The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  Attention turns now to Anne of Cleves, with whom Cromwell’s downfall is customarily connected. This connection may have originated with Gardiner, who, later in Mary’s reign, reflected on how dangerous it was to ‘take a share in the marriage of princes’. As an example he cited Cromwell for arranging Henry’s marriage to Anne ‘because he believed that Germany would ever afterwards assist this country for her sake; whereas the marriage only lasted one night and ruined Cromwell’.17

  But if the Cleves marriage was all Cromwell’s fault, or if Henry felt misled by Cromwell, why is this subject, and Anne’s name, so conspicuously absent from the attainder? With Cromwell locked away and his enemies free to accuse him of anything they liked – and with complete impunity, for the prisoner had no opportunity to reply or defend himself – why not blame him for the whole sorry affair? Amazingly, the idea never crossed the mind of either the king or the Gardiner party. Despite all the subsequent tales about Cromwell pushing and tricking Henry into an ill-matched marriage, nothing he had said or done during the Cleves negotiations could be used against him at his own trial.

  In fact, Gardiner was disingenuously covering up his own role in Cromwell’s fall. The ruin of Cromwell was not the Cleves marriage itself. He had easily survived that. Cromwell’s ruin began with the Lenten crisis, and it was sealed by Henry’s passion for Catherine Howard, stoked up by those feastings and entertainments laid on by wily Winchester at his Episcopal palace. Henry now saw his Lutheran Vicegerent as a threat to the king’s headship of the church, and, even more provocatively, the barrier to Anne’s removal and Catherine’s coronation.

  With Cromwell incarcerated, however, the way lay open for yet another royal divorce, and a written statement from the prisoner on the delicate subject of the consummation of the marriage, or lack of it, was now required. On 30 June, Henry sent a delegation to the Tower to demand that Cromwell declare, ‘as he would answer before God at the dreadful day of judgement, and also upon the extreme danger and damnation of his soul’, all that he knew of the marriage between Henry and Anne. The choice of Norfolk and Audley was doubly ironic. Henry may have intentionally selected one from the old faith and one from the new, but he may not have known that both of these men had, in happier times, pledged Cromwell their lifelong friendship and loyalty. During the Pilgrimage of Grace, Norfolk wrote to Cromwell with effusive thanks for various kindnesses, promising friendship for ever, begging him to keep his letter as proof ‘if ever fault of promise shall be found in me’. Audley, after Cromwell helped him acquire Walden Abbey during the suppression, promised that ‘ye shall have my heart and good will during my life’. This meeting in the Tower must have been one of the most painfully embarrassing that Audley had ever endured. Here was Cromwell, his former ally, attainted for the Zwinglian heresy when only a few months earlier, in February 1540, Audley had sent cordial greetings to Henry Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in Zürich.18

  Anyway, Cromwell began to write as commanded. In unsparingly intimate detail, he related all that Henry had told him in private about his lack of feeling for Anne, and how the marriage had not been consummated. At the end Cromwell wished God’s blessing on Henry and Prince Edward. Then, with ‘heavy heart and trembling hand’, he closed with an appeal to the king: ‘Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy’. Alongside is Cromwell’s signature, in the hand Henry knew so well. Firm, clear and muscular as ever, it betrays little sign of a ‘trembling hand’.19

  Some persons seize on these dramatic words in isolation as if Cromwell did nothing else but abjectly cry out for mercy when confined in the Tower. Nothing will ever stop people rejoicing in the misfortunes of good men, but by so doing they give their readers a wholly false picture. Cromwell had not finished his writing yet. A second letter was soon composed, and Cromwell asked that it too might be delivered to the king along with the first. The delegation was taken aback, initially unwillingly. Eventually Ralph Sadler, a Cromwell loyalist now compelled to go along with events, went to Henry to seek the king’s permission to bring the letter to him. Henry agreed, though when he read it he might have wished he had not.

  The letter began respectfully enough. Besides the questions about Anne, Cromwell had been asked to name anyone he knew who was untrue to the king. Cromwell coolly replied that had he known anyone thus minded, he would have detected them already. Then – and he had not been asked to do this – he took the time to answer the attainder charges. A touch of sarcasm mingled with deference as he acknowledged his conviction by parliament on the testimony of ‘honest and probable’ witnesses. As a loyal subject he was bound to obey laws, and he submitted meekly to their sentence. Then, suddenly, a few simple words wing their way like arrows straight at Henry’s conscience: ‘though laws be laws … yet God is God’ – and God knows that he had never been a traitor or sacramentary.

  The exact wording here is difficult because the document is mutilated. What remains goes as follows:

  Albeit laws be laws and in them have … yet God is God and knoweth both … towards your Majesty, and your Realm … how dear your person was, is and ever hath … much grieved me, that I should be noted … e I hadde your laws in my breast, and … mentary God he knowth the … he ton and the other guiltless.

  The last words – ‘the one and the other guiltless’ – are the crucial ones. Almost certainly they refer to the two main charges on the attainder – that he was a sacramentary, and that he threatened to ‘fight in the field’ against the king.

  Cromwell had now aimed a penetrating double thrust at Henry, a dutiful appeal to the king’s goodness and mercy, but also a fearless denial of the charges against him. If we may be allowed to cut through the profligate Tudor prose and suggest a paraphrase of these letters, the substance might read thus: ‘Whatever man’s laws or attainders may say, you King Henry know that these charges are false, and God Almighty knows they are false. I appeal to you to be righteous and merciful’. Then, aware that he ought not to overdo this, a good deal of typical Tudor bowing and scraping follows. Again he makes confessions of human failings, though they are very general and contain nothing specific. He also appealed to Henry to be good to his son and the rest of his family. For reasons not stated, much of the stuff about Anne is then repeated. The letter left Henry much moved, says Foxe; he asked for it be read to him three times over.20

  The trial of Cromwell had now taken an unexpected twist. To secure his divorce, Henry had demanded a written statement from his minister on the failed marriage, trusting that a prisoner condemned to death would tell the truth lest he perjure his soul. This statement Henry duly received. But the accused, condemned unheard by attainder, though with wits intact and quick as ever, had grasped this golden opportunity to appeal directly to the conscience of the king. Now if Henry accepted the statement on the marriage, he was bound to accept the denial of the charges of heresy and treason as well, because it was composed under the same solemn oath. So Henry was confronted with a piercing crisis of conscience. He had hoped to wash his hands of Cromwell’s death by sheltering behind that ‘petition attainder’, because if Cromwell could be condemned by an act of parliament rather than by royal fiat, then accountability would lie with parliament and not the king. Cromwell’s unsolicited letter skewered that idea and forced Henry into the unwanted role of a supreme appeal judge. On him, no longer on parliament, lay responsibility for exercising justice, or committing judicial murder.

  No man is entirely free from fear when the hour of death is at hand, but Cromwell’s humility and appeals in his letters should not be crudely torn from their context. His bearing towards Henry was meek and humble, like any true and obedient servant’s should be; but in the presence of Henry’s delegates, and in a personal letter to the king, he also called the charges against him a pack of lies, invoking God Almighty and the Day of Judgement as his witness. This is not the spirit that Henry expected from his prisoners. Neither is it the air of a man possessed by fear. Had Cromwell been in state of terror, he would have co
nfessed everything. An instinct for survival may have led him to hope that, even at this late stage, he might somehow be able to drive a wedge between Henry and the Gardiner faction and regain the king’s trust.

  But it was too late for that, and other men were more ready to gratify Henry’s lust for Catherine Howard than Cromwell had been. Gardiner was already drawing up ‘an order to be observed in the process for this matter’, and divorce arrangements were soon underway. Audley delivered a speech in Convocation on 5 July on the danger to the realm if, though he prayed God would avert it, some accident were to befall Henry’s only heir, Prince Edward. A second heir would then be needed, born ‘in true and lawful wedlock’. Alas, it was ‘doubtful’ that such a blessing would be granted from this present marriage due to ‘some impediments, which upon inquiry may arise to make the validity of that marriage dubious’. Audley proposed that a delegation from both Houses should go to the king and beg leave to speak with him on this most sensitive matter. The delegation was despatched straight away. Henry replied that he could neither deny nor grant the request, but thought it best to refer the matter to the clergy. As with the ‘petition’ attainder, everything was carefully stage-managed to make it look as though the initiative came from parliament, not the king.21

  Another speech by Gardiner on 7 July stated the reasons why the marriage was invalid. Next day Convocation declared Henry free to marry another. Gardiner’s prominent role suggests that he had already, before Cromwell’s arrest, assured the king how quickly everything could be arranged. The reasons for divorce were these: Anne’s pre-contract to Lorraine’s son, Henry’s unhappiness on meeting her and his reluctance to complete the marriage ceremony, the fact that the marriage was not consummated, and England’s need of a male heir in the event of Prince Edward’s untimely death. Not a word is to be found about Cromwell misleading the king about Anne. Nor did the woman forsaken raise even a murmur. No lady has ever consented to a divorce settlement more readily than Anne of Cleves. She was, she assured her anxious brother, entirely satisfied with the outcome. Anne is portrayed as pliant and biddable in popular accounts of her, with few historians willing to allow for the possibility that she saw Catherine Howard not as a rival she should be jealous of, but as an escape route to be thankful for. Whatever her true feelings, her adopted country was saddened to see her go. Marillac told Francis about the divorce and the ‘great regret of the English people, who loved her and esteemed her much’, and how it was ‘commonly said’ that Henry would soon marry ‘a lady of great beauty’. If reports were to be believed, the ambassador added, ‘he would say this marriage has already taken place and is consummated, but as this is kept secret he dare not yet certify it as true’. Edward Hall, who covered Anne’s reception and marriage in abundant detail, notes her divorce in one terse, solitary paragraph.22

  The reasons cited for the divorce, and the remarkable speed with which the arrangements were concluded, prove that ending this marriage was never a particularly ‘great matter’ for Cromwell. It would have been easy – very easy – for him to have survived the summer of 1540. A ruthless, scheming, unprincipled politician could have sacrificed Barnes, Garrett and Jerome, arranged Henry’s divorce for him – Anne was willing enough – and remained comfortably in office as Lord Privy Seal and Vicegerent. Instead, Cromwell chose to make a stand for what really was his ‘great matter’, namely the Reformation in England. Thus the story of Cromwell’s fall now closes.

  A brief word is now needed on a few sub-plots going on around this time. A rumour was circulating that Cromwell planned to make himself king and marry Mary. The source was Castillon, Marillac’s predecessor, and Henry ordered Ambassador Wallop in France to search out the facts. On 5 July Wallop promised he would send a letter from Castillon confirming the claims, but ten days later he had to tell Henry that no news had arrived. Letters continued between Henry and Wallop, but Henry must have lost interest in the tittle-tattle about the danger to his throne from King Thomas and the House of Cromwell. The rumour was never confirmed, and there is nothing about it on the attainder.23

  On 17 July Barnes, Garrett and Jerome were attainted for heresies ‘too long to be rehearsed’. All three, and particularly Barnes, had enjoyed the king’s favour until Henry’s blunder over faith and good works was expertly brought home to him by Gardiner at Lent. Their fate was sealed by their refusal to recant devoutly and their closeness to Cromwell, while others of the same faith like Cranmer, Latimer and Barlow lived on, for now, unharmed.24

  Speculation abounded about what manner of death awaited Cromwell, condemned as both a heretic and a traitor. Convicted heretics died at the stake, while traitors were hanged, drawn and quartered unless they were fortunate enough to be of noble stock, in which case they were customarily beheaded. Some were saying Cromwell would be burned, others predicted hanging and quartering because he was not a nobleman by birth. Merriman writes that not until the morning of the execution did Henry commute the sentence to beheading, and he quotes Marillac as his source; but in fact Marillac merely says that ‘grace was given him’ to die by the axe – he does not say that grace was given only on the day of execution. Despite all the gossip, there was probably never any real danger of either disembowellment at Tyburn or the fires of Smithfield for the former Vicegerent. From Buckingham to More, Fisher and Exeter, Henry’s prominent victims were allowed to die with dignity. Besides, though Cromwell’s attainder pompously notes his humble origins – ‘a man of very base and low degree’ before the king exalted him – it thereafter consistently refers to him as ‘Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex’, not plain, low born Mr Cromwell.25

  Little is known of how Cromwell wiled away the time when he was not receiving delegations from the king. Foxe records that official visitors were a touch disquieted by the prisoner’s unexpectedly calm and composed demeanour. Foxe gives no details, but his source may have been Ralph Sadler, Cromwell’s former secretary who lived on till Elizabeth’s reign. Cromwell’s last surviving letter, to the Council on 24 July, concerned the so-called Rochepot affair. This had been discussed already (here), but for reasons not stated he was now required to make a statement about it, and he denied taking money unlawfully. This apart, the letter has little interest value except that the style, the grasp of detailed facts and the carefully constructed arguments all point to a man who had lost none of his faculties during his two-month confinement.26

  ‘My prayer’, Cromwell once said, ‘is that God give me no longer life than I shall be glad to use my office in edification and not in destruction’. In a way unforeseeable, yet strangely merciful, that prayer was now answered. Cromwell could only have survived the summer of 1540 by an act of destruction, either the cynical sacrifice of his allies, or the brutal culling of his enemies on rather flimsy evidence. Instead, he was able to mount the scaffold on 28 July with a quiet conscience, and to deliver his valedictory address.27

  ‘I am come hither to die’, he told the crowd, ‘and not to purge myself, as some think peradventure that I will’. So anyone expecting a phoney, wretched confession would be disappointed. He acknowledged he had offended God and the king, and he sought the forgiveness of both; but this was another purely general admission of human failure, with nothing precise. ‘I die’, he went on, ‘in the Catholic faith, not doubting in any article of my faith … nor in any sacrament of the church’. An ironic gallows humour was now at play. He used the word ‘Catholic’ in the sense that Melanchthon did in the Augsburg Confession, and as Cranmer subsequently did, meaning the ‘Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’ of the New Testament and the Nicene Creed, not the medieval Roman church. Then once again came a bold denial of the charges against him, followed by a piece of classic Cromwellian inscrutability:

  Many have slandered me, and reported that I have been a bearer of such as have maintained evil opinions; which is untrue: but I confess, that like as God, by His Holy Spirit, doth instruct us in the truth, so the devil is ready to seduce us; and I have been seduced.

  If
Cromwell was not guilty as charged, as he claimed, then the words in my italics must have puzzled his hearers. They could have been the sort of sweeping, general confession that all believers make from time to time, like ‘forgive us our trespasses’, or ‘all we like sheep have gone astray’ (Matthew 5:12; Isaiah 53:6). Or maybe Cromwell, a little out of touch after nearly two months in the Tower, was under the impression that affairs in Calais had contributed more to his downfall than was actually the case. If so, the ‘evil opinions’ could be the sacramentaries’ opinions, and Cromwell had been seduced, not into believing them himself, but by sacramentaries like Damplip pretending to be Lutherans.

  A calculated ambiguity, so typical of Cromwell throughout his life, marks these words. He was leaving his hearers waiting and guessing, right up to the last prayer. When that moment arrived, however, all vagueness vanished. He committed his soul to Christ in the sure hope of the blessed resurrection, calling on Him for mercy. For ‘I see and acknowledge that there is in myself no hope of salvation, but all my confidence, hope and trust is in thy most merciful goodness. I have no merits or good works which I may allege before thee’. Here was a withering attack on the work righteousness of medieval religion. This is what he meant by ‘Catholic faith’. Justification by faith alone – the faith that Robert Barnes had preached in Lent, the very faith that Henry had rejected – was now being proclaimed from the scaffold. Merriman has misinterpreted the speech if he thinks that Cromwell parroted a prepared statement, authorised by Henry, in return for commuting the sentence from quartering to beheading. It is highly unlikely that Henry would tell Cromwell to preach justification by faith to a large crowd in public.28