by Karen Davies | Apr 16, 2019 | Blog, History, Writing
In his lifetime Thomas Cromwell was called the most hated man in England. He was born a commoner, became an earl, and died a traitor. His dissolution of the monasteries was the largest single act of privatisation the country has ever seen. His Valor Ecclesiasticus was the most extensive survey of property since the Normans’ Doomsday Book, undertaken to establish the wealth of the Church. He laid the foundations for the Civil Service we know today. His money lending bound the nobility to his will, and he orchestrated the judicial murder of Queen Anne Boleyn.
Cromwell rose to power quickly under his master Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Cromwell caught the eye of the government in 1521 when he acted for Charles Knyvett, who had resigned as the Duke of Buckingham’s surveyor shortly before Buckingham’s execution. Cromwell’s carefully drawn up petitions on behalf of Charles Knyvett marked him out as a skilled advocate.
When Cromwell and Cardinal Wolsey first met is a matter of conjecture. But we do know that they most likely met sometime in 1522. The following year Cromwell was elected to parliament.
Cromwell and Wolsey had much in common. Both came from humble beginnings. Wolsey was the son of an Ipswich butcher, and Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith, and they shared an instinct for cunning and practicality that appealed to the King.
Before entering Henry VIII’s court, Cromwell was a lawyer and money lender, who specialised in loans to the gentry, charging them extortionate rates.
Henry VIII’s paranoia about the threat posed by rival noble families gave men of low birth an advantage at his court. Wolsey and Cromwell had no allegiance to the hereditary nobility so the King could raise them without fear and break them quickly, which is what happened to Wolsey when he failed to obtain an annulment of the King’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon.
The King’s Great Matter, as it became known, grew arms and legs. The King wanted the Pope to grant an annulment of his marriage to the Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon, ostensibly because Katherine had been briefly married to his brother, Prince Arthur, but really because Henry wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. The King made his argument from Leviticus 20-21. ‘And if a man shall take his brother’s wife it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.’
To begin with, the King was hopeful the Pope would grant the annulment, but that changed when Katherine’s nephew, Emperor Charles V, sacked Rome and kept the Pope a virtual prisoner to prevent him granting the divorce. Delays and postponements ensued, letters went to and from Rome, and the King became furious.
On 9th October 1529, Wolsey, Cromwell’s patron to whom the King had entrusted the matter of his annulment, was charged with Praemunire – the offence of having introduced into England a foreign authority that limited the power of the King, which was treason. And so Wolsey fell and Cromwell rose.
An unscrupulous Cromwell suggested to the king that, if Wolsey was guilty of Praemunire, then so were all the bishops of England. He put it to the King that the clergy should be fined for their frailty and lack of wisdom. The king liked Cromwell’s thinking and levied a fine of £100,000 against the clergy, payable over five years. The higher clergy, terrified of Wolsey’s fate, agreed to the penalty on behalf of their subordinates, who didn’t take kindly to it, particularly in London. John Stokesley, Bishop of London, invited the clergy to a meeting to persuade them to pay, but the 600 or more priests and lay folk who attended refused. The meeting quickly got out of hand and resulted in a number of arrests.
Cromwell then suggested to Henry that the way out of his Great Matter was for the King to declare himself Head of the Church in England and grant his own annulment. Henry readily took Cromwell’s advice.
It is clear from early on that Cromwell had a ruthless streak and that he was prepared to use any situation to further his own ends. His laws knew no bounds, only necessity, which inspired me to write this brief exchange of dialogue:
‘Tell me, Master Cromwell, what in your opinion makes for a good lawyer?’ the king asked.
Cromwell’s answer was instant. ‘A man who appreciates that necessity is the best law-maker, your grace.’
Henry gave a smirk of pleasure. ‘Well said, well said.’
In 1524 on Wolsey’s instructions, Cromwell dissolved 29 religious houses, the proceeds of which went to fund the Cardinal’s college at Oxford. In the process he made a number of backhand deals to increase his personal wealth. Together with Wolsey’s agent Dr John Allen, he agreed to rent out the property of some of the monastic houses that resisted suppression at a higher price, and split the difference between them. These deals made Cromwell a hated figure at court. Aware of this and fearing a backlash, Cromwell had a strong chain fitted to the front door of his house.
By 1532, Cromwell had amassed considerable wealth in the service of Cardinal Wolsey and the King, which he had invested in property. John Stow, son of Cromwell’s neighbour Thomas Stow, records how Cromwell moved his father’s house 22 feet in order to extend his own garden.
In 1535, Cromwell sent his agent, Master Rice, to York to root out fanatic ceremonies and after that to various abbeys. When Rice’s agents arrived at the abbey at Langdon in Kent, they found the abbot in bed with his whore. The woman was incarcerated in a cage at Dover for eight days.
On 11th March 1536, Parliament passed the Bill for the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The King wanted the wealth of the Church, but Queen Anne disagreed with her husband and Cromwell about where the revenue should go. Anne made her displeasure with Cromwell known through the famous sermon by John Skip (www.karenldavies.com/2019/04/skips-sermon). It would prove a fatal mistake. Cromwell removed himself from the court, feigning illness, and plotted Anne’s downfall.
Time was running out for the King to father a legitimate son as he was almost 45 and Cromwell played on his fears of civil war if he were to die without a male heir to strike back at Anne.
On 30th April 1536, Cromwell invited Mark Smeaton, a low-born musician and groom of the Queen’s Privy Chamber, to dine at his house. Once there, Smeaton was tortured into confessing to adultery with Anne. The Spanish Ambassador recorded that a knotted rope wound ever tighter around his head persuaded him to confess. One can only imagine what it must have been like to enter Cromwell’s murky world. To one minute be sipping wine and the next confronted with charges of adultery with the Queen of England.
The next day, while watching the May Day Joust with Queen Anne, the King was passed a note. He immediately set out for London, taking with him six men. During the ride, he allegedly turned to Henry Norris, one of his closest friends, and offered him a pardon if he would confess to the true nature of his relationship with Anne Boleyn. Norris refused and said he would fight any man who said anything against the Queen’s honour. As they entered London, Henry ordered Norris to be taken to the Tower.
The following day it was Anne’s turn. She was taken to the Tower and interrogated. 18 days later she was executed.
Cromwell was now at the zenith of his power. He began pursuing the full dissolution of the monasteries. When he was met with an uprising in the north, called the Pilgrimage of Grace, he ruthlessly quashed it by luring the rebel leaders to talks and then executing them.
After the death of the King’s third wife, Jane Seymour, Cromwell persuaded Henry that a marriage to Anne of Cleves would strengthen his alliance with the protestants of Germany against Catholic France and Spain. The politics were perfect, but Cromwell overlooked the alchemy Henry liked between a husband and wife. Instead, the marriage rested solely on a portrait. The king took one look at Anne and was outraged. He instructed Cromwell to find a way out of the union.
By now, the King was becoming ever more unpredictable. It was said that he could be of one mind in the morning and another in the afternoon and Cromwell had to negotiate his hot temper. The marriage was annulled on the basis that it was never consummated, but Henry’s wrath with Cromwell never abated.
Aware of the King’s displeasure, Cromwell’s enemies began to move. On the morning of 10th June 1540, Thomas Howard ordered Anthony Wingfield, Captain of the Guard to the Parliament House at Westminster, to arrest Cromwell. As Cromwell went to take his seat at the head of the Privy Council, Norfolk jumped up, pointed a finger, and said, ‘Do not sit there! That is no place for you! Traitors do not sit amongst gentleman.’ Cromwell calmly replied, ‘I am no traitor,’ and demanded to see the King. When the men refused, he threw his hat on the floor and demanded, ‘On your consciences, I ask you, am I a traitor?’ The men began a chant of ‘traitor, traitor’ and ‘let him be judged by the laws he has made.’ Cromwell was taken to the Tower.
On 30th June, Cromwell wrote to the King pleading for mercy and apologising for the Cleves marriage saga. The King had the letter read to him three times, but there would be no mercy for Cromwell. On 28th July 1540, Thomas Cromwell was beheaded without a trial. That very same day Henry married his teenage bride Katherine Howard.
by Karen Davies | Apr 16, 2019 | Blog, History, Writing
Henry VIII began his reign in 1509 as a charismatic, vibrant young man. He ended it in 1547, a bloated, blood-stained monster. He had put two of his wives to death, sacked the monasteries and plundered their wealth. But Henry VIII’s reign was a turning point in English history, second only to the Norman Conquest. Henry gave us Parliament and a national Church, and most importantly, a sense of English identity.
Henry VIII came to the throne with a desire to make a name for himself. He cancelled many of his father’s debts and invited complaints against what his father had enforced. He hunted and jousted, composed and played music. He added new ships to the navy and ruled the Church with a firm hand. So, what went so wrong?
Henry’s father, Henry VII, had won the crown of England at the battle of Bosworth Field after years of civil war between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, known as the War of the Roses. After his victory, Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster married Elizabeth of the House of York to unite the two families and to ensure that his heirs would have the bloodline of both families. But Yorkist claimants remained, who Henry VII controlled with an unjust tight fiscal policy.
Henry VIII was born into an England that bore the scars of civil war. Mistrust, control, resentment, and deception were the lifeblood of the new Tudor court.
As the second son, Henry was not born to rule. His brother Prince Arthur was the heir; Henry was the spare. But Arthur died suddenly in April 1502. The following year Henry’s mother died in childbirth. All too aware of the fragility of his dynasty and the Yorkist claimants to the throne, Henry VII had his son bought to court, where he and Henry’s grandmother could watch over him. The freedom Prince Henry had enjoyed, growing up at Eltham Palace on the Thames with his sisters and mother, was over. The Spanish Ambassador reported: ‘Prince Henry is in complete subjection of his father and grandmother and never opens his mouth in public except to answer a question from one of them.’
In April 1509, Henry VII died. Henry was only 17. His first act was to have the men who had implemented his father’s brutal fiscal policy rounded up and imprisoned in the Tower of London, then executed. Initially, at least, the Yorkists were appeased, and the long-feared rebellion never took place. Secondly, Henry married his brother’s widow, the Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon.
Henry VIII’s apologist argue that a blow to his head in a joust in 1535 caused a personality shift. But Henry had a cold, pathological streak long before 1535.
In 1519, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, entertained the king at Penshurst Place. Stafford was a Yorkist descendent and next in line to the throne while Henry lacked a male heir. The feast Buckingham laid on for the King cost the equivalent of £1.2 million in today’s money. The Duke’s wealth and influence unsettled the king. In May 1521, Henry had Stafford executed on trumped up charges of divination and predicting the King’s death. His real crime was his Plantagenet blood.
Buckingham was not the only Yorkist descendant to fall prey to Henry’s insecurity. In 1513, Henry had Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, executed.
In 1528, the year Cardinal Campeggio arrived in England from Rome to try the validity of the king’s marriage, Henry told his council: ‘If I find anyone – whoever he is – who speaks in unsuitable terms of his prince, there is no head so fine, but I will make it fly.’
It wasn’t just rival claimants that suffered at Henry’s hands. Most famously, how he treated his various wives gives us plenty of insight into his character. In 1524, Henry began his campaign to woo Anne Boleyn by sending her a buck he had killed. He writes in the note he sent with it: ‘I send you by this bearer a buck killed late last night by my hand, hoping that when you eat it, it will remind you of the hunter.’ He sent Anne a constant stream of letters, arguably behaving much like a modern-day stalker, after she left his court for her family home of Hever Castle, reminding her that she had not kept her promise to write to him.
In January 1533, in a private ceremony at Whitehall Palace, Henry and Anne were finally married after seven years of legal wrangling with the Pope, during which Henry had split from Rome and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. He even executed his boyhood friends, Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher, for refusing to accept his self-styled new role. When the Pope tried to save Fisher by making him a cardinal – the execution of a cardinal required the Pope’s consent – Henry is said to have declared that if the Pope sent Fisher a cardinal’s hat, there would be no head to put it on. On 22 June 1535, he kept his word. Fisher’s head was then boiled and set on a pole beside the heads of monks, also executed for a refusal to accept Henry’s supremacy in the Church of England, and that of Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent, who had made treasonous prophecies against the King. In July the head of Sir Thomas More joined them on Traitor’s Gate at the southern end of London Bridge.
Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s long-time minister, had also fallen from favour. He was charged with praemunire, the offence of having set a foreign power higher than the King in England. His property became forfeit to the Crown, and on 9th October he was arrested but died before Henry could have him executed.
On 2nd May 1536, Henry had Anne Boleyn arrested on charges of adultery. Her real crime, however, was failing to give the king a male heir. Tradition tells us that the King was swayed to mercy by choosing to have Anne beheaded rather than burnt at the stake. But, this theory disappears when it becomes clear that for the French executioner to reach London for the date of Anne’s beheading, Henry must have requested he set out before the trial verdict.
Henry married Jane Seymour 11 days after Anne’s execution and the following year he sacked the monasteries. If ever the saying ‘You reap what you sow’ applies, it is to the later years of Henry’s reign after Anne Boleyn’s execution. Henry suffered as everything seemed to go wrong for him. Jane Seymour died the following year. The Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising in the north against the ransacking of the monasteries, churches, and nunneries pulled 40,000 men to its cause. As always Henry fought fire with fire, imposing martial law in the north and executing the leading rebels.
Henry’s health deteriorated. His ulcerated legs meant he couldn’t enjoy the sporting activities he had in his early reign. The King was in chronic pain. As a result, he gained a massive amount of weight.
Fearing attacks from France and Spain for the break from Rome, Henry invested in a Royal Navy. He built dockyards on the River Thames at Deptford and Woolwich close to his armouries at Greenwich. He improved the army by increasing its firepower. With Catholic France and Spain against him, Henry married the daughter of the German Duke of Cleves. But Anne of Cleves was not to Henry’s liking. The failure of the marriage bought down Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister for a decade. Henry divorced Anne and blamed Cromwell for arranging the match. Cromwell was arrested and executed on 28th July 1540.
Henry’s next marriage to Anne Boleyn’s teenage cousin Katherine Howard led to the imprisonment of the Duke of Norfolk in the Tower of London. He had arranged the match. Jane Parker, the wife of George Boleyn, was executed for aiding Queen Katherine’s adulterous affair. Katherine herself was executed on 13th February 1542.
Henry’s sixth wife Kathryn Parr was a loving stepmother to his children. She gave Henry companionship and comfort in his old age, but even she wasn’t safe from his paranoia. Kathryn was a committed reformer, and she ruled as regent while he led his troops in a final war against the French. The Catholics at court accused Kathryn of heresy, and she had to beg Henry for her life. For once, he showed mercy.
Around 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed during the reign of Henry VIII. In his later years, the King referred to ‘the prisoner in the tower, who died without justice.’ Before he died he repented for the crime committed against Anne Boleyn.
by Karen Davies | Apr 16, 2019 | Blog, History
Westminster Abbey and Palace once stood on a small island known as Thorney Island, where the river Tyburn and the river Fleet meet the Thames. The maps of 1593 show the entry points, north and south of Westminster Abbey, where the Tyburn and Fleet flowed into the Thames.
Nowadays most people think the Thames is the only river, flowing like a major artery through the heart of London, but that wasn’t always the case.
There are 21 direct branches of the Thames within inner and greater London. Most of them are now buried deep underground. Their names are a reminder of London’s once agricultural past. The Mutton Brook, The Crane, The Quaggy, and The Silk Stream are but a few. The Falcon’s Brook in Streatham may even be named for Queen Anne Boleyn, as her badge was the Falcon. Or maybe it was just a rich wooded forest where kings practised falconry.
Westminster Abbey derives its name from the Minster in the West. The merchants of Old London controlled the city in the east and had the large Saint Paul’s Cathedral, so King Henry III built Westminster Abbey (on the site of Edward the Confessor’s church) to cement the power of the crown in the west. The island must have seemed almost spiritual, surrounded by rivers with the Abbey in the centre, a brooding presence sometimes shrouded in an ethereal mist.
LONDON’S LOST RIVERS MAP
by Karen Davies | Apr 14, 2019 | History
On this day in 1536, Passion Sunday, Anne Boleyn had her chaplain, John Skip, preach an audacious sermon in the Royal Chapel at Greenwich Palace. It was a strike against her enemies at court, and it caused something of a sensation.
Skip used the Bible story of Esther as a metaphor to convey the current political-religious scheming taking place under the disguise of reform for the New Religion.
Esther was the Jewish wife of King Xerxes. She discovered a plot by her husband’s wicked counsellor Haman to destroy the Jews and take their wealth and she begged her husband to spare them. There could have been no doubt to those present in the Royal Chapel for Skip’s sermon, that Haman represented Thomas Cromwell and his evil counsel, while Anne was Esther and Xerxes was Henry.
To better understand Skip’s sermon and what it meant we must to go back to 1st January 1535 when the King Henry VIII made Cromwell Vicar-General of the Monasteries. This title gave Cromwell precedence over all the bishops in England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Cromwell wasted no time planning to take the wealth of the Church. On 21st January, the King, now Supreme Head of the Church in England, issued Cromwell with a commission to visit all the churches, monasteries, and their clergy to investigate their behaviour. In October 1535, Cromwell set up his ecclesiastical court, a court that had the power to install and dismiss bishops and monastic priors as well as to issue licenses to approve preachers, wills, and to hear petitions. Cromwell ordered what was known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus, the most extensive survey of property since the Normans’ Doomsday Book, to establish the full wealth of the Church. The voice of God had taken on a political tone.
On 11th March 1536, the bill for the Dissolution of the Monasteries was passed. All religious houses with an income less than £200 a year were ordered to yield their lands to the King for better use. King Henry wanted the wealth of the Church, but Anne argued with the King and Cromwell over the redistribution of that wealth. Anne supported non-schismatic reform. She put her store on educating the people, on keeping some of the rituals of the Church that conveyed deeper meaning but enabling the people to understand that meaning through education, and doing away with the corrupt practices of the Church, such as the selling of indulgences, purgatory, prayers to saints and pilgrimages, and to free the people from superstition. Moreover, Anne’s charities were in growing conflict with Cromwell and his clients, to whom he planned to award grants and monastery land.
In the story of Esther, King Xerxes married the Jewish woman Esther and made her his Queen. Like Anne, Esther had to conceal her true religious beliefs. The sermon was fitting because Haman wanted to destroy all the Jews and take their wealth. Haman whispered in King Xerxes’ ear: “There is a certain people dispersed and scattered among your peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose customs are different from all other people and who do not obey the King’s laws; it is not in the King’s best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the King, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will put ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury for the men who carry out this business.”
Dispatches were sent out to all of Xerxes’ provinces. The instruction was to kill the Jews and take their wealth. Esther’s cousin Mordecai learned of this and he told Esther. The King had been closeted with Haman in his inner court, planning war. The penalty for approaching the King in his inner court without being summoned was death, but Mordecai instructed Esther to do so. King Xerxes held out his gold sceptre to Esther, saving her from death.
When King Xerxes asked Esther what her request was, she asked that he and Haman come to a banquet she had prepared for him.
The King and Haman went to dine with Queen Esther as she had requested. The King asked Esther what her request was. Esther answered: “If I have found favour with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared.” King Xerxes granted his Queen her petition, and had Haman hanged.
Cromwell, terrified, removed himself from the court, feigning illness, and plotted Anne’s demise. The outcome, of course, we know.
Skip’s sermon marks an important moment in the story of Anne Boleyn, but what I find so interesting about it is the parallel between the sermon and the letter Anne wrote to Henry on 6th May, after her arrest and imprisonment. Anne says, similar to Esther’s plea to King Xerxes, “If ever I found favour in your sight – If ever the name of Anne Bullen has been pleasing in your ears – then let me obtain this request.” She writes, “My last and only request shall be, that myself only bear the burden of your graces displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen [the men accused of adultery with Anne] whom, as I understand, are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake.”
Anne Boleyn is nearly always an enigma. Almost everything about her is in dispute nearly 500 years later. But, through this sermon and her final letter to Henry, which is indeed one of the most moving letters ever written, Anne Boleyn is bought into sharp focus.
by Karen Davies | Apr 4, 2019 | Blog, History, Quote
