This was Cromwell’s lowest point in the King’s esteem so far in seven years of service, apart from that moment of near-shipwreck during the Pilgrimage of Grace. He was actually being kept away from Council meetings held on the King’s progress in Essex. Richard Cromwell had to report to his uncle that there was no answer to a packet of letters he had taken to Court, as ‘his Highness was all this day very busy in Council with the Lords, and talked long with the French ambassador.’ Henry curtly told Richard to wait for his response the following day.10 Particularly unfortunate was the recent death on 8 May of Edward Foxe, Bishop of Hereford: a major blow not just to Cromwell (who was supervisor of his will), but to the general reconciliation of quarrels at Court. Foxe was the smoothest of evangelical statesmen – too smooth for some: Melanchthon experienced him as ‘prelatical’, and the fiery reformer George Joye later put him in a corner of Hell alongside Wolsey and More.11 But Foxe was also the sort of man whom the piously conservative Lord Lisle could see as a reliable ally at Court, while still impressing most of the German Protestants he encountered on his long embassy in 1535–6. He would be sorely missed in the diplomatic tangles to follow.12 This was also the time that George Paulet returned from Ireland after relentlessly badmouthing Cromwell to Irish notables. It is not surprising that the Lord Privy Seal concentrated his fury on Paulet for his indiscretions over there, sending him to the Tower.
In his usual style Cromwell also fought back against his ill fortune, inserting himself into the Essex royal progress through a lavish entertainment. The day after Richard’s embarrassed letter to his uncle, John Husee reported to Lord Lisle (alongside news of Paulet’s imprisonment) that ‘on Tuesday next, or Monday [21 or 22 May], the King shall have a great banquet at Havering, of my lord Privy Seal’s gift’.13 More than fifty pounds’ worth of expenditure appears in Cromwell’s accounts, probably additional to stores in his own cellars. To divert the easily bored monarch, there appeared six Cornish wrestlers (a speciality act Cromwell had considered before, courtesy of his Cornish friend Sir William Godolphin), and a porpoise was centrepiece for the table.14 Cromwell went out of his way to be pleasant to the French ambassador, following what Castillon heard was a severe talking-to from the King.15
The danger passed. The wrestlers and the porpoise may have helped, but it turned out that this same month Marie de Guise had already married King Henry’s nephew the King of Scots, to his uncle’s considerable chagrin. Cromwell’s exhibition of Francoscepticism did not seem so heinous after all. It would be tedious to follow the twists and turns of Henry’s unrequited courtships during 1538. By the end of the year, the King remained unmarried, while circumstances changed in many other ways. Meanwhile Cromwell had pressed home his other grand passion in foreign affairs: a closer alliance with the Schmalkaldic League and other evangelical cities of the Empire and Switzerland. His enthusiasm for a Habsburg alliance was an uneasy bedfellow with this, for the Protestantism of the Schmalkaldic princes and cities was anathema to their overlord Charles V. Yet the League had its own military resources which might give the Emperor pause if he threatened England, so long as its members were sufficiently motivated to take an interest in the island kingdom – they possessed the only Protestant military force of any significance in mainland Europe. This was a useful thought when presenting the King with any proposal for negotiations.
During 1537, dealings with the Schmalkaldic League had stalled.16 While discreet exchanges between Zürich and England gathered momentum (see above, Chapter 15), the Schmalkaldeners badly mishandled a renewed overture to King Henry in the spring, entrusting a formal statement on the common threat of a papal General Council to a totally unqualified and unaccredited sailor of Hamburg. He made the worst possible impression on the English Court and the King. Horrified at this misstep, Cromwell, Cranmer and Foxe sent a quiet private rebuke to the League via a godson of the Earl of Wiltshire, Thomas Theobald, who had spent time in Germany as a student and had been providing the Archbishop with information on central Europe. They also extended their feelers beyond the League to the city of Strassburg; this was in parallel with the Zürich initiatives, but Cranmer’s old correspondent Martin Bucer, on friendly terms with many leading figures in the League, would also be a useful voice in getting a renewed Schmalkaldic embassy to England.
By autumn 1537 the German Protestants were enthusiastic about this proposal, though they also had a healthy understanding that King Henry must not be allowed to realize the extent of the discreet groundwork the English evangelicals had already undertaken: ‘in these matters, the King is not to be trifled with,’ as Philip Melanchthon anxiously reminded the Elector of Saxony.17 With discretion maintained, it was promising that Henry was still worried about a General Council, and was happy to consider his own embassy to the only significant power in western Europe immune from papal overtures. By February 1538, the ever-faithful Christopher Mont was travelling to the League’s Diet with letters and confidential oral instructions. Cromwell’s name was very carefully kept out of all Mont had to say, for it was important to represent the whole initiative as the King’s, but the evangelical expression of the message was entirely the Lord Privy Seal’s, and Mont’s visit had been preceded by Cromwell’s own private letter to the leading Schmalkaldic prince Philipp of Hessen.18
The German embassy, a joint mission in the names of Landgraf Philipp and Johann Friedrich Elector of Saxony, assembled with four principal members. One of them did not stay in England long, leaving leadership in the hands of the Hessian diplomat Georg von Boineburg and the Saxon ducal Vice-Chancellor, Franz Burchard. They were both distinguished and highly competent, but the German conception of the mission was still merely to explore something more ambitious. A mark of this preliminary character was that the third active member and the mission’s theological consultant, Friedrich Myconius, Superintendent of Gotha, was something of a second-ranker among Lutheran reformers. He was certainly not the equivalent of Philipp Melanchthon, the only Lutheran for whom King Henry felt real respect on account of Melanchthon’s formidable scholarly reputation. Melanchthon was as always deeply unenthusiastic about meeting the King of England, and had made his excuses. This was an initial mistake if anything was to come of the discussions. So was the fact that the Germans were sure they had more to offer to the English than vice versa: they had already achieved properly godly Reformations which should set England an example.
The mission came armed with a list of four points to be resolved on German terms: allowing communion ‘in both kinds’ (bread and wine) to all communicants; abolishing ‘private masses’ (directed towards particular prayer intentions, especially prayers for the dead); denying the value of monastic vows and, finally, abolishing universal clerical celibacy. Even monastic vows remained an open question in England, despite everything that was happening to the regular life, and all the other points were likely to arouse King Henry’s disapproval. On the German side, the issue of ‘both kinds’ was particularly important: for centuries the Western Latin Church had restricted the laity to taking only bread at mass, on the infrequent occasions that they received communion at all, and the restoration of the cup had become one of the chief symbols of the Reformation. The hopelessness of resolution on these matters would not be obvious to begin with, since the ambassadors’ first contacts were with Cromwell and Cranmer, in the Whitehall complex and at Lambeth Palace. Cromwell, full of optimism, told them that the only real problem for the King would be the issue of clerical celibacy.19
The following day, 2 June, Henry himself met the ambassadors with his leading councillors, including both Norfolk and Cromwell. Straight away the King raised the question of the missing Melanchthon, who was best placed to discuss with him some problematic points in the Augsburg Confession of 1530 (Melanchthon had drafted it in the first place). At least in public Henry accepted the substitution of Myconius with good grace, and a week later Myconius did his best with the King. The atmosphere remained cordial, the Germans optimistic
about progress. Cromwell’s actions as Vice-Gerent at this time offered plenty to please them, as will become apparent, and Myconius would be gratified to be invited as regular guest preacher to the largely foreign congregation in the church of the Austin Friars, no doubt after judicious pressure from Cromwell on his landlord and neighbour Prior Hammond. Myconius was probably the first foreign Protestant to be allowed such public exposure in England.20
Yet Cromwell would see a wider picture than that available to the German Protestants. There were just too many diplomatic negotiations in progress for comfort. Thomas Wyatt rushed back from his embassy in France (arriving on 3 June, the day after the Germans’ interview with the King), but in a matter of days he had to hare south again over the Channel, because of a critical moment in high diplomacy. The long-dreaded agreement had arrived: the King of France and the Emperor were concluding a deal, the Treaty of Aigues-Mortes. Mortifyingly it was concluded without reference to Wyatt and his English mission. Meanwhile Henry was now pursuing at full tilt a Habsburg princess, the Duchess of Milan.21 Consequently there were now two imperial ambassadors in England for red-carpet treatment: Don Diego de Mendoza, entrusted with a particular brief for the Milan marriage, and the veteran Chapuys. Both would be deeply suspicious of the Schmalkaldic delegation. It was vital to keep those two sets of envoys apart, and in fact when the imperialists saw King Henry on 6 June, the appointment was neatly quarantined between the two royal interviews first with the whole Schmalkaldener mission and then with Myconius.
Whatever his private enthusiasms, the Lord Privy Seal realized that the Emperor and his representatives far outclassed his Protestant vassals in importance. It was symptomatic that Cromwell secured the Schmalkaldeners lodgings in the City which Cranmer for one thought cramped and thoroughly unsuitable, but lodged the two imperial envoys in his own properties in solicitous rural comfort, away from the danger of City plague, though on opposite sides of London: one in Stepney and one in Mortlake.22 Since the King’s marital fantasies still involved eligible French ladies if no progress emerged with the Duchess of Milan, there could be no question of ignoring the French ambassador Castillon. He was currently installed in Sir Thomas More’s old house in Chelsea; Cromwell was a temporary near neighbour in a small royal house there after yielding his two rural residences to the imperialists. The Lord Privy Seal made sure that he saw plenty of Castillon in Chelsea.23 The essential criterion for this diplomatic version of a Feydeau farce was for everyone to be within hailing distance of a Thames barge.
Cromwell thus straddled desperately conflicting agendas, and his recent contretemps over the French marriage proposals was a reminder that the King was listening to multiple voices. That became apparent when the English team to negotiate with the Schmalkaldeners took shape. Its membership accurately reflected the breadth of opinion among English higher clergy. Alongside Cranmer, assisted by his old friend Archdeacon Nicholas Heath, were two bishops who were articulate and uncompromising traditionalists: Sampson of Chichester, a regular antagonist of the Archbishop, and, most remarkably, Bishop Stokesley of London, who had just come through some torrid times, centring on a charge of praemunire which looks like Cromwell’s doing. Sampson and Stokesley deployed as adviser a favourite Court conservative, Dr Nicholas Wilson, in order to balance Heath.24 The veteran Anglo-German Robert Barnes was a participant in the discussions, but, at the Germans’ request, on their side!
The combination of viewpoints spoke to the self-image the King had chosen for himself amid the debates of the 1530s: proponent of the ‘middle way’, weighing opinions from both extremes and sternly holding the balance between them. At the time it was a favourite pose to claim oneself as the centre-point of extremes, and the King’s centre-point did not coincide with any of those espoused by his theological team – not least because it was liable to shift without warning.25 That was one good reason why Cromwell left the theologians at Lambeth Palace to get on with their business, just as he had in his vice-gerential synod the previous year. It was far more important for him to stick as closely as he could to the King, who was then on a long summer progress through Sussex and Kent. Other matters intertwined with the work of the Lambeth negotiators needed the sort of personal attention only he could provide. One difficulty was a build-up of tensions in summer 1538 with Lord and Lady Lisle, to whom Cromwell had previously been friendly and helpful. From now on, his increasingly less sympathetic interventions in their enclave of Calais contributed to the growing atmosphere of religious faction there.
Archbishop Cranmer was involved in rows with the Lisles almost as soon as he and Lisle arrived in their respective offices in 1533. He strongly disapproved of their traditionalist religious outlook, particularly Lady Lisle’s, and provoked them by choosing John Butler, an aggressive proponent of evangelical reformation and a local man, as his Commissary for the enclave.26* Cromwell generally kept his distance from these spats, but in September 1537, in a foretaste of what was to come, he spectacularly lost his temper with his friend Sir Thomas Palmer, loosely in service to both Cromwell and the Lisles. Religion was at stake, in particular the arrest that summer of two conservative priests in Calais, who had been denounced by John Butler. Cromwell was convinced that the Lisles showed undue lenience to the pair, and as Palmer reported it to Lord Lisle, he ‘swore by God’s blood we were all papists, and looked through out our fingers’ to sedition – or, as we would say, turned a blind eye to it. A shouting-match developed between Palmer and Cromwell in which ‘he that was a stone’s-cast off might hear us’. Their conversation settled down more constructively, and Cromwell’s own letter to Lord Lisle written the same day as Palmer’s made no mention of the incident.27
Now this following summer matters became much more fraught, over another Calais priest under suspicion for opposite reasons. Adam Damplip held views on eucharistic presence that were so advanced that they caused Cranmer some awkwardness in defining an acceptable version of them to let Damplip escape the worst. Despite this, Cromwell threw himself into this case.28 Thomas Master’s seventeenth-century notes from then extant State Papers preserve a precious glimpse of the Lord Privy Seal’s incandescent letter to Lord Lisle on 14 August, otherwise now lost, defending Damplip. He stormed at the Deputy ‘for persecuting those who favour and set forth God’s word and favouring those who impugn it’; worse still, ‘for suffering bruits to be scattered that the Bishop of London is Vicar-General of England, and all English books shall be called in, etc.’. There were secular complaints about Calais government too, and Cromwell invoked the ultimate sanction, ‘to inform the King of him’.29
Cromwell was then on progress in Sussex with Henry, but he made a point of posting this letter via Cranmer at Lambeth Palace for forwarding to Calais, with a copy for the Archbishop’s files. Cranmer was delighted by ‘how frankly and freely you do admonish [Lisle]’.30 Cromwell, Wriothesley and Richard Morison personally drew up the interrogatories for Damplip’s chief opponent, Prior Dove of the Calais Carmelites, who was now under arrest as well. Among the questions was the very dangerous ‘whether he was privy to the Bishop of London’s letters to the Lord Deputy of Calais?’ Questions followed about Dove’s dealings with the Bishops of Chichester and Durham.31 It is clear that both Cromwell and Cranmer saw Dove’s interrogation as a means not merely to save Damplip, but also to save the German negotiations from disaster, by attacking the conservative bishops best placed to wreck them. Cranmer actually wrote Cromwell two letters on 18 August: the second detailed his efforts to stop the German envoys leaving for home in frustration at the lack of progress.32
Bishops Stokesley and Sampson remained delegates in the team at Lambeth, but extending Dove’s interrogation to include Bishop Tunstall witnessed the fact that he was now a major player in the Schmalkaldic negotiations: not in person at Lambeth Palace but at the King’s side on progress. After some very anxious years before the Pilgrimage of Grace, a sudden turnaround in Tunstall’s fortunes came when in late June 1538 King Henry r
ewarded him for his steady service heading the Council in the North by summoning him to Court. It was soon clear that this was no punitive invitation to cause dread, when a royal letter told the Council that since Tunstall’s arrival Henry had become ‘minded to continue his demore [attendance] here about our person’. Cromwell made the best of an unwelcome situation by securing as Tunstall’s replacement to lead the Council at York his reliable protégé the Yorkshire Gilbertine Robert Holgate Bishop of Llandaff, who had the potential to be a second Roland Lee for him in the North.33
That did not lessen the damage that Tunstall could do to evangelical hopes in his new close access to the King. In a list of abusively alliterative nicknames for conservative clerics he loathed, John Bale could think of nothing worse for Tunstall than ‘Dreaming Durham’, which suggests that what was so dangerous about the Bishop was a quality of quiet reflection he shared with Cranmer. Tunstall had none of the clerical arrogance which so infuriated Henry in other great prelates, and his nuanced analytical approach to theology produced broadly traditionalist conclusions. He was one of the best travelled and least provincial of English bishops, uniquely able among them to reflect from first-hand experience on Eastern Orthodox Christian custom.34 Tunstall’s household later recalled that through the subsequent summer progress months of 1538, ‘the King’s Majesty did call upon my Lord many times and talk with him on the way.’35
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