Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  48. Cromwell’s remembrance, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 455, LP 7 no. 143; LP dated this to early 1534, but the content looks more directly related to November 1533.

  49. LP 5 no. 1065[33]: a grant in survivorship to Thomas Cromwell and Gregory, his only son. A general round-up of Cromwell’s land acquisitions, with occasional misunderstandings, is provided by Everett, Rise of Thomas Cromwell: see ibid., 184–95 and index, 353, s.v. Land, Property and Wealth.

  50. William Walwyn to Cromwell, 24 September [1532], SP 1/71 f. 52, LP 5 no. 1342; Sir William Morgan to Cromwell, 21 November [1532], SP 1/72 f. 44, LP 5 no. 1562.

  51. Below, this page. Thomas Philips wrote from Ludlow, headquarters town of the Council in the Marches, on 3 May [1532], SP 1/70 f. 11, LP 5 no. 991. The reference to ‘Princess’ Mary makes this document no later than 1532, and Cromwell as point of reference for Philips makes it very unlikely to be earlier.

  52. London, College of Arms MS 2 G.4 f. 35v. I am very grateful to Robert Yorke, Archivist Emeritus of the College, for our discussions of Cromwell’s heraldry. The full formal blazon of this first version of his achievement is azure on a fess between three lions rampant or, a rose gules between two Cornish choughs proper. Crest: a demi-lion rampant double-queued or, holding a gem-ring or, stoned gules.

  53. John Judd to Cromwell, 4 August [1532], SP 1/70 f. 186, LP 5 no. 1214. Judd’s embarrassment makes his letter somewhat incoherent, but his meaning is clear. The business for Mistress Hall at Ipswich concerned professional debts left by Thomas Hall, the nature of which is specified in a draft grant to her, TNA, SP 2/M ff. 183–5, LP 5 no. 1730.

  54. The inventory of Standon for the then Ralph Sadler records among much material from the first Ralph’s time ‘Cromewells picture’ in the long gallery: A. Heal, ‘A great country house in 1623’, Burlington Magazine 82 (1943), 108–16, at 113.

  55. SP 1/42 ff. 101–16 at f. 112r, LP 4 ii no. 3197, and see above, this page.

  56. H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (London, 2009), Part 5, ch. 3. Frick collection accession no. 1915.1.76.

  57. Now National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 1727.

  58. J. Roberts, Holbein and the Court of Henry VIII: drawings and miniatures from the Royal Library Windsor Castle (Edinburgh, 1994), 28–9.

  59. TNA, SP 2/M ff. 126–47, LP 5 no. 1694. Cromwell appears in the Essex list at f. 132v, Kent at f. 136r, Middlesex at f. 138v and Surrey at f. 140v.

  60. On Cromwell’s inexperience in local government up till then, see sensible remarks in H. M. Speight, ‘“The politics of good governance”: Thomas Cromwell and the government of the southwest of England’, HJ 37 (1994), with reply by M. Robertson, 623–41, at 627–8.

  61. W. B. Robison III, ‘The justices of the peace of Surrey in national and county politics, 1483–1570’ (Lousiana State University PhD, 1983), 167–8, 171–5.

  62. P. S. Allen, H. M. Allen and H. W. Garrod (eds.), Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami . . . (12 vols., Oxford, 1906–58), 10, 116 (5 October 1532), 135 (late 1532), 180 (21 March 1533). The second of these letters, to Johannes Faber, Bishop of Vienna, appears in D. Erasmus, Liber . . . de praeparatione ad mortem . . . accedunt aliquot epistolae seriis de rebus, in quibus item nihil est non novum ac recens (Basel, 1534), 93.

  63. Kelly, ‘Submission of the clergy’, 105, 110; Muller (ed.), Letters of Gardiner, 48–9.

  64. For a masterly assessment of the myth around Gardiner, his character flaws and real talents, see M. Riordan and A. Ryrie, ‘Stephen Gardiner and the making of a Protestant villain’, SCJ 34 (2003), 1039–63.

  65. Leonard Smyth to Lord Lisle, 15 December [1533], SP 3/7 f. 160, LP 1 i no. 886, Lisle Letters 1 no. 97. See also Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, 124–5, 261–86.

  66. Below, this page.

  67. For Paget jumping ship, see S. R. Gammon, Statesman and Schemer: William, first Lord Paget, Tudor minister (Newton Abbot, 1973), 25–7.

  68. Richard is named in Thomas Cromwell’s will of 1529, with the phrase ‘servant with my Lord Marquess Dorset’ erased. See two references to Gardiner’s servant ‘Mr Cromwell’ on mission with him in letters of Henry VIII to Gardiner, 9 and 16 February 1532, Pocock 2, 184, 190, LP 5 nos. 791, 807; Christopher Wellifed to his parents, 23 January [1533], SP 1/74 f. 66, LP 6 no. 70 (he failed in his quest for Cottenham; the Bishop of Ely had obtained it for his Chancellor Robert Cliffe); George Lawson to Cromwell, 1 February [1533], SP 1/74 f. 121, LP 6 no. 107.

  69. Gunn, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, 115–27; Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 165.

  70. Norfolk’s testimony to the Privy Council, mid-December 1546, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 101r, LP 21 ii no. 554. He was describing a conversation with Wolsey at Esher, which must have been the memorable encounter described by Cavendish in December 1529: Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, ed. Singer, 277–85. He said that Suffolk’s initiative had been fourteen years before that, so 1515, just at the time that Brandon had first gained the ducal title.

  71. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors, 57–71, 228–30.

  72. Gunn, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, 125. Richard and Robert Southwell’s escape from punishment in this affair and total rehabilitation (at the expense of a property surrender to the Crown) is remarkable, and needs further explanation. They were clearly already on excellent terms with Cromwell and seem to have at this stage left Norfolk’s service for his.

  73. Duke of Suffolk to Cromwell, 20 July [1532], SP 1/70 f. 165, LP 5 no. 1183.

  74. On the removal, see below, Chapter 18. On Cromwell as godfather, see Duke of Suffolk to Cromwell, [18 September 1535], SP 1/96 f. 172, LP 9 no. 386; dateable as LP observes by the birthday of Henry Brandon.

  75. Duke of Suffolk to Cromwell, 27 November [1536], SP 1/112 f. 21, LP 11 no. 1180: a letter in which he bluntly recommends the payment of royal debts in the county. It is his boldest surviving letter to Cromwell.

  76. Lord Leonard Grey to Cromwell, 24 May [1532], SP 1/70 f. 56, LP 5 no. 1049; my italics. See above, this page.

  77. Augustine to Cromwell, 22 and 28 July 1532: SP 1/70 f. 170, LP 5 no. 1188; SP 1/70 f. 174, LP 5 no. 1197.

  78. Spanish Calendar 4 ii no. 1158, at 876.

  79. Norfolk’s testimony to the Privy Council, mid-December 1546, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 100r, LP 21 ii no. 554.

  80. Duke of Norfolk to Cromwell, ‘Ascension Day’ [?1535], SP 1/92 f. 124, LP 8 no. 673; my italics. ‘Grudge who will’, a favourite phrase of the Duke’s, was borrowed as a motto by his niece Anne Boleyn, although she may also have purloined it from Margaret of Austria: Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 141. Elton, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s decline and fall’, 193–7, usefully rounds up the course of the Cromwell/Norfolk relationship.

  81. Elizabeth Duchess of Norfolk to Cromwell, 10 November [1537], BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 389, LP 12 ii no. 1049. It is unfortunate that we cannot pin down the exact relationship of the child’s mother ‘Mistress Abram’ to Cromwell, though she was presumably the wife of the younger of two Thomas Abrams who were London merchants and friends of his.

  82. Norfolk’s testimony to the Privy Council, mid-December 1546, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 101r, LP 21 ii no. 554.

  83. Ibid.

  84. Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 141–3.

  Chapter 8: Making a Difference: 1532

  1. For the medieval background on commissions of sewers, see J. H. Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England 6: 1483–1558 (Oxford, 2003), 265.

  2. P. Cavill, The English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485–1504 (Oxford, 2009), 162–3.

  3. Elton, Reform and Renewal, 121–2. The disaster can be seen first unfolding in William Harris to Cromwell [Sunday 17 January 1529], SP 1/40 f. 101, LP 4 ii no. 2759 (misdated by LP to 1526), and an appalled Thomas Cromwell to Stephen Gardiner, 18 January [1529], SP 1/52 f. 146, LP 4 iii no. 5186.

  4. Sir Nicholas Carew to Cromwell, 23 September [1532], SP
1/67 f. 83, LP 5 no. 429 (misdated in LP to 1531, but it has to be after the passage of the 1532 Act).

  5. Erasmus Forth to [Thomas] Stidolf, ?autumn 1532, SP 1/73 f. 103, LP 5 no. 1728.

  6. Fitzwilliam to Cromwell, probably autumn 1532, SP 1/84 f. 102, LP 7 no. 760 (misdated by LP to 1534, but the address to Cromwell as Master of the Jewels renders that unlikely a priori). John Browning Abbot of Waverley to [Thomas] Stidolf, probably 1532, SP 1/73 f. 142, LP 5 no. 1765, no doubt relates to that or another meeting of the commissioners at Southwark. For long-term argument about the Act, see C. Holmes, ‘G. R. Elton as a legal historian’, TRHS 6th series 7 (1997), 267–79, at 273–4.

  7. Cromwell’s first draft of the commission is SP 1/73 f. 61r and a later draft with the King’s and Cromwell’s emendations, SP 1/73 f. 59r, LP 5 no. 1705.

  8. For a thorough account of this ill-fated legislation, see Elton, Reform and Renewal, 90–92, 100–106; Cromwell’s draft letter to the King, of late March 1534, is SP 1/82 f. 82, LP 7 no. 73.

  9. On the Dover saga, see Colvin (ed.), History of the King’s Works 4, 729–68.

  10. Robert Bager, Mayor of Winchester, to Cromwell, 19 January [1535], SP 1/89 f. 35, LP 8 no. 63.

  11. See Chapuys’s shrewd comments on the political dimensions of the case, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 203, at 542; for stages of the dispute running into 1536 and 1537, Mayor, Recorder and citizens of Winchester to Cromwell, 10 January [1536], SP 1/101 f. 44, LP 10 no. 67, and Mayor and citizens of Winchester to Cromwell, 9 August 1537, SP 1/105 f. 266, LP 11 no. 252 (misdated in LP).

  12. For an early stage in the campaign, see William Burton Abbot of St Augustine’s Bristol to Cromwell, 24 August [1535], SP 1/95 f. 156, LP 9 no. 169; for Cromwell following up early circulars, Cromwell to Roland Lee, early September 1535, SP 1/96 f. 50, LP 9 no. 241[II]. For more on the visit to Winchester, see below, this page.

  13. For specimens, Roland Lee to Cromwell, 19 and 24 August 1535, SP 1/95 f. 111, LP 9 no. 126; SP 1/95 f. 154, LP 9 no. 166.

  14. John Husee to Lord Lisle, 19 November [1535], SP 3/5 f. 110, Lisle Letters 2 no. 483.

  15. Leonard Smyth to Lord Lisle, 10 December 1535, SP 1/99 f. 114, Lisle Letters 2 no. 495; my italics.

  16. SP 1/102 f. 5rv, LP 10 no. 254. There was a reaffirmation in that Parliament of previous related legislation against streaming for tin in Devon and Cornwall: Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 234.

  17. For Cromwell pursuing action in 1539, John ap Rhys to Cromwell, 21 August 1539, SP 1/153 f. 37, LP 14 ii no. 72.

  18. Wigston to Cromwell, ?July 1539, SP 1/152 f. 210, LP 14 i no. 1350; Scarisbrick, ‘Cardinal Wolsey and the Common Weal’, 58, draws attention to the prominence of Roger Wigston in Wolsey’s campaign.

  19. John London to Cromwell, 10 January [1539], SP 1/142 f. 31, LP 14 i no. 42.

  20. J. P. Carley and A. M. Hutchison, ‘William Peto, O.F.M.Obs., and the 1556 edition of The folowinge of Chryste: background and context’, Journal of the Early Book Society 17 (2014), 94–118, at 94–6.

  21. W. Barlow, A dyaloge describing the originall ground of these Lutheran faccyons . . . (London, 1531, RSTC 1461). There have been nearly two centuries of debate on the confusing number of William Barlows and their relationship to this work: all is sorted out effectively by A. J. Brown, Robert Ferrar: Yorkshire monk, Reformation bishop and martyr in Wales (c. 1500–1555) (London, 1997), 266. See also E. G. Rupp, Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Cambridge, 1947), 62–72, and for a link between Barlow and More as early as 1525, A. M. McLean, ‘“A noughtye and a false lyeng boke”: William Barlow and the Lutheran factions’, Renaissance Quarterly 31 (1978), 173–85, at 176–7.

  22. Barlow, Dyaloge describing the originall ground of these Lutheran faccyons, sig. P4v.

  23. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 55–8.

  24. Ibid., 438–40.

  25. For what follows in this and the next paragraph, see the excellent detective work of R. Rex, ‘Jasper Fyloll and the enormities of the clergy: two tracts written during the Reformation Parliament’, SCJ 31 (2000), 1043–62. Rex (pp. 1061-62) is curiously reluctant to credit the sincerity of Fyllol’s evangelicalism, despite providing much evidence for his radicalism, and in view of his action for Cromwell a year or two later at the London Charterhouse. His arguments from the nature and contents of Fyllol’s prayer book do not seem to me to be enough to contradict that evidence.

  26. Fyllol’s petition is TNA, SP 2/M f. 125, LP 5 no. 1690.

  27. The first edition is RSTC 11919. Rex, ‘Redating Henry VIII’s A Glasse of the Truthe’, is a convincing refutation of S. W. Haas, ‘Henry VIII’s Glasse of Truthe’, History 64 (1979), 353–62, which argued for a dating of this tract to 1531, and also made the serious mistake of confusing the Collectanea and the Censurae/Determinations.

  28. Richard Croke to Cromwell, 17 September 1532, SP 1/71 f. 36, LP 5 no. 1320; Croke to Cromwell, 23 September 1532, SP 1/71 f. 48, LP 5 no. 1338. These two letters cannot be any earlier than 1532, as Croke with characteristic pretentiousness signs himself ‘Sub-Dean’ in Greek characters, and he did not become Sub-Dean of King Henry’s College Oxford until that year.

  29. Hawkins to Henry VIII, 21 November 1532, SP 1/72 f. 48r, LP 5 no. 1564. On the French translation, John Williamson to Cromwell, 20 October [1532], SP 1/71 f. 128, LP 5 no. 1454.

  30. [Anon.], The maner of the tryumphe at Caleys [and] Bulleyn (London, 1532, RSTC 4350, 4351), and see comment, Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 160–61. This John Gough should be distinguished from the John Gough of Calais mentioned previously (above, this page). The best previous precedent for such government instant news was for the proposed marriage of the King’s sister Mary in 1508: J. Gairdner (ed.), ‘“The Spousells” of the Prinsess Mary’, Camden Miscellany 9 (CS new series 53, 1895), 1–38.

  31. Sir Edward Guildford to Cromwell, 30 December [1532], SP 1/72 f. 171, LP 5 no. 1678.

  32. LP 6 no. 87. It is a circumstantial story; the conmen were well informed enough to know that Cromwell was about to leave for Calais with the King.

  33. Everett, Rise of Thomas Cromwell, 77–8, rounds them all up. Below we will meet the one exception to that: the exchange with Christ’s College Cambridge, still therefore involving an ecclesiastical corporation of royal foundation.

  34. Alsop, ‘Cromwell and the Church in 1531: the case of Waltham Abbey’, discussing TNA, E 407/8/180/4. The Westminster draft is TNA, SP 2/L ff. 66r, 70r, 71r, LP 5 no. 673, with some small further emendments in Cromwell’s hand; cf. the enrolment of an earlier version of the grant on 23 December 1531, which mentions neither Cromwell nor Hales, LP 5 no. 627[23]. No. 627[24] is a royal grant to Wolsey’s former abbey of St albans, also signed on 23 December, of one of the nunneries dissolved by Wolsey, which likewise does not explicitly involve Cromwell, though it is precisely the sort of business in which he would have had a major interest. I have noted (above, this page) Cromwell’s simultaneous appointment at the beginning of January 1532 as royal Receiver-General of estates belonging to Wolsey’s former Colleges, all of them former monastic lands.

  35. Heale, Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation England, 284.

  36. Robert Thornton Abbot of Jervaux to Cromwell, 30 July [1532], SP 1/70 f. 178, LP 5 no. 1203.

  37. The following citations are simply representative of much other documentation, and should be compared with the appropriate new appointments noted by Smith. St Bartholomew’s Smithfield: Robert Fuller Abbot of Waltham to Cromwell, 22 May 1532, SP 1/70 f. 53, LP 5 no. 1044; Bruton and Montacute: Sir John Fitzjames to Cromwell, 9 September [1532], SP 1/71 f. 23, LP 5 no. 1304; Muchelney: see next note; Holm Cultram: John Lord Hussey to Cromwell, 19 November [1532], SP 1/72 f. 41, LP 5 no. 1556; Tilty: Margaret Marchioness of Dorset to Cromwell, 17 October [1532], SP 1/79 f. 186, LP 6 no. 1304 (misdated in LP); St James Northampton: George Gifford to Cromwell, 19 May [1536], SP 1/104 f. 30, LP
10 no. 916, commenting on an election of May 1532. On Vaudey, see below, n. 43.

  38. Cf. e.g. Thomas Ine Abbot of Muchelney to Cromwell, 15 June 1533, SP 1/77 f. 44, LP 6 no. 651 (also wrongly calendared as LP 5 no. 295) referring to the events of 1532, about which there is much other correspondence.

  39. Nicholas West Bishop of Ely to Cromwell, 9 March [1533], SP 1/74 f. 213, LP 6 no. 218. G. R. Elton’s characteristically crisp and informed answers to the question ‘How corrupt was Thomas Cromwell?’, HJ 36 (1993), 905–8, are an effective valedictory defence of his hero.

  40. See Lee writing to Cromwell on the business of Wolsey’s pardon, winter or spring 1530, SP 1/57 f. 1, LP 4 iii no. 6212.

  41. Cranmer to Nicholas Hawkins, 24 December 1533, BL MS Harley 6148 f. 41r, LP 6 no. 1546. Cranmer’s phrase does not suggest any warm acquaintance with Lee.

  42. Roland Lee to Cromwell, 7 June [1535], SP 1/93 f. 29, LP 8 no. 839.

  43. See Henry Saxton, Abbot of Vaudey to Cromwell, 28 October [1532], SP 1/71 f. 152, LP 5 no. 1477; Cromwell to the Abbot of Woburn, probably November 1532, SP 1/77 f. 175, LP 6 no. 778; John Lord Hussey to Cromwell, 20 April [1533], SP 1/83 f. 101, LP 7 no. 516; Robert Hobbes Abbot of Woburn to Cromwell, 7 July [1533], SP 1/77 f. 176, LP 6 no. 779.

  44. LP 5 no. 978[6]; see G. R. Elton, Star Chamber Stories (London, 1958), 147–73, and for background on the Cistercians, D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England III: the Tudor age (Cambridge, 1959), 28–38.

  45. For an account of the Premonstratensians’ exemption, see Richard Bowyer alias Strelley to Cromwell, n.d. but 1537–40, SP 1/123 f. 162, LP 12 ii no. 400.

  46. Smith, 568–9, noticed a Horsman as Abbot at Coverham without fixing him to a date in the early 1530s or to this letter, but he must be the Roger Horsman who died in 1536 as Vicar of Sedbergh, a Coverham living (LP 11 no. 943[16]), and who must have previously resigned the Abbacy to the Abbot at the dissolution, Christopher Rokeby. For the possible significance of this in the early stages of the Pilgrimage of Grace, see below, this page. On Leonard Horsman, see Lee to Cromwell, summer 1532, SP 1/81 f. 26, LP 6 no. 1566; Horsman to Cromwell, 2 August [1532], SP 1/70 f. 184, LP 5 no. 1212.