Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  15. Depositions and covering letter from Sir Thomas Denys to Cromwell, 2 September [1538], SP 1/136 ff. 41–2, LP 13 ii no. 267; payments relating to this arrest in Cromwell’s accounts for September 1538, Arundel MS 97, LP 13 ii no. 1280, at 525.

  16. See John Husee’s guarded reference to Lord Lisle about ‘divers of the West Country . . . committed to the Tower’, 26 September 1538, SP 1/137 f. 29, Lisle Letters 5 no. 1230; for his suicide attempt, same to same, 28 October [1538], SP 1/138 f. 35, Lisle Letters 5 no. 1259.

  17. ‘Il y a bien longtemps que ce Roy m’avoit dict qu’il vouloit exterminer ceste maison de Montagu, qui est encore de la Rose Blanche, et de la maison de Polle dont est le Cardinal’: Castillon to Montmorency, 5 November 1538, Ribier (ed.), Lettres et mémoires d’estat, 1, 247–8, LP 13 ii no. 753.

  18. On what follows where not otherwise referenced, see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 152–3, 231–6. Gunn, ‘The structures of politics in early Tudor England’, 74–5, is a model of how to derive a sense of such relationships without exaggeration or distortion, in this case by probing the Earl of Hertford’s kitchen accounts.

  19. For criticisms of the Archbishop on these grounds, see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 474–6.

  20. Bodl. MS Ashmole 861 336; Wriothesley’s Chronicle 1, 90.

  21. The two major letters are Theobald to Cromwell, 1 October [1538], BL MS Cotton Nero B/VI f. 137, LP 13 ii no. 507, and same to same, 12 November 1538, BL MS Cotton Nero B/VI f. 55, LP 13 ii no. 812; see also P. Marshall, ‘“The greatest man in Wales”: James ap Gruffydd ap Hywel and the international opposition to Henry VIII’, SCJ 39 (2008), 681–704, and S. Menache, ‘Papal attempts at a commercial boycott of the Muslims in the Crusader period’, JEH 63 (2012), 236–59.

  22. LP 13 ii nos. 1087–8.

  23. On the suicide attempt, Chapuys to Charles V, 9 January 1539, Lanz, Correspondenz des Kaisers Karl V, 2, 306, LP 14 i no. 37. On Courtenay and Pole, imperial ambassadors in England, to Charles V, 19 September 1553, Spanish Calendar 11, at 239.

  24. For what follows, see Starkey, ‘Intimacy and innovation’, 114–15, and D. Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII: personalities and politics (London, 1985), 120–21.

  25. See the list of members of the Privy Chamber, SP 1/142 f. 1, LP 14 i no. 2.

  26. All one needs to know about it is to be found in J. Youings, ‘The Council of the West’, TRHS 5th series 10 (1960), 41–59.

  27. For Abbot More of Walden as Audley’s Steward even before becoming Bishop of Colchester, see Audley to Cromwell, 29 August [1536], SP 1/106 f. 51, LP 11 no. 369, and same to same, 18 September [1536], SP 1/106 f. 179, LP 11 no. 465. More’s grant of episcopal office on 26 September 1536 was sealed at Audley’s then country home of Berechurch.

  28. Norfolk’s testimony to the Privy Council, mid-December 1546, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 101r, LP 21 ii no. 554. Gertrude Blount/Courtenay, Marchioness of Exeter, was sister to Charles Blount Lord Mountjoy, who was actually on the panel for the trial of his brother-in-law in December 1538.

  29. Elton, Policy and Police, 259–60, discussing SP 6/4 ff. 266–82, LP 13 ii no. 1183.

  30. Lady Lisle to Lord Lisle, 3 December [1538], SP 3/1 f. 52a, Lisle Letters 5 no. 1298.

  31. Robison, ‘Justices of the peace of Surrey’, 211–15.

  32. LP 14 i no. 290[3], 113.

  33. Thomas Wriothesley to Cromwell, 2 February [1539], SP 1/142 f. 224, LP 14 i no. 208.

  34. Fuller, Worthies of England, ed. Freeman, 548.

  35. John Butler and others to Conrad Pellican and others in Zürich, Epistolae Tigurinae de rebus potissimum ad ecclesiae Anglicanae Reformationem pertinentibus . . . (Parker Society, 1848), 404–6, LP 14 i no. 466.

  36. Elizabeth Lady Carew to Cromwell, c. March 1539, SP 1/242 f. 222, LP Addenda 1 ii no. 1404; Maud Carew (widow of Sir Nicholas’s father) to Cromwell, 20 November [1539], SP 1/155 f. 9, LP 14 ii no. 556.

  37. For what follows where not otherwise referenced, see the excellent account in Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland, 113–24.

  38. Thomas Allen (brother of the Irish Master of the Rolls) to Cromwell, 20 October [1538], SP 60/7 f. 150, LP 13 ii no. 658.

  39. Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland, 121. The commission of 3 February is LP 14 ii Appendix[5].

  40. John Allen, William Brabazon and Gerald Aylmer to Cromwell, 18 January [1539], SP 60/8 f. 1, LP 14 i no. 88.

  41. Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland, 122–3.

  42. For the correspondence about this new settlement, misdated in LP to 1538, see Lord Leonard Grey to Cromwell, 19 January [1539], SP 60/6 f. 11, LP 13 i no. 109, and Mayor and aldermen of Dublin to Cromwell, 23 January [1539], SP 60/6 f. 13, LP 13 i no. 130.

  43. Deputy and Council of Ireland to Cromwell, 21 May [1539], SP 60/8 f. 35, LP 14 i no. 1005.

  44. SP 1/133 f. 53, LP 13 i no. 1200. LP’s positioning of this letter was entirely arbitrary and was occasioned by a letter which has no relevance to it.

  45. On Sampson’s demolitions at St Paul’s on 23 August 1538, see Wriothesley’s Chronicle 1, 84; for his letter of self-defence to Cromwell, 4 September [1538], BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/V f. 306, LP 13 i no. 278. For the demolition of St Richard’s shrine, LP 13 ii no. 1103 (20 December 1538).

  46. I am very grateful to Dr Andrew Foster for arranging for me to see the main possible source, the surviving fragment of the register for Bishops Sampson, Day and Scory, West Sussex Record Office, Chichester, Ep I/1/6, which alas concerns itself only with national business relating to the diocese.

  47. Sir John Gage to Cromwell, 18 December [1538], SP 1/140 f. 125, LP 13 ii no. 1091.

  48. John Husee to Lord Lisle, 5 March [1539], SP 3/4 f. 133, Lisle Letters 5 no. 1114. This letter and its fellow to Lady Lisle written from Gravesend represent a rare piece of misdating in the Lisle Letters, following LP 13 i no. 421 and LP Addenda 1 ii no. 1309, where they are attributed to 1538. They will be seen to fit in between Lisle Letters 5 nos. 1361a and 1362, 4 and 7 March 1539.

  49. Henry Polstead to Cromwell, Friday ?14 March 1539, SP 1/129 f. 46, LP 13 i no. 293, misdated in LP. The farming arrangements described in it are certainly of late winter or early spring.

  50. Alienation licence is LP 13 ii no. 967[54], passing on 30 November. The conveyance to Gregory after that appears to have been a month later, 26 December 1538: Blomefield and Parkin, Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 9, 489.

  51. The exhausting twists and turns of the Painswick affair can be traced throughout the Lisle Letters, best approached by index entries for Painswick.

  52. LP 14 i no. 191[2].

  53. See various payments for the move and dissolution of the Lewes household between March and May 1539 in an account of John Williamson, LP 14 i no. 1049, and payments for repairs and provisions in April and May, LP 14 ii no. 782, at 341. The Lewes Priory precinct was leased on 21 June 1539 to Nicholas Jenny or Jennings, a Sussex yeoman who was a long-standing servant of Cromwell’s, and who organized the winding up of the household there; he was given a new Crown lease on Cromwell’s fall: LP 16 no. 305[70] (27 November 1540). For Jennings’s role in organizing the move from Lewes to Leeds, John Williamson to Cromwell, 2 August [1539], SP 1/153 f. 6, LP 14 ii no. 12.

  54. The indenture on the Close Roll is LP 14 i no. 9, the alienation licence (1 January 1539) LP 14 i no. 191[1], and for the payments to Dudley in Cromwell’s accounts on 13 and 25 February 1539, LP 14 ii no. 782, at 340.

  55. John Husee to Lord Lisle, 16 October [1537], SP 3/5 f. 91, Lisle Letters 4 no. 1024. For what other evidence there is in this reconstruction, see HC 1509–1558 1, 112–14.

  56. Gregory’s absence from the bench was first noticed by Mary Robertson: ‘Profit and purpose in the development of Thomas Cromwell’s landed estates’, 332.

  Chapter 21: Stumbling Blocks: 1539

  1. SP 1/1
43 ff. 198–205, LP 14 i no. 402; see discussion in Elton, Policy and Police, 195–8.

  2. SP 1/143 f. 205v, LP 14 i no. 402. ‘Tyrant’ has been altered from ‘traitor’, which one can dismiss as a slip of the pen.

  3. SP 1/143 f. 202rv, LP 14 i no. 402.

  4. A fine reassessment is Clark, ‘Humanism and reform in pre-Reformation English monasteries’, especially 87–92.

  5. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors, 138–9, 162–3.

  6. On the background, see the essays in H. Wansbrough and A. Marett-Crosby (eds.), Benedictines in Oxford (London, 1997), and on this development of the 1530s, Cunich, ‘Benedictine monks at the University of Oxford and the dissolution of the monasteries’, in ibid., 155–82, at 171–2. The largest numbers of known Benedictine Oxbridge students 1500–40 are Bury St Edmunds (15), Canterbury Cathedral (43), Durham (30), Evesham (12), Glastonbury (15), Gloucester (13), St Albans (12), Westminster (28), Worcester (10): ibid., 182.

  7. Knowles, Religious Orders in England III, 431–2.

  8. Audley to Cromwell, 8 September [1538], SP 1/136 f. 86, LP 13 ii no. 306; on Great Malvern, Hugh Latimer to Cromwell, 13 December [1538], BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 320, LP 13 ii no. 1036, and on Hailes, see a remembrance of Cromwell’s from September 1538, BL MS Cotton Caligula B/III f. 209, LP 13 ii no. 488.

  9. For Walsingham, see Richard Vowell Prior of Walsingham to Cromwell, 12 August [1538], SP 1/135 f. 78, LP 13 ii no. 86; Robert Ferrar Prior of St Oswald’s (Nostell) to Cromwell, 5 September [1538], SP 1/136 f. 76, LP 13 ii no. 285; for Thetford, Duke of Norfolk to Matthew Parker, 19 August 1538, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 114A 106. The Duke’s proposals for Thetford dated to 1539 by LP, SP 1/156 ff. 95–102, LP 14 ii nos. 815–16, are actually probably near-contemporary with the letter to Parker. For a hint that Leicester Abbey might be turned into a collegiate church at exactly this time, see above, this page.

  10. Richard Thornden to Cromwell, 30 September [1538], SP 1/137 f. 51, LP 13 ii no. 465.

  11. John Freeman to Cromwell, 3 October [1538], SP 1/137 ff. 89–92r, LP 13 ii no. 528[1, 2]; John Uvedale to Cromwell, 4 October [1538], SP 1/137 f. 96, LP 13 ii no. 534, and on the Uvedales at Marrick, see Smith, 671.

  12. Colvin (ed.), History of the King’s Works 4, 367–83.

  13. Ralph Sadler to Cromwell, 16 March [1539], SP 1/144 f. 116, LP 14 i no. 529.

  14. Castillon to [Constable Montmorency], 26 January 1539, Ribier (ed.), Lettres et mémoires d’estat, 1, 364, LP 14 i no. 144.

  15. On what follows, see the inspired reconstruction of events in A. J. Slavin, ‘The Rochepot Affair’, SCJ 10/1 (Spring 1979), 3–19.

  16. Cromwell to the Privy Council, 24 July 1540, Merriman 2 no. 351, LP 15 no. 910.

  17. M. D. Orth, ‘The English Great Bible of 1539 and the French connection’, in S. L’Engle and G. B. Guest (eds.), Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander (London, 2006), 171–84, argues for a French artist, known only as the Master of François de Rohan. A French artist would seem logical, but a case for an English Court artist is pressed by T. C. String, Art and Communication in the Reign of Henry VIII (Abingdon, 2008), 96. Her argument that such a knowing portrait of the current English political and religious scene would have to come from someone resident in England is interesting but not conclusive.

  18. T. C. String, ‘Henry VIII’s illuminated “Great Bible”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 59 (1996), 315–24, at 323.

  19. John Hutton to Cromwell, 4 December [1537], SP 1/127 f. 5, LP 12 ii no. 1172.

  20. Chapuys and Mendoza to Charles V, 17 June 1538, Spanish Calendar V ii no. 225, at 531.

  21. McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 142, sees Cromwell taking an initiative in a Cleves marriage proposal earlier, in August 1538, on the basis of his reading of a report by Burchard to the Elector of Saxony that ‘[H]err Crumellus, welcher zum hochsten der Teutschen Nation genaigt ist, wolte am liebsten das sich seine Mait. mit den Teutschen fursten befreien det’, which he translates as ‘lord Cromwell, who is most favourably inclined to the German nation, wants most dearly that the king should wed himself with the German princes.’ Reading ‘befreundet’ at the end of the sentence, I would suggest that this simply means ‘Lord Cromwell, who is well disposed to the noblest of the German nation, would prefer that his Majesty develops friendship with the German princes.’

  22. Ibid., 142–4: the main documents, dateable to January 1539, are the King’s instructions in SP 1/142 f. 105, and Cromwell’s in BL MS Cotton Vitellius B/XXI ff. 175–176r, LP 14 i no. 103[1, 2]; the quotation is from BL MS Vitellius B/XXI f. 175v.

  23. This is attested in a slightly garbled sentence of the account of the argument by Thomas Wakefield’s later reminiscence to Archbishop Cranmer in Bodl. MS Jesus College 74 f. 299v. See also above, this page.

  24. McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 149–53.

  25. TNA, E 36/143 129, LP 14 i no. 655.

  26. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 241–2.

  27. Cromwell to Henry VIII, 17 March [1539], BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 265, LP 14 i no. 538.

  28. Sowerby, Renaissance and Reform, 134–5, usefully clarifies the nature of the appointment.

  29. For what follows on this Parliament where not otherwise referenced, see Lehmberg, Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 40–84.

  30. On Cheyney see HC 1509–1558 1, 634–8, on his religious conservatism, MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 198–200, 207, 365, and on his appointment as Warden, John Husee to Lord Lisle, 13 May [1536], SP 1/103 f. 278, Lisle Letters 3 no. 695.

  31. See the account in Lehmberg, Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 43–4, as part of a generally sound survey of what we know about the elections nationwide.

  32. For a piece of the evidence against the Countess of Salisbury’s chaplain John Helyar delivered to Goring on 18 September 1538, see SP 1/136 f. 141, LP 13 ii no. 376. Cromwell was staying with Goring at Burton on 13 September 1538 as the White Rose conspiracy broke: see the letter cited in Elton, ‘Two unpublished letters of Thomas Cromwell’, 38, and discussed above, this page, n. 85. For Cromwell’s involvement in the collusive sale of Hardham Priory to Goring in 1534, see above, this page.

  33. Earl of Southampton and Lord St John to Cromwell, 20 March 1539, BL MS Cotton Otho E/IX f. 73, LP 14 i no. 573; Southampton to Cromwell, 14 March 1539, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 209, LP 14 i no. 520.

  34. John Kingsmill to Thomas Wriothesley, 31 March and 1 April [1539], SP 1/144 f. 197, LP 14 i no. 634, and SP 1/146 f. 237, LP 14 i no. 662. On Kingsmill, see R. Fritze, ‘“A rare example of godlyness amongst gentlemen”: the role of the Kingsmill and Gifford families in promoting the Reformation in Hampshire’, in Lake and Dowling (eds.), Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, 144–61, especially 146–9.

  35. John Kingsmill to Thomas Wriothesley, 1 April [1539], SP 1/146 f. 239r, LP 14 i no. 662.

  36. William Earl of Southampton to [Cromwell], 14 March 1539, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 209, LP 14 i no. 520.

  37. Thomas Soulemont to Thomas Wriothesley, 16 April 1539, TNA, SP 7/1 f. 53, LP 14 i no. 783.

  38. John Husee to Lord Lisle, 4 April [1539], SP 1/146 f. 258, Lisle Letters 5 no. 1372; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 56.

  39. For this and what follows where not otherwise referenced, MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 242–5, and there is very useful comment and analysis in McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 159–66.

  40. McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 162–3.

  41. See my discussion in MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 247–8.

  42. This is cogently argued by McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 150, 159–62, although the wider domestic background does need to b
e taken into consideration.

  43. On the discovery of Damplip’s links to Shaxton, Lord Lisle to Cromwell, 10 June [1539], SP 1/152 f. 52, Lisle Letters 5 no. 1447. On John Goodall of Salisbury, see HC 1509–1558 2, 228–30.

  44. Shaxton to Cromwell, 25 June [1539], SP 1/152 f. 82, LP 14 i no. 1157.

  45. Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland, 141–5, 151–4.

  46. Shaxton to Cromwell, first week of July 1539, SP 1/152 f. 118, LP 14 i no. 1217.

  47. Thomas Key to Cromwell, 15 June [1539], SP 1/152 f. 59, LP 14 i no. 1114.

  48. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 252–3.

  49. Lehmberg, Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 62–3.

  50. Ibid., 66–7.

  51. Ibid., 58–60; Statutes of the Realm 3 729 (31 Henry VIII, cap. 10).

  52. T. Lott, ‘Account of the Muster of the Citizens of London in the 31st Year of the Reign of Henry VIII’, Archaeologia 32 (1847), 30–37; John Husee to Lord Lisle, 8 May [1539], SP 3/4 f. 54, Lisle Letters 5 no. 1406, 466–7; Cromwell’s accounts, LP 14 ii no. 782, at 341, 343.

  53. Foxe introduced Morice’s material into his 1570 edition, and reprinted it thereafter, duplicating the main story, so the doublet in Foxe 1570, 1337 and 2075, becomes Foxe 1576, 1134–5, and 1781, and Foxe 1583, 1160 and 1886. The story of the row with the Duke of Norfolk is Foxe 1570, 1398–9, Foxe 1576, 1184, and Foxe 1583, 1213. In all cases, Foxe misdates the anecdote to 1540 while making it quite clear that the incident followed the 1539 Parliament. Morice’s anecdote which he did not use is Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the days of the Reformation, 258–9.

  54. Foxe 1570, 1399; my italics.

  Chapter 22: Downfall: 1539–1540

  1. Paisey and Bartrum, ‘Hans Holbein and Miles Coverdale’.

  2. The following paragraphs where not otherwise referenced are based on MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 256–61, and McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation, 167–84. I have to emphasize once more (as at this page, n. 44) that I am making no use in this account of summer 1539 of the material in [Collier, forger], ‘Transcript of an original manuscript, containing a memorial from George Constantyne to Thomas Lord Cromwell’, ‘ed.’ Amyot.