Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII Read online

  This electronic edition published 2013

  Amberley Publishing

  The Hill, Stroud, Gloucestershire

  GL5 4EP

  www.amberley-books.com

  Copyright © David Loades 2009, 2013

  ISBN 9781445615387 (PRINT)

  ISBN 9781445615615 (e-BOOK)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  1 - The Making of a Man, c. 1485–1522

  2 - The Cardinal’s Servant, 1523–1530

  3 - The King’s Servant, 1533–1536

  4 - The Royal Supremacy, 1533–1536

  5 - The Lord Privy Seal, 1531–1540

  6 - Viceregent in Spirituals, 1536–1540

  7 - The Fall of Thomas Cromwell, 1539–1540

  8 - Cromwell and the State

  9 - Historiography

  Picture Section

  Notes

  Bibliography

  List of Illustrations

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My first and greatest debt of gratitude is due to the late Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton who supervised my PhD research at the University of Cambridge from 1958 to 1961 and who was a friend until his death in 1994. Geoffrey taught me most of what I know about Thomas Cromwell and brought Henry VIII’s ‘man of business’ to the forefront of Tudor politics in his book The Tudor Revolution in Government. My second major debt is to the History Faculty of the University of Oxford, which has welcomed me as an honorary member and provided an academic home for the last sixteen years. During that period I have been fortunate to attend the Graduate Seminars in Early Modern British History at Merton College and History and Theology Seminars at Corpus Christi College and learned much from the senior and postgraduate members. It was at Merton that I met Dr Paul Cavill, then a postgraduate and now Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He has read the entire work and given me the benefit of his time and expertise. Incorporating his suggestions has saved me from a number of errors. In more recent years I have enjoyed email contact with double Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, and on one occasion shared a platform with her when we discussed approaches to and the value of historical fiction and academic history. Her books Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies deserve all the success they have achieved. Despite the unsurprising demands on her time, especially with the stage production of her work, Hilary has read my entire work and provided me with remarkable insights and detail. I am immensely grateful to her. I must also thank Jonathan Reeve of Amberley Publishing for suggesting that I tackle a book on Cromwell and Nicola Gale for seeing my work through publication. My wife, Judith, has acted as project manager and – as always – given her help, support and, in her own inimitable way, never failed to tell me what I have done wrong and how I could improve the text.

  David Loades

  Burford

  University of Oxford

  October 2013

  PROLOGUE

  On 4 October 1529 Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor and Cardinal Archbishop of York, fell from power, leaving those in his service in limbo. One such was Thomas Cromwell, who is alleged to have lamented,

  I am likely to lose all that I have laboured for all the days of my life…

  However, he was made of sterner stuff than these words would imply. Cromwell was a survivor, and, more to the point, he knew that his future must lie in the royal service. Henry VIII would have known him slightly, through his good service to the fallen minister, but Cromwell was not important enough to approach the king directly, and there was no need for him to do so. His best route lay through the good offices of the Duke of Norfolk, the king’s chief councillor after Wolsey’s fall. Cromwell asked for a burgess place in the forthcoming parliament, and was sufficiently encouraged by the response to begin a search. This proved far from easy, but with two days to go, and thanks to the good offices of his friend William Paulet, he was chosen to represent Taunton, a borough of the see of Winchester, and thus took his seat in what is known to us as the Reformation Parliament. He knew that this parliament was called to deal primarily with issues such as probate and mortuary fees, and so well did he employ his legal expertise in these matters that within a couple of years he had been appointed to the king’s council as a legal adviser. He was also good company, and a man who could get things done. Henry liked good company, and was in need of a competent ‘ways and means’ man. Consequently he was able to show the king how to end his existing marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and to achieve the desired union with Anne Boleyn. This he did by using the legislative power of Parliament to break with the papacy, and set up the Royal Supremacy. Thereafter for several years, as Secretary and Lord Privy Seal, he was supreme in the king’s counsels, running the administration and advising on foreign policy. In 1540 he was created Earl of Essex and Lord Great Chamberlain; but in that same year he overreached himself in his support for the reformers. He had once said that his religion was whatever pleased the king, but on this occasion he went too far, and forfeited Henry’s confidence. Like Wolsey before him he fell from power, but, unlike the cardinal, the Earl of Essex was indicted for high treason, and executed in July 1540.

  So who was Thomas Cromwell?

  1

  THE MAKING OF A MAN, c. 1485–1522

  Thomas Cromwell was born in Putney or thereabouts, being a smith’s son whose mother was married afterwards to a shearman…

  John Foxe

  Thomas Cromwell’s origins are wreathed in obscurity. Much of what we know about his upbringing is derived from casual remarks dropped much later in his life, when he was already a man of substance. Apparently he came of a reasonably prosperous Nottinghamshire family and his grandfather, John, moved south from Norwell to Putney in around 1460 in order to take possession of a cloth fulling mill leased to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury.1 This suggests that John was probably a younger son, but that cannot be proved. In Putney he moved into the wool processing business, married and settled down. His second son, Walter, was Thomas’s father. Walter appears to have been an enterprising fellow, and something of a rogue. He features in the records as ‘Cromwell, alias Smyth’, a name which appears to have been derived from one of his numerous occupations, or possibly from his mother’s maiden name.2 He owned or leased land in the Wimbledon area, on which he ran sheep, and seems to have continued in the wool processing business, perhaps based on his father’s fulling mill. He is described as ‘shearman’ in some of the records referring to him. He also ran at least one alehouse, because he was constantly in trouble for ignoring the regulations appertaining to the sale of beer, and suffered numerous small fines. He was also fined a number of times for running his sheep on Putney Common, where he had no right to be, not being a commoner. His name appears more than ninety times on the Court Rolls of the manor of Wimbledon, mostly for such infringements, although he also features in the more respectable guise of juryman and even constable.3 This is an indication, presumably, that substance was more important than character in securing such positions, because Walter was also in trouble on occasions for drunkenness and brawling – not at all consistent with the office of constable! His elder brother, John, seems to have moved to Lambeth, perhaps to dissociate himself from all this bother. There he became a brewer, a
nd later entered the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was also lord of the manor. Meanwhile, Walter continued to hold two pieces of land in Putney parish, and two more were added by grant of Archbishop Morton in 1500. In 1495 he was constable of Putney parish, but in 1514 he blotted his copybook irredeemably by ‘falsely and fraudulently’ erasing evidence from the Court Roll, to which he had somehow secured access. This was the last straw as far as the steward was concerned, and he was ordered to forfeit all his copyholds in the manor. This was his last appearance on the Court Roll, and he seems to have died soon after.4 He left no will, and what his son may have inherited from him remains a mystery. By then it did not matter very much anyway.

  Walter’s wife appears to have been the daughter of a Derbyshire yeoman named Glossop, although that may refer to his place of origin. She was living in Putney at the home of one John Welbeck, although whether he was her first husband is not clear. She was considerably older than Walter, and the attraction may well have been Welbeck’s money, because he was an attorney by profession. They married in about 1474, and she bore him a daughter who was named Catherine in 1477. A second daughter, Elizabeth, was born around 1480, and their son Thomas around 1485. These birthdates are all somewhat hypothetical, and Thomas’s later story that his mother was fifty-two when she bore him must be treated with scepticism.5 Conception at such an age was virtually impossible. What he presumably meant was that she was past the normal age of childbearing; it is not to be supposed that he was claiming miraculous birth! The ‘mother’ who was living in his household in the later 1520s was his mother-in-law, not this lady, who would by his calculation have been over 100 years old by that time. Catherine later married a successful lawyer and accountant named Morgan Williams, who had come to Putney from Llanishen in Glamorgan. Morgan’s brother, John, was steward to John, Lord Scales of Nayland, and an important man in Putney. Catherine’s son, Richard, subsequently entered the service of his uncle Thomas, and changed his name to Cromwell. He founded the Huntingdonshire Cromwells, and was the ancestor of Oliver.6 Elizabeth married a sheep farmer named Wellyfed, and their son, Christopher, was subsequently at school with his cousin Gregory, Thomas’s son, and enters the story at a later date.

  Nothing is known for certain about Thomas’s childhood, although it is reasonable to suppose that he was put to school, his father being well able to afford the fees and his later intellectual interests pointing to a sound early education. Walter, however, was not an easy man to live with. He may even have had his son imprisoned for some unrecorded misdemeanour, and his wife, who might have mediated, was probably dead by then. At any rate, at the age of about fifteen or sixteen, Thomas ran away, probably stowing away on a ship bound for the Low Countries.7 How he occupied himself and what he used for money are both unknown, but according to one later story he enlisted in the French army, or in another version was engaged as a servant to a soldier, ‘carrying his pike’. In this guise he made his way into southern Italy, and was present at the Battle of Garigliano, which was fought on 28 and 29 December 1503. Garigliano was a defeat for the French, but Thomas escaped successfully from the field, and next appears as a penniless fugitive in Florence, where he was picked up in the street by Francesco Frescobaldi, a member of the prominent Florentine banking family, to whom he appealed for alms. Francesco was attracted by the young man’s demeanour, and by his English nationality, that being a country of which he had fond memories, and took him into his service.8 How long he remained in Florence is not known, nor exactly what his service in the Frescobaldi household involved. However he was an intelligent youth, and it is reasonable to suppose that he took the opportunity to educate himself in the essentials of business, and in the Italian language, both skills for which he was later to show a marked aptitude. Florence was at that time a republic, and Niccolò Machiavelli was active in its service, but it would be stretching credulity too far to claim that they met, and in any case he would have been far too distinguished to discuss his ideas with a mere English servant. In so far as those ideas may have influenced the mature Cromwell, that influence came much later in his career.9 Frescobaldi seems to have taken Thomas with him when he travelled on business within Italy, and on one such trip left him behind as factor to a Venetian merchant. The parting seems to have been completely amicable, and how long Cromwell remained in his new employment is similarly unknown. It was probably in Venetian service that he travelled north to Antwerp, the connections between the two cities being close at that time, but once there he again abandoned his master, and took service instead with some of the merchants of the English House. Somehow he succeeded in establishing himself as a trader in his own right, dealing in English cloth and undertaking some legal work on behalf of the Merchant Adventurers, although how he could have acquired any legal knowledge so early in his career is again a mystery, unless it had been part of his experience in the house of Frescobaldi.10

  By this time he was in his very early twenties, and had already acquired the experience of a much older man, being skilled in several languages and in merchandising. He spoke French and Spanish as well as Italian, and had a good working knowledge of Latin, which he appears to have developed by memorising large chunks of the Erasmian version of the New Testament, a benefit which was to remain with him over the years.11 It was during his stay in Antwerp that Cromwell undertook the first of his two missions to Rome, when he was persuaded to accompany Geoffrey Chambers, who had been sent by the Guild of Our Lady in St Botolph’s church at Boston in Lincolnshire to the Pope to secure an indulgence for the guild. As far as we know he had no previous connection with Boston, unless it was through a trade link with Antwerp, but Chambers clearly identified him as a useful colleague for a mission of this kind, because of his skill in languages, which he himself lacked. He picked up Cromwell on his way through Antwerp, and he soon proved to be invaluable. Chambers himself had no idea how to approach the pontiff, and would have awaited his convenience alongside the innumerable other suitors who thronged the papal audience chamber. Cromwell, however, had other ideas, and having acquired some choice sweetmeats, lay in wait for Julius when he returned from a hunting trip. How he had learned of the Pope’s weakness for such delicacies we do not know, but the trick worked to perfection, and Julius granted the desired indulgence on the spot.12 It appears that the highly developed opportunism that became so manifest later in life had put in an early appearance. According to Foxe, from whom this story is derived, this episode took place in 1510, when Thomas would have been about twenty-five. At some point between 1512 and 1514, Cromwell returned to England, and added a legal practice to his established trade in cloth, although his existing commercial ties continued to take him back to the Netherlands from time to time. More than twenty years later a merchant named George Elyot reminded him of an encounter which they had had at the Syngsson Mart in Middleburgh in 1512, and although Elyot’s memory was not necessarily perfect, it does indicate that Thomas was present at the market in that year.13 However in November 1512 a legal instrument, endorsed in a hand that closely resembles that of Cromwell, records a title to the manor of Whityngham, which seems to suggest that he was practising as a lawyer in London by that date. Some such date for his return is also indicated by the fact that by 1514 he had married. His wife, whom Chapuys referred to many years later as the daughter of a shearman, was Elizabeth Wykys, who in fact came of an ancient gentry family, and was the niece of one who had been a gentleman usher to Henry VII. She was therefore his superior in status and probably in wealth.14 Cromwell appears to have entered into a business partnership with his father-in-law, and was marketing his produce as late as 1524, which might seem a strange occupation for a man who was by then primarily an attorney, but is a good example of his versatility, which enabled him to pursue several occupations simultaneously. This noticeably increased both his wealth and his standing. By 1522 he was being referred to as a gentleman, and had moved into the substantial house at Austin Friars in London that he was to occupy for many y
ears.15 Elizabeth presented him with three children, Gregory, Anne and Grace, the first of whom must have been born not later than 1515. Gregory was later something of a disappointment to his father, and Anne and Grace both died during the plague outbreak of 1529. It seems likely from the will that Thomas drew up in that year that their mother died at the same time, but Cromwell’s private life remains very much in the shadows. It is possible that Elizabeth had been married before, and the fact that Mercy Prior is recorded in his will as his mother-in-law indicates that she too had married a second time. She was resident in his house at the time that his will was drawn up, which suggests that her second husband was also dead by then. Elizabeth’s father had clearly died at some point after 1524, but all these dates, except that of the will, are somewhat speculative.16

  Meanwhile Cromwell appears to have undertaken a second trip to Rome on behalf of the Boston guild. This took place in 1517 or 1518, and was again in the company of Geoffrey Chambers, with whom by this time he could claim a good acquaintance. The story of what happened has become confused with the events of seven or eight years previously, but there is no reason to doubt that he made a second trip, or that he stayed in the English Hospice and took the opportunity to do a little sightseeing. Interestingly enough, the effect of this experience seems to have been much the same as that of a similar trip by Martin Luther a few years before. It alienated him from the whole apparatus of the Roman bureaucracy, and indirectly from the ritualism of the Roman Church. Nevertheless the mission was successful, and the Boston guild obtained its indulgences as before. At about this time also, Cromwell caught the eye of the powerful Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York from 1514, Cardinal and Lord Chancellor in 1515.17 It is possible that he was introduced by his cousin Robert Cromwell (John’s son), who was vicar of Battersea at this time and had business dealings with the archbishop, or perhaps the introduction was affected by Lord Henry Percy, who is alleged to have borrowed money from Cromwell and to have been impressed by his creditor’s attitude. We do not know the exact date or the circumstances of their connection. It may have come at any time between 1514 and 1519, and probably arose as a result of Wolsey’s decision to use Cromwell’s legal expertise as a client of his business. There are no records of his being paid a regular retainer for his services, nor do we know exactly what being ‘in Wolsey’s service’ would have meant in terms of commitment, or of his other business.18 It is perhaps safest to assume that the archbishop began to use him on an occasional basis in about 1516, and that mutual satisfaction caused the connection to develop. According to one version he became a member of Wolsey’s council in 1519, but it is not certain exactly what that would indicate, and he continued his private practice throughout the 1520s. He does, however, appear to have given up his wool business by about 1524, perhaps on the death of his father-in-law. It is not until 1520 that the records preserve the first undoubted sign of his activity on the cardinal’s behalf, when he was called upon to prepare an appeal to the papal Curia against a decision of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury involving Nicholas Cowper, the vicar, and the Prioress of Cheshunt, Margaret Chawry. The prioress wrote sending ‘information by the letters of Thomas Cromwell from which your Lordship will understand the merits of the case’. Cromwell apparently prepared the resulting brief, but the outcome is not known.19 The case does, however, indicate that he was thought to be well seen in the canon law as well as the common law, and familiar with the proceedings of the Curia. Wolsey had by this time been the king’s leading man of affairs for some six years, and it is entirely likely that Henry was aware of his use of Thomas Cromwell, but whether he employed him in any service involving contact with the court is not known. In August 1522 he was granted power of attorney in a suit involving two merchants of the Hanse, and in that, which describes him as ‘of London, gentleman’, it is clearly indicated that he was considered to be a member of Wolsey’s household, although most of the records which survive from this period could equally well have been generated by his private business.20