Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  9. On all this see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 159–66, and McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 26–76; for Alesius’s failed attempt to leave England at this time, TNA, SP 70/7 f. 11r, Calendar of State Papers Foreign . . . Elizabeth [I], 1: 1558–59, no. 1303, at 533.

  10. LP 10 no. 1256[2].

  11. Jane Lady Rochford to Cromwell, late May 1536, BL MS Cotton Vespasian F/XIII f. 199, LP 10 no. 1010; Earl of Wiltshire to Cromwell, 1 July [1536], SP 1/105 f. 5, LP 11 no. 17.

  12. Complete Peerage 2, 40 and 6, 478. Seymour’s patent of creation, 5 June 1536: LP 10 no. 1256[4], and for Garter King of Arms’s letter about the King’s choice to Cromwell, beginning of June 1536, SP 1/104 f. 85, LP 10 no. 1017.

  13. Robert Sherburne Bishop of Chichester to Cromwell, 7 May [1536], SP 1/103 f. 250, LP 10 no. 818, and see Richard Leighton’s dismissive reference to him when writing to Cromwell on 1 October 1535, ‘Tu ipse optime nosti hominem’, SP 1/97 f. 74, LP 9 no. 509. For his will, Lisle Letters 3, 425, and for background, Lander, ‘Church courts and the Reformation in the diocese of Chichester, 1500–58’.

  14. Cromwell to Stephen Gardiner, 14 May [1536], Merriman 2 no. 147, LP 10 no. 873. For Husee’s startlingly prompt and well-informed comment on this, see his letter to Lord Lisle, 24 May [1536], SP 1/104 f. 48, LP 10 no. 952. For Gardiner’s protests, e.g. Cromwell to Gardiner, 8 June and 21 July 1536, Merriman 2 nos. 149 and 156, LP 10 no. 1084 and LP 11 no. 152.

  15. D. Starkey, ‘Court and government’, in C. Coleman and D. Starkey (eds.), Revolution Reassessed: revisions in the history of Tudor government and administration (Oxford, 1986), 29–58, at 53–5.

  16. S. E. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII 1536–1547 (Cambridge, 1977), 1–39, and on the division recorded in a later reminiscence of William Thomas, Hawkyard, House of Commons 1509–1558, 334.

  17. The account below where not otherwise referenced follows the excellent summary in J. Edwards, Mary I: England’s Catholic queen (New Haven and London, 2011), 43–51.

  18. Chapuys to Charles V, 6 June 1536, Spanish Calendar 5 ii no. 61, at 160–61.

  19. Chapuys to Charles V, 1 July 1536, Spanish Calendar 5 ii no. 70, at 185.

  20. Richard Sparkford to John Scudamore, 30 June [1536], BL MS Additional 11042 f. 68r (not in LP). On Sparkford’s career, see Emden, Oxford 1501 to 1540, 530, and for his chaplaincy to Tunstall (and also his long acquaintance with Cromwell), see William Popley to Cromwell, 27 September [1522], SP 1/26 f. 57, LP 3 ii no. 2577.

  21. Princess Mary to Cromwell, 23 June 1536, LP 10 no. 1186: a text totally lost in the Cottonian fire and now preserved only in T. Hearne (ed.), Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis, Vita Henrici Quinti, Regis Angliae: accedit, Sylloge Epistolarum, a variis Angliae Principibus scriptarum (Oxford, 1716), 144.

  22. Chapuys to Charles V, 8 July 1536, Spanish Calendar 5 ii no. 71, at 195–6. Wriothesley’s Chronicle 1, 51 corroborates Chapuys’s account. On Hackney in the Boleyn crisis, see above, this page.

  23. Chapuys to Granvelle, 23 July 1536, LP 11 no. 148 (not in Spanish Calendar), from an MS in Vienna. It is baffling that the LP translation made this object a ring rather than the medal which is patently what is described.

  24. Mary to Cromwell, 8 December [1536], BL MS Cotton Otho C/X f. 277, LP 11 no. 1269, deficiencies in the damaged text supplied by Thomas Hearne.

  25. Elizabeth Duchess of Norfolk to Cromwell, 26 June [1537], BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 388v, LP 12 ii no. 143.

  26. Chapuys to Granvelle, 8 July 1536, Spanish Calendar 5 ii no. 72, at 198: ‘et doubtent mesmement quil [Henry] ne la veuillie bailler a maistre cremuel, ce que ne crois en sorte du monde, et pense quicelluy cremuel, ores que le dict roy voulsist, ny entendroit . . .’.

  27. John Husee to Lady Lisle, 22 February [1537], SP 3/12 f. 24, Lisle Letters 4 no. 868; it is not clear who this child was, nor how long s/he lived. See the payments in Mary’s accounts around this christening, Madden (ed.), Privy purse expenses of the Princess Mary . . ., 16, 19, which also has a note partly in her own hand of Cromwell’s New Year’s gifts to her, at 6, 51. For the Valentine payment, see LP 14 ii no. 782, at 329.

  28. For acute commentary on this, see Starkey, ‘Court and government’, 52–4.

  29. Chapuys to Granvelle, 8 July 1536, Spanish Calendar 5 ii no. 72, at 198.

  30. Richard Sparkford to John Scudamore, 30 June [1536], BL MS Additional 11042 f. 68r; it is extraordinary that historians have overlooked this remarkable letter. It confirms what has been doubted, e.g. by Lisle Letters 3, 439–40, that Lord Beauchamp was in the running for Lord Privy Seal: that is what John Husee had told Lord Lisle on 26 June [1536], SP 1/104 f. 208, Lisle Letters 3 no. 734.

  31. That seems a more likely argument than that put forward by Lehmberg, Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 16–17, and repeated since, that Catholic supporters of Mary and enemies of Cromwell objected; that is to mistake the atmosphere of this summer.

  32. Bath is included in Anthony Budgegood’s account of leading English nobility, end of 1538, LP 13 ii no. 732, printed from a document in the Vatican via W. M. Brady, The episcopal succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, A.D. 1400 to 1875 (3 vols., Rome, 1876–7), 3, 493.

  33. W. A. Shaw, The Knights of England (2 vols., London, 1906), 2, 50. For the peerage grants for Cromwell and Fitzwarren, both completed on 9 July 1536, see LP 11 no. 202[14, 15] On 4 July one commission of the peace, for Essex, anticipated his peerage by naming him as Lord ‘Crumwell’ in the appropriate place on the bench after the earls: LP 11 no. 202[9].

  34. See above, this page. There has been confusion about Cromwell’s title, first perpetrated by the great antiquarian William Dugdale. For the quashing of his idea that the barony was of Oakham, see Complete Peerage 3, 556n, and for (actually rather rare) uses of the Wimbledon title: John Husee to Lord Lisle, 8 July [1536], SP 1/105 f. 17, LP 11 no. 46; Earl of Northumberland to ‘my Lord Crumwell Lord of Wimbuldon’, 30 March [1537], BL MS Cotton Vespasian F/XIII f. 159, LP 12 i no. 774; Henry Broke to ‘Lord Cromwell of Wymlenton’, 11 August [1538], SP 1/135 ff. 63–4, LP 13 ii no. 75.

  35. The complex process can be followed in Statutes of the Realm 3, 585–6, 712–15: 27 Henry VIII, cap. 50; 28 Henry VIII, cap. 50.

  36. See above, this page; Hales’s grant of the Mastership, completed the day after Cromwell’s patent of nobility, specifically referred to his custody of The Rolls: LP 11 no. 202[17]. On St Radegund’s Bradsole, see VCH: Kent 2, 172–5. For the suppression of St Gregory’s as late as 23 February 1538 after much litigation and trouble, Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the days of the Reformation, 264, 284, and TNA, E 321/34/6, 321/2/29.

  37. LP 10 no. 1256[26].

  38. For further discussion of this and what follows, see D. MacCulloch, ‘A Reformation in the balance: power struggles in the diocese of Norwich, 1533–1553’, in C. Rawcliffe, R. Virgoe and R. Wilson (eds.), Counties and Communities: essays on East Anglian history presented to Hassell Smith (Norwich, 1996), 97–115, especially 102–3. Repps had called himself ‘Your extremely poor chaplain and assuredly perpetual bedeman’ in asking to be excused attendance in Parliament in late 1535: Repps to Cromwell, 22 October [1535], SP 1/239 f. 86, LP Addenda 1 i no. 948 (misdated by LP).

  39. Sir Thomas Rush to Cromwell, 15 December [1535], SP 1/99 f. 120, LP 9 no. 978; for the ride to London, TNA, E 315/128/85, deposition of Richard Redman.

  40. See above, this page.

  41. Thomas Thacker to Cromwell, 24 July [1536], SP 1/105 f. 144, LP 11 no. 159, deals with the first building work at Mortlake and the partial removal of The Rolls household there, on the first day that parts of the house were in a condition to receive them.

  42. John Whalley to Cromwell, 5 April [1536], SP 1/103 f. 95, LP 10 no. 624.

  43. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 166–9.

  44. Lehmberg, Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 34–6; Margaret Douglas
to Cromwell, ?August 1537, BL MS Cotton Vespasian F/XIII f. 241, LP 11 no. 294.

  45. Duke of Norfolk to Cromwell, 12 July [1537], SP 1/122 f. 237, LP 12 ii no. 248.

  46. Elizabeth Duchess of Norfolk to Cromwell, 28 September [1536] and 24 October [1537]: SP 1/106 f. 219, LP 11 no. 502 and BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 390, LP 12 ii no. 976.

  47. On Cromwell’s letter to Mary and the treatment of Richmond, see Chapuys to Antoine de Perrenot, LP 11 no. 221 (not in Spanish Calendar).

  48. Duke of Norfolk to Cromwell, 5 August 1536, SP 1/105 f. 248, LP 11 no. 233.

  49. Lorenzo Campeggio to Cromwell, 14 January 1535, SP 1/89 f. 26, LP 8 no. 51.

  50. Campeggio to Tunstall, 5 June 1536, SP 1/104 f. 121, LP 10 no. 1067; Campeggio to Duke of Suffolk, SP 1/104 f. 122, LP 10 no. 1068. The Italian original of Marc’Antonio’s instructions not only survives in the State Papers but was turned into a Latin version, presumably for the King’s benefit, by the royal Italian secretary Peter Vannes. The Italian original is BL MS Cotton Vitellius B/XIV ff. 205–6, and the Latin translation SP 1/104 f. 126, LP 10 no. 1077[1–2].

  51. W. E. Wilkie, The Cardinal Protectors of England: Rome and the Tudors before the Reformation (Cambridge, 1974), 229–32.

  52. Edwards, Archbishop Pole, 51, 57. On the publishing history and prehistory of De unitate, see T. F. Dunn, ‘The development of the text of Pole’s “De Unitate Ecclesiae”’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 70 (1976), 455–68.

  53. Tunstall’s letter of 13 July 1536 to Pole is preserved in his own draft and also in a transcript by Wriothesley probably made for Cromwell: respectively BL MS Cleopatra E/VI. ff. 390–95, LP 11 no. 72[2], and SP 1/105 ff. 32–44, LP 11 no. 72[1].

  54. Dunn, ‘Development of the text of Pole’s “De Unitate Ecclesiae”’, 457, 462–3.

  55. BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 323r, LP 13 ii no. 1036.

  56. On what follows where not otherwise referenced, MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 160–66, and Lehmberg, Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 37–9.

  57. Wriothesley’s Chronicle 1, 52.

  58. The best available text of the injunctions is to be found in C. H. Williams (ed.), English Historical Documents 1485–1558 (London, 1967), 805–8. The fact that they specify 1 August 1537 as the date for acquiring a Bible for churches suggests that they were first launched exactly a year before that.

  59. Cromwell to Lord Lisle, 1 August [1536], SP 3/2 f. 166, Lisle Letters 2 no. 152a, 96n.

  60. For discussion about this clause, which is frequently and wrongly asserted not to have formed part of the original text of summer 1536, see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 166.

  61. The account in G. Latré, ‘The 1535 Coverdale Bible and its Antwerp origins’, in O. O’Sullivan (ed.), The Bible as Book: the Reformation (New Castle, DE, and London, 2000), 89–102, needs modifying by D. Paisey and G. Bartrum, ‘Hans Holbein and Miles Coverdale: a new woodcut’, Print Quarterly 26 (2009), 227–53, particularly 244–6. See also James Nicholson to Cromwell, ?autumn 1535, SP 1/96 f. 33, LP 9 no. 226.

  62. W. Tyndale, A Treatyse of the Justificacyon by faith only, otherwise called the Parable of the wyked mammon (Southwark, 1536, RSTC 24455), title-page and ff. 1–6r, 106r; see Paisey and Bartrum, ‘Hans Holbein and Miles Coverdale’, 248–9.

  63. For what follows, unless otherwise cited, see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 174–84, and D. MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking world’, in E. Campi and P. Opitz (eds.), Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575): Leben, Denken, Wirkung (Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte 24, 2007), 891–934, at 891–910. In the latter piece, I go into remorseless detail on the prosopography of the visitors to Zürich discussed below, and will not repeat those citations here unless for clarification.

  64. William Clifton to Cromwell, 11 May [1536], BL MS Cotton Vitellius B/XXI f. 178, LP 10 no. 847. There is a glitch in the Clifton family pedigree recorded in G. W. Marshall (ed.), The Visitations of the County of Nottingham in the Years 1569 and 1614 . . . (Harleian Society 4, 1871), 18, as Customer Clifton (who died in 1564) cannot possibly be of the same generation as Dr Gamaliel Clifton, who was nevertheless Dean of Hereford, and who probably therefore accounts for William’s presence in the diplomatic party of Bishop Foxe of Hereford. Probably this William was the son of Gamaliel’s brother William. On the remarkable Clifton family, see also MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 17–18.

  65. A tantalizingly brief summary of Marot’s letter to Cromwell, clearly of the second half of 1536, is in Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 134r.

  66. Euler, ‘Religious and cultural exchange during the Reformation’, 101, 103.

  67. Logan, ‘First royal visitation of the English universities’, 873–5, sums up the story broadly correctly, though he confuses Thomas son of William Marshall, junior Fellow of Magdalen, with William’s brother Thomas (so uncle of the younger Thomas), former Demy of Magdalen and in 1535–6 Vicar of South Molton. To separate them, cf. Michael Drum to William Marshall, 9 March ?1534, SP 1/82 f. 239, LP 7 no. 308, with William Marshall to Cromwell, late December 1536, SP 1/113 f. 20, LP 11 no. 1355. The uncle’s markedly conservative career probably indicates that it was not Cromwell but John Longland Bishop of Lincoln who wrote a recommendation of him in May ?1535, SP 1/92 f. 194, LP 8 no. 790, an unsigned contemporary copy of the original letter made for Cromwell’s archive.

  68. Emden, Oxford 1501 to 1540, 643, 742. If he is the same as the priest ordained in Exeter diocese on 29 March 1533, he probably links with the William Woodroffe revealed as having a Devon and Somerset clerical career taking off at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign: Clergy of the Church of England Database, s.v. Woodroff, William.

  69. P. Boesch (ed.), ‘Rudolph Gwalthers Reise nach England im Jahr 1537’, Zwingliana 8/8 (1947), 433–71.

  70. On Lord John, see above, this page. The one major error I made in MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking world’, was to identify this Lord John Grey as Henry Grey’s brother; he would have been too young to undertake any hosting duties in 1537, and so it is Henry’s uncle John who was responsible.

  71. Wentworth’s mother was a Woodroffe: HC 1509–1558 3, 582.

  72. Boesch (ed.), ‘Rudolph Gwalthers Reise nach England im Jahr 1537’, 452: Michael Drum, John Somer, Nicholas Partridge, Richard Arderne, Thomas Slithurst, John Hoker, Simon Parrett. These are mostly the earlier and therefore probably the more senior names in the list of signatories in 1535. Several of them went on corresponding with Gwalther when he returned home: Euler, ‘Religious and cultural exchange during the Reformation’, 106.

  73. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 179–81. Gwalther arrived back on 8 June 1537: Boesch (ed.), ‘Rudolph Gwalthers Reise nach England im Jahr 1537’, 459.

  74. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 183–4.

  75. Ibid., 354–5, 378–83, and cf. the concurrence of Euler, ‘Religious and cultural exchange during the Reformation’, 129.

  76. An excellent account of him is provided by A. Boyle, ‘Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl of Arundel: politics and culture in the Tudor nobility’ (University of Oxford DPhil, 2003), and in Boyle, ‘Hans Eworth’s portrait of the Earl of Arundel and the politics of 1549–50’, EHR 117 (2002), 25–47, especially 27–9.

  77. Bartholomew Traheron to Heinrich Bullinger, 20 [sic – in fact about a week later] February 1540, H. Bullinger, Heinrich Bullinger: Briefwechseledition, various editors (Zürich, 1973–, in progress), 10, 51; H. Robinson (ed.), Original Letters relative to the English Reformation . . . (2 vols., Parker Society, 1846–7), 316–17. MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking world’, 905, provides the possibility of more tangles along these lines than those with which I weary the reader here.

  Chapter 16: Grace for the Commonwealth: 1536

  1. Circular of Cromwell e.g. to the Earl of Cumberland, 18 June [1535], Merriman 1 no. 105, LP 8 no. 893; James Layburn to Cromwell, 8 July
[1535], SP 1/94 f. 10, LP 8 no. 1008; Thomas Stanley Lord Monteagle to Cromwell, 4 July [1535], SP 1/93 f. 192, LP 8 no. 984. On Lee, Layburn and the Duke of Richmond, see Thomas Lee to Cromwell, 14 September [1533], SP 1/79 f. 53, LP 6 no. 1124 and Thomas Lee to Cromwell, 2 December 1537, SP 1/126 f. 177, LP 12 ii no. 1161. For the knight wrongly identified as a JP, who nevertheless offered his services, see Sir Stephen Hamerton to Cromwell, 5 July [1535], SP 1/93 f. 202, LP 8 no. 995, and for further background, see C. Haigh, The Last Days of the Lancashire Monasteries and the Pilgrimage of Grace (Manchester, 1969), 50.

  2. Sir Richard Tempest, Sir Marmaduke Constable, Robert Chaloner and John Lambert the elder to Cromwell, 5 July [1535], SP 1/93 f. 198, LP 8 no. 992.

  3. Henry Earl of Cumberland to Cromwell, 22 August [1535], SP 1/95 f. 127, LP 9 no. 150; Sir Richard Tempest to Cromwell, 27 August [1535], SP 1/95 f. 183, LP 9 no. 196; on Tunstall, Sir James Layburn to Cromwell, 24 September [1535], SP 1/96 f. 213, LP 9 no. 427.

  4. Christopher Jenny to Cromwell, 27 March [1536], SP 1/91 f. 144, LP 8 no. 457 (misdated to 1535 in LP); see also M. L. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: a study of the rebel armies of October 1536 (Manchester, 1996), 132, 143, 166–7, 413. On the background, which reveals that in 1541 Mistress Carr came to an agreement with William Wycliffe, perhaps therefore not her husband’s murderer, see ‘Parishes: Wycliffe’, in VCH: Yorkshire North Riding 1, 138–42, and R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001), 40–41. William Wycliffe was still alive and honoured in 1562, when his relative Joan Wycliffe of Richmond made him supervisor of her will: J. Raine (ed.), Wills and Inventories from the Registry of the Archdeaconry of Richmond . . . (Surtees Society 26, 1853), 160.

  5. Memorandum by Sir Thomas Tempest, October 1536, SP 1/112 f. 114v, LP 11 no. 1244. For the identification of Tempest as the author, see Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 167 n. 158.

  6. For what follows where not otherwise referenced, see the deposition of James Rokeby, April 1537, SP 1/118 ff. 254–7, LP 12 i no. 1011: now much damaged and not attributed to him in LP, but Dr Bush and I independently arrived at Rokeby’s identity (see Bush, Pilgrimage of Grace, 142n, 158–9).