The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  But there were some who would not submit, not even outwardly. Though Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher indicated that they would be prepared to swear to the main body of the Act of Succession, they objected to its provocative preamble that specifically condemned papal authority and the Aragon marriage. Cranmer, anxious to spare More and Fisher from Henry’s wrath, suggested to Cromwell that this compromise should be accepted. Cromwell agreed, and he took the idea to Henry. However, Henry was adamant that they must swear to the entire act, preamble and all, otherwise they would be an inspiration for others also to resist.28

  More’s own words remain the best guide to his personal relations with Cromwell, who seemed to share Cranmer’s willingness to save More from death if he could. Cromwell was glad that More’s name was not included on the attainder of the Maid of Kent and her allies, and he made a point of asking More’s son-in-law, William Roper, to tell More the good news. In his memoirs recorded during his interrogations, More variously described Cromwell as ‘he that tenderly favoureth me’, ‘my good master’, and even – when Cromwell reminded him that the king’s goodwill would not discharge him from complying with an act of parliament – ‘my special tender friend’. When More used his fine legal mind to avoid implicating himself, Cromwell advised him, apparently in a kindly rather than a threatening manner, that his answer ‘should not satisfy nor content the king’s highness’, and that Henry would want something more definite. Cromwell then assured More that Henry was still willing to be gracious towards him. More’s wife, Alice, wrote to Cromwell while her husband was still alive. She was, she assured him, ‘most deeply bound … for your manifold goodnesses and loving favour, both before this time and yet daily, now also showed towards my poor husband and me’. She appealed for Cromwell’s continued goodwill, ‘for thereupon hangeth the greatest part of my poor husband’s comfort and mine’. Now in financial straits, she was ‘compelled of very necessity to sell part of mine apparel’.29

  Despite the clearest possible evidence from the Mores themselves, and without bothering to give a source reference, Merriman writes confidently that Cromwell was spitefully hunting around for ‘some mesh’ to trap More. Where Merriman gets this from, I have absolutely no idea. The only sign of tension between the two men appears in More’s account of one of his last interrogations before his trial. More writes that Cromwell gave a very ‘fair’ summary of the situation thus far, before telling More that Henry was not pleased with his answer. The king had demanded to know whether More would accept the Supremacy and the Acts of Succession, and confess Henry as Head of the Church. Again More would not commit himself, so Audley and Cromwell warned him that Henry might compel an answer. Cromwell reminded More that he had once compelled heretics to answer his questions, so surely the king could do likewise. More replied that the cases were not identical: when More was Lord Chancellor the pope’s authority was recognised throughout Christendom, including in England, but now – and here More spoke with a shrewd vagueness so as not to incriminate himself – it ‘seemeth not like a thing agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in other realms’. In that case, countered Cromwell, ‘it were as well to be burned for the denying of that as be beheaded for denying of this, and therefore as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to the one as to the other’. More suggested that the law of all Christendom bound the conscience in a way that the law of one dissenting land could not do. Unfortunately, Cromwell’s answer is not recorded. The conversation continued at some length but More’s account gives no further details except that, at the end, Cromwell ‘liked me this day much worse than he did the last time’. This suggests disappointment rather than sheer malice on Cromwell’s part. One other interesting point to emerge from More’s recollections is that even during the exchanges on theological matters it was Secretary Cromwell, not Archbishop Cranmer, who did most of the talking for the government side.30

  Unlike More, Bishop John Fisher was not averse to looking for help from abroad to overturn the Henrician settlement, though not to destroy Henry personally. According to Chapuys, Fisher had urged Charles to ‘interfere in this affair and undertake a work which must be as pleasing in the eyes of God as war upon the Turk’. Chapuys reckoned that many English people would support the ‘strong measures’ for which Fisher appealed.31

  Fisher had also shown more interest in the Maid of Kent than was prudent for a man already viewed by his king with some suspicion, and this led to an interesting exchange between the bishop and Cromwell. Fisher had written to Cromwell on 18 January 1534 about the affair. His letter is unfortunately missing, but some idea of its contents can be gauged from Cromwell’s reply in February, which is worth looking at closely because it reveals much about Cromwell’s theological mind.

  Cromwell was unconvinced by the ‘craft and cunning’ that he claimed Fisher had used ‘to set a good countenance upon an ill matter’. The Scripture texts quoted by Fisher, ‘though well weighed according to the places whereof they be taken, make not so much for your purpose as ye allege them for’. Fisher claimed he had believed the Maid because of her pious religious bearing, and reports of her holiness. Cromwell called this a lack of discernment. ‘For if credence should be given to every such lewd person as would affirm himself to have revelations from God, what readier way were there to subvert all commonwealths and good orders in the world?’ Rather than listen to ‘vain voices of the people making bruits of her trances and disfigurations’, Fisher should have examined credible witnesses. Fisher had cited Amos 3:7 – ‘The Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets’ – as one reason why he trusted the Maid. Again, Cromwell was unimpressed. He bluntly told Fisher that he was misapplying the text. Is it not self-evident, demanded Cromwell, that ‘since the consummation and the end of the Old Testament, and since the Passion of Christ, God hath done many great and notable things in the world, whereof He showed no thing to His prophets, that hath come to the knowledge of men’. Cromwell appealed to Fisher’s conscience. What if the Maid’s ‘revelations’ had been of a different sort? What if she had spoken for the king’s marriage rather than against it? Would Fisher have believed her then? Maybe not, Cromwell suggested; maybe Fisher might reply that the Boleyn marriage was against the Law of God. But surely the bishop should know ‘by the histories of the Bible that God may by His revelation dispense with His own law, as with the Israelites spoiling the Egyptians, and with Jacob to have four wives, and such other’ (Exodus 3:21–2, 35–6; Genesis 29–30). So the bishop was without excuse. Now Cromwell closed in for the kill. Fisher’s real interest in the Maid was to ‘know more of her revelations than to try out the truth or falsehood of the same’. In this the bishop stood in ‘great default, believing and concealing such things as tended to the destruction of the prince’. Cromwell rebuked Fisher for not reporting what he knew of the Maid to Henry. It was no excuse for Fisher to say he had kept silent because the Maid herself had spoken to Henry. Fisher had only her word for that, and even if it were true, he was still duty bound to tell his prince. At the end Cromwell delivered a warning to the bishop. ‘Surely my lord, if this matter comes to trial, your own confession in these [Fisher’s] letters, besides the witnesses which are against you, will be sufficient to condemn you’. Cromwell then urged Fisher, ‘laying apart all excuses’, to appeal to the king’s mercy, ‘and I dare undertake that his highness shall benignly accept you into his gracious favour’.32

  It could never be imagined from this letter that Cromwell was wholly self-taught in theology. Despite this, he entered boldly into a theological bout with John Fisher, a man internationally recognized as one of England’s foremost scholars and theologians. He coolly tells Fisher that he has been naïve in his dealings with the Maid, and that the learned bishop has bungled his Bible texts. Then, with an assurance and incisiveness that few theologians can command, he sets forth into sensitive theological territory, such as God overruling his written Word with revelations, and the role of proph
ecy in the New Testament era as distinct from the Old. Finally he calls on this senior bishop to repent. If anyone has any doubts about why Henry advanced this layman so high in spiritual as well as secular affairs, this letter will amply answer them. Thomas Cromwell was more than a match for the best of bishops in their own specialist field.

  It is not clear how or even if Fisher responded. There is a request from him to Cromwell to stop sending angry letters and leave him in peace, but this is undated, so whether it was a reply to Cromwell’s letter above we cannot say. But Cromwell’s letter is not angry; he just makes his point with his customary vigour and eloquence. However, it was just before Christmas (1534) that Fisher – now in evident discomfort in the Tower and dependent on his brother’s charity – appealed to Cromwell for relief from the cold and the poor diet. A certain Anthony Bonvisi, a man Cromwell knew, was wont to send meat and wine two or three times a week to More, and wine and jelly daily to Fisher, but these supplies may have stopped when the prisoners were brought to trial for fear of provoking Henry. Not much else, unfortunately, can be said about this point, except that when he was preparing for his death, More made a point of thanking Bonvisi for his friendship and kindness.33

  The closing words of Cromwell’s letter to Fisher prove that Cromwell was not hounding the bishop to his doom, and it is not absolutely clear what Henry intended to do with him or with More at this stage. Throughout 1534, their fate hung in the balance. Anne Boleyn is sometimes blamed for inciting the king against them, but the decisive factor was the pope’s decision to make Fisher a cardinal. Infuriated at this provocation, as he saw it, Henry piled the pressure onto these two most prominent dissidents before bringing them to trial and the inevitable condemnation. Cromwell then had the unenviable task of having to explain, and to try and justify, the executions to foreign courts.34

  The other leading dissidents of this period were the Carthusian monks of the Charterhouse. Cromwell’s agent, Thomas Bedyll, equipped with ‘diverse books and annotations’, was busy in spring 1534 trying to persuade these monks to accept the Royal Supremacy. He tried to prove to them the ‘equality of the apostles by the law of God’, and refute Peter’s primacy and papal succession. After a long conversation he left certain books with them, hoping ‘that they should see the Holy Scriptures and doctors thereupon concerning the said matters, and reform themselves accordingly’. Bedyll comes over as an unsympathetic character in some of his letters, but he was obviously making some attempt to engage the monks and debate with them. Unfortunately for the government, he was unsuccessful.35

  Matters came to a head in spring the following year. In April 1535 Cromwell’s remembrances include notes to ask what the king wished to do regarding the Charterhouse of London and Richmond. Cromwell then sent John Rastall to try once more to prevail with the monks. John Whalley, another of Cromwell’s clients, warned Cromwell that Rastall would fail, and that the ‘superstitious’ monks would only laugh at him. Whalley then put forward an idea of his own. He suggested that some ‘loyal’ man should stay at the Charterhouse, and then men like the vicar of Croydon – a well known religious conservative who had submitted to Henry – should be invited to preach to them as well. Should this two-pronged approach fail, Whalley advised sentencing the monks according to the law.36

  Cranmer also offered to try and reason with the monks. Cranmer expressed surprised at the attitude of one of them named Reynold, ‘having such sight in scriptures and doctors’, and another named Webster, ‘which promised me that he would never meddle for the defence of that opinion’ – papal authority. As with More, Cranmer was anxious to see the monks convicted ‘by communication of sincere doctrine’, and then make a public profession of loyalty rather than suffer as traitors.37

  Again Cromwell seems to have agreed, and soon after this he went to speak with the monks himself. However, he had no more success than his agents. One monk named Houghton struck up a conversation on the subject of Christ giving the keys to Peter (Matthew 16). Evidently not persuaded by the arguments of Bedyll and Rastall, Houghton claimed that ever since the early church, all the fathers and doctors understood that the keys were given first to Peter, then to the apostles and subsequently to the pope and the bishops. How then, demanded Houghton, could the king, as a layman, be Head of the Church? Cromwell’s reply was terse: ‘You would make the king a priest, then?’ With that he closed the subject, apparently deciding that there was little point in going over the same ground yet again.38

  As with More and Fisher, so with the Carthusians, Cromwell and Cranmer were not rushing to shed Papist blood. Over a period of a year or more, various attempts were made to secure a peaceful end by a mixture of persuasion and pressure. Yet the monks would not yield, and in a savagely ironic twist their resistance led them to a trial where the duke of Norfolk, the leading Catholic peer of the land, presided as judge and passed sentence. Unlike More and Fisher, both quickly despatched by the axe, the unfortunate monks were hanged, disembowelled and quartered. Chapuys reported the executions, attended by Norfolk, Wiltshire, and his son George Rochford, with ‘several other lords and gentlemen’, including Henry Norris. Chapuys does not mention Cromwell at the spectacle.39

  Efforts to bring the remaining Carthusians into submission met with only limited success. Jasper Fyloll told Cromwell that the monks he met still preferred reading the medieval schoolmen to the New Testament. When a copy of Marsiglio’s Defence of Peace was given to them to study, one defiant monk promptly threw it straight into the fire. A renewed offer of royal mercy was made in October if they would submit to the king, surrender their Papalist books and start reading the Bible instead. Some did accept, and one Nicholas Rawlyns begged Cromwell to release him from the Charterhouse, fearing his health could stand no more – the Carthusian life was known to be exceptionally rigorous. John Copynger, learned Bridgettine Fellow of Christ’s College in 1511, was sent from his Syon community to Bishop Stokesley for resisting the Royal Supremacy. He also had a personal interview with Cromwell which must have changed his religious outlook significantly, because he was soon urging the remaining Charterhouse to submit, and thanking Cromwell for the gift of certain books (titles withheld). Copynger was later appointed as Confessor-General.40

  It is hard to think of a class of men less likely to elicit sympathy from Thomas Cromwell than strict Carthusian monks. Nevertheless, as one of the leading Catholic historians of recent times has already noted, but for Cromwell the fate of some of these monks might have been worse than it was. After the infamous executions Ralph Sadler, Cromwell’s assistant, had a meeting with the king, and found Henry displeased that the ‘Charterhouse in London is not ordered as I would have had it’. Henry recalled that he had commanded Cromwell ‘long ago to put the monks out of the house’. For reasons not too clear, however, Cromwell had delayed carrying out this order. Sadler did his best to help his master out of difficulty by pointing out that Cromwell had managed to get some of the monks ‘reconciled’, but this achievement left Henry unimpressed. ‘Seeing that they had been so long obstinate’, the king declared, ‘I will not now admit their obedience’.[41]

  Eventually government pressure forced many of the remaining Carthusians, some being kept in wretched conditions, to submit. A few who held out were taken to Newgate and left to die. Bedyll told Cromwell that these ‘traitorous’ monks ‘be almost despatched by the hand of God’. Bedyll was not sorry, but he did ask Cromwell to be favourable to the current prior of Charterhouse, ‘as honest a man as ever was in that habit’. Why the monks were left to waste away in jail rather than face trial and death at Tyburn is not known. It is hard to believe that Henry took compassion on them, or that he wanted to spare them the customary fate of traitors. Someone may have persuaded him, in view of what had gone before, that public executions for the sake of conscience might be counter productive. It could have been Cromwell’s advice, but it is impossible to say for sure.42

  During the days of their liberty Thomas More, John Fisher and the Carthusia
ns had evinced little sympathy for religious dissidents. More in particular had shown a singular zeal for eradicating heresy by all available means, including the stake. Nobody he examined ever called him ‘my special tender friend’. Fate had now made these men the best known examples of tough new laws grimly enforced against the regime’s most outspoken opponents. In each case, however, Cromwell can be found making some attempt to avoid a bloody end. The same goes for Cranmer. There can be no reasonable doubt that the decision to exact the ultimate penalty was the king’s, and that Henry was not being spurred on by bloodthirsty reformist ministers. It might also be noted that even though the number of people unwilling to conform was potentially quite high, only a few felt the full, concentrated force of Tudor justice. Even at their most repressive, Henry and his councillors can hardly begin to compare with the Dantons or Robespierres of later times, still less the hideous modern monsters of the twentieth century.