Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  42. SP 1/233 ff. 334–8, LP Addenda 1 i no. 400. For Antonio Duodo and Venice, see Duodo to Cromwell, 10 September 1535, BL MS Cotton Nero B/VII f. 110, LP 9 no. 327, and for an account of a colourful night out in which Duodo behaved very badly among his fellow-Italians, [unknown] to Cromwell, ?1533, SP 1/81 f. 148, LP 6 no. 1701.

  43. This is part of the treatise which its eighteenth-century editor called Apologia Reg. Poli ad Carolum V. Cæsarem drastically summarized in LP 14 i no. 200 from ERP 1, 66–171, and to which we will return. Charles V was probably spared the pleasure of ever reading it. See ERP 1, 126–7 (sect. xxviii); repr. in Merriman 1, 18.

  44. See correspondence concerning the travels of Wolsey’s illegitimate son Thomas Winter, both 2 August 1532, Winter to Cromwell, SP 1/70 f. 182, LP 5 no. 1210, and Rullo himself to Cromwell, BL MS Harley 6989 f. 36, LP 5 no. 1211. On Rullo’s career in heterodoxy, see below, this page.

  45. SP 1/21 f. 120rv, LP 3 i no. 1026 is a summons to the contending parties, the Prioress and Vicar of Cheshunt, to Rome in early December 1520. It is evident from later stages of papers, heavily corrected by Cromwell (SP 1/31 ff. 31–2, LP 4 i no. 368; SP 1/234 ff. 94–8, LP Addenda 1 i no. 427), that this document was exhibited in Chancery proceedings in 1524, and there is no suggestion in this case that Cromwell’s involvement was in Rome itself; he was attorney in England for the Prioress.

  46. R. N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: passports to paradise? (Cambridge, 2007), especially 172–4, 375–9. A good account of the workings of the Gild is [M. Finch] for Lincolnshire Archives Committee, ‘A Boston guild account’, Archivists’ Report 16 (1 April 1964/31 March 1965), 40–43. BL MS Egerton 2886 is the Compotus book of the Gild of St Mary Boston 1514–1525; for later books, see [Finch], ‘A Boston guild account’, describing a further account book for 1525–6, and there are subsequent accounts for 1526–35 and 1536–8, now deposited at Lincolnshire Archives as 6-CHAR/2/1. I am indebted to Dr Rod Ambler for pointing me to these later volumes.

  47. BL MS Egerton 2886 f. 101r itemizes the expenses of the clerk, William Hasill, including riding to Wolsey for the suspension of the pardon made by the Austin Friars.

  48. BL MS Egerton 2886 f. 112r: part of the account of Thos Parowe, Gild Alderman Whitsun 9 Henry VIII [1517] to Whitsun 10 Henry VIII [1518].

  49. Foxe 1570, 1385. Foxe also made a gratuitous link in his account to Chamber meeting Cromwell in Antwerp; Foxe probably added this with the aim of connecting his narrative, whereas the Boston accounts make clear that Cromwell travelled to Rome via Calais.

  50. There has been much confusion in dating this trip, beginning with John Foxe repeatedly putting it in 1510. The reality can be reconstructed from entries in BL MS Egerton 2886, first at f. 125r, which specifies the size of Cromwell’s fee. Being in the account for 1518–19, it can only refer to a journey in that accounting year, since the full account by Geoffrey Chamber (ibid. f. 181rv) covers the whole Rome enterprise over three years between Whitsun 1517 and Whitsun 1520, and it specifies two journeys to Rome, the first of which was undertaken by Chamber and his servants alone and not in company with Cromwell, and that must have been in 1517 (less likely early 1518).

  51. SP 1/232 f. 199, LP Addenda 1 i no. 267. Sixteen years later Stephen Vaughan referred to the widowed Mistress Addington as Cromwell’s ‘great friend’: Vaughan to Cromwell, 10 September 1535, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 345, LP 9 no. 330.

  52. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England, 375.

  53. Foxe 1570, 1385–6.

  54. The Austin Friars’ indulgence is RSTC 14077c.1.

  55. John Robinson to Cromwell, s.a., SP 1/27 f. 286, LP 3 ii no. 3015. John Robinson was Alderman of the Gild between Whitsun 1519 and Whitsun 1523, and was responsible as Alderman for printing costs in the accounts between those years; he was answering a letter from Cromwell of 5 May s.a., yet was unlikely to be replying to it as late as 12 June 1519, which was Whitsun in that year.

  56. BL MS Egerton 2886 ff. 264v–265v, in the account of Geoffrey Chamber as Secretary for the year ending Thursday in Whitsun Week 16 Henry VIII [1524]. Cromwell is also found drafting a letter from Wolsey to an unidentified bishop in the Gild’s favour, which is likely to date from after he entered the Cardinal’s service in 1524: SP 1/235 ff. 32–5, LP Addenda 1 i no. 471.

  57. On regular gifts of ling, see Richard Tomyou to Cromwell, 18 August 1536, SP 1/106 f. 17, LP 11 no. 321. On wildfowl gifts, see e.g. John Williamson to Cromwell, 4 November [1532], SP 1/72 f. 13, LP 5 no. 1512; Robert Tomlynson, Alderman of Our Lady’s Gild in Boston to Cromwell, 29 May 1533, SP 1/76 f. 119, LP 6 no. 554; John Wendon to Cromwell, 8 January 1534/6, SP 1/89 f. 16, LP 8 no. 29; Nicholas Robertson to Cromwell, 4 May 1538, SP 1/132 f. 26, LP 13 i no. 925. Cromwell does not seem to have been involved in the Gild’s next major negotiation with Wolsey and Archbishop Warham for a papal bull of confirmation in 1525: [Finch], ‘A Boston guild account’, 43.

  58. G. Byng, ‘The contract for the north aisle at the church of St James, Biddenham’, Antiquaries Journal 95 (2015), 251–65; Byng discusses TNA, E41/318, which is a draft contract dated 16 December 1522, in the same hand (a clerk of Cromwell’s) as a petition drafted for Somer in the early 1520s: SP 1/2342 f. 25, LP Addenda 1 i no. 429[2].

  59. Foxe 1583, 1231. For Somer’s friendship with Cromwell, see an unknown correspondent from the Middle Temple to Cromwell, early 1530s, SP 1/88 ff. 42–3, LP 7 no. 1618, writing after Somer’s death.

  60. F. Blomefield and C. Parkin, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk . . . (11 vols., London, 1805–10), 9, 488, provides an alternative pedigree for Cromwell’s wife then in the possession of Blomefield, which could be compatible with this possibility: ‘he is said to have married Elizabeth, a daughter and coheir of John Prior, (widow of Thomas Williams,) by Isabel his wife, daughter of Richard Lord Talbot, which John was son of Sir John Prior, by Joan his wife, daughter of Edward Grey, 2d son of Reginald Lord Grey of Rutheyn, and bore for his arms, azure, a bend, per pale, gules, and or, in a bordure ingrailed, counterchanged.’ That might also explain Cromwell’s undoubted relationship to the Williams family of Oxfordshire. This pedigree does name the mother as Isabel, and it goes on to make a mistake about Cromwell’s later peerage title, so doubts remain.

  61. Henry Wykes to ‘my faithful cousin’ Cromwell, 2 November [?1523], SP 1/29 f. 26, LP 3 ii no. 3502. The only other trace of him in Cromwell’s papers is a letter asking a favour for a friend, calling on Cromwell’s affection for Surrey and signing himself ‘your servant and bedeman’: Wykes to Cromwell, 29 January 1539 (not 1538 as in LP), SP 1/128 f. 136, LP 13 i no. 172. On the Wykes family at Thorpe, see VCH: Surrey 3, 437–40. Lawrence (ed.), Extracts from the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wimbledon, 87, records John Wykes among the court homage in Henry VIII’s time.

  62. She can be seen to have her own chamber at f. 102v in the inventory of Cromwell’s house at Austin Friars taken in 1527, SP 1/42 ff. 101–16, LP 4 ii no. 3197. LP suggests that at f. 113r there is also a reference to the chamber of ‘Mr’ Prior, but this is a misreading of a rather faded and indistinct word; the page is in a secondary hand to the main writer of the inventory and patently replaces the much altered inventory of Mistress Prior’s chamber at f. 102v. The contents of both lists are what one would expect a lady of the house to concern herself with: almost entirely household linen (plus in the latter case a couple of altar frontals).

  63. Morison to Cromwell, probably summer 1536, SP 1/113 f. 181, LP 11 no. 1481, and earlier note e.g. the Cambridgeshire farmer William Cowper to Cromwell, 5 June ?1525, SP 1/34 f. 232, LP 4 i no. 1385, who asks ‘my mistress your mother for another plaster for my knee’. Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell, 15 December 1528, SP 1/51 f. 105, LP 4 ii no. 5034.

  64. Cromwell’s accounts, 29 December 1539, LP 14 ii no. 782, at 344: ‘Mistress Pryour, by Mr. Gregory, 40s.’.

  65. The names of Anne and Grace are erased f
rom the original text of Cromwell’s will of summer 1529, SP 1/54 ff. 234–44, Merriman 1, 56–63. Nothing absolutely specific proves that the daughters were younger than Gregory, but there were no moves to get them married off in the 1520s, which if the marriage had taken place early in the 1510s might well have started in 1528–9. The original text of the will speaks of ‘my little daughter Grace’ (SP 1/54 f. 240v), but just ‘my son Gregory’, suggesting that she is younger than Gregory, but both girls get the same legacies: not just 100 marks for marriage when they come of lawful age to be married, but also £40 for providing for them till then, suggesting that they are not far apart in age, with Anne slightly older.

  66. Elizabeth’s death is likely to have been in February or early March 1529, as Stephen Vaughan refers to money in Mistress Prior’s custody, suggesting that her daughter was dead by then: Vaughan to Cromwell, 23 March [1529], SP 1/53 f. 128, LP 4 iii no. 5398. Then two correspondents in April 1529 send Cromwell good wishes for finding a new wife: Eleanor Scrope to Cromwell, 6 April [1529], SP 1/236 f. 76, LP Addenda 1 i no. 639; Edward Lewkenor to Cromwell, 13 April 1529, SP 1/236 f. 77, LP Addenda 1 i no. 640. His daughters were evidently still alive when he first drafted his will in summer 1529.

  67. The first culprit in print, basing himself on ‘the research of J. S. Brewer’, seems to be W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (12 vols., London, 1860–76), 6, 122.

  68. See Merriman 1, 11–12, and his particularly crass remarks on Gregory at 53–4. For detailed reappraisals, see M. C. Erler, Reading and Writing during the Dissolution: monks, friars and nuns 1530–1558 (Cambridge, 2013), 88–106, and T. Fitzgerald and D. MacCulloch, ‘Gregory Cromwell: two portrait miniatures by Hans Holbein the Younger’, JEH 67 (2016), 587–601.

  69. In 1536 Gregory Williams, named as Cromwell’s nephew, was put into possession of two benefices on Anglesey by local ecclesiastical officials: Sir Richard Bulkeley to Cromwell, 17 December 1536, SP 1/112 f. 218, LP 11 no. 1329. The fact that Sir Richard’s brother Prebendary Arthur Bulkeley was resisting this move may suggest that Gregory Williams was still young enough to raise questions as to whether he was suitable to hold the benefices.

  70. P. Hayward, ‘Gregory the Great as “Apostle of the English” in post-Conquest Canterbury’, JEH 55 (2004), 19–57.

  71. Cf. John Williamson to Cromwell, 15 October 1532, SP 1/71 ff. 110–11, LP 5 no. 1435, with Williamson to Cromwell, 16 August 1535, SP 1/95 f. 89, LP 9 no. 105.

  72. Thomas Cromwell’s will of 12 July 1529, SP 1/54 ff. 234–47, LP 4 iii no. 5772, refers to his late wife’s sister Joan, wife to John Williamson. John’s children were numbered among Cromwell’s ‘poor kinsfolk’ in his will. For outline details of family relationships, see Merriman 1, 5.

  73. LP 4 ii no. 3403: an indenture with Wellifed’s deputy Thomas Maneryng, 6 September; Wellifed had custody of Lambeth Palace alongside his office as chief cook. On the cook, Merriman 1, 17, translates Eustace Chapuys to Nicolas de Granvelle, 21 November 1535, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 228, at 568, though Chapuys muddies the waters with an apparent reference to Richard Williams alias Cromwell as son of this cook; Morgan Williams, Richard’s father, was Cromwell’s brother-in-law.

  74. Christopher Wellifed’s preferments or hoped-for preferments are too numerous to list here. For his arrival at the King’s Hall, see Christopher Wellifed to Cromwell, 26 January ?1535, SP 1/89 f. 64, LP 8 no. 107.

  75. Burke, General Armory, 246, s.v. Cromwell of Hinchingbrooke. For ‘Mr Morgan’, see William Brabazon to Cromwell, 14 August ?1528, SP 1/55 f. 45, LP 4 iii no. 5849.

  76. J. Leland, The itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535–1543, ed. L. Toulmin Smith (5 vols., repr. London, 1964), 3, 17.

  77. The evidence for Walter’s change of name comes only from the later 1530s: LP 13 ii no. 119/2, 17 August 1538, and Thomas Legh to Thomas Cromwell, 3 September 1538, SP 1/136 f. 70, LP 13 ii no. 275.

  78. Henry Sadler to Ralph Sadler, 16 December 1529, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 163, LP 5 no. 584. LP misdates this letter to 1531, but it has to be 1529; the Marquess of Dorset mentioned in it, together with his wife, died on 10 October 1530, at which time his young son was unmarried. Richard was still called Williams in Thomas Cromwell’s will in summer 1529.

  79. See the jovial remarks about Richard’s household in Thomas Brooke (Thomas Cromwell’s gentleman servant) to Cromwell, 24 August 1535, SP 1/95 f. 159, LP 9 no. 172, and same to same, 11 September 1535, SP 1/96 f. 134, LP 9 no. 345.

  80. On this, see below, this page.

  81. Thomas Cromwell’s coat was azure on a fess between three lions rampant or, a rose gules between two Cornish choughs proper, the fess and charges thereon being the tribute to Wolsey; for further discussion of the heraldry, see below, this page. Interestingly, his coat makes no reference to the heraldry of the Meverells of Throwley: or, a griffin segreant sable. For these blazons, see Burke, General Armory, 246.

  82. Gules, 3 chevronels argent between as many lions rampant or (in some cases, the colours/metals are reversed; see Burke, General Armory, 246, s.v. Cromwell, alias Williams, and Cromwell of Hinchingbrooke).

  83. LP 5 no. 1065(33): 17–27 May 1532. For an introductory letter explaining the customs of the lordship and its overlordship, Sir William Morgan (a relative of Morgan Williams?) to Cromwell, 21 November 1532, SP 1/72 f. 44, LP 5 no. 1562.

  84. On 21 December 1523, Cromwell was a signatory to and one of the scribes for an inquest of wardmote in Broad Street ward, which includes Austin Friars: SP 1/29 ff. 117–22, LP 3 ii no. 3657. A list of Cromwell’s papers in 1524 includes the bill of Thomas Smith, ‘for the house in Fanchurche’ and four acquittances ‘for this my howse’: SP 1/32 f. 234r, LP 4 i no. 955. For the accusations in the Attainder Act, see Chapter 22.

  85. Cromwell’s building programme at Austin Friars and the medieval background are admirably analysed in N. Holder, ‘The medieval friaries of London: a topographic and archaeological history, before and after the Dissolution’ (University of London PhD, 2011), ch. 5.

  86. Ibid., 142.

  87. On Cavalcanti and the financial scandal and collapse in morale at Austin Friars in Bellond’s time, see F. X. Roth (ed.), The English Austin Friars 1248–1538 2: The Sources (Augustiniana supplement, 1961), no. D1032. I am very grateful to Dr Anik Laferrière for leading me to this latter material. On Cromwell, see below, this page.

  88. The commission was made in 1526, while Cromwell was resident at Austin Friars. For an excellent account of the Austin Friars, Italian connection, see C. M. Sicca, ‘Consumption and trade of art between Italy and England in the first half of the sixteenth century: the London house of the Bardi and Cavalcanti company’, Renaissance Studies 16 (2002), 163–201, especially on this point at 187. She points out, 170, that Nunziata had come to London in 1519 in connection with the projected tomb for Henry VIII.

  89. E. L. Blackburn, An architectural and historical account of Crosby Place, London (London, 1834), 51–4.

  90. D. Baker-Smith, ‘Antonio Buonvisi and Florens Wilson: a European friendship’, Moreana 43 (2006), 82–108, usefully modifies the account in C. T. Martin, rev. B. Morgan, in ODNB, s.v. Bonvisi, Antonio.

  91. Sicca, ‘Consumption and trade of art between Italy and England’, 172.

  92. On Cromwell and Casali, see below, this page.

  93. On Gigli and Ghinucci and their relationship with Wolsey, see Wyatt, Italian Encounter with England, 58–9. For one example among many of Ghinucci’s pleas to Cromwell, which also stresses Ghinucci’s contacts through his nephew Dr Augustine, Ghinucci to Cromwell, 27 December 1532, BL MS Harley 6989 f. 17, LP 5 no. 1666. For his relationship with Buonvisi, Ghinucci to Cromwell, 28 June 1535, SP 1/93 f. 150, LP 8 no. 940, and for his admirably generous reaction to his deprivation by Henry VIII as Bishop, John Boroughbridge to Cromwell, 26 May 1535, SP 1/92 f. 171, LP 8 no. 763.

  94. M. Everett, The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: power
and politics in the reign of Henry VIII (New Haven and London, 2015), 27, lists the relevant letters.

  95. On Popley as courier, see Lisle Letters 2, no. 277, and on Salisbury, SP 1/32 f. 36, LP 4 i no. 611, wrongly dated by LP to 1524, but redateable to 1517–18 via Le Neve, Fasti 1300–1541: Salisbury, 62. On Knight, see ODNB, s.v. Knight, William.

  96. C. M. Sicca, ‘Fashioning the Tudor Court’, in M. Hayward and E. Kramer (eds.), Textiles and Text: re-establishing the links between archival and object-based research (London, 2007), 93–104, at 98.

  97. Wyatt, Italian Encounter with England, 50.

  98. I am indebted to Dr Susan Brigden for letting me know of her so far unpublished research on the Bardi/Cavalcanti papers in the Archivio di Stato in Florence, revealing the social contacts of the Bardi/Cavalcanti at Austin Friars. On Wyatt’s relationship with Sir Henry Guildford see S. Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: the heart’s forest (London, 2012), 173–6.

  99. For a detailed discussion of this function of the London Austin Friars, see A. Laferrière, ‘The Austin Friars in pre-Reformation English society’ (University of Oxford DPhil, 2017), ch. 4.

  100. On this, see S. Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), 153–5.

  101. John Gough to Cromwell, 24 March probably 1532, SP 1/69 f. 189, LP 5 no. 896. Richard Williams alias Cromwell, writing to Lord Lisle on 11 May 1535, calls Gough his ‘cousin and kinsman’, which would suggest that he was a Welshman like ap Reynold: SP 3/2 f. 156, Lisle Letters 2 no. 388.

  102. On the debt, see two letters of ap Reynold to Cromwell, SP 1/73 ff. 131–2, LP 5 no. 1756[1, 2]. For later good turns by Cromwell to ap Reynold in 1534–5, see ap Reynold to Cromwell, SP 1/92 f. 121, LP 8 no. 668, and SP 1/84 f. 168, LP 7 no. 830, and Sir Thomas Palmer’s letter of thanks to Cromwell on ap Reynold’s behalf, 16 October probably 1535, SP 1/98 f. 18, LP 9 no. 623.