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.