The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  To revert from the intrigues of court to those of diplomacy, sometime in the first week of April Chapuys received the emperor’s reply to his letter in which he had described the approaches made to him by Cromwell previously discussed. After commending his ambassador’s conduct, Charles agreed that Chapuys should do all he could to induce Henry to be reconciled to Rome. Charles issued a veiled warning that if the pope proceeded to the ‘depravation’ of England, and asked for the help of the princes of Christendom, ‘we and the rest of them could not well refuse’. Charles offered to mediate on Henry’s behalf if that would help. However, if Chapuys perceived that it was ‘impossible to withdraw Henry from the error in which he is’, then Charles was prepared, though reluctantly, to ‘set this point aside for a while’ rather than abandon negotiations with Henry and Cromwell altogether. Chapuys should do whatever he could to secure Mary’s legitimacy; but here again, if Henry refused, Chapuys may ‘allow the matter to drop and things remain as they are for the present’. Chapuys should continue to act in Mary’s best interests, with Cromwell’s assistance if he was willing to give it – and Charles called Cromwell the ‘most fit’ of Henry’s ministers. The emperor welcomed the prospect of English help against the Turk and a more formal alliance with Henry, but he cautioned Chapuys to be wary lest the anti-French feeling in England among the king and his councillors ‘be only feigned’. With Charles prepared to be flexible, therefore, the prospect of an Anglo-Imperial accord edged a little closer.13

  Some assessment of Cromwell’s own aims may now be called for. An imperial alliance would undoubtedly benefit English trade, but Cromwell was interested in more than commerce. Besides talking to Chapuys, Cromwell was also eagerly awaiting the outcome of the embassy to Germany, and corresponding cordially with Martin Luther and Justus Jonas in Wittenberg. Luther’s letter to Cromwell, dated 9 April, commended Cromwell’s goodwill ‘in the cause of Christ’, which he had heard about from Robert Barnes. Luther prayed that the Lord would ‘complete the good work begun in him’, meaning Cromwell. Jonas assured Cromwell that if agreement could be reached in religion, a political treaty with England would follow.14

  Certainty is difficult without any personal memoirs of his own to draw on. However, it seems as though Cromwell saw within his grasp the hugely advantageous prospect of a twin alliance, one with the Schmalkaldic League and another with Charles. If handled skilfully, the two could compliment rather than clash with each other. The Lutheran princes were Charles’s subjects, anxious to live in peace with him so far as was possible, and willing to support him against the Turk if called upon. Additional support from England would be greatly welcomed. In that case, therefore, Charles could hardly object too strongly to a separate Anglo-Lutheran treaty, which might be a price worth paying, certainly until the Turkish threat could be dealt with. And if Henry and the Lutheran princes were rallying under the emperor’s banner to the defence of Western Christendom, even Rome’s hostility would be neutered. Cries of ‘heretic’ and ‘schismatic’ would be silenced, briefly at least, leaving England free from the danger of attack by Europe’s Catholic powers. Events at home could also work to Cromwell’s personal gain. Apart from earning Henry international prestige, an English army abroad would need commanders to lead it, and Henry’s most prominent general was Norfolk, one of Cromwell’s main rivals on the council. With Norfolk and Gardiner both conveniently out of the country, Cromwell could consolidate his grip on power at home, and advance the evangelical cause more thoroughly. Henry would take all the credit for English military success, and Norfolk all the blame for any failure. It was, therefore, a bold and imaginative plan, and it would have been a stunning diplomatic coup if he could have brought it to pass. However, Chapuys’s condition that England should tacitly accept papal authority again was unacceptable for Cromwell. Nor would Henry ever humble himself before the pope. This obstacle remained, and Cromwell would have to overcome it somehow.

  An opportunity presented itself near Easter, when Chapuys and Cromwell held a further meeting. It began with a discussion of the emperor’s letter. Sensing a little flexibility in the Imperial negotiating position, Cromwell decided to exploit it. He pointed out the difficulties regarding any reconciliation with Rome – the pope had offended Henry personally, while acts of parliament had been passed and could not quickly be altered. Still, Cromwell was determined to do all he could to help. He enigmatically hinted that Charles ‘might in time have greater authority and credit to persuade his master to reconciliation with the Apostolic See’. Cromwell then referred to a letter he had recently received from Rome, sent on the instructions of the pope’s son, Peter Louis Farnese. This letter promised that should ‘the king my master feel inclined to treat, he would find the pope disposed to gratify and please him as much as he possibly could’; but if Henry refused, then ‘His Holiness would be obliged to give up altogether the friendship of France’. Cromwell then sent for the secretary who had the letter, to show it to Chapuys. The secretary, however, was not in his office. While Cromwell was ‘much displeased’ at this, Chapuys was wondering what the words about ‘giving up the friendship of France’ might mean. Cromwell gave ‘an evasive answer’. Chapuys persisted. Why, he asked, should the pope, having lost England, ‘be so careless of French friendship’ as to risk losing France as well? Chapuys now suspected something else. Was Henry secretly tempting Francis to ally with England on religion against the papacy? To this ‘Cromwell made no reply, save to say that he really could not understand what was meant by the words’. Another possibility then occurred to Chapuys. Maybe this mysterious letter could explain Rome’s recent chilliness towards Charles, and warmth to Francis. Maybe Francis had been hinting that he, not Charles, might be the one to reconcile Henry and Rome.15

  Behind this intricate diplomatic dealing lay a simple message. Cromwell had sent Chapuys a veiled warning. If Charles remained too demanding in his conditions for an Anglo-Imperial alliance, then Henry might be tempted to make an alliance with Francis instead. It was a subtle reminder to Chapuys of Henry’s advantageous bargaining position; he could swing either to France or to the emperor, whichever option looked the most attractive. Chapuys, however, accomplished diplomat that he was, gave nothing away. He piously reflected that any offer made for the sake of the unity of Christendom should be welcome. Cromwell agreed, and ‘added that he sincerely hoped all would be set right in time’.

  If a cricketing metaphor may be employed to sum up the latest exchange between the two, Cromwell had varied his line of flight only to be met by an impeccably straight bat from Chapuys. Nevertheless, the point had been made, and soon it would get back to the emperor, just as Cromwell wanted. A further concession might be forthcoming. To encourage this, Cromwell then assured Chapuys that he was doing all he could to make Henry look favourably on Mary. The council, he added, were mostly supportive of friendship with Charles. This support would increase yet more if reports that Francis had made an agreement with the Turk were confirmed.

  Cromwell then sent one of his clerks to inform Henry about this discussion. Henry seemed well pleased; he invited Chapuys to meet him the following Tuesday, promising him that he would ‘be welcome, and get such an answer as would greatly please me’. Chapuys duly arrived at court on the appointed day. It was Tuesday 18 April, a day of high diplomatic drama, and a fateful one for Queen Anne.

  In the morning all went agreeably well. The ambassador was met first by Cromwell, before being received by other councillors as an honoured guest. Cromwell raised a delicate matter of protocol – would Chapuys be prepared to meet Anne and kiss her hand? Very politely Chapuys excused himself – that would be going too far too soon. This was accepted with good grace, and Henry appeared at his most affable when Chapuys was presented to him. On the way to mass, Chapuys and Anne met face to face, and exchanged the faintest of bows. After mass and dinner, Henry saw Chapuys again, and took him into a private room. Cromwell and Audley followed them. Chapuys gently raised the subject of Anglo-Imperial relation
s with Henry. Then the ambassador noticed the first signs that things were not going as expected. Henry’s mood altered; he abruptly introduced the subject of the duchy of Milan, and stung Chapuys by saying that Francis had as good a title to Milan as Charles. Soon Chapuys suspected that ‘the affection this king professes’ for Charles was ‘neither sincere nor disinterested’, and he withdrew to speak with Jane Seymour’s brother. From a discreet vantage point he could see Henry with Cromwell and Audley, though he could not hear what was said. Between the first two, ‘much altercation and angry words’ soon arose. Suddenly Cromwell turned his back on Henry and stormed out of the room into the foyer where Chapuys and Seymour were standing together. Seething with anger, Cromwell sat down on a chest and demanded a drink. After a short while Henry followed him out. The king turned to Chapuys and brusquely demanded that Chapuys put his requests in writing. Chapuys protested respectfully – this was an attack on his integrity. Then Henry launched into a tirade – Charles had no right to meddle in Henry’s affairs, either regarding his relations with the pope or with Mary; Henry would deal with Mary exactly as he pleased, depending on whether she was obedient or disobedient. ‘I am no longer a child’, bawled Henry, ‘to be whipped … then caressed and petted, and urged to come back and called all manner of sweet names’. Henry then started to ‘play with his fingers on his knees, and do as people who want to appease a crying child’. Complaining bitterly of Charles’s ingratitude to him, Henry demanded that Charles write a personal letter apologising for past wrongs and asking Henry’s forgiveness. While this performance was being played out, Cromwell and Audley sat with heads in their hands, downcast and dejected.

  Briefly but courteously, Chapuys took his leave. Later that day he saw Cromwell again, who was ‘so affected that he could hardly say one word … never in his life had he been so much taken aback’. Chapuys commiserated; he suggested dropping or delaying the matter, and concentrating on less contentious points like improving diplomatic relations generally, and helping Mary. At these consoling words Cromwell ‘suddenly recovered his wits, and said that the game was not entirely lost, and that he still had hopes of success’. The following day (Wednesday), led by Cromwell, Henry’s Council begged the king to relent and seek Charles’s friendship; but Henry would not yield. Cromwell assured Chapuys that during their talks together he had always acted with Henry’s authority. He could not imagine why Henry changed his mind so abruptly. ‘Whoever trusts in the words of princes, who one day say one thing and on the next retract it, relies on them, or expects the fulfilment of their promises, is not a wise man, as I myself experienced last Tuesday’. So Cromwell confessed to Chapuys.

  This astonishing sequence of events now calls for a moment of reflection. Merriman predictably blames Cromwell for pursuing his hopes of an Anglo-Imperial alliance too far, when Henry simply wanted to stay neutral. But this does not convince for a moment. Henry was not consistently neutral between Francis and Charles. Before Cromwell’s rise to power, and again after his fall, Henry fought on one side or the other. Besides, Henry himself had looked forward to better relations with Charles following Catherine’s death, and Cromwell had kept Henry fully informed about his discussions with Chapuys. If Henry disapproved of what Cromwell was doing, he could at any time have ordered him to stop seeing Chapuys; and he would not have invited Chapuys to court on the Tuesday morning, first holding out the hope of an agreement and then dashing it in a manner embarrassing to his ministers and humiliating to Chapuys. Henry’s royal tantrum – whining about Charles’s past unkindness, playing on his knee – suggests that he could not resist this opportunity to take sweet revenge for all the wrongs he imagined he had suffered from Charles. Cromwell, by contrast, wanted to keep negotiations with the imperialists going, hoping that Charles might give further ground on his demand that Henry should submit to Rome.16

  One clue to Henry’s odd behaviour comes from letters of French diplomats. On 19 April, the day after the scene with Chapuys and Cromwell, the bishop of Tarbes saw Henry and also Norfolk, who assured him that relations between France and England would remain unchanged, no matter what the emperor might promise. Henry then showed Tarbes a letter he had received from Charles, allegedly asking Henry to make peace and help him (Charles) against Francis and the Turk. Believing that Charles was preparing to attack French forces in Italy, Henry then offered Francis advice on military tactics. Francis was naturally delighted to be receiving such useful intelligence about the emperor’s plans.17

  Henry, it would seem, was not only playing Francis and Charles off against each other. He was doing the same with his two most powerful ministers at home, Cromwell and Norfolk. He used the one to deal with the imperialists, the other with the French. In his own eccentric way, Henry was trying to keep a balance of power not only in Europe but also in his own council, watching to see which way things would go before making his mind up – and in the end, not really making it up at all. The only certainty is Henry’s unpredictability. Anyone who has ever worked for a boss who changes his mind at the last minute without bothering to keep his management team fully informed will know how Cromwell felt on the morning of 18 April.

  But maddening though this can be, it is not life threatening. Nowhere does Chapuys, who reported minutely on all these events, even hint that Cromwell’s position was now imperilled. He was not isolated, and he had much support in the council for rapprochement with Charles. Nor was he under any threat from Anne and her rapidly crumbling faction. She was not actively opposing Cromwell’s pro-Imperial policy, though whether she opposed it or supported it no longer mattered very much. Her removal had never been one of Chapuys’s pre-conditions for an imperial alliance. In fact, Charles was now prepared to recognize her as queen provided only that there was some sort of posthumous rehabilitation of Catherine and reconciliation with Rome. So unless Cromwell had gone momentarily insane, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever (apart from a dodgy translation in the Calendar of State Papers) to believe that he would want to vent his frustration with Henry on Anne. Cromwell’s quandary was what to do about Henry’s exasperating changeability, not what to do with a queen whose demise was already determined.18

  However, though Anne was a mere bystander in England’s foreign diplomacy, she now returns to the centre stage of domestic policy. From Chapuys’s letter of 6 June (see Chapter 8), it was on or just after 18 April that Henry set in motion the sequence of events that would lead to the downfall of Anne and the crowning of Jane. It may have been at the council meeting on 19 April that Henry ‘authorized and commissioned’ Cromwell to prepare the case for a second divorce and a new marriage. The only reason he had not done this earlier, says Chapuys, was that ‘one of his Privy Councillors hinted that he could not divorce himself from Anne without tacitly acknowledging the validity of his first marriage’.19

  This information is the best clue yet to explaining Henry’s volte-face of the previous day (18 April). If Henry sought peace with Charles at the same time as he ended his marriage to Anne – the marriage that had caused the rift between the two monarchs in the first place – that could all too easily be seen as an admission of guilt for putting away Catherine of Aragon, the emperor’s aunt. A vindication of Catherine and a victory for Charles: this, surely, was how it would be interpreted by observers on the continent. It was more than this proud Tudor king could endure. So this was Henry’s dilemma: how could he divorce Anne without appearing to be the loser? Answer: he would give a grand display of his political virility with a rebuff to Charles and a public humiliation of his ambassador. This done, and when no one could accuse him of weakness or defeat, he would ‘authorise and commission’ Cromwell to end his marriage to Anne.

  Subsequent events confirm the view that the king’s mind was made up. On 22 April Cranmer, who had missed the rumpus at court having been at Knole for a few days, dashed off a letter to Cromwell. Cranmer began unremarkably enough by asking Cromwell to remember a master Smyth of the exchequer. Then the archbishop suddenly chang
ed the subject and broke into an impassioned appeal – ‘I was ever hitherto cold, but now I am in a heat with the cause of religion, which goeth all contrary to mine expectation, if it be as the fame goeth; wherein I would fain break my mind unto you’. This ‘cause of religion’ is such a vague expression that it reads almost like a coded message. Could it mean, perhaps, the cause of the Reformation, which Cranmer feared might be threatened if, ‘as the fame goeth’, Anne was about to be replaced by Catholic Jane? The most likely explanation in the circumstances is that rumours of Anne’s impending rejection had reached Cranmer, perhaps the only real ally Anne had left on the council, and he desperately wanted to speak to Cromwell about it. However, no reply is traceable. It may well be that Cranmer was being kept away from court deliberately. It is also plausible that he was the lone voice on the council who had been trying to dissuade Henry from divorcing Anne.20

  Then on 24 April a commission of oyer and terminer was named to investigate unspecified treasons. Issued from the Lord Chancellor’s office, it included Cromwell, Norfolk and Thomas Boleyn. This is a curious document, because it did not bring any specific charge against any named individual. So what could these treasons – as yet unnamed and uncommitted – be? No allegations of the queen’s infidelity had yet been reported. The most probable answer in the context is that Henry, Cromwell and now Audley were preparing the ground in the more than likely event that Anne would not depart meekly. Under existing legislation her refusal to surrender her crown would not be treason – but it could be made treason if the right laws were hurriedly passed and the judicial machinery put in place.21