The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell
Page 5
It may be harsh to call Augustine Wolsey’s betrayer. He may have done nothing worse than answer Norfolk’s questions honestly. As for Wolsey, the Venetian ambassador writing retrospectively confirmed the reports of his imperialist colleagues: Wolsey had initially supported the divorce, but had changed his mind after Campeggio’s visit to England, when he began to fear that if Rome approved Henry’s marriage to Anne, then he (Wolsey) would lose power at home, and might even be ousted by the alliance of Anne, her father and Norfolk.36
Wolsey then received a summons to London, but his death on 29 November at Leicester spared him the humiliation of a trial and possibly the scaffold. Cromwell’s reaction to the news is not known, but there is no valid reason not to accept Cavendish’s testimony that he remained loyal to a fallen master, despite occasional moments of exasperation when it became embarrassingly plain that Wolsey was not prepared to retire quietly and gracefully. Cavendish is supported by Chapuys, a seasoned diplomat, who had been following the events of 1529 closely. Chapuys had been in regular contact with Wolsey throughout the summer, and he would later testify that Cromwell ‘behaved very well’ towards the cardinal during his unhappy last days.37
By January 1531, Cromwell was a member of Henry’s council. He was not a senior councillor yet, and his position might be likened to that of a British government minister who does not have a seat in the cabinet. And this might be the suitable place to consider the well-known story that Cromwell rose rapidly to power after one dramatic interview with Henry, in which Cromwell urged the king to break with Rome and declare himself head of the Church, before going on to outline a bold plan that would make Henry the richest king in the world. With only minor variations, this story appears in the writings of Reginald Pole and John Foxe. Chapuys has half of it – that Cromwell promised to make Henry rich – but not that he encouraged the king to break with Rome.38
This story does not, however, feature in the works of Hall and Cavendish, two contemporary witnesses who knew Cromwell better than did Pole, Foxe or even Chapuys. Cavendish, as noted already, speaks of a gradual rise to power, and how Cromwell ‘grew continually in the king’s favour’. This is, beyond all doubt, right. There was no speedy, sudden promotion for Cromwell. He may have had personal meetings with the king during 1530, and they may have discussed royal revenues and financial affairs; but Cromwell would have to wait three more years before being appointed Henry’s Principal Secretary. His eventual pre-eminence on the council would be due to the old-fashioned, unglamorous virtues of hard work and ability, not to one single melodramatic encounter with Henry. Besides, in 1530 there was nothing startlingly novel in the idea that Henry should make himself Head of the Church (see Chapter 4).39
According to Cavendish, Anne’s father was the ‘chiefest of the king’s Privy Council’ after Wolsey’s demise. Chapuys assigned that distinction to Norfolk, and the Venetian ambassador thought likewise. His colleague from Milan wrote that Boleyn senior, Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner now enjoyed most influence with the king. Whilst minor differences of opinion existed between the ambassadors, they all agreed that Cromwell was not yet one of the king’s foremost councillors. In fact his name does not appear in Chapuys’s surviving letters until March 1533, even though Chapuys in particular took an avid interest in English affairs, and sent regular reports to Charles.40
Although Cromwell’s star was rising steadily rather than spectacularly, he could nevertheless look back on a long and successful, if at times painful, life’s journey. In every sense he had made, not marred. The humble blacksmith’s son, the fugitive, the one-time ‘bit of a ruffian’ was now called by his prince to be a councillor of the realm. Further advance and honour would lie ahead. Before that, however, he would hear a calling of quite a different kind. A new path was now opening up in front of him, as precarious as any he had trodden hitherto. Thomas Cromwell was about to set out on a spiritual journey that would make him, in the coolly dispassionate judgement of the later French ambassador Charles de Marillac, the ‘principal author’ of the Protestant Reformation in England.41
Notes
1 From the vast amount of material on Henry’s first divorce, the following are some of the best accounts (apologies are offered to anyone who feels unjustly excluded): G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors, chaps 5–6; J. Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 116–53; V. Murphy, ‘Literature and Propaganda of Henry VIII’s First Divorce’, in The Reign of Henry VIII, Politics, Policy and Piety, ed. D. MacCulloch (Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 135–58; R. Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (Basingstoke, 1993), pp. 6–11; R. Rex: The Theology of John Fisher (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 162–83; J. Ridley, Henry VIII (London, 1984), pp. 157–69; J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London, 1968), pp. 163–239; D. Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (London, 2003), part 2.
2 Rex, Henry VIII, p. 7; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 139–52.
3 See discussions in Rex, Theology of John Fisher, p. 164; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 168–9.
4 Hall, p. 728.
5 Cavendish, pp. 29–35.
6 CSP Span., 1527–9, no. 69, pp. 193–4; no. 113, pp. 273, 277; no. 224, pp. 432–3; Cavendish, pp. 43–4; LP 4 (2), no. 3318.
7 LP 4 (2), nos 4314, 4433, 4560–61, 4837–8.
8 Merriman 1, pp. 318–25; LP 4 (2), nos 4755, 4778, 4872; D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 44.
9 Hall, pp. 755–6.
10 CSP Span., 1527–9, no. 550, pp. 789–90; no. 586, p. 846. For a somewhat more sympathetic interpretation of Wolsey’s dealings in the Great Matter, see P. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal: The rise and fall of Thomas Wolsey (London, 1990), chapter 12.
11 Cavendish, pp. 94–5; CSP Span., 1527–9, no. 614, p. 877; no. 586, p. 841; no. 621, pp. 885–6.
12 Foxe 4, pp. 599–601.
13 LP 4 (2), nos 4388, 4542; Hall, p. 750; Merriman 1, pp. 56–63.
14 Merriman 1, p. 325; LP 4 (3), nos 5757, 5787, 5792, 5809–11, 6219, 6722.
15 CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 135; Ellis 1, p. 310; Cavendish, pp. 96 (15–19), 232.
16 LP 4 (3), nos 5983, 6011, 6018–19.
17 Cavendish, pp. 104–5.
18 Cavendish, pp. 105–110. NB: On two occasions, once to Cavendish and once in the presence of Wolsey and others at his last dinner, Cromwell claimed that he never received any increase in salary from the cardinal. On neither occasion was he contradicted. See Cavendish, pp. 105 (12–14), 109 (23–5).
19 Ellis 10, pp. 171–2.
20 Cavendish, p. 112 (21–5); Merriman 1, pp. 67–9.
21 Elton, Tudor Rev., pp. 77–8; S. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament: 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 27.
22 Hall, p. 765; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, pp. 69, 76–83.
23 See discussions in Elton, Studies 2, pp. 107–35; Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, pp. 83–6; Cavendish pp. 112–13; LP 4 (3), no. 6112.
24 SP 1, pp. 351–5; LP 4 (3), no. 6115; CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 232, pp. 366, 368.
25 Merriman 1, pp. 71–2.
26 Elton, Tudor Rev., pp. 81–4; PRO SP 1/56 fol. 252 = LP 4 (3), no. 6196.
27 CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 257, pp. 449–50; SP 1, pp. 360–62; LP 4 (3), nos 6151, 6213–14; Merriman 1, p. 75.
28 SP 1, pp. 355–6; Cavendish, p. 126; Merriman 1, pp. 73–4.
29 LP 4 (3), no. 6213–14; Cavendish, pp. 123–32; Hall, p. 769.
30 Merriman 1, pp. 327–30; LP 4 (3), nos 6420, 6467.
31 Hall, p. 773; CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 354, pp. 600–601; no. 366, p. 619; E. Hammond, ‘Dr. Augustine, Physician to Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry VIII’, in Medical History 19 (1975): 215–19; LP 4 (3), no. 6374.
32 Merriman 1, pp. 326–7.
33 Merriman 1, pp. 327–8; Hall, p. 773.
34 Merriman 1, pp. 328, 334. There is nothing cryptic or sinister in these words; Cromwell simply meant that he would keep Wolsey up to date w
ith news. On these praemunire proceedings, see J. Guy, ‘Henry VIII and the Praemunire Manoeuvres of 1530–31’, EHR 97 (1982): 481–503. By these manoeuvres, which lasted from July 1530 till November 1531, Henry asserted his control over the clergy. Cromwell carried out some business for the king, but at this stage of his career it is unlikely that he greatly influenced Henry’s policy.
35 CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 509, pp. 819–20; CSP Ven. 4, nos 637, 642.
36 Cavendish, pp. 151–2, 155, 157, 249; Hammond, ‘Dr Augustine’, pp. 219–25; CSP Ven. 4, no. 694, p. 301. Compare De Mendoza in CSP Span., 1527–29, no. 69, p. 193; no. 550, p. 790 – see notes 6 and 10 above. Again, a slightly more sympathetic view of Wolsey can be found in his more recent biography – see Gwyn, Wolsey, pp. 599–639.
37 CSP Span., 1534–5, no. 228, p. 569.
38 Elton, Tudor Rev., pp. 89–90; T. Mayer, Reginald Pole, Prince and Prophet (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 78–100; Foxe 5, p. 366; CSP Span., 1534–5, no. 228, p. 569.
39 Cavendish, Wolsey, p. 126 (18–19).
40 Cavendish, p. 29 (16–19); CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 249, p. 116; no. 250, p. 428; CSP Ven. 4, nos 601, 694, pp. 294–5; CSP Span., 1531–3, index under ‘Cromwell’, p. 1042.
41 Kaulek, p. 189 = LP 15, no. 766.
3
The Lutheran
On 16 February 1531 the Schmalkaldic League, the newly formed alliance of Lutheran states, wrote to the kings of France, Denmark and England. The League defended the Lutheran Augsburg Confession as being fully in accordance with Holy Scripture and the ancient Christian creeds, and strongly denied accusations that Lutherans were heretics or subversives. Henry sent a courteous reply on 3 May. He was relieved to hear of their commitment to Christian orthodoxy, and he commended them for seeking to make necessary, wholesome reforms to the church. Doubtless with Luther in mind, however, he added that he preferred physicians who ‘heal the wound or cure the disease without exasperating the parts’.1
It so happened that a mild, gentle physician was now dispensing the Lutheran medicine. Philip Melanchthon was of the same faith as Martin Luther, but of quite a different temperament. ‘I am a rough warrior’, Luther confessed, ‘born to fight with mobs and the devil. I clear away the logs and stones, tear up the briars and thorns. Then along comes Master Philip, softly and gently, sowing and watering with joy’.2
King Henry had already experienced a bruising encounter with the spiritual warrior from Wittenberg. Nearly ten years earlier, eager to prove his orthodoxy following the challenge of Luther, Henry had written his Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther, only to be stunned by a furious reply. Among other things Luther had called Henry a ‘liar’, a ‘buffoon’, a ‘big sissy’ and a ‘stupid king’. Luther’s fiery zeal for the Gospel was known and feared by his opponents. It has also elicited a great deal of dreary sanctimonious moralising, as well as largely inept psychoanalysing, from historians down the years (with honourable exceptions like Martin Brecht).3
But times were changing, and it was Melanchthon who drafted the League’s letter to the kings of Europe. He, too, had composed the Augsburg Confession, presented to the Emperor Charles V at the diet in summer 1530. When the Catholic delegation countered with their Confutation, Melanchthon made the first sketches of his Apology of the Augsburg Confession, which soon developed into the most significant Lutheran work yet written. It expanded on the Augsburg Confession, and answered in minute detail the points raised in the Confutation. Begun in the autumn of 1530, the Apology was not finished until spring or summer the following year. But only a few months after the first editions were running off the printing presses of Witttenberg, Thomas Cromwell received, by special delivery, his own personal copy. How this came to be is the subject of this chapter.
Until now Cromwell’s views on Luther were not much different from Henry’s or Wolsey’s. In a letter to Wolsey during summer 1530, Cromwell reported a rumour that Luther had died, and added curtly that he wished he had never been born. For a man seeking to rebuild his political career in Henry’s England, this was a prudent attitude. Two royal proclamations of March 1529 and June 1530 thundered against ‘erroneous books and heresies … printed in other regions, and sent into this realm … to pervert and withdraw the people from the Catholic and true faith’. The first proclamation, though not the second, condemned Luther by name. Both condemned the books of his English ‘disciples’, with William Tyndale, Simon Fish and John Frith being the chief targets. All teaching ‘contrary and against the faith Catholic’ was forbidden.[4
Tyndale, the foremost English evangelical scholar and Bible translator, was now living in exile on the continent. His decision to remain abroad proved a wise one in view of the fate suffered by Thomas Hitton in February 1530. Hitton, a priest who had returned to England after travelling in Europe, was burned at the stake for smuggling a New Testament and other evangelical literature into the country. Hitton may count as England’s first real Protestant, rather than Lollard, martyr. The Lord Chancellor, Thomas More, had cast aside his cultivated humanism to spearhead an anti-heresy onslaught, and like a victorious angel of wrath he condemned Hitton as ‘the devil’s stinking martyr’, who had caught his ‘false faith’ from Tyndale’s ‘holy books, and now the spirit of error and lying hath taken his wretched soul with him straight from the short fire to the fire everlasting’.5
Hitton was not the only object of More’s fury. Suspected Lutherans were being rounded up and questioned. Many recanted under the threat of the stake. One Philip Smith was found in possession of works by Luther, Melanchthon and the Basle reformer, Johannes Oecolampadius; but only, so he claimed, in order to form his own opinions about them. Apparently adept at getting out of tight corners, Smith told his examiners that he accepted Luther only as far as the church did. With More as Chancellor, this would not be very far. Another suspect taken in for questioning had allegedly bought works by Luther and Melanchthon at an Antwerp book fair before bringing them to England. Another early evangelical convert, Hugh Latimer, maintained that he had borrowed nothing from Luther and Melanchthon for his sermons. This may be so, but it does suggest that by now Latimer had been reading the German Reformers.6
Yet it was while this campaign was reaching its height we have the first indication that Cromwell’s religious views were undergoing a change. In November 1530, four men were required to do penance for reading and distributing Tyndale’s works. At least one, Thomas Somer, was known to Cromwell. He had helped Somer when he fell on hard times. How much Cromwell knew of, and agreed with, Somer’s beliefs is far from certain; but his evangelical interest, though rather tenuous at this stage, may well have begun while Wolsey was still alive.7
During 1531, someone or something induced Henry to take a more lenient line towards Lutheranism. It may have been the timeliness of the League’s letter, because it arrived just when Henry was asserting his authority over his clergy. He demanded from them a massive £100, 000, ostensibly to recover expenses incurred on his divorce case, such as sending emissaries to Rome, soliciting opinions from universities, and so on. After some murmurs of protest the clergy yielded, only to be assailed with a further demand that they acknowledge the king as ‘sole protector and supreme head of the Anglican church and clergy’. Following token resistance, the clergy accepted this too, with only a minor qualifier ‘as far as the law of Christ allows’.8
With his opposition to the papacy now growing, Henry may have felt that he had something in common with the German Lutherans, though at this stage not very much. He agreed to send Stephen Vaughan, Cromwell’s friend, to the continent to see if there was any chance of reconciling Tyndale to Henry. Like Luther, Tyndale had opposed Henry’s plans to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Tyndale did, however, support the principle of kingly rather than papal authority. Henry, influenced perhaps by Cromwell, must have decided that an approach to Tyndale and the Lutherans would be worthwhile. The choice of Vaughan as an emissary is a little curious because duri
ng a recent visit to Antwerp, questions had been raised about his Catholic orthodoxy. No formal charges were made against him, but he was not entirely free from suspicion. As we will see, More was watching him closely.9
Vaughan’s first report to Henry from the continent is dated 26 January 1531. Vaughan had written to Tyndale as instructed by the king, offering Tyndale a safe conduct to England. Tyndale, however, suspected a trap. Fearing that England would be unsafe, he politely declined. Vaughan sent a copy of his report to Cromwell, though with a few interesting extra points. Vaughan doubted whether Tyndale would ever agree to come to England because of the anti-Lutheran drive orchestrated by More. Vaughan thought Tyndale would answer More’s attack on him, then write no more. Tyndale, Vaughan added, was ‘of a greater knowledge than the king’s highness doth take him for; which well appeareth by his works. Would God he were in England!’ Obviously Vaughan knew that commending Tyndale, which would have risked arrest had More heard of it, was a safe thing to say to Cromwell.10
Vaughan’s next letter to Cromwell is dated 25 March. Now he boldly commended Tyndale’s book, written in reply to a critique of him by More. Vaughan wondered whether it would be wise to let Henry see it, and he asked Cromwell’s advice. His caution was well founded because these were still uncertain and dangerous times for Lutheran men. In the spring Convocation questioned a clutch of evangelicals including Edward Crome, Thomas Bilney, Hugh Latimer and John Lambert, though following a partial climb-down by the accused, no serious action was taken against them. Convocation also summoned Richard Tracy, whose dead father’s will had confessed justification by faith alone. He was also spared prosecution, but next year his father’s body was exhumed, and, on the directions of the chancellor of the bishop of Worcester, burned at stake. Tracy’s supporters and helpers, by now including Cromwell, took legal action against the chancellor, who was forced to pay a £300 fine by way of compensation.11