The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  Richer still is Alesius’s tale that Cromwell, when in prison four years later, repented that he ‘had caused many innocent persons to be put to death, not sparing your most holy mother, nor had he obeyed her directions in promoting the doctrine of the Gospel’. It is all syrupy, sentimental nonsense. Not only was Alesius in Germany when Cromwell was arrested, but the letters Cromwell wrote from prison are preserved in the British Library and elsewhere, and no such stuff is found in them.

  Alesius’s account of Anne’s life and death is, to borrow a phrase from his own countrymen, pure blethers. Just for the sake of argument, however, let us assume that Anne did disagree with Cromwell over how the monastic revenue should be spent. Even if this were true, it would not amount to very much. Such a difference of opinion at this early stage of the dissolution, when only the smaller monasteries were being suppressed, might prompt an exchange of words or letters, but it is nothing like enough to incite a murderous power struggle between the Vicegerent and the queen. Among evangelicals and humanists, various ideas for the monasteries were being floated. Robert Barnes and Thomas Starkey hoped to see the extra income diverted to the poor or for education, and Cromwell did not try to destroy them because of it. On the contrary, he was willing to consider these and other suggestions as well.5

  In June 1535, Cromwell told Chapuys that Henry was now so rich thanks to his increased ecclesiastical revenues and other taxes that he could easily afford to join a crusade against the Turk if an Anglo-Imperial alliance was made. Cromwell also commented on how ‘fond of hoarding’ Henry was; he reckoned that sooner or later ‘all the gold and silver of England will ultimately fall into his hands’, giving him a treasury certain to arouse covetous interest from other nations like Flanders and France. ‘I and other Privy Councillors’, Cromwell added, ‘are now looking for the means of checking this king’s avarice and making him spend his money for the benefit of the nation’.6

  Among Cromwell’s policies was a new act for poor relief, more radical than anything envisaged before. A draft bill prepared that autumn, based on ideas and proposals from various sources including men in Cromwell’s service, listed many causes of poverty: idleness, sickness, invalidity, over-indulgence, maltreatment by cruel employers, even poor upbringing. An ambitious plan of public works for the unemployed was then laid out. It included new buildings, repairs to harbours, highways and fortresses, ‘scouring and cleansing of watercourses’, all under the direction of officers reporting to a central council. This council would be authorised to issue legally binding proclamations and summonses to the able-bodied unemployed to work, for which they would be paid ‘reasonable wages’. Those who refused to report for work risked prosecution, and, if found guilty by the testimony of three witnesses, they would be branded. There would be free medical treatment for poor persons unable to work through sickness, and provisions were made for those too old or terminally ill. Officials would be appointed to make sure no one was abusing the system; their task would be to seek out and report idlers to the authorities, but also to identify the old and the incapacitated, and care for them. They would record the details of men who had become impoverished through no fault of their own and were unable to live on their wages, either because they had too many children to feed, or because they were victims of robbery or some natural disaster. In such cases, local justices would provide assistance from public funds if necessary. But giving money to beggars who were fit to work was forbidden. Healthy child beggars would have to serve as apprentices to craftsmen and other masters in order to learn a trade.7

  Cromwell intended that this plan, unprecedented in England, would be funded from three main sources. The first was the resources of the crown, subject only to the king’s discretion. Second, direct taxes would be levied on the better off classes, including the clergy. Third, collections in local parishes for poor relief would be organized. The first of these would almost certainly include money received from the monasteries. Unfortunately, Cromwell did not succeed in winning the support the bill needed from parliament and the king, and the actual Poor Law act of 1536 was much more modest than the drafts. No real national program of public works was possible, and many other proposals were left to the responsibility of local authorities. The act was an improvement on the situation hitherto, but nothing on the scale that Cromwell and his allies had hoped for.

  Nevertheless, these proposals and the draft bill should suffice to answer the cheap accusation that Cromwell was callously unmindful of the poor, concerned only to fill up the king’s coffers and his own pockets with the wealth of the church. He did indeed want to make Henry rich; but he also hoped to persuade Henry to spend money on worthwhile projects for the common good, not hoard it in his palaces like a miser. Cromwell seems to have decided that he could begin the spiritual reform of England by evangelising in the monasteries, and that he could best help the poor and the economy generally through his Poor Law legislation, backed up by a productive public works program. Anne may or may not have approved; the evidence is not conclusive. But almost all contemporary economists and politicians would agree with Cromwell that government sponsored work-creation measures are far more useful to the poor and unemployed than, say, unconditional cash handouts.

  Enough has now been said about Alesius and the monasteries. It is significant that his call for a formal, posthumous vindication of Anne Boleyn went ignored even in her daughter’s reign. Elizabeth’s government did review Anne’s case, but wiser heads decided to leave this unhappy affair in the past. Readers will draw their own conclusions.8

  Another piece of evidence that needs to be considered is an anonymous work on Henry’s reign written by a Spanish visitor, commonly known as the Spanish Chronicle. Though Eric Ives wisely treats this work with scepticism, other accounts of Anne draw freely upon it to support the utterly baseless claim that, on the orders of this arch villain Cromwell, witnesses were compelled by torture or the threat of torture to testify falsely against the queen.9

  According to the Chronicle, a young court musician named Mark Smeaton has been reported to Cromwell for his behaviour. Suspicions were raised because Smeaton, penniless only a few months ago, is now living like a lord in the queen’s service. He has also, ‘on many occasions’, been seen going into the queen’s chamber. Smeaton is taken to Cromwell for questioning, and Cromwell warns him that he must tell the truth, or Cromwell will get it out of him by force. Smeaton is tongue-tied, so Cromwell warns him again. Still Smeaton gives only an evasive answer. Now Cromwell summons six of his heavies, and a knotted rope is tied round Smeaton’s head and tightened. After a dose or two of this medicine Smeaton is singing like a canary, and he confesses he is the queen’s lover. Cromwell is ‘terror-stricken’, and asks if any other men are involved. Smeaton provides a list of names, Cromwell sends a message to Henry, and Smeaton is despatched to the Tower.10

  It is a spicy, entertaining story, but as with Alesius the devil is in the detail. A knotted rope was a novel form of torture in England, while torture of any kind was used far more sparingly in Tudor England than on the continent, and seldom if ever on the whim of a councillor so early in an interrogation. Then for the story to reach the chronicler, someone from Cromwell’s household would have to tell it, and it is not clear why a servant of Cromwell’s would report this to a visiting Spanish writer, and a known supporter of Catherine of Aragon.

  The Chronicle also claims that when Anne was taken to the Tower on 2 May, Henry sent Cranmer, Audley, Norfolk and Cromwell to examine her, and that Cranmer took the lead in the questioning. Actually on 2 May Cranmer was summoned to Lambeth from Knole, where he had been for some days. The following day, still unable to see Henry face to face, he wrote an anguished letter to the king about what he had heard ‘reported’ of the queen. So he had not seen her on the 2nd.11

  Furthermore, the Chronicle calls Anne’s brother a duke – actually he was Viscount Rochford. It describes the executions of Anne’s lovers as if the writer had inside information, but nowhere does i
t mention the name of one of them, Francis Weston. It also informs us that Anne’s father ‘died of grief’ a few days after her death. Actually her father lived on nearly three more years.12

  Then leafing through later pages of the Chronicle the reader is puzzled to find Cromwell, who died in 1540, investigating adultery allegations against Catherine Howard, which were not uncovered until the following year. The solution – and it takes a moment or two for this particular penny to drop – is that the chronicler has been engaging in some rather radical historical revisionism. He makes Catherine Howard Henry’s fourth wife, followed by Anne of Cleves. Which brings us to Cromwell’s own fall (and presumably we are now in 1542 or thereabouts). After discussing Henry’s unhappiness with Anne, the Chronicle describes how certain lords devise a plot against Cromwell. One of these lords is the marquis of Exeter (who died in December 1538). Then at a dinner given in the honour of the emperor’s ambassador, Cromwell announces to all the guests that he intends himself king. Not too surprisingly, he is promptly reported to Henry and arrested.13

  Reverting to the section on Anne Boleyn, the Chronicle has got the main point right – it was Smeaton’s confession that led to the arrest of the queen and her other lovers. On this, all evidence agrees. This apart, the Chronicle is far too cavalier with facts, dates and details to be a credible witness. At best the knotted rope story must be highly dubious, and very likely an invention.

  However, as with Alesius, let us suppose for the sake of argument that the story in the Chronicle is true. It still does not support a conspiracy theory. Cromwell does not make up the charges about Anne, then torture Smeaton into confessing them. What happens is that suspicious behaviour, which might implicate the queen, is reported to Cromwell and it is Cromwell’s job to get the facts. He allegedly uses strong-arm tactics not to get Smeaton to sign a prepared confession, but simply to get Smeaton to open his mouth and say something. Cromwell, says the Chronicle, is ‘terror-stricken’ when he hears that Smeaton is the queen’s lover, not glad to have discovered what he has been looking for at last. So even in this colourful version of events, not a trace can be found of a Cromwellian conspiracy against Anne.

  Finally to Ambassador Chapuys, the trump card for the coup theory, according to whom Cromwell was supposed to have ‘planned and brought about the whole affair’. Readers may care to see these words in their proper context. The relevant passage is as follows, taken from a letter of Chapuys to Charles V, dated 6 June, nearly three weeks after Anne died.14

  First, the original:

  Et que a luy avoit este lauctorite de descouvrir et parachever les affaires diçelle concubine, en quoy il avoit eu une marveilleuse pene, et que sur le desplesir et courroux quil avoit eu sur la reponce que le roy son maistre mavoit donnee le tiers iour de pasques il se mist a fantasier et conspirer le dict affaire, et que une des choses que lavoit mis en soupeçon at anime pour senquerre du cas …

  The translator of the Calendar of State papers (CSP) has, not unreasonably, broken up this long, sprawly and still unfinished sentence into something more manageable, as follows:

  He [Cromwell], himself, had been authorised and commissioned by the king to prosecute and bring to an end the mistress’s trial, to do which he had taken considerable trouble. It was he who, in consequence of the disappointment and anger he had felt on hearing the king’s answer to me on the third day of Easter, had planned and brought about the whole affair.

  Regarding the first sentence, the CSP assumes that the authorisation came from the king. Literally it reads that Cromwell ‘had the authority’, or ‘to him had been given the authority’. However, the CSP’s rendering is a fair one, because only the king could authorise such action against the queen, and, as Cromwell was the most powerful minister in the land, no one but the king could commission him to do something as grave as this.

  Chapuys’s very first words, therefore, scotch any notion of a clandestine Cromwellian coup against Anne. Whatever Cromwell did, he did lawfully and properly, acting under orders from Henry. Allegations about Anne have presumably reached Henry, as the Chronicle also says, and Henry has appointed Cromwell to take charge of the case, which resulted in her prosecution and conviction.

  There is no suggestion that Cromwell has done anything illegal, unauthorised, or perfidious; still less that he has framed the queen on false charges and then convinced Henry of her guilt. Henry, not Cromwell, is directing events. The only oddity of the passage is that after telling us that Henry authorised Cromwell to act, it goes on to say that Cromwell carried out his commission not as an obedient servant of the king exactly, but ‘in consequence of’ his disappointment with Henry’s answer on the third day of Easter (that would be 18 April). This would appear to introduce a new idea, hinting that Cromwell had motives of his own. So is Cromwell acting under orders or not? The text is now ambiguous. It is also nonsense, because if Henry gives Cromwell a royal command, then Cromwell has to carry it out whether he is angry or happy; he does not, as this phrasing implies, obey Henry’s orders when it suits his mood to do so. This text, either in transcription or translation, has become garbled.

  Here I must ask the reader to bear with a point of grammar. The CSP has curiously translated the French ‘sur’ as ‘in consequence of’ (sur le desplesir et courroux, ‘in consequence of his disappointment and anger’). However, the French for ‘in consequence of’ is par or en conséquent. The word sur usually means ‘on’, and although it may have other meanings besides, ‘in consequence of’ is not listed in the authoritative Collins or Robert dictionary as one of them.15

  The nearest Collins gives to a causal meaning is this: sur invitation/commande, ‘by invitation/order’; and sur un signe du patron, elle sortit, ‘at a signal from the boss, she left’. ‘In consequence of’ would be misleading here because it would introduce a motive that is not intended. She left, not because she wanted to leave, or was motivated for her own reasons to leave, but simply when and because the boss told her. Further, sur can also indicate a point of time or proximity: Il est arrivé sur les 2 heures, ‘he arrived about two o’clock’; la pièce s’achève sur une reconciliation, ‘the play ends on/with a reconciliation’.16

  An example of the absurdity and inconsistency of rendering ‘in consequence of’ for sur is clear from the rest of Chapuys’s report, which continues:

  One of the things which had mostly raised his [Cromwell’s] suspicions, and induced him to inquire into her case, was certain prognostications made in Flanders of a conspiracy against the King’s life, by people, it was said, nearest to his Royal person. After which avowal (sur ce) Cromwell went on to extol beyond measure the sense, wit and courage of the royal mistress, as well as her brother’ (Et sur ce loua grandement le sens, esperit, et cueur de la dicte concubine et de son frere).

  This time the CSP has translated sur as ‘after which’ – just like the examples from Collins. Translating it as ‘in consequence of’ would give ‘Cromwell suspects a plot against the king, in consequence of which he praises Anne’s sense, spirit and courage’!

  So applying the rules of grammar according to Collins to Chapuys’s letter, the third day of Easter marks the day when Cromwell began, on Henry’s order, to investigate the case against Anne; but it does not mean that Cromwell’s disappointment over what happened that day motivated him to launch an action of his own against Anne. The absurdity of this, if it is not obvious already, will become so soon enough. Chapuys is simply reminding Charles of what happened that day, a very dramatic day about which he had already sent a long report. A detailed discussion of these events will have to wait until the next chapter; but for now readers may rest assured that Cromwell’s anger and disappointment with Henry on 18 April had nothing, absolutely nothing whatever, to do with Anne Boleyn.

  An alternative, free translation may now be suggested, as follows:

  On (or just after) the third day of Easter, the day when Cromwell was so disappointed and angry on hearing the king’s answer to me, Henry authorised an
d commissioned him to prosecute and bring to an end the mistress’s trial. Since then he was the one who planned and brought about the whole affair, which had taken him considerable trouble.

  Besides being grammatically acceptable, this would also remove the ambiguity in the CSP translation.

  An alternative rendering might be that because Cromwell was so upset, Henry authorised him to follow up these prognostications from Flanders and examine evidence against the queen, as a sort of consolation. But even if this were grammatically passable, it is scarcely sensical. Any intelligence that the king’s life was in danger would have to be investigated regardless of what happened on 18 April, regardless of whether Cromwell was angry or not.

  By now the reader has probably had enough of points of grammar. Chapuys is no longer with us to clarify his meaning, so the issue will have to be settled from the context. Of two things at least we can be certain. First, ‘in consequence of’ for sur is a mistake, or at best unreliable. Second, the opening words – that Cromwell was ‘authorised and commissioned’ by the king – cannot be arbitrarily struck out or overlooked. Because they come at the head of the sentence in the original document, it is reasonable to assume that they govern what follows. It can hardly be acceptable to turn it all around and say that Cromwell made up the charges against Anne and then persuaded Henry to authorise an investigation. Chapuys’s letter, therefore, is wholly inadequate as a foundation for a conspiracy theory.