The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  By early summer 1538 Coverdale and Grafton had begun work in Paris. At Cromwell’s request they sent him samples of what they called ‘your lordship’s work’ – a telling phrase, proving that Cromwell was the man directing the Great Bible project. What Cromwell received from Paris, however, was not just a routine progress report. ‘We follow not only a standing text of the Hebrew with the interpretation of the Chaldee and the Greek’, the writers explained; ‘but we set also, in a private table, the diversity of readings of all texts, with such annotations … as shall doubtless elucidate and clear the same’. They explained the different annotations they were using. One would indicate a ‘diversity of reading among the Hebrews, Chaldees, Greeks and Latins’; another a sentence ‘not in the Hebrew or Chaldee, but in the Latin and seldom in the Greek’; while a cross would point out Old Testament texts ‘alleged of Christ or of some apostle in the New Testament’. So Cromwell, apart from organizing things, was taking a close interest in the technical and linguistic details as well. But these reports also contained a note of anxiety: ‘We be daily threatened’, they told him, though frustratingly they gave no details. The problem soon worsened. On 7 October the English ambassador in Paris, Edmund Bonner, reported ‘a stay’ in the printing of the Bible, though he had petitioned the Grand Master to allow the work to continue. In December Grafton told Cromwell he feared the opposition of ‘these men’ and their ‘cruelness against us’, and that the work might be confiscated; but again, he named no one.47

  Then on 17 December, the French Inquisitor General formally ordered the work to be halted. He further ordered that all Bibles produced thus far – approximately 2,500 – should be confiscated. According to Foxe, the opposition originated from English bishops opposed in principle to an English Bible. Such opposition undeniably existed, but it is a little unlikely that a few disgruntled bishops could, unaided, have foiled a project authorised by the king of France at the request of the king of England.48 More serious opposition was coming directly from Rome, by now renewing attempts to forge a continental alliance against England, and demanding that the Bible ‘corruptly translated into the English tongue should either not be published, or else burned’ (che la Biblia tradotta in lingua Angla corrottamenti o non si divulghi o si abbruci).49 Pope Paul III had renewed his bull against Henry, especially in view of his impenitence and his most recent crimes like the destruction of Becket’s shrine, seen abroad as a calculated attack on the spiritual authority of the papacy. The pope and Cardinal Pole were pressing Francis, Charles and the Scots to enforce a united trade embargo against England. Fearing that Charles’s proposed expedition against the Turk would delay such action, Rome was even willing to consider a temporary truce with the Turk so that Christendom’s continental princes could marshal their combined resources to reduce Henry, and if possible the Lutherans as well, to submission.50

  Cromwell had a personal as well as a religious interest in the Great Bible, because he had invested his own money to finance it. To try and get the printing re-started, he appealed to the French ambassador, Castillon. He also urged Bonner to appeal to the French authorities, including Francis personally. Castillon was uncompromising. The French Inquisitor, he claimed, had found many things corrupt and false (vicieuses et fascheuses) in the work, so any more printing in France was unthinkable. The dexterous King Francis, however, desirous of keeping good relations with Henry as well as with Rome, dropped a subtle hint that the English might be able to buy the necessary types, printers and paper, and carry on the printing in England.51

  After being ‘well comforted and encouraged by the Lord Cromwell’, says Foxe, the Englishmen were allowed to collect presses and printing equipment from France and bring them to England, where printing resumed in April, 1539. Cromwell’s next task was to try and recover the Bibles that the French had confiscated. At first the French refused, again on the grounds that the translation was faulty, though they declined to give examples of defective work. To put pressure on the French, Cromwell used the Rochepot Affair – a maritime dispute involving a French raid on German merchant vessels in the English Channel – as leverage in negotiations. The fate of these confiscated Bibles, however, presents a puzzle. Foxe says that the Englishmen never could recover any of them, but then he has this intriguing passage:

  Saving that the lieutenant-criminal having them delivered unto him to burn in a place of Paris (like Smithfield) called Maulbert Place, was somewhat moved with covetousness, and sold four great dry-fats of them to a haberdasher, to lap in caps, and those were bought again, but the rest were burned.52

  But why would a French haberdasher buy a large consignment of these Bibles? Not only were they banned by the French authorities; they were also printed in the English tongue. Who could this strange buyer be? And where could he sell his illicit goods – except in England?

  Ambassador Chapuys, still monitoring English affairs with interest, has a cryptic note to the effect that Francis, still seeking to be all things to all men, had dropped another of his discreet hints. He had implied that printed copies might after all be delivered to English ministers in certain circumstances. Chapuys had no details of how, when or even if this was done, but he has given us a useful clue to the riddle of the missing Bibles.53 Because they were no use to anyone else, only one explanation seems possible. Cromwell must have struck a secret deal with the French, and Foxe’s mystery haberdasher was an agent of Cromwell’s paid to buy up the Bibles in France and then ship them back to England. The entire operation must have been funded by Cromwell. Nobody else would have put up the money, certainly not Henry or the French government. So not for the first time in his career, Cromwell had to resort to bargaining and haggling in his evangelical endeavours.

  The title-page of the Great Bible is a fascinating piece of religious art and can be seen in the illustrations section (plate 2). In the centre is the Word of God itself, ‘The Byble in Englyshe’. Then there are three distinct frames. In the first (top) frame Henry sits on his throne. On his right stands Cranmer at the head of the clergy. On Henry’s left is Cromwell, and behind him the privy councillors. Cranmer and Cromwell each receive a Bible from the king, though Henry’s gaze is directed at Cranmer. Then in the second (middle) frame, Cranmer hands the Bible to the clergy, while Cromwell on the left does the same to the laity. In the third and lower frame we see on the right, below Cranmer, a congregation listening attentively to a sermon. On the left, below Cromwell, another group of godly, contended Tudor citizens are doing nothing specific apart from going cheerfully about their daily lives.

  It is believed to be a work of Hans Holbein, but the brain behind it was probably Holbein’s patron, Thomas Cromwell. Its message is that the English Bible is the king’s gift to the English people, and it therefore behoves all loyal subjects to read it. But they are not only to read it, or have it read to them, in church by their priests. The Bible is for the nation as a whole: church and state, clergy and laity. Another example of Cromwellian evangelical strategy, it is designed to encourage Bible-reading among an increasingly literate laity, with the aim of weaning them further away from the medieval religion, and directing them instead to the more Scripture-based faith of the Reformation.

  The royal proclamation regarding the Bible declared that Henry had appointed ‘our right trusty and well beloved councillor the Lord Cromwell, Keeper of our Privy Seal’ to be responsible for licensing Bible translations. One small curiosity of this royal edict is that in this undeniably spiritual project, Cromwell was not referred to as Vicegerent. In fact, his exact terms of reference as Vicegerent are unclear. Four years before, he had drawn up plans for a Vicegerential court and office, but unfortunately no useful details have survived.54 Nevertheless, some idea of the vicegerency in practice may be gauged from letters to Cromwell from Cranmer. Though Cranmer usually addressed his friend and ally as Lord Privy Seal, the letters discussed below all relate to church affairs of one kind or another during 1537–9.

  Beginning in May 1537, Cranmer reported
that the bishop of Norwich, William Rugge, a man of the old faith ‘doth approve none to preach in his diocese that be of right judgment’. Cranmer asked Cromwell to grant the king’s licence to one Mr Gounthorp of Norwich, of whom Cranmer approved. Cranmer also knew of three or four good men in that diocese ‘to whom, if your lordship would give the king’s licence, I doubt not but you should do a deed very acceptable to God’.55

  Next summer Cranmer reported the case of a sacramentary called Atkinson, commanded to do penance at Paul’s Cross. Atkinson then asked if he could do penance at his parish church instead. Cranmer would have preferred Paul’s Cross, ‘where the most people might be present … and be ware of like offence’; but apparently this was not a decision that he as archbishop was able to make, so he asked Cromwell ‘what answer I shall make unto him at this behalf’.56

  Cranmer then took up the cause of an old unnamed friend from his days as a scholar at Cambridge. The man wished to leave the priesthood ‘for causes moving his conscience’, but feared he might lose his livelihood due to the hostility of certain people in Ludlow, where he now lived. Cranmer asked Cromwell to write to the warden of the guild in Ludlow, so that the man would be allowed to carry on teaching at the school there, even though he had left the priesthood. Cranmer admitted that ‘there is no foundation or ordinance, as he sheweth me, that the schoolmaster thereof should be a priest’, but Cromwell’s help and patronage were requested in view of the man’s background.57

  When the dean of Tamworth died in August 1538, Cranmer asked Cromwell if ‘you will have in remembrance Doctor Barons unto the king’s majesty, for his preferment thereunto’. This indicates that even Cromwell did not actually make appointments himself, but that he, not Cranmer, made recommendations and representations to the king.58

  In October Cranmer received reports from a scholar of Oxford about suspicious words and activities. A certain Mr Don had been defending papal primacy, while others tried to ‘keep the youth of this college from the knowledge of God’s word’. Nor were the king’s injunctions being kept, and Bible-reading was suppressed. Cranmer sent full details and a report to Cromwell ‘to be examined by you’. In the same month he recommended Dr Champion, his chaplain, for a vacant benefice in Somerset by Cromwell’s ‘favour and aid’. Once again the suggestion is that Cromwell had to refer the matter to Henry for final approval.59

  Then Dr Cave, a servant of Cromwell’s, was ‘right willing to leave a prebend, which he now hath in the king’s majesty’s college at Oxford’, to Dr Barber, Cranmer’s chaplain. Cranmer, ‘having no other mean to the king’s highness … was compelled in this, as in all other my business, to have resource to your lordship’ to secure this favour for Barber. In January 1539 Cranmer detained two priests in Kent for breach of injunctions, and commanded them to give alms of forty shillings to the poor. He then asked Cromwell to ‘send me word, how I shall behave myself hereafter in punishing of such offences’.60

  Another short case study concerns a priest, Sir William Swerston, who was reported to the bishop of Norwich for heresy. Swerston refused to answer the charges laid against him, and appealed to Cromwell as vicar-general. The bishop kept him in custody until he knew what Cromwell wished to do. Unfortunately, neither the details nor the outcome are known.61

  At the time of the Germans’ visit, and with Cromwell’s encouragement, Cranmer was beginning the first drafts of a revised order of service for church offices – daily readings of Scripture, prayers and worship, though not the main Eucharist service. It is possible that this initiative came from Cromwell. Besides being technically superior to Cranmer in ecclesiastical affairs, he was also by nature more energetic and innovative, and liturgical reform might well have come under his Vicegerential remit, though this cannot be proved. However, there is nothing to suggest that he was seriously thinking of a full English, evangelical liturgy at this stage. Had he done so, the most likely blueprint would have been Luther’s German mass. Frustratingly, not much more can be said on this point because Cranmer appears to have stopped work when the evangelical program ran into difficulties, and he did not return to it during Cromwell’s lifetime.62

  The prestige and authority of the office of Vicegerent is impressively declared in the act for the placing of lords in Parliament in 1539. It confirms that Henry appointed ‘Thomas, Lord Cromwell and Lord Privy Seal, his Vicegerent, for good and true ministration of justice to be had in all causes and cases touching the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and for the godly reformation and redress of all errors, heresies and abuses in the said church’. According to this act the office would be permanent, and Cromwell ‘and all other persons which hereafter shall have the said office of the grant of the king’s highness, his heirs or successors, shall sit … upon the same form that the Archbishop of Canterbury sitteth on, and above the same archbishop and his successors’.63

  It reads grandly. However, it is worth recollecting that when the Lutheran delegation arrived in summer 1538, Cromwell was sidelined in favour of Bishop Tunstall. Presumably Henry guessed that Tunstall would be more sympathetic than Cromwell to the king’s views on masses and priestly celibacy. So the imposing title of Vicegerent, and the theoretically sweeping powers accompanying it, could be just a little misleading, because without Henry’s approval there was not a great deal that Cromwell could safely do. The vicegerency existed chiefly to enforce the king’s will in the church, and herein lay Cromwell’s dilemma. With Henry hardening on priestly celibacy, determined to hold on to private masses, and all at sea on justification by faith, Cromwell’s ability to further the Protestant cause was becoming increasingly limited, as reports reaching him on the state of reform in England made uncomfortably plain.

  As he probably expected, not everyone was delighted to receive his new injunctions. ‘By God’s bones’, grumbled Robert Mawde, a Warwickshire curate to his congregation one day, ‘I have read this out to you a hundred thousand times and yet ye be never the better’. Mawde also complained about their wordiness – ‘here is a hundred words in these injunctions where two would serve’.64

  Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire were generally quiet, according to John Marshall. When people heard about reforms, they ‘whisper a little but it is soon forgotten’. The English Pater Noster was well received, and the abbeys were ‘nothing pitied’. Some were surprised at the recent legal requirement to register births, marriages and burials, fearing that a new tax will soon be imposed. Following the deaths of Exeter and Montague, many wondered whether Reginald Pole ‘should make business one day to all the power he may’. A stained glass window of Becket had been removed, and people were uncertain about what was expected of them on traditional feast days. A few weeks later Marshall had to admit that, whilst there was no open opposition to Henry in Nottinghamshire, there was little enthusiasm for reform either, and few priests were preaching according to the injunctions.65

  In Newbury, Miles Coverdale found some prohibited popish books, and he promptly ordered the local curate to call all such books in. A lingering fondness for forbidden images of Becket among church goers in Kent was discovered by John Fogges and Henry Goderick. Injunctions were only grudgingly obeyed in much of Kent, and apart from Cranmer and his chaplains, few preached the Gospel sincerely. In a Barking parish, Robert Ward reported that the injunctions were not being read at all.66

  Robert Ferrar, evangelical prior of St Oswald’s in the north, advised Cromwell that whilst Yorkshire folk were eager to learn the Gospel, very few were willing to preach it. In Northumberland, too, people were glad to hear the Word, while law and justice were in better order and crime was down. But Ferrar added sadly that he knew of only one good preacher between the Tyne and the Tweed.67

  A sample as short as this is nowhere near representative enough to draw definite conclusions on the reception of the Reformation in England. However, it is probably fairly typical. Although it is interesting that there were encouraging signs even in the north, the overall picture was a disappointing one for evangelicals. Prog
ress towards reform was somewhat pedestrian, and no decisive breakthrough appeared in prospect. There was even the danger that the Lutherans might now give up hope on Henry. To forestall this, and to keep Protestant hopes alive, an idea had entered Cromwell’s mind to cement the Anglo-Lutheran relationship in a time-honoured way – by a diplomatic, royal marriage.

  Notes

   1. R. McEntegart, Henry VIII, The League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 89–94; Merriman 2, pp. 144–6; J.F. Mozley, Coverdale and his Bibles (London, 1953), pp. 168–71; Burnet 6, pp. 206, 210; LP 13 (1), nos 1197, 1231; Sermons and Remains of Latimer, ed. G.E. Corrie (PS, 1845), pp. 240–44.

   2. Ellis 10, pp. 249–67; Hall, pp. 825–6; Wright, pp. 190–91; LP 13 (1), no. 1043; Cranmer, Misc. Writings, pp. 365–6; Latimer, Remains, pp. 391–2.

   3. P. Marshall, ‘Papist as Heretic: The Burning of John Forest, 1538’, HJ 41 (1998): 351–74.

   4. Kaulek, pp. 23–4 = LP 13 (1) 273–4; Kaulek, p. 73 = LP 13 (1), no. 1451, p. 535; Merriman 2, pp. 92–4, 102–5, 122–5, 140–41; LP 13 (1), nos 69, 1396; CSP Span., 1538–42, no. 7, p. 18. On the summer delegation to England, see McEntegart, Henry VIII, pp. 94–107. For the Thirteen Articles, see Cranmer, Misc Writings, p. 473 (4). On the Wittenberg Articles, see chap. 8; Melanchthon’s Loci, chap. 6; Ten Articles and the Bishops’ Book, chap. 10.

   5. LP 13 (1), nos. 1267–9; C. Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstall: Churchman, Scholar, Statesman, Administrator (London, 1938), pp. 129–43, 170–87, 360.

   6. Latimer, Remains, p. 395; LP 13 (1), nos. 1054 (p. 388), 1376, 1407.