Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII
Read Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII Online
Authors: David Loades
This electronic edition published 2013
Amberley Publishing
The Hill, Stroud, Gloucestershire
GL5 4EP
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.
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
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
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?
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, and 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
