news was distressing. I felt for Marguerite and Jeanne and also for myself, because I had no counsel to offer to the victims of royal tyranny. Royal tyranny! That was a subject the queen brought up in another of her letters.
What you write about matters in England agrees well with the official reports of Ambassador Marillac. He explains that King Harry, having used Cromwell like a packhorse to carry all his unpopular policies, killed the horse, thinking thereby to silence criticism. Was there ever greater folly? Everyone here is at a loss to understand what is happening there. Marillac prophesies that the king will soon regret his action. Who will there be to take the blame next time his acts of tyranny stir up more enemies? Poor England.
. . . this Prince seems tainted, among other vices, with three which in a King may be called plagues. The first is that he is so covetous that all the riches in the world would not satisfy him. Hence the ruin of the abbeys, spoil of all churches that had anything to take . . . it is unlikely that he should pardon the living who troubles even the dead, without fearing the offence to the religion of the world which reveres them as saints, witness St Thomas of Canterbury, who, because his relics and bones were adorned with gold and jewels, has been declared traitor. Everything is good prize, and he does not reflect that to make himself rich he has impoverished his people, and does not gain in good what he loses in renown . . .
Thence proceeds the second plague, distrust and fear. This King knowing how many changes he has made, and what tragedies and scandals he has created, would fain keep in favour with everybody, but does not trust a single man, expecting to see them all offended, and he will not cease to dip his hand in blood as long as he doubts his people. Hence every day edicts are published so sanguinary that with a thousand guards one would scarce be safe. Hence too it is that now with us, as affairs incline, he makes alliances which last as long as it makes for him to keep them.
The third plague, lightness and inconstancy, proceeds partly from the other two and partly from the nature of the nation, and has perverted the rights of religion, marriage, faith and promise, as softened wax can be altered to any form.
(From the report of Charles de Marillac, French Ambassador to the English court, 6 August 1540)
The remainder of this long letter was devoted to literary matters. Her Highness continued:
I seek refuge from my worries in Italian poetry. There is an aged Florentine here; a cynic whose jests are like shards of ice. I wish you could meet him and would value your opinion. His verses and his pasquinades are cruelly sharp and yet so witty that everyone at court applauds them. Lords and cardinals actually pay to be lashed by his pen. In fact, to be ignored by Signor Bruschelli is the worst humiliation that can befall an ambitious courtier. He is a friend and, for all I know, a bedfellow of the outrageous Aretino. I confess he has awakened in me a new interest in that notoriously obscene fellow. Let me know if you come across any copies of his works, especially The Courtesan. I think perhaps I will send into Tuscany for additions to my library. It may be that I can persuade Bruschelli to visit us in Nérac. Yesterday we were talking about poor Thomas Cromwell, and Bruschelli recalled meeting him many years ago when he was in the household of Niccolò Machiavelli . . .
I started at the sudden mention of the name. It was not the first time I had seen Cromwell’s name coupled with that of the Florentine cynic. Quickly I hurried through the rest of the letter for any further mention of Cromwell. There was nothing but that tantalizing brief reference. What exactly was meant by ‘many years ago’ and how reliable was the word of an old cynic who made a living from ridiculing the victims of his wit? There was only one source where I might – just possibly – find answers to those questions.
I opened Cromwell’s coffer.
Inside lay what I might have expected and also what I could not understand. Mostly it was papers written in Cromwell’s tidy secretary hand. They seemed to be in precise date order, the latest uppermost. It was soon obvious that they were written in various languages – English (a few), Italian and Latin (several of each) and others in French. So much I could tell at a glance. Later I noted a few letters in Dutch and what appeared to be a German dialect. The variety was remarkable but not surprising. Anyone at all familiar with Cromwell had been impressed by his extraordinary command of languages.
There was also a small canvas bag. I emptied its contents on to the table and stared in bewilderment. What lay before me was the top half of a simple wooden crucifix. It had been broken below the crosspiece, so that all that remained was the head and arms of Christ against the top of the upright and the horizontal beam. The edges of the fracture were jagged, as though the image had been torn apart roughly. There was also a small square of folded and age-yellowed paper. I opened it out carefully. The creases were so ingrained that the frail fragment almost came to pieces. On it were two words of untidy scrawl, quite unlike the well-schooled handwriting of the letters: ‘Remember Always’.
A shiver ran through me as I picked up the fragment of carved oak. A tiny steel loop was attached to the top of the cross. Clearly it had been a devotional pendant, though rust on the metal showed that it had been many years unworn. The workmanship was simple to the point of crudeness. This was the sort of talismanic gewgaw that could be picked up on a market stall. Yet the image of the Saviour had once been important to someone. Thomas himself? But why had it been violently desecrated? And, if in anger, why had it been kept among Thomas’s most intimate possessions? If kept at all, why only half kept? And what was it that Thomas had vowed never to forget? Was it a symbolic remembrancer to continue his onslaught against papistical idolatry? Unlikely – the note and the object were obviously older than the onslaught on the monasteries Thomas had unleashed scarcely four years since.
Any answer – if answer there was – might haply lie somewhere in the bundle of papers that lay before me. I began to read, working my way down the pile and in effect back down the years, like a man who stumbles along a dark tunnel, hoping at every step to descry a sliver of light.
Hours later I was woken, still sitting in my chair, by André, my manservant. The lamp was guttering and the fire, which he, poor fellow, had kept well stacked while I worked, was burned low. I staggered to my bed and as I lay in the dark I tried to catalogue in my mind what I had discovered. A pointless exercise. Groups of words revolved in my head like singers performing a roundelay. Within minutes they had lulled me to sleep.
Bright sunlight was already flooding into the room by the time I threw back the bed curtains next morning. I decided on a brisk walk by the river to clear my head. The remedy worked. By that I do not mean that I understood everything I had read in Cromwell’s box, simply that I had gone to bed with a confusion of questions in my head, but now I had a ready-formed plan for investigating them further.
First I wrote to the queen with a partial account of my recent adventures. ‘Partial’ because it would have been a betrayal of trust to put in writing my possession of Thomas Cromwell’s secret papers. I pressed her for more information about the connection between Cromwell and Machiavelli. I knew from my time in London years before how close Cromwell’s connection had been with the Italian immigrant community, and my cursory reading of his letters confirmed the strong connections he had maintained with friends from his early years spent in Florence. I was now seized with a desire to meet some of those friends. The queen’s latest letter suggested a means by which I might be able to satisfy my curiosity, as I cautiously observed in my reply:
My suspicion is that Bruschelli may simply be repeating rumours he has heard. Cromwell and Machiavelli lived at the same time in Florence – ergo Cromwell was Machiavelli’s disciple. As to Your Highness’s comments on Italian books, I have carefully scanned the collection in the palace library and there are certainly gaps that need to be filled. With Your Highness’s per
mission, I will gladly undertake a short sojourn beyond the Alps to seek out and buy volumes which you should possess and which should form a part of the princess’s education.
While I waited for a reply I worked more systematically on Cromwell’s letters, making a list of the correspondents to whom he had written in the last four or five years. In truth, I was staving off boredom. After the recent events, life at Nérac without the royal court was dull. I needed the stimulus of the ‘Cromwell enigma’. Like a squirrel worrying a nut, I was possessed by the need to find the kernel of truth within the shell of conflicting information. Her Highness well understood the workings of my mind. With her answer she enclosed a reminiscence written by Alexander Bruschelli in person. His tart prose certainly agreed with the description of him given by the queen.
Niccolò Machiavelli was like a tree that has grown gnarled and twisted because its growth has been impeded by sturdier neighbours. Thwarted ambition and want of patronage soured his temper and drove him to philosophical extremes.
As often happens, green youths were attracted by his railleries against kings and princes, popes and cardinals. Here was a man who had ‘seen the world’ and drunk deeply of its drugged chalice. He had tales to tell of travels through Italy, France and Germany. He related vividly the imprisonments and torture he had suffered. He spoke passionately of the foibles and treacheries of the great and powerful. It should occasion no surprise that a train of young men eager for success in the political arena attached themselves to this sage with the gleaming eyes and beak-like nose.
All this was thirty or more years ago. The times were troubled: foreign troops marching to and fro through north Italy; the Medici clawing their way back to power in Florence and even reaching out for the papal tiara. Machiavelli was just one of many ‘prophets’ who claimed to unlock the mysteries governing the affairs of nations. There must have been a score or more of young disciples in his ‘entourage’ – Florentine natives and others who had settled in the city. Your Master Cromwell was, for sure, of their number. I remember him well – a genial young man and popular, very likeable, but for his devotion to that teacher of embitterment, Niccolò Machiavelli.
In her letter the queen explained that her return to Nérac would be further delayed by ‘family matters’ and that she would be happy for me to scour the printshops and book markets of Italy on her behalf. She provided a list of volumes she was particularly anxious to own, and gave me permission to use my judgement in acquiring whatever I thought would appeal to her. ‘My little poet well knows my taste,’ she was gracious enough to add.
For myself, I was less convinced than many in fashionable society about the ‘superior’ culture south of the Alps. I believed then, and still do, that our French poetic traditions are sufficiently robust to require no Petrarchan buttressing. It was one of the few subjects on which I had ventured to disagree with Cromwell. His passion for all things Italian was obvious to anyone who had been admitted to his house, perused his library or been privileged to sit at the host’s table in company with close friends from Florence, Venice, Rome or other fine cities lying either side of the Appenine spine.
This land of city states frequently warring over territory had been the young Englishman’s home throughout his early manhood. He told me that as a young man of less than twenty years he had been irresistibly drawn to Florence, the city of moneylenders to kings and merchants trading exotic goods from the far ends of the earth; of avant-garde artists and poets; of scholars who were sweeping away outdated ideas and discovering new truths. Florence was the place for an ambitious and sophisticated young man to be. So he had believed and the reality had not disappointed. I was hopeful that some vestiges of old encounters might remain to be discovered – anecdotes, remembered acts of kindness, harboured grudges, even smouldering hatreds. I was eager for any revelation that a visit to the haunts of Cromwell’s youth might yield to my eager enquiries.
I lost no time in setting out. Armed with the notes I had made of Cromwell’s papers, and having securely locked away his casket, the very next day I mounted my best horse and, attended by two servants, set off across the Pyrenees to Toulouse and thus, via Montpellier and Marseilles, along the coast of the Genoese Republic to Pisa and up the Arno Valley to Florence. With every kilometre my excitement mounted and I was eager to know what condition I would find the city in. My last visit had been in 1531 and to say that the intervening years had been turbulent would be a gross understatement. The French king and the Spanish king-Emperor had been at war and, as usual, the place they chose to do their fighting was Italy. The very road I travelled had been trampled by King Francis’ troops heading for Genoa and the other coastal towns, and then retreating in disarray. That fracas had left Spain in effective control of much of the land between the Po and the Tiber, and it had spelled disaster for the Florentines. They had thrown out the Medici and established a republic – a serious miscalculation. Alessandro de’ Medici had struck a deal with the Emperor and the Pope. A Spanish army had laid siege to the city, which was battered and starved into submission. After many months the vengeful Medici were back, more powerful than ever.
When I was last there, gashes could still be seen in the walls, and many buildings were clad in scaffolding. I had no doubt that, by now, the scars to the city’s fabric would have been covered over. But what of the deeper wounds? Factions and personal rivalries were sure to be blistering through the skin of the state. If any proof of that were needed it lay in the news that had flown round Europe three years earlier: that Duke Alessandro de’ Medici had been assassinated. The new ruler was his seventeen-year-old distant kinsman, Cosimo de’ Medici. Poor Florence.
I would have been well advised to save any sympathy for myself.
8
Florence
Most heartily I commend me to you, thanking our Lord God at all times for the cords of friendship that bind us together. I beg you to note that those importuning you have finally received quittance. Edmunds and the Bailiff of Calais, presenting true accounts, have been paid in full. The other two on examination were found wanting in honesty, presenting false or enlarged accounts, thinking to advantage themselves from your present misfortune. They now reside in the Tower of London awaiting my pleasure. If anything is still wanting for your complete easement you must tell me and it shall be provided, even from the bottom of my purse. I trust to see you shortly back in England when we shall make merry together again as of old.
May our Lord Jesus have you ever in his holy care.
Your friend
Thomas Cromwell
From my dwelling at Austin Friars the twenty-first day of June 1537
This letter from Cromwell’s papers, addressed to Francesco Frescobaldi at the headquarters of the Frescobaldi bank in Florence, would, I hoped, be the first stepping stone across the Lethe separating me from the real Thomas Cromwell. I had never met the Florentine banker but knew that he had been a close friend of Cromwell’s for many years.
It was, therefore, with nervous anticipation that on the morning after my arrival I approached the business headquarters of the Frescobaldi, close by the Palazzo del Bargello. The building was surprisingly modest for such a prestigious merchant house, but the main salon was bustling with businessmen and clergy mostly in groups of two or four doing business. At the far end of the room an imposing door reaching from floor to ceiling, and heavy with carved and gilded decoration, barred the way to what was obviously an inner sanctum. Access was double-guarded. In front of the impressive portal stood a wide desk, and behind it was an official wearing a gold chain. Thither I negotiated my way through the throng of hommes d’affaires and hommes d’Église.
The official glanced up from his papers with a smile-less visage.
I introduced myself and presented my letter of introduction from the queen. ‘I am in hopes that Francesco Frescobaldi might grant me a brief audience,’ I said with as much respectf
ul self-abasement as I could manage.
The man looked up, expressionless. ‘Signor Francesco? Is it about a loan—’
‘No, no,’ I hastened to interrupt. ‘I simply wish to talk with him about a mutual friend.’
‘Who?’
‘An Englishman – Thomas Cromwell.’
The name was met with a blank stare and a shake of the head, but a nearby rotund man in a brown friar’s habit looked sharply in my direction – or so I thought. However, when I returned his gaze he looked away and continued his conversation.
The official handed back the letter. ‘Signor Francesco is not here. You may find him in his villa at Fiesole.’ With a nod of dismissal, he turned his attention to another customer.
I left the bank but had not gone more than a few paces along the street when I felt a tug at my sleeve. Halting my stride, I turned and found myself looking at the stocky little Francescan friar I had noticed a few minutes earlier.
He looked up at me with a broad smile. ‘Forgive me waylaying you, Signore, but I overhead you in there. You mentioned a man called Croomwill.’
‘Cromwell,’ I corrected. ‘Did you know him? He spent some years here as a young man.’
He met my question with one of his own. ‘Was this Signor Crowmwell’ (he tried hard to get the pronunciation right) ‘related to the man the King of England executed recently?’
I shrugged non-committally. By now I was very cautious about letting strangers into my confidence. ‘His family are eager to contact his old friends.’
The friar nodded with a serious frown. ‘Of course. It is very proper to remember those we love but who have been taken from us by death.’
