Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  58. Donington to Cromwell, 10 August 1530, SP 1/57 f. 265, LP 4 iii no. 6556. For uncomplimentary opinions of Donington, see e.g. Lancelot Collins to Wolsey, 27 March [1529], SP 1/53 f. 130, LP 4 iii no. 5400; Robert Smith to Wolsey, 10 June [1530], SP 1/57 f. 155, LP 4 iii no. 6447.

  59. Vaughan to Cromwell, 1 December 1530, SP 1/58 f. 173, LP 4 iii no. 6754.

  60. Vaughan to Cromwell, 30 November 1530, SP 1/58 f. 147, LP 4 iii no. 6744; the end of this correspondence about the whale-oil is Vaughan to Cromwell, 26 February 1532, BL MS Cotton Galba B/X f. 5, LP 5 no. 808.

  61. For the wine licence, of 20 December 1532, see LP 5 no. 1693[10].

  62. Cromwell to Wolsey, n.d., Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 192r, and same to same, [17 May 1530], f. 194r, the latter LP 4 iii no. 6076, at 2715 (the Luther fragment of the latter is also cited in chronological position by LP from an intermediate source as LP 4 iii no. 6391). For the background to the King’s summons, which culminated on 24 or 25 May 1530, reinforcing the date of this letter fragment as 17 May, see Guy, Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 103–4.

  63. C. Euler, ‘Religious and cultural exchange during the Reformation: Zürich and England, 1531–1558’ (Johns Hopkins University PhD, 2004), 223.

  64. E.g. Vaughan to Cromwell, 9 December 1531, BL MS Cotton Galba B/X ff. 23–5, LP 5 no. 574; Vaughan to Cromwell, 27 August 1533, SP 1/78 f. 167, LP 6 no. 1040. See Cromwell to Wolsey, 18 August 1530, SP 1/57 f. 272v, LP 4 iii no. 6571, Merriman 1 no. 18, 333.

  65. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 60–66, 71, 153–4.

  66. Ives, ‘Fall of Wolsey’, 313–15, concisely rounds up the evidence; see also Hammond, ‘Doctor Augustine’, 217–20.

  67. Chapuys made the claim to Charles V about his regular contact with Wolsey in a letter of 20 August 1530, Spanish Calendar 4 i no. 411, at 692. The claim of the French ambassador about Wolsey’s intrigues, at third hand via Chapuys, is in Bradford (ed.), Correspondence of Charles V, 325–6, Spanish Calendar 4 i no. 509; Ives, ‘Fall of Wolsey’, 314–15, provides good commentary on this.

  68. See William Brabazon to Cromwell, early May 1530, SP 1/53 f. 227, LP 4 iii no. 5507; William Capon to Cromwell, 7 May [1530], SP 1/53 f. 250, LP 4 iii no. 5526; Capon to Cromwell, 15 May [1530], SP 1/54 f. 4, LP 4 iii no. 5550; Robert Smyth to Wolsey, 10 June [1530], SP 1/57 ff. 155–6, LP 4 iii no. 6447 (in which the reference to Alvard occurs, apparently ready to take liturgical books to York from Ipswich). This whole sequence apart from the last letter is misdated in LP to 1529, but that is clearly wrong, not merely because of Capon’s thanks but because the principal actor is Brabazon. For much of the spring of 1529 he was lying severely ill at Walton in Suffolk: cf. the reference to his five-week illness in Cromwell’s accounts, SP 1/44 f. 310r, LP 4 ii no. 3536, with John Smith to Cromwell, 31 March [1529], SP 1/53 f. 135, LP 4 iii no. 5405, a letter which has to be of 1529 in view of the content.

  69. Wolsey to Cromwell, BL MS Cotton Appendix XLVIII f. 25, LP 4 iii no. 6524, printed in full in State Papers 1, 362. As usual with Wolsey’s holograph notes, it is undated, but what seems like a reply to it by Cromwell appears to have been dated 12 July 1530: Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 193v, LP 4 iii no. 6076, at 2715.

  70. All these strands can be conveniently sampled in the extracts gathered by Thomas Master, Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 194v, LP 4 iii no. 6076, but they are present in many of the original letters which survive. From them must be subtracted a peremptory letter from Cromwell to an Archbishop of York which can conclusively be reassigned to 1538 thanks to Ward, ‘Origins of Thomas Cromwell’s public career’, 219–20: Cromwell to [Edward Lee Archbishop of York], 5 May [1538], SP 1/57 f. 87, LP 4 iii no. 6368.

  71. Cromwell to Wolsey, 18 August [1530], SP 1/57 ff. 270r–273r, LP 4 iii no. 6571; Merriman 1 no. 18, efficiently displays the emendments, though not the change in hands, and I have made some modifications to his readings. The draft is not in Wriothesley’s hand, as LP claims. Thomas Master made extracts from the vanished fair copy of this letter, but conflated it with an earlier letter of Cromwell’s in August containing less reassurance, which had probably generated Wolsey’s anxious letter of 10 August mentioned in this present text of 18 August: Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 194rv, LP 4 iii no. 6076, at 2715–16.

  72. The geldings are also mentioned in a letter of Thomas Donington to Cromwell, sent down with Wolsey’s letter of the same day, 10 August 1530, SP 1/57 f. 265, LP 4 iii no. 6557; Donington also thanked Cromwell for his ‘gracious goodness’ to their common master.

  73. Chapuys to Charles V, November 1530, Spanish Calendar 4 i nos. 804–5. Ives, ‘Fall of Wolsey’, 314–15, efficiently introduces the complex evidence; see also Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 131.

  74. Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 194v, LP 4 iii no. 6076, at 2716.

  75. Cromwell to Wolsey, 21 October 1530, BL MS Cotton Appendix XLVIII f. 110, LP 4 iii no. 6699, the much damaged text partially reconstructed in Merriman 1 no. 19, 334–5; part is excerpted in Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 194v, LP 4 iii no. 6076, at 2716, which suggests that the text from Cromwell’s lost letter about Wolsey’s distrust, excerpted before this, was the opening of the now fragmentary text of 21 October in the Cottonian Appendix. On Wellifed and Sadler, see above, this page.

  76. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, ed. Singer, 348, 351.

  77. See especially L. R. Gardiner, ‘Further news of Cardinal Wolsey’s end, November–December, 1530’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 57 (1984), 99–107, and useful supplementary comment in Ives, ‘Fall of Wolsey’, 314–15nn.

  78. An abbreviated version is in Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 228, Chapuys to Nicolas de Granvelle, 21 November 1535, missing some important nuances, especially the crucial subjunctive ‘auquel il deust promettre’, ‘at which he must have promised’. It is surprising that Geoffrey Elton did not appreciate this: Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, 72. The French original from Vienna which I have translated is conveniently presented via a TNA transcript in Merriman 1, 17.

  79. Hawkyard, House of Commons 1509–1558, 137, 204–5.

  80. See the good account of him by Alan Bryson in ODNB, s.v. Wallop, Sir John.

  81. Wolsey used that phrase to Cromwell’s annoyingly persistent relative Henry Carbot, while postponing the fulfilment of promises of promotion which Cromwell had secured for Carbot the previous March at Sheen Charterhouse: Carbot to Cromwell, 11 August 1530, SP 1/57 f. 266, LP 4 ii no. 6558.

  82. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, ed. Singer, 297.

  83. Russell to Cromwell, 1 June [1530], SP 1/57 f. 139, LP 4 iii no. 6420.

  Chapter 6: Council and Parliament: 1531

  1. G. R. Elton, ‘Why the history of the early-Tudor Council remains unwritten’, in Elton, Studies 1, 308–38.

  2. TNA, E 101/421/1, LP 5 no. 341, for the July reference. For two from December 1531, see Henry VIII to Surveyors and Auditor, 11 December 1531, SP 1/68 f. 82, LP 5 no. 577 (interestingly, concerning finances for the refounded King Henry’s College Oxford); Abbot of Waltham to Cromwell, ‘of the Council’, 31 December 1531, SP 1/73 f. 7, LP 5 no. 1684 (convincingly redated by J. D. Alsop, ‘Cromwell and the Church in 1531: the case of Waltham Abbey’, JEH 31 (1980), 327–30). A variety of letters addressing him with such honorifics as ‘Councillor to the King’s Majesty’ are misdated in Letters and Papers to 1531, when many of them can definitely be reassigned to a later year, and few definitely placed in this period.

  3. Creke to Cromwell [winter 1531], SP 1/69 f. 138, LP 5 no. 840. Cromwell’s papers include a number of instances of his involvement in Creke’s business in Spain and Crete over the previous decade.

  4. [Creke] to Cromwell, [early April 1531], SP 1/68 f. 137, LP 5 no. 652: ‘I stand at point of preferment, by the labour of the Spaniards and other my friends to enter service with the Queen in 7d halfpenny a day.’

  5. Creke to Cromwell, [April 1531], SP 1/81 f. 95, LP 6 no. 1642, where it is misdat
ed to 1533, correctly reassigned to 1531 in Corrigenda to that volume; the italics are mine, indicating the final clue to the firm dating of this correspondence. It is interesting that Creke did not use the title ‘Councillor’ in his slightly earlier letters to Cromwell already cited. There is a further emotional appeal from Creke to Cromwell, SP 1/81 f. 94, LP 6 no. 164, which probably does come from 1533. Cromwell evidently then got him a secretarial post with Archbishop Cranmer, in whose correspondence he appears, before a good deal of complicated business after his death into which Cromwell was drawn once more. For the most usefully clarifying letter about that tangle, badly timed in the middle of the Pilgrimage of Grace crisis, see William Heydon to Cromwell, 25 October 1536, SP 1/109 f. 103, LP 11 no. 867.

  6. For a report of the Hanworth grant to Gardiner, see Robert Smith to Wolsey, 10 June 1530, SP 1/57 ff. 155–6, LP 4 iii no. 6447. In the same month the Marquess of Dorset in his will left £20 to ‘Dr Stephens now secretary to the King’s Grace’ (TNA, PROB 11/24 ff. 72v–76r); surprisingly, Cromwell does not figure in the bequests.

  7. On the trade dispute, Customers of Bristol to Cromwell, 1 March 1535, SP 1/91 f. 5, looking back on events in 1531. On the proclamation, Cromwell to Norfolk, 15 July [1531], BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 318, LP 8 no. 1042; this was convincingly redated from 1535 by G. R. Elton, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge, 1973), 117–18.

  8. Augustine to Norfolk, 3 June 1531, BL MS Cotton Galba B/X f. 10, LP 5 no. 283; Piero de’ Bardi to Cromwell, 14 October 1531, SP 1/68 f. 18, LP 5 no. 474.

  9. Venetian Calendar 4 no. 694, at 297. Falier had arrived back in Venice at the beginning of November after thirty-seven months’ absence: ibid., nos. 689, 690. For Falier’s period of service, from December 1528 to September 1531, see ‘Venetian Diplomatic Agents in England’, in Venetian Calendar 1, cxxii–cxxix. Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, 91, failed to notice that Falier was describing the situation in England at his departure from it in September, and hence dated Cromwell’s rise into the ‘inner ring’ of councillors to November; in this, he has been followed by many commentators since.

  10. In the list of names, the Venetian Calendar’s identification of ‘il maggior Contarvolo Ary cavaliere dell’ ordine’ as Thomas Lord Darcy KG is clearly wrong, and it has to be Sir Henry [‘Ary’] Guildford KG, then Comptroller of the Household.

  11. BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 486, LP 5 no. 394, with useful commentary in State Papers 1, 380–83. The document is endorsed by the King himself.

  12. C. Fletcher, Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian ambassador (London, 2012), 161.

  13. We are indebted to the excellent analysis of McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation. For my own attempts to cut the Gordian Knot of Henry’s theology, see D. MacCulloch, ‘Henry VIII and the reform of the Church’, in MacCulloch (ed.), Reign of Henry VIII, 159–80.

  14. See the account in Fletcher, Our Man in Rome, 156–68, and see above, this page.

  15. McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 13.

  16. McEntegart, ibid., 13 and n., argues that the English overtures of 1531 to Germany were biconfessional in direction. This is true, but misses the point that, besides those missions concerned with the electoral challenge to the Habsburgs, there was a series of specifically evangelical missions which I now discuss, which had a wider reference geographically and in intention, and which included the Swiss. He does actually pick up this point later, with useful discussion: ibid., 39–41.

  17. Maas, Reformation and Robert Barnes, 25–6.

  18. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 60–66.

  19. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 59, 68, 77, and D. MacCulloch, ‘Two dons in politics: Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner, 1503–1533’, HJ 37 (1994), 1–22.

  20. E. Surtz and V. Murphy (eds.), The Divorce Tracts of Henry VIII (Angers, 1988), and see commentary in MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 51–5, and V. Murphy, ‘The literature and propaganda of Henry VIII’s first divorce’, in MacCulloch (ed.), Reign of Henry VIII, 135–58.

  21. Chapuys to Charles V, 24 June 1531, Spanish Calendar 4 ii no. 753, at 201. There really is no other candidate for this reference, given Richard Rex’s convincing redating of the Glasse of the Truthe to 1532: R. Rex, ‘Redating Henry VIII’s A Glasse of the Truthe’, Library 7th series 4 (2003), 16–27. The Disputatio is also likely to be the ‘book in writing’ renouncing papal power which Simon Grynaeus saw in the King’s chamber in early summer 1531: MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 62–3.

  22. The work is RSTC 12510 and 12510.5, and the English translation of 1533 is 12511 and 12511a; S. W. Haas, ‘The Disputatio inter clericum et militem: was Berthelet’s 1531 edition the first Henrician polemic of Thomas Cromwell?’, Moreana 14 (Dec. 1977), 65–72. Of Haas’s attempts to date various works to 1531, this is the most secure: the printing of the Latin version of the Disputatio directly relates to the English version of the Censurae published as the Determinations in November 1531 (RSTC 14287), for that work reused its typeface ornaments, especially the title-page.

  23. Vaughan to Henry VIII and Cromwell, 26 January 1531, BL MS Cotton Galba B/X f. 46r, LP 5 no. 65.

  24. Vaughan to Cromwell, 16 December [1530], SP 1/68 f. 85, LP 5 no. 585 (misdated in LP but assignable to 1530 because of its reference to the recent publication of Cornelius Agrippa’s De vanitate scientiarum, first published at Antwerp in September 1530, and by Vaughan’s reference to this letter of 16 December by date (‘the eighth day before Christmas’) in a further letter to Cromwell on 3 January 1531, SP 1/65 f. 46, LP 5 no. 26.

  25. Haas, ‘Disputatio inter clericum et militem’, 66, is too confident in identifying this work with the book bought by Vaughan, tempting though the identification is. On the genuine dialogues by Ockham which we know to have been in Henry VIII’s library, see J. P. Carley, The Libraries of Henry VIII (London, 2000), 56–7, no. 170 (this is corrected in J. P. Carley, ‘The Libraries of King Henry VIII: an update of the Westminster inventory of 1542’, Library 7th series 16 (2015), 282–303, at 298); 188, no. 1060; 189–90, no. 1077; see also J. P. Carley, ‘Hannibal Gamon and two strays from the library of King Henry VIII’, The Book Collector 64 (2015), 213–19. I am grateful to James Carley for discussions on this.

  26. See above, this page, this page, this page. On Coverdale’s uncertain movements at this time, probably in Antwerp, see ODNB, s.v. Coverdale, Miles.

  27. C. C. Butterworth and A. G. Chester, George Joye 1495?–1553: a chapter in the history of the English Bible and the English Reformation (Philadelphia, 1962), 30, 40–43; on Frith, John Clerk to Cromwell, 4 August 1526 (dateable to that year by its reference to Frith before he fled abroad), SP 1/49 f. 196, LP 4 ii no. 4607.

  28. Vaughan to Cromwell, 1 December 1530, SP 1/58 f. 173, LP 4 iii no. 6754; my italics.

  29. Cromwell to Stephen Vaughan, early May 1531, BL MS Cotton Galba B/X ff. 354–7, LP 5 no. 248; Merriman 1 no. 21 effectively presents the complicated alterations. Despite LP numbering this as 248, it is clearly this letter to which LP 5 no. 246 is a response.

  30. Vaughan to Henry VIII, 20 May 1531, SP 1/65 f. 252, LP 5 no. 246.

  31. Maas, Reformation and Robert Barnes, 22–6.

  32. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 65–6; Maas, Reformation and Robert Barnes, 25–6. Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, 91–3, is a judicious assessment of the Cromwell/Vaughan transactions in this year.

  33. Carley, Libraries of Henry VIII, Introduction.

  34. Ibid., lvii–lviii.

  35. J. P. Carley, ‘Religious controversy and marginalia: Pierfrancesco di Piero Bardi, Thomas Wakefield, and their books’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 12 (2002), 206–45; Carley’s fascinating reconstruction suggests that Bardi offered these books to the King as a New Year’s gift for the beginning of 1532.

  36. LP 5 no. 506[1].

&
nbsp; 37. McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 15–16, 90. See also E. Hildebrandt, ‘Christopher Mont, Anglo-German diplomat’, SCJ 15 (1984), 281–92, and ODNB, s.v. Mont, Christopher.

  38. Cromwell to Christopher Mont, probably late summer 1533, SP 1/80 f. 54, LP 6 no. 1374.

  39. Vaughan to Cromwell, 21 November 1533, SP 1/80 f. 106, LP 6 no. 1448.

  40. Vaughan to Cromwell, 1 November 1533, SP 1/80 f. 75, LP 6 no. 1385.

  41. G. Nicholson, ‘The Act of Appeals and the English Reformation’, in Cross, Loades and Scarisbrick (eds.), Law and Government under the Tudors, 19–30. The main Collectanea MS is BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/VI ff. 16–135. For a crisp analysis of the theory of ‘empire’, usefully limiting Cromwell’s role in formulating it, see J. Guy, ‘Thomas Cromwell and the intellectual origins of the Henrician revolution’, in A. Fox and J. Guy, Reassessing the Henrician Age: humanism, politics and reform 1500–1550 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 151–78. See also F. Heal, ‘What can King Lucius do for you? The Reformation and the early British Church’, EHR 120 (2005), 593–614, particularly 599–600.

  42. The narrative in the next two paragraphs reflects the excellent account in Guy, Public Career of Sir Thomas More, 133–40, although he probably dates Cromwell’s active agency in this manoeuvres too early, if my account of Cromwell’s interview with the King in December 1530 is accepted.

  43. As Guy points out, ibid., 137, Hussey was already a proctor in the Court of Arches, but he also may have been acting as Registrar of the Province of Canterbury by this time; he was certainly scribe of the diocesan Official of Middlesex in the diocese of London by 1526 (Emden, Oxford 1501 to 1540, 684).

  44. Cromwell to Wolsey, 21 October 1530, BL MS Cotton Appendix XLVIII f. 110, LP 4 iii no. 6699, efficiently reconstructed in Merriman 1 no. 19, 334–5.