Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII (27 page)

The pillar perished is whereto I leaned,
The strongest stay of my unquiet mind,
The like of it no man again can find –
From East to West still seeking though he went –
To mine unhap, for hap away hath rent
Of all my joy the very bark and rind…
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Two days later, three of Cromwell’s more obvious clients, who had been in prison since Barnes retracted his recantation on 30 March – Robert Barnes himself, William Jerome and Thomas Garrett – were burned at Smithfield. Barnes was certainly a Lutheran, but that had not prevented Cromwell from using him as a diplomatic agent no further back that the beginning of 1540. None of these men was guilty of the radical heresies with which they were charged, but it was deemed necessary as part of the campaign against Cromwell to represent him as the controlling force behind a dangerous heretical conspiracy — and these were the other conspirators, or some of them. Like him they were condemned by Act of Attainder, and Barnes at least proclaimed his innocence in his last speech to the crowd.
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He had never preached sedition or disobedience, and had used his learning against the Anabaptists. He did not know why he was condemned to die, but the true answer lay not in his own doings or beliefs, but in his association with Thomas Cromwell. At the same time three adherents of the old faith, Edward Powell. Richard Fetherstone and Thomas Abel, were executed as traitors for denying the Royal Supremacy. Their deaths must also be laid at the king’s door, but the true story again relates indirectly to Cromwell’s fall, because his enemies had to demonstrate that they were loyal subjects of the king, and had no sympathy with those papists against whom he had so rigorously set his face.
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They were every bit as zealous in the cause of the ecclesiastical supremacy as he had been. Not for the first time (or the last), the machinations of Henry’s servants left him with the responsibility for unnecessary and brutal executions. At the time, the king was much incensed against Cromwell, and ignored those who argued for his years of good service, but the mood did not last. In March 1541, when his leg was troubling him and he was feeling particularly sorry for himself, he berated his councillors for having deprived him of the best servant that he had ever had.
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Whether he was missing Cromwell’s expertise in affairs of state or his diligence in running the administrative machine is not clear, perhaps it was a little of both, but in any case his successors did not live up to the exacting standards which he had set. So alone among the victims of Henry’s whims and policies, Thomas Cromwell received a sort of posthumous pardon. No document to that effect survives, but his son Gregory was raised to a barony, notwithstanding his father’s attainder in December 1540, and so must have been restored in blood.

Who is he that can think himself to have any vein of an honest man, that feareth not God, that loveth not his country, that obeyeth not his Prince…

Sir Richard Morison

Thomas Cromwell was not an intellectual, and wrote nothing specifically directed to any theory of the state, but what he believed can be deduced from his letters and from his acts of patronage. Reginald Pole’s famous description of him as a Machiavellian can be discounted, because it was written in the aftermath of his role in the destruction of Pole’s family, when the cardinal’s animus against him was obvious and understandable. It relates to a conversation which he had allegedly had with Cromwell several years previously in 1535, the last time when such an exchange would have been possible, and about three years after
The Prince
was published.
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Cromwell had explained that he had told the king, in an interview which did not in fact take place, that the distinction between right and wrong did not apply to kings, and that political morality was different from the ethics which applied to ordinary people. He had also said that no realm could have two masters, and that the headship of the Church was his by right, all of which was being wise after the event. They had also discussed the proper role of a councillor, and Cromwell had declared that the first concern of such a person must be to serve the honour and advantage of his prince, and if he does his work well, his master’s ambitions will be achieved without any sign of discord in his realm. However a show of moral virtue must be maintained, and only those inexperienced in the ways of the world (like Pole) would be shocked by such sentiments.
²
All this could indeed be garnered from the pages of
The Prince
,
but whether Cromwell had so gathered it is not known. Pole admitted that he had met Cromwell only the once, and was not acquainted with his circle. He also confessed that the secretary never put forward his ‘blasphemous’ ideas in public, but rather posed as a good Christian. In fact we have the testimony of Thomas Starkey, who knew them both, that they were ‘almost unacquainted and of small familiarity’.
³
So Pole’s account of their alleged conversation in 1535 can be discounted as evidence of Cromwell’s actual opinions; it only reflects the way in which the cardinal thought that he should have been expressing himself.

Thomas was interested in theories, however, and although he had little opinion of Plato, which he had obviously read, he thought better of other writings on the state, noticeably those of Aristotle. He also knew his Bible, as is demonstrated by his refutation of Fisher’s use of Amos, and by his reproof to Shaxton for quoting the scriptures out of context, both of which citations are included in letters to the respective parties rather than in public utterances. He was sufficiently interested in legal theory to declare that the Divine Law was irrelevant to the affairs of England, an opinion again expressed in a private letter to Fisher, and not altogether consistent with his public pronouncements in Parliament.
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The best evidence of his interest in theory comes from the testimony of Thomas Starkey, who was an ideas man by profession and well known to the secretary, who says that he had many conversations with him ‘of God, of nature, and of other politic and worldly things’, including the writings of Aristotle. There was no reason why Starkey should have misrepresented these exchanges, and although they also took place in private, no particular pains were taken to conceal them.
⁵
Taken in conjunction with his letters, they prove conclusively that Cromwell was no mere pragmatist, but made a conscience of what he did. As to his Machiavellianism, as Elton has rightly pointed out,
The Prince
is
not so much a work of moral philosophy as a presentation of things as they are, and that it would be hard indeed to find any competent statesman of the sixteenth century who did not follow its advice at least to some extent.
⁶
Richard Morison, who was certainly a member of Cromwell’s circle, knew the Florentine’s works by 1535, so it is reasonable to suppose that he understood his general drift, but whether the secretary ever read
The Prince
is not known.

Cromwell was a practical man, and his letters generally stick to the point. Only occasionally do they indulge in those generalisations which give an insight into his ways of thinking. One example of such occurs in March 1538, when he wrote to the Bishop of Salisbury that his prayer was that ‘God give me no longer life than I shall be glad to use my office in edification and not in destruction’. He never destroyed anything without the intention of putting something better in its place, which is interesting in view of the number of men and institutions which he swept away in the course of his reforming career.
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He is generally reputed to have been a radical, and in so far as he disregarded obstacles in his way, that description is justified, but he was very anxious not to appear radical in his constructive work. Since innovation was a dirty word in the sixteenth century, such caution was fully justified. He preached moderation, especially to the bishops of his own way of thinking, when it came to the enforcement of reforming practices and doctrines. Intensely sensitive to the need for public order, and to the king’s views on that matter, he urged them as far as possible to avoid ‘contention, division and contrariety in opinion in the unlearned multitude’, and to be lenient in their punishment of offenders.
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In the debates surrounding the publication of the
Institution of a Christian Man
he made much the same point, demanding unity on a basis of moderation, and avoiding such words as ‘papist’ and ‘sacramentary’. This debate apparently took place in an informal gathering of bishops early in 1537, where Cromwell went out of his way to be conciliatory, and of which we owe our knowledge to Alexander Alesius, whose
Of the auctorite of the word of god
was published in 1540. Cromwell apparently picked up Alesius, who was known to him, on his way to the meeting, to which he introduced him, to the consternation of some of those present. Alesius was a Scot and a known reformer.
⁹
In 1539 Cromwell wished to treat the Calais sacramentaries ‘without rigour or extreme dealing’, not because he sympathised with their point of view, but because their execution would have drawn attention to the disunion which existed in the realm. In that case he was overruled by the king, who saw such people as a dangerous menace, but his preference for relative gentleness is worth noting. He said much the same thing in the House of Lords in 1540, when he again insisted on the need for moderation and unity in religious matters. In all his enforcement policies steady pressure rather than severity of punishment was the key. Like those who set out to suppress heresy, his aim was submission rather than execution, and on the whole, as we shall see, he was successful.
¹⁰

He also thought a good deal about the law, which formed an important part of his own professional background. Unlike Wolsey, he had no desire to be a judge, and did not, as far as is known, ever sit in that capacity while he was Master of the Rolls. Nevertheless he cultivated a reputation for judicial fairness in his dealings with offenders, and was careful always to ensure that the formal procedures of the law were observed, telling Fisher, for example, that his private opinions were irrelevant because his case would be decided by the evidence produced in court.
¹¹
When his own time came he wrote that ‘the trial of the law only consisteth in honest and probable witness’, a trial which he was to be denied by the process of attainder. Attainder was a method to which he had himself resorted when there was any doubt about the evidence available being sufficient to convince a jury, which was also, in a sense, a gesture of respect towards the common law. Cromwell, therefore, regarded the law with reverence, and the stories of his securing the condemnation of offenders on slender grounds, and of using political power to secure convictions on evidence which should not have stood up in court, are serious misrepresentations of the truth. He was also a common lawyer, and stoutly defended the king’s ordinary courts against the encroachments of both equity and the civil law. About equity he could do little beyond urging potential litigants to think carefully before embarking upon suits in Star Chamber or Requests. The decisions of neither had the finality of King’s Bench or Common Pleas, and this might need to be explained.
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The procedures of both courts were relatively rapid, but their main appeal was that they offered remedies in cases where there was no relevant law, such as slander.
¹³
However, potential cases needed to be scrutinised to make sure that they fell into that category, and it was possibly for that reason that Requests acquired a common lawyer as a part of its permanent staff during his years in power. Requests, like the Admiralty, was otherwise a bastion of the civil lawyers. There was, however, no such thing as a reception of the civil law, and it is
by no means clear who would have wanted such a thing. Wolsey, as Chancellor, may have favoured it, but his successors Thomas More and Thomas Audley were both common lawyers by training, and it never advanced much beyond the specialist courts already referred to. Several of the conservative bishops, notably Gardiner and Tunstall, were canon lawyers by background, but neither had much impact on policy in this respect, and Cromwell arranged for the canon law faculties of both universities to be closed down in 1535, as a part of his campaign against popery.
¹⁴
Several of the Crown’s lesser servants were civilians, but they had no influence on official attitudes, and the stoutest protagonist of reception was Reginald Pole, who was in exile for the whole decade, and in disgrace for most of it. Before he entered the royal service, Cromwell had run a flourishing legal practice, and legal work continued to occupy a significant proportion of his time; he held powers of attorney, and acted for the Crown in cases of debt, and several other types of suit. He was a member of Gray’s Inn, and knew his Bracton well enough to commend him for giving the king the title
vicarius Christi.
¹⁵
There is no proof that he remembered that, according to the same source,
rex debet esse sub lege
,
but he always acted in accordance with that principle. The common law was a remarkably tough code, especially when threatened with the Roman alternative, and much of that toughness it seems to have owed to the leadership of Thomas Cromwell. It was Stephen Gardiner, many years later, who claimed to remember Cromwell quoting to him the civil law precept
quad principi placuit
,
leges habet vigorem
in justification of some arbitrary action, but if Gardiner’s memory was accurate it seems likely that the bishop was being twitted with a legal principle far more subversive of the king’s honour than the common law to which he adhered.

It is an enduring myth that Cromwell rode roughshod over the law in pursuit of those who opposed the king’s policies. Such cases were usually brought to his attention by voluntary information, not infrequently by the personal enemies of the guilty party, and his first reaction was almost invariably to order an investigation. A fairly typical example occurred in Windsor in April 1538, when the parish priest, Richard Lawson, was charged with treasonable words by Robert Guy, a singing man of the college who was obviously sympathetic to reform.
¹⁶
One afternoon in early April Guy decided to annoy two conservative citizens by quoting the king’s proclamation permitting the eating of white meats during Lent, on the grounds that the prohibition was merely a ‘popish superstition’. It was not to be murmured or grudged at, he added, which produced hasty disclaimers from the two worthy citizens. Warming to his task, Guy then switched his attack to Richard Lawson, accusing him of sexual improprieties in the confessional, and of warning one Agnes Wilson not to eat meat in Lent just because her husband did so, and so consequently urging her to break the king’s proclamation. To Guy this was proof that the priest would not obey the king’s orders and was thus a ‘privy traitor’. He must then have laid his information before a local magistrate, because within two days an investigation was under way.
¹⁷
Under interrogation Guy accused Lawson of superstitious practices, which the latter denied. However, a couple of months earlier he had warned the priest to be more convincing in his prayers for the queen and the prince, and to declare the king’s title to the people as he was bound to do. Lawson rebuffed him, whereupon he repeated his warning publicly in the presence of the mayor, who had seconded his urgings. The priest then turned surly and declared that he had never received instructions from his bishop about preaching the king’s title, which was almost certainly untrue at this late date. The results of this examination were then communicated to Cromwell, who effectively ignored them, and nothing further happened.
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Lawson was clearly a malcontent, but Guy was equally clearly a personal enemy and his talk of treason ridiculously exaggerated. Similar dubious denunciations came from all over England. Dr Horde, the prior of the Charterhouse at Henton in Somerset, was reported in May 1533 by a disgruntled inmate of the neighbouring house of Witham, who alleged that he had attacked Queen Anne, and claimed that he would never consent to the king’s second marriage. Cromwell presumably did nothing beyond warning Dr Horde to guard his tongue. and a year later the same informant was telling him that all the Somerset Carthusians were disaffected, and would prefer death to obedience.
¹⁹
The Prior of Henton, however, was an old friend of the secretary, and in 1535 was able to write gratefully that he was pleased that their goodwill was not ‘utterly extinct’. Although a number of charges were laid against him, including seeing ‘seditious visions’ (whatever they might have been) and running a house full of the disaffected, he survived as prior until 1539 when he reluctantly but peacefully surrendered. As he accepted his pension, he noted that the Lord Privy Seal had always been his ‘especial good lord’, which seems to have been nothing but the truth. Cromwell must have concluded that the charges against Horde arose out of malice on the part of his accusers, although the evidence for that is lacking.
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