Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  45. See the various commissions listed in LP 8 no. 149[35–82], 30 January 1535, and on his auditors at the Surrey houses of Merton, St Saviour’s Southwark and St Thomas’s Hospital, Sir William Fitzwilliam to Cromwell, 1 August [1535], SP 1/95 f. 5, LP 9 no. 4.

  46. The best summary discussion of the Valor is still Knowles, Religious Orders in England III, 241–54.

  47. Cromwell was receiving a fee from New College perhaps from the late 1520s, augmented in 1532: John London to Cromwell, 3 October [1532], SP 1/71 f. 79, LP 5 no. 1384. On Cromwell as visitor, London to Cromwell, 24 October [1534], SP 1/86 ff. 80–81, LP 7 no. 1299, and the letter of evangelical scholars of New College to Cromwell, 24 October [1534], SP 1/86 f. 82, LP 7 no. 1300. On the friendship of London and Bedell, e.g. London to Cromwell, probably 18 May 1532, SP 1/70 f. 41, LP 5 no. 1034.

  48. Oxford University and town authorities to Sir William Fitzwilliam and Cromwell, 4 January [1533], BL MS Cotton Faustina C/VII ff. 208–9, LP 6 no. 20; Mayor of Oxford and other townsmen to Cromwell, 4 January [1533], SP 1/76 f. 30, LP 6 no. 21.

  49. For the fee, S. M. Leathes (ed.), Grace Book A (Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Luard Memorial Series 1, 1897), 227, and Searle (ed.), Grace Book Γ, 286. For the Stewardship, Searle (ed.), Grace Book Γ, 301.

  50. Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 106, 195.

  51. Cromwell to University of Cambridge, 5 September [1535], Merriman 1 no. 116, LP 9 no. 278.

  Chapter 12: Deaths for Religion: 1535

  1. For excellent analysis of this phase of Casali fortunes, see Fletcher, Our Man in Rome, 194–202, 205–9.

  2. Chapuys to Charles V, 11 July 1535, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 181, at 510.

  3. Chapuys to Charles V, 13 October 1534, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 97, at 281.

  4. Fletcher, Our Man in Rome, 202–5.

  5. Note of the meeting on 7 May occurs in deposition of Richard Wilson before the Lieutenant of the Tower and three of Cromwell’s servants, Thomas Lee, Henry Polstead and John ap Rhys, 7 June 1535, LP 8 no. 856.

  6. Fletcher, Our Man in Rome, 209–11.

  7. On Gardiner, see S. Gardiner, Obedience in Church and State: three political tracts by Stephen Gardiner, ed. P. Janelle (Cambridge 1930), xvii; Cuthbert Tunstall to Cromwell, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/VI f. 249, LP 10 no. 202.

  8. For an effective overview of these last days of Fisher and More, see Guy, Thomas More: a very brief history, 43–6.

  9. On the eve of these events, see Richard Rich to Cromwell, 3 April [1535], SP 1/91 f. 162, LP 8 no. 490, in which he solicits a lucrative office with the promise of a handsome cash gift ‘and over that pray for you’. The record of the trial of 26 June to 1 July 1535, LP 8 no. 974, contains the crucial testimony of Rich in regard to 12 June.

  10. Remembrance, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 474, LP 8 no. 892.

  11. Thomas Knight to Cromwell, 5/6 October 1538, SP 1/137 f. 110, LP 13 ii no. 542. My italics: LP misreads as ‘the others’.

  12. Cf. the reaction in Venice: Edmund Harvel to Thomas Starkey, 15 June 1535, BL MS Cotton Nero B/VII f. 107, LP 8 no. 874.

  13. Interrogatories for Robert Laurence Prior of Beauvale and Augustine Webster Prior of Axholme, 20 April 1535, SP 1/92 ff. 26–7, LP 8 no. 565. For Chauncy’s account of their visit to London and confrontation with Cromwell, Chauncy, Historia aliquot martyrum Anglorum, 98–9.

  14. Thomas Starkey to Reginald Pole, May 1535, BL MS Cleopatra E/VI f. 373rv, LP 8 no. 801; Cranmer to Cromwell, 30 April 1535, SP 1/92 f. 102, LP 8 no. 616.

  15. Borde reminded Cromwell of this during his further adventures in Scotland, 1 April 1536, SP 1/103 f. 61, LP 10 no. 605. On Salter, see above, this page.

  16. See Borde’s report back to Cromwell from Bordeaux on his way to the Grande Chartreuse, 20 June 1535, SP 1/93 f. 119, LP 8 no. 901; he asks that Cromwell would be a ‘good friend as you ever have been to Master Prior of the Charter House [my italics]’.

  17. Andrew Borde to Prior and Convent of the London Charterhouse and all priors and convents of the said Order in England, 2 August 1535, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 70, LP 9 no. 11; John Gaillard Prior of the Grande Chartreuse to Roland Lee, 1 August 1535, BL MS Cotton Vitellius B/XIV f. 125, LP 9 no. 8, now much damaged. The fact that the Prior calls Bishop Lee John rather than Roland is probably scribal error rather than deliberate sabotage.

  18. On the Charterhouse, Roland Lee to Cromwell, probably very early May 1534, SP 1/84 f. 100, LP 7 no. 758. On Fisher, Lee to Cromwell, just before 17 April 1534, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/VI f. 160, LP 7 no. 498.

  19. Andrew Borde to Cromwell, writing from London probably in early September 1535, SP 1/96 f. 45, LP 9 no. 238. For Borde’s summary of his mission and delivery of his letters from the Grande Chartreuse to Cromwell at Bishop’s Waltham, between 18 and 24 September 1535, SP 1/96 f. 46, LP 9 no. 239.

  20. On efforts in Somerset at Witham and Hinton, see Shaw, ‘Compendium Compertorum’, 41 and 43, and Prior of Hinton Charterhouse to Cromwell, 1 September [1535], SP 1/85 f. 136, LP 7 no. 1127 (misdated in LP to 1534), and cf. Cromwell’s remembrance ‘Of the Charterhouse of Henton’, dateable to the end of August 1535, TNA, E 36/143 f. 33, LP 9 no. 498.

  21. Thomas Bedell to Cromwell, 6 May [1535], BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/VI f. 259, LP 8 no. 675.

  22. BL MS Harley 604 f. 2. This seventeenth-century copy of the instructions has been given a misleading heading, ‘Instructyones to be performed by governores appointed to enter the possessyone of the Charterhowse of Londone upon the suppressyon thereof’, but it clearly relates to the events of summer 1535.

  23. John Whalley to Cromwell, 29 May [1535], SP 1/92 f. 188, LP 8 no. 778. Chauncy and then Nicholas Sander, echoed by the Jesuit historian Ribadeneira, say that two of Cromwell’s servants were installed in the Charterhouse, and overall confirm the reports of Fyllol, Rastell and Whalley themselves, though with the most negative possible interpretation: Chauncy, Historia aliquot martyrum Anglorum, 109–10, and S. J. Weinreich (ed. and trans.), Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Ecclesiastical History of the Schism of the Kingdom of England (Jesuit Studies 8, 2017), 225.

  24. Jasper Fyllol to Cromwell, 5 September [1535], BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 42, LP 9 no. 283, and Fyllol to Cromwell, September 1535, SP 1/96 f. 82, LP 9 no. 284.

  25. Above, this page: Rex, ‘Jasper Fyloll and the enormities of the clergy’, 1043–62.

  26. The date of 25 June 1536 suggested in ODNB, s.v. Rastell, John, for Rastell’s death is far too early; his last extant letter (SP 1/113 f. 188, LP 11 no. 1487) addresses Cromwell as Lord Privy Seal, which Cromwell only became on 30 June 1536, and details of Rastell’s final arrest seem to be associated with the crackdown on evangelicals in November 1536 (below, this page). That is also the judgement of J. C. Warner, ‘A dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, c. 1532: a neglected tract belonging to the last period of John Rastell’s career’, SCJ 29 (1998), 55–65, at 65.

  27. On the monks’ reaction to Rastell, John Whalley to Cromwell, ?late spring 1535, SP 1/92 f. 61, LP 8 no. 600.

  28. Fyllol to Cromwell, 5 September [1535], BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 42, LP 9 no. 283.

  29. A report via Dr Ortiz to the Empress Isabella, 24 October 1535, BL MS Additional 28588 f. 31, LP 9 no. 681.

  30. John Husee to Lord Lisle, 11 December [1535], SP 3/5 f. 84, Lisle Letters 2 no. 496; Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 265.

  31. John Gostwick to Cromwell, 5 September 1535, SP 1/96 f. 76, LP 9 no. 279.

  32. On Trafford’s defiance, Sir John Markham and others to Cromwell, 18 April 1535, SP 1/92 f. 22, LP 8 no. 560, and Markham to Cromwell, 9 May [1535], SP 1/92 f. 135, LP 8 no. 692. On his appointment to the London Charterhouse, Henry Man Prior of Sheen to Cromwell, 23 April [1536], SP 1/92 f. 51, LP 8 no. 585 (misdated to 1535 by LP).

  33. Ralph Sadler to Cromwell, 27 September [1536], SP 1/106 f. 217, LP 11 no. 501.

  34. J. F. Mozle
y, William Tyndale (London, 1937) is still the most scholarly overall account of his life, and where not otherwise referenced I have followed its narrative and analysis, particularly in the account of his fall, 294–342. It must nevertheless now be supplemented by P. Arblaster, G. Juhasz and G. Latré, Tyndale’s Testament (Turnhout 2002).

  35. B. Buxton, At the House of Thomas Poyntz: the betrayal of William Tyndale with the consequences for an English merchant and his family (Lavenham, 2013) makes clear that the traditional notion that Tyndale lived in the English House in Antwerp has no foundation.

  36. The complex but very suggestive history of Richard Phelips and his sons is well presented in HC 1509–1558 3, 103–5, which produces intriguing possible links between the Phelips family and Cromwell via the Marquess of Dorset and even a possible Cromwell relative, Richard Wykes. Using the conventional spelling for this gentry family usefully distinguishes them from the London victim of religious persecution Thomas Philips, discussed above: this page.

  37. The most vivid account here is of Thomas Theobald to Archbishop Cranmer, 31 July [1535], BL MS Cotton Galba B/X f. 119, LP 8 no. 1151. For elucidation and correction on the dates of Tyndale’s arrest and death, see Arblaster, Juhasz and Latré, Tyndale’s Testament, 176–7.

  38. For Stokesley’s letters to Cromwell on 26 and 29 January [probably 1533] about Edward Tyndale, denouncing William Tyndale as well, see SP 1/74 f. 83, LP 6 no. 81, and SP 1/74 f. 89, LP 6 no. 95. Despite Stokesley’s honeyed words, these letters suggest that Cromwell was not sympathetic to the Bishop in that land dispute.

  39. Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell, 4 September [1535], SP 1/96 f. 74, LP 9 no. 275; Vaughan to Cromwell, [11 September 1535], SP 1/90 f. 195 with a dummy placement as SP 1/96 f. 135, LP 8 no. 303 and now LP 9 no. 346; Robert Flegge to Cromwell, 22 September 1535, BL MS Cotton Galba B/X f. 68, LP 9 no. 409.

  40. John Hacket to Cromwell, 12 March 1534, SP 1/82 ff. 246v–247r, LP 7 no. 317. See also vivid accounts of the Netherlands mayhem in Hacket to Cromwell and John Cooke to Cromwell, both 31 March 1534, SP 1/83 f. 23, LP 7 no. 397, and SP 1/83 f. 20, LP 7 no. 394; and Cooke to Cromwell, 5 April 1534, SP 1/83 f. 64, LP 7 no. 440.

  41. W. J. de Bakker, ‘Civic reformer in Anabaptist Münster: Bernard Rothmann, 1495?–1535?’ (University of Chicago PhD, 1987), 241. For a compendium of much evidence of the Anabaptist witness in England in 1535, I. B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieuwkoop, 1972), 37–9, 49–77.

  42. It is difficult to disentangle Cromwell’s and Cranmer’s contributions from the evidence: MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 146.

  43. Cromwell’s remembrance, early May 1535, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 424, LP 8 no. 475; Chapuys to Charles V, 5 June 1535, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 170, at 484; deposition of Bishop Fisher’s servant Richard Wilson, LP 8 no. 856.

  44. Walter Mersche to Cromwell, 4 July [1535], SP 1/93 f. 190, LP 8 no. 982.

  45. [Anon.], A treuue nyeuu tydynges of the wo[n]derfull worckes of the rebaptisers of M[u]nster in Westuaell (Antwerp, 1535, RSTC 564).

  46. R. Parsons, A treatise of three conuersions of England from paganisme to Christian religion (3 vols., Saint-Omer, 1603–4, RSTC 19416), 1, 565.

  47. SP 1/237 f. 284r, LP Addenda 1 i no. 809. There is no reason to date this set of memoranda any earlier than 1535, pace Horst, Radical Brethren, 49–50, 53–4. Even if one accepts that the work mentioned can be identified with one published in 1532, the memorandum is not necessarily asserting that this Confession has only just been published. Really nothing suggests Anabaptist activity in England earlier than 1534–5.

  48. For my development of these themes, see D. MacCulloch, ‘Calvin: fifth Latin Doctor of the Church?’, in I. Backus and P. Benedict (eds.), Calvin and his Influence, 1509–2009 (Oxford, 2011), 33–45.

  49. Knecht, ‘Francis I, “Defender of the Faith”?’, 119–24.

  50. On Henry and the ‘middle way’, see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 114, 137, 164, 183, 193, 212, 216, 238, 241–2, 265, 267, 275, 335, 348, 351, 617.

  51. Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, in Walter (ed.), Doctrinal Treatises by Tyndale, 124.

  52. J. Ayre (ed.), Prayers and other pieces of Thomas Becon (Parker Society, 1844), 40–41.

  53. Corrie (ed.), Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, 197.

  54. For the following paragraphs where not otherwise referenced, see McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 26–34.

  55. Maas, Reformation and Robert Barnes, 27–8.

  56. Royal diplomatic instructions to Cromwell via the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Rochford, [19 July 1535], BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/VI f. 337, LP 8 no. 1062. In fact Melanchthon had a healthy fear of the French invitation and had made his own arrangements to avoid it: Melanchthon to Joachim Camerarius, 31 August 1535, Corpus Reformatorum, ed. C. G. Bretschneider et al. (101 vols. to date, 1834–), 2, cols. 918–19. For Haynes’s nerves about his inexperience, see Simon Haynes to Cromwell, 22 July [1535], SP 1/94 f. 115, LP 8 no. 1086.

  57. Corpus Reformatorum 2, cols. 920–30, at 927: ‘Accipimus te cum in sacris literis praeclare doctum esse, tum in reliqua philosophia, ac praecipue in illa pulcherrima parte, videlicet in consideratione motuum et effectuum coelestium . . .’.

  58. For decent summary discussion, J. Schofield, Philip Melanchthon and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 2006), 61–7, and for monograph-length treatment of this highly nuanced question, G. B. Graybill, Evangelical Free Will: Philipp Melanchthon’s doctrinal journey on the origins of faith (Oxford, 2010).

  59. Henry VIII to Melanchthon, 1 October 1535, Corpus Reformatorum 2, cols. 947–8; the letter from Cromwell does not appear to have survived. For Cromwell’s memorandum probably from August 1535 to arrange for the 300 crowns, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 433, LP 9 no. 219.

  60. Cromwell arranged credit with an Italian firm in Germany to sustain Foxe and his colleagues in their mission through his old neighbour in Austin Friars, Antonio de Vivaldi: SP 1/97 f. 129, LP 9 no. 589, credit note dated 11 October 1535. Chapuys, ever vigilant, immediately reported this to his master: Chapuys to Charles V, 13 October 1535, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 213, at 555.

  Chapter 13: Progresses and Scrutinies: 1535–1536

  1. Chapuys to Charles V, 5 June 1535, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 170, at 484.

  2. Chapuys to Charles V, 24 October 1534, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 102, at 295.

  3. Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 191–7.

  4. For what follows on the progress and visitation, see respectively the excellent summary account in D. Starkey (ed.), Henry VIII: a European Court in England (London, 1991), 120–26 (including a useful map of the itinerary), and Shaw, ‘Compendium Compertorum’, passim: an exemplary piece of archival research and analysis, which effectively replaces the study of the visitation in Knowles, Religious Orders in England III, ch. 22.

  5. Edmund Billingford appears in Thomas Cromwell’s service in 1538 as one of the ‘Gentlemen not to be allowed in my Lord’s household aforesaid but when they have commandment or cause necessary to repair thither’: SP 1/140 f. 229r, LP 13 ii no. 1184[iii]. Edmund Billingford esquire is recorded as supervisor of the will of Thomas Bateman of Flixton (adjacent to South Elmham) in the 1550s (TNA, C 1/1406/26). On the Billingfords of Stoke Holy Cross (Norfolk) and their relationship to the Batemans, see Blomefield and Parkin, Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 5, 523–4, 526, and J. Corder (ed.), The Visitation of Suffolk 1561 made by William Hervy . . . (2 vols., Harleian Society, new series 2 and 3, 1981, 1984), 2, 379; these show that Edmund was son and heir of Thomas Billingford. Thomas Billingford, probably the same as Thomas Bateman’s father-in-law as well as Edmund Billingford’s father (and putatively James’s father too), received deer from the Howard estate at Framlingham in the 1510s: BL Additional Rolls 17746.

  6. The clinching identification of Billingford, described as
beneficed in Suffolk and taking various prominent people’s names in vain, including that of the Duke of Norfolk, is in Anthony Cope to Cromwell, 2 May [1535], SP 1/83 f. 185, LP 7 no. 600 (misdated by LP). On South Elmham St George, also known as Sancroft, and Billingford as Rector there on the presentation of Thomas Bateman, who farmed the benefice from the Bishop, see A. Suckling, The History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk (2 vols., Ipswich, 1846–8), 1, 207–12; V. B. Redstone, ‘South Elmham Deanery’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 14 pt3 (1912), 323–31, at 329, 331. Billingford was there described as ‘Magister’, implying a university degree.

  7. SP 1/106 f. 189, LP 11 no. 484, to Horsham St Faith Priory, dated 23 September [1534]; SP 1/106 f. 190, LP 11 no. 485, to Coxford Priory, undated. Merriman 2 nos. 163, 180, misdated them as well as being fooled into considering them authentic.

  8. Besides Cope’s letter referenced above, see Anthony Cope to Cromwell, 10 May [1535], SP 1/84 f. 6, LP 7 no. 641. For previous depositions on Billingford’s activities in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, apparently all taken in Nottingham on 24 January 1535, see LP 7 Appendix no. 22, LP 8 no. 94, and SP 1/89 f. 50, LP 8 no. 81[i and ii].

  9. On Billingford’s successor as Rector, Robert Thompson, see VE 3, 447. Interestingly, he was deprived under Queen Mary, presumably as a married man, and restored under Elizabeth: Suckling, The History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk, 1, 212.

  10. On Cromwell’s clash with Christopher Hales over John Brigenden, see above, this page. Other examples are Nicholas Caunton (Christopher Hales to Cromwell, 19 July 1536/9, SP 1/152 f. 140, LP 14 i no. 1287), Nicholas Gifford (Cromwell to Wolsey, 21 October 1530, BL MS Cotton Appendix XLVIII f. 110, LP 4 iii no. 6699) and indeed some of his vice-gerential visitors like Thomas Lee and Ellis ap Rhys. For his patronage of Richard Lee against snobs, see Miss St Clare Byrne’s perceptive discussion in Lisle Letters 4, 361–2, and the arch-example apart from his own son is Sir Thomas Wyatt, whose relationship with Cromwell is perceptively described by Brigden, Thomas Wyatt, passim.