The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  The picture is a little confused. However, if Bryan’s claim had contained any real substance, then Gardiner, like the Exeters, would have been speedily despatched to the Tower and the scaffold. So there was probably nothing much in it. But in the feverish climate of early June 1540 – with Cromwell on the offensive, Sampson and Wilson in the Tower on suspicion of Roman connections, Sampson questioned about what Gardiner had been saying to him, and even Cuthbert Tunstall interrogated by Cromwell’s agents – with all this swirling around, Gardiner had every reason to fear that Cromwell might be about to produce something that would damage him.

  Though Cromwell’s exact plans will never be known for certain, it looks as though he had decided that attack was the best means of defence, indeed the only means now available to him. He was rooting for evidence – any scrap of evidence would do – that might fatally connect the bishops with Pole or Rome, both of whom Henry hated violently. In other words, Cromwell wanted to expose the bishops for what, in his eyes as a Protestant statesman, they really were – Papists in all but name. Though they had accepted the Royal Supremacy, they still remained attached to most Roman dogmas like clerical celibacy, the mass, transubstantiation and the saints. To have them condemned for popish connections would have been rough justice, but not, at least not by Tudor standards, a complete travesty of justice. Had this plan succeeded, then the king would see that the bishops were traitors, whereas the reformers, whatever their faults, were his true and loyal supporters. The Reformation might yet be saved.

  Henry, however, badly needed Tunstall and Gardiner. Tunstall had been his special advisor on the disputed theological points with the Lutherans two years ago, while Gardiner had opened Henry’s eyes for him on justification by faith. Whatever Henry felt about Sampson, he could hardly afford to lose the other two. Gardiner, moreover, unlike Cromwell, was now ready, willing and able to arrange a quick divorce for Henry so he could marry Catherine Howard. And if Cromwell’s purge of prominent bishops had gone ahead unchecked, the result could have been the near obliteration of the Catholic party, and a triumphant Reformation party led by an all-powerful Lutheran Vicegerent. Henry would scarcely have countenanced such an imbalance of power even in the heady days of 1535–6, when Melanchthon was dedicating his Loci to the king, and Henry was looking forward to seeing Melanchthon personally. But now – now that the scales had fallen from his eyes on justification; now that he, at last, understood Lutheranism properly; now, besotted with Norfolk’s voluptuous niece and desperate to be rid of his German wife – in these vastly changed times the prospect of Cromwell holding unlimited sway in government and parliament was unthinkable.

  Yet despite the lure of Catherine and her faction, Henry drew back from the destruction of Cromwell. All too well the king knew what an outstanding chief minister he had. Cromwell’s performance in parliament that spring was just one more reminder of how ably he could direct affairs of state in Henry’s interests. No equal or no obvious successor lay in wait to replace him. Gardiner was a skilled lawyer and Norfolk a fine soldier, but neither was a match for Cromwell as Henry’s chief minister, responsible for the entire gamut of government business ranging from church matters to foreign policy, security, finance and economics. If either of these two coveted the vicegerency or the chief place beside the king, he would be quickly disappointed. Furthermore, knowing the hostility of Pole and Rome towards him, Henry needed Cromwell and his efficient intelligence network to thwart and investigate these popish plot theories. Henry’s attitude towards Lisle and Sampson strongly suggests that he suspected some mischief was afoot, and that Cromwell was not merely scaremongering. So the king was caught in a dilemma. Perceptive as ever, Marillac read the situation well and summed it up with admirable succinctness – Cromwell and Gardiner were both in great favour with Henry, but ‘things have come to the point where one of them must succumb’.37

  An affair of the heart would decide the outcome. On 6 June Cromwell admitted to Secretary Wriothesley that ‘one thing rested in his head, which troubled him – that the king liked not the queen, nor did ever’. When Wriothesley suggested that ‘some way might be devised to relieve the king’, Cromwell would only reply that it was a ‘great matter’. Next day Wriothesley pressed him again, because if no solution could be found, then ere long ‘they would all smart for it’. Again Cromwell merely replied that it was a ‘great matter’. ‘Let the remedy be searched for’, begged Wriothesley. ‘Well’, said Cromwell – ‘and then brake off from him’.38

  This is Wriothesley’s account of one of his last meetings with Cromwell, from which it is plain that Cromwell was not about to ‘relieve the king’ by ridding him of Anne and giving him Catherine. Other witnesses confirm this. Richard Hilles told a foreign correspondent that Cromwell, unlike Gardiner and others on the council, was known to be opposed to Anne’s removal. Foxe has a story of Cromwell wishing ‘his dagger in him that had dissolved or broken that marriage’.39

  So this was Cromwell’s ‘great matter’. He was risking a clash not just with his enemies, but also with Henry. Cromwell would not actively rebel, or disobey a specific royal command; but he would oppose or stall on Anne’s divorce even in discussions with the king’s councillors, even though he, like everyone else, knew that Henry longed to be married to Catherine. No wonder this one thing troubled him more than any other. It does not sound as though he was unduly worried about the setback for reform, or the detention of Latimer and Barnes, prospects for both of whom had improved recently. Nor did he seem greatly concerned about the men from Calais still in jail. All this had become secondary. Even if Cromwell could rout his enemies and set his friends free once more, and reverse the setbacks the Reformation had suffered, he would still be left with one thing to trouble him – he could never force the king to love Queen Anne. And while Henry wanted a divorce, Cromwell could only stall and hedge. The search was on for something that would convict his rivals of illicit links with Rome, but his agents had yet to uncover anything damning. Never in his long, eventful life had he lived more dangerously. He could neither consent to Anne’s demise, nor deliver the decisive blow against his foes.

  Frustratingly, the surviving records give little useful clue to the flurry of conspiratorial activity between 7 and 9 June, though presumably Wriothesley reported his meeting with Cromwell to Henry. It must have been on 9 June that the king, egged on by Gardiner, turned fatefully against his minister. On the 10th Cromwell attended parliament along with Norfolk and Audley. Gardiner, still vulnerable in the face of Cromwell’s onslaught against the bishops, stayed away. Cromwell’s name appears on the parliamentary lists for the next six days, though without the ‘p’ (‘present’) beside it. After that it is gone. Which suggests that what followed that afternoon was sudden and hastily planned.40

  Around mid-day Cromwell left parliament for the council chamber at Westminster to deal with affairs of state. At three o’clock the door opened, and in strode the Captain of the Guard with a royal warrant bearing the king’s seal. The Captain announced the arrest of Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, on a charge of treason. Cromwell threw his bonnet to the floor, and fixed his eyes intently on the council members sitting at table. He appealed to their consciences to judge whether he was a traitor or not; but if this was the will of the king, he vowed he would renounce all pardon. All he would ask of Henry was a quick end. Some of his fellow councillors, emboldened now like never before, called him a traitor. Others said he should be judged by his own laws, words which themselves might be deemed to be treason. (Actually these were the king’s laws, which all councillors, not just Cromwell, supported.) Norfolk rose from the table to reproach Cromwell for his villainies and snatch the order of St George from him. The earl of Southampton, soon to be made Lord Privy Seal in Cromwell’s stead, tore off the Garter. Cromwell was then ushered into a waiting barge and rowed to the Tower, entering under the Traitors’ Gate.41

  Notes

   1. LP 14 (2), no. 750, pp. 278, 281; Merriman 1, p. 279.

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nbsp;  2. R. McEntegart, Henry VIII, The League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 192–3.

   3. LP 15, nos 136, 248–9; Ellis 11, pp. 279–83.

   4. Kaulek, p. 153 = LP 15, no. 121; LP 15, nos 145, 189.

   5. LP 15, nos 222–4.

   6. LP 15, nos 233, 240, 253; Merriman 2, pp. 250–55.

   7. J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials under Henry VIII (Oxford, 1822) 1 (2), p. 437; SP 8, p. 234; LP 15, no. 243.

   8. J.F. Mozley, Coverdale and his Bibles (London, 1953), pp. 261–88 (quote from p. 269); Foxe 5, pp. 411–12.

   9. Henry on justification quoted and discussed in McEntegart, Henry VIII, pp. 192–3. I am most indebted to Dr McEntegart’s researches in Germany for this vital piece of evidence.

  10. See chap 6 (Loci), chap. 10 (Ten Articles and the Bishops’ Book), chap. 14 (Thirteen Articles). On Taverner, see W. Underwood, ‘Thomas Cromwell and William Marshall’s Protestant Books’, HJ 47/3 (2004): 533–5.

  11. LP 14 (1), nos 206, 412, 775, 890; ET, p. 406 = OL 2, p .627; ET, p. 398 = OL 2, p. 614. For a fuller account of this Lenten controversy, see J. Schofield, Philip Melanchthon and the English Reformation (Ashgate, 2006), pp. 137–41. What follows here is a summary.

  12. ET, p. 209 = OL 1, p. 317.

  13. Ribier 1, p. 513 = LP 15, no. 486.

  14. LP 15, no. 429. Wallop’s letter is dated 31 March, but the date of this dinner is not certain. It was either before the recantations, or at least before anyone in power heard that they were all made as a bit of a joke. See M. St C. Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, 6 vols (Chicago, 1981) vol. 6, p. 59. There is no evidence for Merriman’s suggestion that Cromwell made an apology to Gardiner, as Merriman himself admits. Why he made the suggestion at all is a mystery: Merriman 1, pp. 288–9.

  15. Burnet 1, pp. 437–9; S. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henery VIII, 1536–1547 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 85, 90–91.

  16. Cromwell resigns as PS: Elton, Tudor Rev., pp. 313–14; LP 15, no. 437. Cromwell’s ennoblement: Hall, p. 838; LP 15, no. 541; Kaulek, p. 179 = LP 15, no. 567; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, p. 86; G.R. Elton, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s Decline and Fall’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 10 (1951): 174; D. Head, Ebbs and Flows of Fortune: Life of Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk (Georgia, 1995), p. 170. Whether Cromwell’s advancement was an intended snub to Norfolk is uncertain. It could be taken that way.

  17. Ellis 5, pp. 156–8.

  18. Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 91–5; LP 15, no. 502.

  19. Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 94–5, 103; Kaulek, pp. 181, 184 = LP 15, nos 651, 697.

  20. Merriman 2, pp. 65–6, 139–40. For a full account of religious troubles at Calais, see Lisle Letters, especially vol. 6, passim.

  21. Foxe 5, pp. 497–501; Cranmer, Misc. Writings, pp. 375–6.

  22. Merriman 2, pp. 222–8; LP 14 (1), nos 1009, 1042, 1058, 1088; LP 14 (2), no. 496.

  23. Lisle Letters 6, pp. 63–6, 72–4, 117; Foxe 5, pp. 515–19. Cromwell’s reception of the prisoners comes from Foxe, and it is just possible that Foxe is exaggerating slightly. Foxe does have a tendency to assume that Lutherans like Cromwell, had they lived longer, would have turned into good Calvinists like himself. But it does seem fairly certain that Cromwell did not take the allegations against the men too seriously.

  24. Lisle Letters 6, pp. 53–121, especially pp. 56, 74, 87, 96–8, 102.

  25. LP 15, nos 727–8, 1005; Kaulek, pp. 184–5, 195 = LP 15, nos 697, 804, p. 378; Lisle Letters 5, pp. 352–3; 6, p. 116.

  26. LP 15, nos 310, 509; Kaulek, p. 184 = LP 15, no. 697; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 102–3.

  27. J. Stow, A Survey of London (Oxford, 1908), vol. 2, p. 99; Merriman 2, pp. 271–2; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials 1 (2) 461–2.

  28. ET, p. 134 = OL 1, pp. 201–2.

  29. Head, Norfolk, pp. 179–80; J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London, 1968), p. 429; LP 14 (2), no. 572; LP 15, nos 21, 613 (12), 686; LP 16, no. 1409.

  30. LP 15, no. 329.

  31. Foxe 5, p. 401; Kaulek, p. 185 = LP 15, nos 697, 721.

  32. Kaulek pp. 186–8 = LP 15, nos 736–7.

  33. LP 15, nos 747, 749–50 (see also Index, p. 671).

  34. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials 1 (2), pp. 381–2; SP 1, p. 627.

  35. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials 1 (2), pp. 328–9; Burnet 6, pp. 287–8; LP 12 (1), nos 987, 939, 1032.

  36. BL Cottonian MS Titus B. I, fol. 100 (no matching LP); Burnet 6, p. 275; Foxe 6, p. 66.

  37. Kaulek, p. 187 = LP 15, no. 737.

  38. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials 1 (2), pp. 459–60.

  39. ET, p. 134 = OL 1, p. 202; Foxe 5, p. 402.

  40. Elton, Studies 3, p. 91; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 105–6.

  41. Kaulek, p. 193 = LP 15, no. 804. This is Marillac’s account, dated 23 June, nearly two weeks after the event. Marillac received his information from Norfolk and others, so some allowance may have to be made for a bit of embellishing. Nevertheless, Marillac was a politically astute man, well able to sift fact from spin, so there is no real reason to doubt him this time.

  17

  The Pillar is Perished

  ‘Many lamented, but more rejoiced’. So the historian, Edward Hall, noted in his chronicle as news spread through London and beyond of the arrest of Thomas Cromwell. Those rejoicing were mainly ‘religious men’; they ‘banqueted and triumphed together that night, many wishing that that day had been seven years before’. Others, fewer in number, ‘lamented him and heartily prayed for him’.1

  With entreaties and thanksgivings rising to heaven together, Marillac described how Cromwell’s party, which lately had ‘seemed the stronger’, was thrown into turmoil by the downfall of its leader. Cranmer was still free, but he ‘dare not open his mouth’. Marillac stressed the suddenness of it – ‘the thing is the more marvellous as it was unexpected by everyone ’.2

  Henry had sent a special envoy to Marillac to tell him ‘the truth’ about Cromwell’s arrest. The ‘truth’ went like this:

  The substance was that the king, wishing by all possible means to lead back religion to the way of truth, Cromwell, as attached to the German Lutherans, has always favoured the doctors who preached such erroneous opinions and hindered those who preached the contrary; and that recently, warned by some of his principal servants to reflect that he was working against the intention of the king and the acts of parliament, he had betrayed himself and said he hoped to suppress the old preachers and have only the new, adding that the affair would soon be brought to such a pass that the king with all his power could not prevent it, but rather his own party would be so strong that he would make the king descend to the new doctrines even if he had to take arms against him.3

  Henry had good reason to take Marillac into his confidence. Like King Francis, Henry’s feelings towards the Lutherans had changed. Francis had long since abandoned his conciliatory approaches towards the Schmalkaldic League, and edicts had been issued to punish Protestant heretics throughout France. Francis was gratified to learn of Cromwell’s arrest; his removal will ‘tranquillise the kingdom to the common welfare of church, nobles and people’, he replied to Marillac. ‘Norfolk will remember what I said of it to him’ when he was in France, Francis added intriguingly.4

  Exactly what Francis said to Norfolk, and vice versa, is not recorded. If, as is likely, he expressed some sort of displeasure with Cromwell, then Norfolk would have mentioned it to Henry. With Henry in need of new allies following his rupture with Cleves and the Lutherans, he may have hoped that news of Cromwell’s arrest would facilitate a renewed Anglo-French accord.

  The drama of 10 June did not end with Cromwell’s arrival in the Tower. The king’s archers were soon at his house taking an inventory of his worldly goods, and certain valuables were taken away to the king’s treasury. Then the news was formally announced to parliament and the European envoys as follows.
Whereas Henry had ever sought to establish good order in religion for the glory of God, Cromwell had been ‘secretly and indirectly’ acting contrary to the king’s will. Cromwell had said – this has been ‘justified to his face by good witnesses’ – that ‘if the king and all the realm would turn and vary from his opinions, he would fight in the field in his own person with his sword in his hand’. Furthermore, Cromwell had been scheming to ‘bring things to the frame that the king could not resist it’. For this treason and ‘other great enormities’, Cromwell had been committed to Tower. So the official version ran.5

  When Richard Pate, Henry’s envoy in Bruges, heard this he promptly wrote to Henry. He was appalled, he avowed dutifully, to learn that Cromwell could be so treacherously minded to ‘pluck the sword’ from the hand of the king, his benefactor. Cromwell should never have involved himself with religion, or tried to disturb the people with the ‘false doctrine’ which ‘condemned good works, trusted too much in faith’ and held that ‘charity and the observance of the Ten Commandments could not be admitted as means to obtain the kingdom of heaven’. Cromwell should have obeyed his king, who had shown such exceptional patience in dealing with the ‘adverse party in religion’.6