Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  30. On Bayham, Sir Edward Guildford to Sir Henry Guildford, 8 June [1525], and associated papers, SP 1/34 ff. 240–48, LP 4 i no. 1397. On Tonbridge, Warham to Wolsey, 2 July [1525], SP 1/35 f. 48, LP 4 i no. 1470, and Warham to Wolsey, 3 July 1525, SP 1/35 f. 50, LP 4 i no. 1471. For comment, see P. Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: religion, politics and society in Kent 1500–1640 (Hassocks, 1977), 22. On background in the Amicable Grant, see G. W. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion in Early Tudor England (Brighton and New York, 1986).

  31. LP 4 i no. 2024[vi]; this was a recognizance before local JPs, 4 March 17 Henry VIII [1526].

  32. John ap Rhys was referring to his colleague in visitation Thomas Lee, when writing to Cromwell on 16 October [1535], SP 1/98 f. 16, LP 9 no. 622. William Knight to Wolsey, 19 August [1527], SP 1/44 f. 3, LP 4 ii no. 3360.

  33. A letter of congratulation on ‘your good promotion that I hear of through the favour of My Lord’s Grace’ from Henry Lacy of Calais to Cromwell, 30 April 1527, SP 1/41 f. 179, LP 4 ii no. 3079.

  34. Smith, 499, 502. Cromwell’s presence in the area is attested by his witnessing the surrender of Wallingford Priory, as noticed above, on 19 April 1524: LP 4 i no. 1137.

  35. See e.g. John Abbot of Osney to Cromwell, 16 January 1534, SP 1/82 f. 85, LP 7 no. 79, in which he thanks Cromwell not merely for his goodness but also for his ‘great cheer at my last being with you’. On the High Stewardship, see Prior and Convent of Osney to Cromwell, 23 November 1537, SP 1/126 f. 151v, LP 12 ii no. 1120.

  36. SP 1/88 ff. 105–6, LP 7 no. 1670, in a notably old-fashioned hand for the 1520s. LP misdated this to 1534, but since it refers to the Prior as ‘aged’ it must be from the time of Bellond rather than his successors Gilbert Roos and George Browne, and should be seen in the context of Bellond’s mismanagement which led to his forced retirement in 1525. See e.g. Roth (ed.), English Austin Friars 2: The Sources, nos. D1041, D1049–50.

  37. Ingworth to Cromwell, early December 1538, SP 1/140 f. 73, LP 13 ii no. 1021.

  38. Abbot of Pershore to Cromwell, n.d. but 1538, SP 1/141 f. 174, LP 13 ii no. 1259.

  39. D. Starkey, ‘Intimacy and innovation: the rise of the Privy Chamber, 1485–1547’, in Starkey (ed.), The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London, 1987), 71–118, at 78–9, 82, 86–7, 91, 94, 103, 105.

  40. See the copy of Sir William Compton’s will annotated by Wolsey himself, SP 1/49 f. 3, LP 4 iii no. 4442. Wolsey provided for the education of the young heir, Peter Compton: John Gostwick to Cromwell, 14 March ?1529, SP 1/59 f. 127, LP 4 iii Appendix no. 233. For Compton’s close involvement in the rebuilding of Winchcombe parish church and his local links, see C. Litzenberger, The English Reformation and the Laity: Gloucestershire, 1540–1580 (Cambridge, 1997), 26.

  41. For Cromwell and Tottenham, see SP 1/236 f. 17r, LP Addenda 1 i no. 614. For the Escheator and drafts, LP 4 ii no. 5117[3] and LP 4 iii no. 4442.

  42. Kidderminster to Cromwell, 3 November probably 1532 or 1533 (LP’s suggestion of 1531 seems too early), SP 1/68 f. 38, LP 5 no. 510. See also same to same, 21 October ?1529, SP 1/55 f. 171, LP 4 iii no. 6014. See also ODNB s.v. Kidderminster, Richard, though Dr Cunich has elided two Richard Abbots of Winchcombe in his account of the correspondence with Cromwell.

  43. Richard Munslow Abbot of Winchcombe to Cromwell, 30 June probably 1529, SP 1/235 f. 346, LP Addenda 1 i no. 593, and 13 January ?1532, SP 1/69 f. 14, LP 5 no. 716. By 1535, Cromwell’s relationship with Winchcombe was still close, but had become much more complex: see below, this page.

  44. On this theme, see J. G. Clark, ‘Humanism and reform in pre-Reformation English monasteries’, TRHS 6th series 19 (2009), 57–93, at 80–92.

  45. See entries at SP 1/53 ff. 41r–42r, 48r, LP 4 iii no. 5330; they include the houses of Welbeck, St James Northampton, Christ Church Canterbury, Lewes, Wenlock, Merevale, St Mary York, Butley and Hinton Charterhouse.

  46. Edmund Whalley Abbot of St Mary’s York to Cromwell, 6 January [?1529], SP 1/52 f. 97, LP 4 iii no. 5143. There is a strong presumption that Abbot Whalley was of the same Nottinghamshire family who supplied Thomas Cromwell with his servants Hugh, John and Thomas. For the reversionary lease, which in fact was overtaken by complications, see William Thornton Abbot of St Mary’s York to Cromwell, 24 July ?1532, LP 5 no. 1192.

  47. Frisby to Cromwell, 14 January s.a., BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 358, LP 4 iii no. 6146, but also LP 5 no. 718. LP’s redating from 1530 to 1532 seems less likely, given that Frisby does not refer to Cromwell as a councillor. A letter of Cromwell to Wolsey, 24 July s.a., is written from ‘Londe’, which LP thinks is London, but is more likely Launde: SP 1/57 f. 252, LP 4 iii no. 6530. From its content, it can only be assigned to 1530, hence is 24 July 1530, and for obvious reasons it cannot have been written on the same snowy visit. A letter written by the Prior to Cromwell, 2 March 1528 or 1529, SP 1/235 f. 275, LP Addenda 1 i no. 574, shows Cromwell performing multiple favours for Launde in return for the right to present to one of its benefices.

  48. We await Dr Hope’s own presentation of his fascinating findings, especially on the Hidden family of Hungerford discussed below; meanwhile, see A. Hope, ‘Lollardy: the stone the builders rejected?’, in P. Lake and M. Dowling (eds.), Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England (Beckenham, 1987), 1–35.

  49. John London to John Longland Bishop of Lincoln, 25 February 1528, SP 1/47 f. 16, LP 4 ii no. 3968. The narrative of events by Anthony Dalaber, fleshing out London’s letters, is in Foxe 1563, 660–66.

  50. Thomas Elyot to Cromwell, 25 March [1528], SP 1/235 f. 280, LP Addenda 1 i no. 577.

  51. Canner to Cromwell, 27 December ?1528, SP 1/51 f. 122, LP 4 ii no. 5069.

  52. John Sone to Cromwell, ?January 1527, SP 1/236 f. 12, LP Addenda 1 i no. 611.

  53. Petition of William Cockes, SP 1/106 f. 4r, LP 11 no. 301[2]. Cockes also indicated that Cromwell’s interest in his case was not casual, for he was responsible for getting Cockes released from Bishop Fox of Winchester’s prison at Wolvesey fifteen weeks after this arrest, when Wolsey took over Winchester diocese on Fox’s death. See also Emden, Oxford 1501 to 1540, 147.

  54. For money paid out to Dr Robert Shorton (Dean of Wolsey’s chapel) for the conveying of ‘sondrie’ scholars from Cambridge to Oxford, rounding up the payments on 13 February 1526, see Cromwell’s accounts for the suppression of monasteries and the founding of the Colleges, SP 1/44 ff. 207–314, LP 4 ii no. 3536, at f. 217v. Far from being an evangelical sympathizer, Shorton rapidly alienated himself from Wolsey by his fierce partisanship for Katherine of Aragon: H. A. Kelly, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (Stanford, CA, 1976), 61, 202. T. A. Sowerby, Renaissance and Reform in Tudor England: the careers of Sir Richard Morison c. 1513–1556 (Oxford, 2010), follows the suggestion of W. G. Zeeveld, Foundations of Tudor Policy (Cambridge, MA, 1948), 29–30, that Edward Foxe was the prime mover in choosing the Cambridge contingent. There is no reason why Foxe should not have been involved, and later he showed himself an evangelical ally of Cromwell in the 1530s, but his initiative does not account for all the evidence presented here.

  55. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 28–9.

  56. For a good summary of early Tudor Boston’s peculiar religious atmosphere, see M. Williamson, ‘Evangelicalism at Boston, Oxford and Windsor under Henry VIII: Foxe’s narratives recontextualized’, in D. Loades (ed.), John Foxe at Home and Abroad (Aldershot, 2004), 31–45.

  57. BL MS Egerton 2886 f. 202r (Tyndale); ff. 295r–296v.

  58. Williamson, ‘Evangelicalism at Boston, Oxford and Windsor under Henry VIII’, 39–40, shows how the shadow of Garrett’s evangelicalism linked his London parish and Boston clergy even after his death.

  59. Edward Fetyplace to Cromwell, 12 February [1525, misdated by LP to 1529], SP 1/52 f. 219, LP 4 iii no. 5285. On Fetyplace, see S. Gunn, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, 1484–1
545 (Oxford, 1988), 88.

  60. Edward Fetyplace to Cromwell, 13 January 1527: SP 1/59 ff. 104–5, LP 4 iii Appendix no. 103. This letter is dateable by Fetyplace’s statement in it that ‘it is not yet ii yeres complete sithe the tyme of the suppression of the seid monastery’. Poughley was suppressed on 14 February 1525: LP 4 ii no. 1137.

  61. Wolsey’s irritable remarks about the desertion of the College for Poughley come in a memorandum to three of his senior officials (not including Cromwell) dateable to summer 1526, LP 4 i no. 1499/26, at 673. In 1526 Cambridge recorded the disruption of its Trinity term because of the plague: W. G. Searle (ed.), Grace Book Γ (Cambridge University Press, 1908), 220.

  62. John Clerk, canon of Cardinal College, from Poughley, to Cromwell, 4 August 1526 or 1527, SP 1/49 f. 196, LP 4 ii no. 4607. LP misdates this 1529, by which time Clerk was dead, and misses the reference to ‘Sir Frith’. According to Emden, Oxford 1501 to 1540, 218, Frith vacated his Fellowship at Cardinal College in 1526, though he was among those imprisoned there in the 1528 round-up.

  63. In Cromwell’s accounts for the suppression of monasteries, SP 1/44 ff. 207–314, LP 4 ii no. 3536, at ff. 212v and 292v, are payments of 26s 8d to John Eden for gathering the rents of the late monastery of Poughley.

  64. Foxe 1583, 855, 856, 858, 861. It is likely that the family were originally Scots, from Clydesdale, and that their alternative name was derived from the manor of Hidden in Hungerford, with which they continued to be associated: see VCH: Berkshire 4, 192, 199. John Clydesdale alias Hidden made his will on 10 August 1549, TNA, PROB 11/33/192, which has some unusual features: he proclaimed his belief in soul-sleep, and made arrangements for security for a large list of named tenants, looking suspiciously like a gathered community. One of his supervisors was John Wilmot, yeoman, perhaps the son of his sister Alice’s first husband John Wilmot. The family has been meticulously researched by Nicholas and Norman Hidden in two privately printed volumes, 1988 and 1996.

  65. TNA, C 1/516/42, bill of John Glydesdall, provides genealogical details.

  66. ‘Articles of agreement made between Thomas Doyley and Alice his wife, ordained, ended, and determined by the Right Worshipful Master Doctor Taylor, Master of the Rolls’, 11 October 1527, SP 1/44 ff. 144–5, LP 4 ii no. 3486; the documents are in the hand of Ralph Sadler and Thomas Cromwell. On Anne Cottismore alias Doyle, née Eden alias Clydesdale, Foxe 1570, 1000, and for elucidating comment, Hope, ‘Lollardy: the stone the builders rejected?’, 8–9.

  67. John Croke to Cromwell, 16 July [1527], SP 1/235 f. 216, LP Addenda 1 i no. 539, which usefully specifies that this is the case before the Master of the Rolls. Croke knew what he was talking about; he was an official in Chancery. He also figures prominently in Cromwell’s will of 1529: see below, this page.

  68. K. D. Maas, The Reformation and Robert Barnes (Woodbridge, 2010), 16–21.

  69. Miles Coverdale to Cromwell, 1 May ?1526, SP 1/65 f. 238, LP 5 no. 221; the fact that Coverdale signs off calling himself ‘friar’ means that this letter cannot be any later than 1527, since by Lent 1528 he had unilaterally left his order and was wearing the garb of a secular priest: Foxe 1570, 1229. It may be as early as 1525, since Cromwell had been much involved in monastic business in East Anglia that year.

  70. Coverdale to Cromwell, 27 August [1527]: SP 1/44 f. 34, LP 4 ii no. 3388. It is worth cautioning the reader that the ‘Master More’ and his family referred in this correspondence is unlikely to have been Sir Thomas More, though commentators have usually assumed that. Cromwell had various friends in Surrey and London called More (e.g. Christopher More of Loseley in Surrey, on whom see More to Cromwell, possibly October 1534, SP 1/86 f. 129, LP 7 no. 1344), but most probably this is the London-based Roger More, servant of the King’s bakehouse, who was named supervisor of Cromwell’s will in 1529 (SP 1/54 ff. 234–47 at f. 243v, LP 4 iii no. 5772); see also below, this page, n. 40.

  71. A mass of evidence from Foxe involving Barnes and Coverdale is summarized in J. F. Davis, Heresy and Reformation in the South East of England 1520–1599 (London, 1983), 59–65.

  72. Erler, Reading and Writing during the Dissolution, 88–106, provides a good overview of the relationship between Cromwell and Vernon.

  73. For disparaging (if self-serving) references to the poor results of Palsgrave’s teaching, see John Cheking to Cromwell, 27 July probably 1529, SP 1/49 f. 152, LP 4 ii no. 4560; Margaret Vernon’s letter to Cromwell, SP 1/65 f. 37, LP 5 no. 17, is dateable to 1529 (for the arguments on this, see Fitzgerald and MacCulloch, ‘Gregory Cromwell’, 589–90), and must have been written shortly before that.

  74. The run of Cheking’s letters to Cromwell is dated by LP to 1528, which is probably a year or two too early given that they must postdate Margaret Vernon’s letter cited in the previous note: SP 1/49 f. 152, LP 4 ii no. 4560; SP 1/50 f. 179, LP 4 ii no. 4837; SP 1/51 f. 2, LP 4 ii no. 4916.

  75. R. Rex (ed.), A Reformation Rhetoric: Thomas Swynnerton’s The Tropes and Figures of Scripture (Cambridge, 1999), 15–16; Rex there gently corrects an earlier error of mine in confusing John Cheking with John Cheke. Elsewhere he points out what will be obvious to anyone with experience of Oxbridge colleges, that in Reformation disputes they did not behave like a well-drilled football team in their theological outlook: R. Rex, ‘The English campaign against Luther in the 1520s’, TRHS 5th series 39 (1989), 85–106, at 92–3. For a reminiscence of Cheking dateable to 1527, see G. Joye, The Refutation of the Byshop of Winchesters derke Declaratio[n] of his false Articles . . . (London, 1546, RSTC 14828.5), f. 81v, and cf. f. 82v for the dating, nineteen years before 1546.

  76. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 166, 196–7, and see below, this page.

  77. For a discussion of the theme of Nicodemism, both in the Reformation and beyond, see D. MacCulloch, Silence: a Christian history (London, 2013), ch. 7.

  78. For further discussion, see Hope, ‘Lollardy: the stone the builders rejected?’

  79. For summary discussion of the Spirituali see D. MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s house divided 1490–1700 (London, 2003), 213–37, 261–3.

  80. On Rullo’s career in heterodoxy, D. Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge, 1972), 72, 76, 78, 280n.

  81. J. J. Scarisbrick, ‘Cardinal Wolsey and the Common Weal’, in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds.), Wealth and Power in Tudor England: essays presented to S. T. Bindoff (London, 1978), 45–67; see also below, this page.

  82. P. Gwyn, The King’s Cardinal: the rise and fall of Thomas Wolsey (London, 1990), 293–9, provides a useful overview on Wolsey and the English episcopate, though he is probably too sanguine about the good relations between Wolsey and Warham.

  83. M. Heale, ‘Dependent priories and the closure of monasteries in late medieval England, 1400–1535’, EHR 119 (2004), 1–26, at 24.

  84. The MS reminiscence is BL MS Harley 422 ff. 84–8, conveniently printed in G. E. Corrie (ed.), Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer . . . (Parker Society, 1845), xxvii–xxxi.

  85. Gunn and Lindley (eds.), Cardinal Wolsey, 9–13, and K. Brown, ‘Wolsey and ecclesiastical order: the case of the Franciscan Observants’, in ibid., 219–38. On Ireland and Allen, see J. Murray, ‘Archbishop Alen, Tudor reform and the Kildare Rebellion’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 89C (1989), 1–16, especially 8.

  86. For the limitations of Wolsey’s achievement in Star Chamber and more generally, see J. Guy, The Cardinal’s Court: the impact of Thomas Wolsey in Star Chamber (Hassocks, 1977), 119–31.

  87. Augustine to Cromwell, 16 May 1532, SP 1/70 f. 38, LP 5 no. 1027, full text at Pocock 2, 259: ‘quod vellem ut semper in animo haberes, quod mihi et aliis dictitare solebas, Reverendissimum nostrum herum non ob aliam causam ita omnibus hominibus exosum fuisse quam propter illam longam suam procrastiationem, et plurima verba factis vacua.’ Augustine added unctuously, though with due note of Wolsey’
s other merits, ‘I hope you will not imitate him in this (although I would wish that in other things), but rather imitate yourself: that is, an excellent man’ – ‘In hoc nollem te eum imitari, in ceteris vellem. Immo potius te ipsum imiteris velim, hoc est virum optimum.’

  Chapter 4: Managing Failure: 1528–1529

  1. For fuller discussion of Wolsey and the shrine, see J. Blatchly and D. MacCulloch, Miracles in Lady Lane: the Ipswich shrine at the Westgate (Dorchester, 2013), 17–45. A full description of the event, from which the following details are taken, was sent to Wolsey by the College’s Dean: William Capon to Wolsey, 26 September 1528, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I ff. 281–2, LP 4 ii no. 4778.

  2. The statutes of Cardinal College Ipswich survive in an imperfect vellum copy in the archives of Christ Church Oxford, the first twenty folios of which are missing (a final list of contents tells us the headings of the missing material at f. 57r): MS D&C vi.c.2. Provision is made for the annual procession to Our Lady’s shrine on 8 September, as Dean Capon apologetically acknowledged in his letter to Wolsey.

  3. For Cromwell’s legal headaches in completing the transfer of the College site, see Cromwell to Thomas Arundell, 30 June [1528], SP 1/49 f. 1, LP 4 ii no. 4441, and William Capon to Cromwell, probably 1 July 1528, SP 1/55 f. 18, LP 4 iii no. 5810. The legal hitch most likely explains the abandoned foundation stone of the College bearing the date 20 June 1528 and discovered in fragments in an Ipswich well in the eighteenth century: BL Stowe 881 f. 51r.

  4. Capon to Cromwell, 24 October 1529, SP 1/50 f. 203, LP 4 ii no. 4872. LP dates this to 1528, but it can be reassigned to 1529 by the securely dated receipt from Cromwell to Capon for a reward payment from Jesus College on 18 February 1530 consequent on the work mentioned in this letter: SP 1/57 f. 24, LP 4 iii no. 6230.

  5. Testwood arrived at Boston in 1524: BL MS Egerton 2886 f. 295r. For his excellent service at Ipswich, William Capon to Wolsey, 12 April 1529, SP 1/52 f. 174v, LP 4 iii no. 5458, and for the letter which may have resulted in Cromwell furthering his next appointment at St George’s Chapel Windsor, Testwood to Cromwell, 1531 or 1532, SP 1/73 f. 141, LP 5 no. 1766.