The man known to history as Thomas Cromwell
is generally understood to have been born in 1485 or shortly before this, in Putney
in the county of Surrey. His father was Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith
in the town, who had also worked previously as a fuller and as a cloth merchant. Virtually nothing is known about Cromwellâs
mother, although she may have been called Katherine Marvell and came from Staffordshire,
having significant ties to the Glossops, a family who were members of the gentry from
Derbyshire. Much like his motherâs identity, most of
Cromwellâs early life is shrouded in mystery. His father evidently prospered in his business
activities in the 1490s and as a consequence, was able to organise a number of good marriages
for Thomasâs sisters, to members of the local gentry, whilst Walter also served on
juries in Putney, a role which carried a minimum wealth requirement. Yet Cromwell himself was somewhat disorderly
and he later described himself as a âruffianâ in his youth and was even rumoured to have
been briefly imprisoned at one point. Much of this chaotic behaviour in his early
years stemmed from an unpleasant home life. Walter Cromwell, despite his success in the
Putney area, was a heavy drinker, one who was regularly in trouble with the law, for
forging documents amongst other offences. He also clashed with his son and may have
been excessively physically violent towards Thomas, at a time when some degree of corporal
punishment was usual in male childrearing. Whatever the exact specifics of the family
set-up, it is clear that young Thomas was unhappy with it and as a consequence he left
Putney when he was still in his teenage years. And he would spend the next several years
wandering far from home. As with his childhood and teenage years, we
have frustratingly little information about Cromwellâs early adult years. He travelled throughout Western Europe in
the early 1500s visiting France and Italy. As a consequence, later in his life, he was
fluent in several continental languages. We do know that he served as a soldier during
this time and fought with the French at the Battle of Garigliano, a substantial engagement,
which took place in central Italy on the 28th of December 1503 between the French and their
Italians allies on one side and the Spanish and their allied states on the other. The Iberians and the Galicians had been engaged
in a long-running war for dominance of the Italian peninsula, since the early 1490s and
these Italian Wars would endure for another half a century. Cromwell, though, resolved quickly that he
was better off lending money rather than fighting and by the late 1500s he was working in a
merchant and banking house run by Francesco Frescobaldi in the city of Florence, the home
of the Renaissance. Cromwell spent the next ten years there as
well as travelling further north in the Low Countries and France, where he worked in the
cloth trade in the early 1510s. Thus, by the time that he returned to England
in around 1515, he had developed a wide range of European contacts, knew the continentâs
politics and was multi-lingual. Shortly after his return to England Cromwell
married Elizabeth Williams, the widow of Thomas Williams, a Yeoman of the Guard, and a woman
who originally hailed from Thomasâs native Putney herself. The couple would have three children, Gregory,
Anne and Grace. Moreover, Elizabethâs father Henry had served
as a gentleman usher to King Henry VII and as a consequence, Thomas was able to obtain
a role in the English cloth trade through his father-in-lawâs contacts. This was a period in Englandâs history,
when men of humble backgrounds could aspire to rise far. The ruling dynasty, the Tudors, were themselves
an upstart family of Welsh origin, with a very tenuous claim to the throne of England. However, the founder of the line, Henry VII,
had managed to come out as the ultimate victor, in Englandâs long civil wars of the fifteenth
century, the so-called Wars of the Roses, after which, he ascended to the throne in
1485. Nevertheless, the Tudorsâ hold on power
was always questionable and when Henryâs son and namesake, Henry VIII, became king
in 1509, he was conscious that he needed a legitimate male heir, conceived in wedlock,
to secure the line. And his quest to do so, would come to define
his reign, as well as profoundly altering the course of Englandâs political and religious
history and shaping Cromwellâs life in the process. That, however, lay some time ahead and in
the late 1510s and into the early 1520s, Cromwell was building his business links. His work in the cloth trade also saw him straying
into legal work or âsolicitingâ, although such employment did not require a legal degree
at the time. A jack of all trades, Cromwell also worked
as a moneylender during these years and in 1517, was sent as a deputy for the town of
Boston in Lincolnshire to Rome, to obtain plenary indulgences from Pope Leo X for the
town, a task he succeeded in accomplishing, after a private meeting with the head of the
Roman Catholic Church early in 1518. On his return to England, he continued to
rise speedily. By 1520, he was well established amongst the
London merchant community and had gained a reputation as an efficient legal representative. This work gradually brought Cromwell into
contact with individuals in the City of London, who had extensive connections outside the
city and upriver, at the seat of government around Whitehall, Westminster and Lambeth. And it was through these connections, that
Cromwell first came to the attention of the kingâs most powerful minister at that time,
the archbishop of York, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. It was the beginning of a relationship which
would bring Cromwell into the heart of government. Thomas Wolsey was the son of a butcher from
Ipswich, who had risen meteorically in the early sixteenth century to become the archbishop
of York and then cardinal, appointed by Pope Leo X in 1515, an office which made him the
most powerful religious figure in England. And that same year, he was also appointed
as Lord Chancellor of England by Henry VIII. He would gradually increase his control over
Henry VIIIâs government in the years that followed. Henry was a traditional king who saw his role
as one of making war with France, in the same vein as his medieval predecessors. Accordingly, the minutiae of day to day government
in England, was left to administrators such as Wolsey, and the cardinal was so effective
in this position, that by the 1520s, he had attained a position as Henryâs chief minister,
making him the most powerful political figure in England next to the king himself. Following his initial encounter with Cromwell
in 1521, Wolsey employed the Putney-born merchant and lawyer sporadically in the years that
followed, often to facilitate his engagements with the powerful London merchant community. As a result, Cromwellâs financial interests
and social standing continued to grow and in 1523, he was elected as a Member of Parliament
for the first time. Thus, as he neared his fortieth year, Cromwell
was rising in the world. There is substantial evidence to suggest that
Cromwellâs interest in high politics was also quite broad by this time. A document of his from this period, contains
an assessment of Englandâs perennial wars with France. Henry VIII was one of the last monarchs to
continue Englandâs efforts to conquer territory on the continent, a role inherited from Englandâs
medieval monarchs and the Hundred Years War of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, by the time Henry ascended to the
throne, Englandâs possessions in France had been reduced to the Pale around Calais
on the north coast of the country. Nevertheless, Henry believed that war could
be renewed with some success and he spent exorbitant amounts of money in order to do
so. In his text, Cromwell rounded on this policy,
arguing that it was not possible from a logistical or financial perspective, for the English
crown to continue to try to conquer France. And instead, he proposed that Henry should
conquer Scotland and this would put England in a more secure position to in time, consider
renewing the war with France. It is an interesting early statement of his
political outlook. For Cromwell, politics was the art of what
was practical and possible and also, what could be paid for by a fiscally limited English
treasury. Throughout the mid-1520s, Cromwell continued
to acquire further positions, notably as a subsidy commissioner for Middlesex, an office
which involved him assessing the value of lands and goods for the imposition of crown
taxation. He was also elected as a member of Grayâs
Inn, one of the senior legal establishments in London, but it was his skill in one particular
area which was garnering him most favour, as by the mid-1520s Cromwell had established
himself as a particularly gifted legal expert in land conveyancing, at a time when the enclosure
of traditional common lands in the countryside, was making vast tracts of land available for
private purchase. Consequently, during this time, Cromwell represented
Wolsey and several of his closest servants in a series of land conveyancing arrangements,
which worked out very favourably for the cardinal. It was as a result of this business, that
Cromwell ended up effectively being hired by Wolsey on a more permanent basis in 1524. Then, in the years ahead, he grew ever closer
to Henryâs leading minister, particularly so, as he became involved in a scheme which
Wolsey was pioneering, to have Englandâs monastic houses and their lands and possessions
variously distributed between the crown and its servants. This work was enormously profitable for all
involved and Cromwell would have recourse to it on a much grander scale in years to
come. By now Cromwell was well liked by Wolsey and
either in 1526 or 1527 he appointed Thomas to his private council of advisors. It is noteworthy though, that Cromwell did
not acquire a position within the kingâs government. Henry VIIIâs administration was largely
run by a group of senior nobles, such as the third Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, and
the Duke of Suffolk, Henryâs closest friend Charles Brandon, as well as administrators
such as Wolsey. Additionally, a large cohort of lower-ranking
figures held various positions at court, as clerks and officials, but Cromwell did not
obtain one of these positions. Rather throughout the late 1520s, he was employed
indirectly by the government through Wolsey and it is unclear exactly what relationship
Cromwell might have had with the king during these years. Nevertheless, his prominence as Wolseyâs
legal advisor ensured, that he was increasingly recognised as an important figure in political
and mercantile circles. Conversely, though, his personal life was
blighted at this time. Cromwellâs wife, Elizabeth, died sometime
around 1527, and his two young daughters, Anne and Grace also passed shortly afterwards,
in what might have been an outbreak of the âsweating sicknessâ in London, a mysterious
illness which ravaged early modern London and the cause of which, is still unclear. As well as this, all was not well at court. Henry VIII had been married to Catherine of
Aragon, a member of the Spanish royal family, since 1509. A son named Henry was born shortly afterwards
in January 1511, but he died within weeks, at a time of very high infant mortality. A daughter, Mary, followed in 1516, but a
legitimate male heir continued to elude Henry VIII. Given the weak claims of the Tudor dynasty
to the English throne, Henry became increasingly obsessed with producing a legitimate son to
succeed him. By the early 1520s, he had despaired of this
child being produced through his marriage to Catherine. And so, by 1525 Henry was looking elsewhere
and was increasingly infatuated with Anne Boleyn, the daughter of a prominent court
figure, Thomas Boleyn, and the niece of the Duke of Norfolk. From 1527, the king had become determined
to divorce Catherine and marry Anne, but this ran contrary to Catholic doctrine and Wolsey
was inclined to resist Henryâs wishes in this regard. Moreover, the city of Rome was under Spanish
control at that time and the Spanish King was Charles V, Catherineâs nephew. He was determined to prevent any Pope from
granting Henry an annulment to his marriage. The quest for such an annulment would define
English politics for many years. By 1529, as Cromwell was reaching the height
of his power in Wolseyâs employ, the cardinal was increasingly under attack by Anne Boleyn
and her allies and Henry, frustrated by the cardinalâs failure to obtain a divorce for
him from Catherine, was soon won over by their arguments and in the autumn of 1529, he stripped
Wolsey of all of his titles and much of his wealth and power and banished him from the
court. The following year Wolsey was accused of treason
but died while on his way to London to face the charges, on the 29th of November 1530. Now, Cromwell was understandably convinced,
that Wolseyâs fall would also spell the end of his own political career and would
also lead to his ruin, if the Boleyn-Howard faction decided to follow up their victory
over the cardinal, by attacking Wolseyâs former servants and allies. Additionally, Thomas was genuinely distressed
by what had happened to his former patron, a man with whom he had formed a personal connection
by 1529. But he survived the fallout from Wolseyâs
destruction relatively unscathed. By utilising a number of other court connections
he had built up throughout the 1520s, Cromwell was able to be returned as an MP, to the parliament
which convened in November 1529, a sign that he had lived to fight another day politically. The next few months were critical in Cromwellâs
career. During early 1530, he acted as an agent at
court for Wolsey, who had departed for his archbishopric of Yorkshire upon his downfall
in October 1529. At this time, Henry still retained considerable
affection for his former chief minister, a figure whom he had removed from power owing
to the influence of his lover, Anne Boleyn and her associates. And Cromwell ingratiated himself to Henry
as the cardinalâs representative. For his part, Cromwell remained loyal to his
former patron to the end, even as the Boleyns moved in to destroy Wolsey completely, late
in 1530. Moreover, by the time that Wolsey died in
November 1530, Cromwell was well enough known to the king and his skills apparent enough
that Henry brought him into the royal government. He was made a member of the kingâs private
counsel and was appointed as a receiver-general, a significant posting within the royal exchequer. A sign of his growing influence is seen, in
the increasing number of petitions which Cromwell was receiving, from individuals all over England
in 1530 and 1531. Such petitions were generally addressed to
individuals who were perceived to have substantial influence with the monarch of the day. Cromwellâs real ascent though occurred between
1531 and 1533, owing to his increasingly significant role in acquiring the king the divorce which
he wanted, what was more and more referred to as his âGreat Matterâ. Previous efforts at obtaining a divorce, had
focused on the fact that Catherine of Aragon had been previously married to Henryâs deceased
older brother Arthur in the early 1500s and that Henryâs subsequent marriage to Catherine,
was invalid as the union between Arthur and Catherine had been consummated. However, when this particular approach had
failed to gain an annulment from the Papacy, during Wolseyâs last years in power, several
individuals had turned to the idea of splitting entirely from the Roman Catholic Church and
establishing Henry as the supreme head of an independent Church of England. This emerging doctrine of the Royal Supremacy,
was being formulated by a team of scholars who were collecting evidence from the Bible
and Anglo-Saxon texts and histories to substantiate the idea that the English Church had always
been independent of Rome and governed by the Kings of England, an argument which, it must
be said, had very little factual foundation to it. But it could potentially be very beneficial. As head of the English Church, Henry could
grant himself a divorce from Catherine. Cromwell was soon involved in the movement
to establish the Royal Supremacy and find a resolution to the âGreat Matterâ. For instance, early in 1531, Cromwell was
charged with bringing the archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, over to the kingâs camp
in this regard. Warham reluctantly agreed, in large part because
nobody at this stage, was fully sure what establishing the Royal Supremacy would even
mean in practice. After this, Cromwell was drafted into a small
group of individuals around the king, who were charged with establishing the Royal Supremacy
in practice and finally gaining an annulment of Henryâs marriage to Catherine. In 1532, the king and his counsellors turned
to Parliament and sought their assent to it, as a precursor to eventually bringing the
clergy on side. It met with mixed success and on the 14th
of May 1532, was temporarily suspended. Then, two days later, the Lord Chancellor
of England, Sir Thomas More, a committed believer in the supremacy of the Pope and someone who
could see where events were leading, resigned his position. The problem for More, was that the question
of the Royal Supremacy and Henryâs divorce was increasingly getting tangled up, with
the religious changes which were tearing Europe apart, a topic to which we now turn. Henryâs quest for a male heir and the marital
complications which were attendant upon that quest, might have remained a rather limited
bit of English political intrigue, had they occurred during another historical period. But they would acquire a much broader significance
as a result of having occurred in the late 1520s. Because Henry was seeking his divorce at this
time, his efforts became hopelessly mixed up with the wider religious and political
intrigue which was sweeping through Europe at this time. In 1517 a German religious reformer by the
name of Martin Luther had pinned a series of 95 theses up in the town of Wittenberg
in Germany, documents which roundly criticised the Papacy in Rome for its corruption and
worldliness. Luther was particularly castigating of the
Popeâs sale of indulgences or pardons from sin for cash, and other abuses such as the
giving of cardinalships and bishoprics to the family members of well-connected aristocratic
families. Ultimately Lutherâs actions set off a chain
of events, which he cannot have predicted. In the years that followed, thousands of political
pamphlets and newsletters, questioning everything about Christian doctrine and the hierarchy
of the Roman Catholic Church, were printed all over Europe, using the new medium of the
printing press. As these appeared, huge sections of Western
and Central Europe became havens for these protestors or âProtestantsâ. This was what has become known as the European
or Protestant Reformation. During the course of it, many new religious
denominations emerged in Europe, notably Lutheran Protestants and Reformed Calvinists, as well
more fringe groups, such as the Anabaptists who believed in adult baptism. These groups had new views on Christian doctrine,
they challenged the Pope in Rome and they believed that the Bible should be read in
the vernacular language of a given country, rather than in Latin. And some of them even argued that priests
should be allowed to marry and that the wealth and ostentation which was on display in churches,
should be stripped away and mass celebrated in a more austere setting. Although these ideas were initially confined
to Germany, the Swiss cantons and parts of the Low Countries and France, by the mid-1520s,
they were gaining traction in England. Henry was initially very hostile to the Protestant
movement and even penned a tract, entitled Defence of the Seven Sacraments, arguing against
the views of the German reformers. This action led Pope Leo X to bestow the title
âDefender of the Faithâ on Henry in 1521, but the emergence of his divorce as a political
issue and the opposition of the Papacy to it, soon saw him being pulled in the direction
of the religious reformers. The question of Cromwellâs own religious
views has divided historians. He was not a hard-line Protestant, or at least
he certainly wasnât when he first entered government. Indeed it is clear from his correspondence
of the 1520s, that at least until 1526 or 1527, he held very traditional, Roman Catholic
religious views. However, the late 1520s witnessed a change,
as he debated the new religious ideas which were arriving to England from the continent,
with friends in London such as Miles Coverdale, the man who would go on to publish the first
full print edition of the Bible in English in the mid-1530s. Thus, in 1530, we find evidence of Cromwell
being critical of the priesthood and its corruption. Consequently, just as Cromwell was transitioning
from being Wolseyâs servant, to entering the direct employ of the king, he was also
beginning to adopt a very moderate Protestant stance. And this may have become more radical as the
1530s progressed, as was the case with other early English Protestants. Coverdale, for instance, was a Roman Catholic
archdeacon in the 1510s, before becoming a moderate Protestant in the late 1520s, but
by the time he died in the early 1550s he had come round to being a radical Calvinist
Puritan. It is possible that Cromwell also experienced
a gradual drift towards a more pronounced Protestantism as the years went by. Cromwell, though, would not be the only influence
working to introduce a moderate form of Protestantism into England during the 1530s. The prevalence of Henryâs âGreat Matterâ
as a political problem in England in the early 1530s, allowed others who wished to initiate
religious reform in England to acquire the kingâs ear at this time. And none was as significant as Thomas Cranmer,
a Cambridge scholar who had been involved in efforts to build a portfolio of evidence,
to support Henryâs quest for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine since the late
1520s. As part of this work, Cranmer was sent to
Europe on several missions between 1529 and 1532, during which, he met many Protestant
reformers on the continent. Then, having visited the Protestant city of
Nuremburg in Germany, he married Margaret Osiander, the niece of the leading Protestant
reformer there, affirming his belief in clerical marriage. Cranmer returned to England as a moderate
Lutheran. He was soon appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury
by Henry VIII and would become the most significant figure of the early Protestant Reformation
in England. Cranmer and several other reformers such as
Bishop Edward Foxe, would act with Cromwell to introduce the Reformation to England in
the course of the 1530s. It had become clear by mid-1532, that the
concept of the Royal Supremacy would be pressed forward with and that this would act on some
level, as the basis for Henry dispensing with his first wife and marrying Anne Boleyn. However, even before the break with Rome or
the divorce were finalised, Henry married his new bride. And on the 14th of November 1532 they were
wed in secret. The king would later justify this action,
by falling back on the earlier argument, that Catherine and his deceased brother Arthur
had consummated their marriage and that as a result, their own marriage was invalid. Nuptials were undertaken more formally in
January 1533, but it was only in May 1533 that Henry had Archbishop Cranmer officially
declare his marriage to Catherine null and void. By this time, Catherine had been in exile
from the court for several years and had resided at various royal castles away from London. She had maintained a dignified court and claimed
that she was still the legitimate queen. She did not return to Spain, but rather spent
the next few years living at Kimbolton Castle in Cambridgeshire, where her servants continued
to address her as the queen. Henry, who had a great affection for Catherine
in the past, was content to allow her to do so, although it nevertheless removed a problem
for the government, when she died there in January 1536. It now remained for the Royal Supremacy to
be rubber-stamped and the break from Rome to be formally entered into. After months of wrangling in parliament throughout
1533 and 1534, âAn Act concerning the King's Highness to be Supreme Head of the Church
of Englandâ was passed by parliament on the 3rd of November 1534, though the wording
of the Act was such that it was made clear, that this was just recognising a Supremacy
which was already in effect. Already months earlier, Cromwell and other
government ministers had begun pressurising the clergy and political figures into swearing
the new Oath of Supremacy, whereby Henry was acknowledged as the supreme head of the Church
of England. Many refused, among them Sir Thomas More,
who was arrested, charged with treason and ultimately executed, in July 1535. Then once the initial campaign had been waged
in London and its environs, commissioners were dispatched far and wide throughout the
country, to have Englandâs political community swear their allegiance to Henry, as the new
head of the countryâs church. And the importance of this was perfectly clear. The price of Henry obtaining his long sought-after
divorce and marrying Anne, was a very real split from the Papacy in Rome. It just remained to be seen, what other religious
innovations would follow. With his divorce finalised and his marriage
to Anne completed, Henry turned to rewarding those who had helped him resolve his âGreat
Matterâ. Already in 1532 and early 1533, the king had
granted Cromwell a number of offices, including those of master of the jewels, clerk of the
hanaper and chancellor of the exchequer. Then, in April 1534, just as the supremacy
campaign was heating up, the king appointed Cromwell as his principal secretary and chief
minister. The significance was clear. Cromwell had now succeeded Wolsey to a large
extent, five years after the cardinalâs downfall. The new secretary brought great energy to
the government. With a forensic attention to detail, he began
reforming the kingdomâs finances in the mid-1530s, introducing new taxes and cutting
back on expenditure. And his range of interests was wide and humane. Amongst his papers, are numerous memoranda
in which he discussed plans for reforming Englandâs education system, its agriculture,
industry and trade and the relief of the poor. His greatest achievement in this respect,
was a Poor Law finalised in 1536, which made individual localities responsible for providing
relief to its most vulnerable citizens. Here Cromwell was effectively responsible
for initiating the first system in England, whereby the state made provision to aid the
least well off within it. This was Cromwell the secretary. Cromwell the man is more difficult to pin
down. We know a great deal about how he managed
the Tudor state, but it is much more difficult to decipher his own views on matters and his
own internal emotions. This is for the very simple reason, that amongst
the thousands of extant letters to and from Cromwell, housed amongst the States Papers
and other collections, the letters which were written by others and sent to Cromwell, far
outnumber those which he composed himself. Moreover, the correspondence which he composed
himself was generally of a political nature and we have very few instances of documents
in which he wrote to friends and close associates, to express his private thoughts and emotions. Indeed, sometime around 1533 or 1534, he sat
for a portrait which was painted by the celebrated Renaissance artist and Henrician court painter,
Hans Holbein the Younger. Copies of the painting today in the Frick
Gallery in New York City and the National Portrait Gallery in London, show an administrator
painted from the side, his face stern and impassive. He doesnât display any discernible emotion
and the viewer gets the feeling, that this is how Cromwell wanted Holbein to depict him. Tellingly, this is in contrast to Holbeinâs
depiction of prominent figures he painted in England, notably Sir Thomas More. Though Cromwellâs star was on the rise throughout
the mid-1530s, that of the woman whom he had helped to become queen was not. Anne Boleyn had been crowned as Queen of England
on the 1st of June 1533. She was already pregnant by then and the entire
court waited with bated breath throughout the late summer and autumn, to see if the
long hoped for male heir would appear. But, when Anne gave birth to a girl on the
7th of September 1534 at Greenwich Palace, Henry professed to still love his new wife,
yet his disappointment was clear to all who encountered the king around this time. And things only deteriorated further in the
months that followed. Having finally obtained the crown, she had
waited so long for, Anne became increasingly arrogant at court and the enemies of the Boleyn-Howard
faction were growing in number. Then, a major rupture between the queen and
the king followed around Christmas 1534, when Anne suffered the first of either two or three
miscarriages which would come in quick succession. By late 1535, the relationship was in terminal
decline and Henry had discussed with several of his ministers, ways by which he could divorce
Anne. His mind seems to have been made up by the
time of her final miscarriage, in January of 1536 and Cromwell would be critical in
her downfall. Anne Boleynâs eventual demise came as a
result of charges of adultery, incest and treason which historians generally agree were
fabricated and which Cromwell was central to bringing against her. Ever since she had gained the kingâs eye
in the mid-1520s, rumours had abounded about Anneâs past sexual liaisons. Now, in early 1536, new charges surfaced,
that Anne had recently committed adultery with multiple individuals including a musician,
Mark Smeaton, the famous poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt, a prominent courtier, Sir Henry Norris,
and even Anneâs own brother, George Boleyn, the latter bringing with it, charges of incest. Cromwell moved quickly and after days of investigations,
most of the figures involved were under arrest and circumstantial evidence and witness testimonies
of them visiting Anneâs apartments was collected. Anne herself was arrested on the 2nd of May
1536. Henry, as ever, unwilling to deal directly
with the implications of his actions, disappeared from sight. Trials of the accused followed in mid-May
and after a perfunctory adjudication, each was found guilty and sentenced to death. Hence it was, that Anne Boleyn, the woman
whom Henry VIII had torn England apart trying to marry, was executed on the 19th of May,
less than three years after she had been crowned as Queen of England. Anneâs demise was hastened by the fact that
Henry had already set eyes on a third wife. His latest interest was Jane Seymour, the
daughter of Sir John Seymour, a prominent courtier whose base was at Wulfhall in Wiltshire. Jane had served as a maid of honour to Queen
Catherine in the early 1530s, but only first came to the kingâs attention in February
1536. Cromwell favoured and promoted the union,
as Jane was a relatively demure figure, who would mark a departure as queen, from the
scheming of Anne. She and Henry VIII were married on the 30th
of May 1536, just eleven days after Anneâs execution. It would be a short-lived marriage, but in
light of Henryâs quest for a male heir, it was highly successful. On the 12th of October 1537, Jane gave birth
to a baby boy at Hampton Court. The young Prince Edward was christened three
days later, but his mother fell ill just over a week later from post-natal complications
and died on the 24th of October 1537. Henry, who was capable of eloquence at times,
wrote to King Francis I of France that âDivine Providence ... hath mingled my joy with bitterness
of the death of her who brought me this happiness.â She was buried in St Georgeâs Chapel at
Windsor Castle, the only one of his six wives to be afforded a queenâs burial. Ten years later, Henry would be buried alongside
her. The arrival of Jane into the kingâs orbit
in 1536, had leant a degree of stability to the kingdomâs politics. As it did, Cromwell was free to focus to a
greater extent on the wider affairs of the Tudor dominions. And one of Cromwellâs greatest successes
in these years, was that he managed to prevent Henry from entering into any major wars. Henry perceived of his role as king, in the
same vein as some of his medieval predecessors and he admired earlier kings such as Henry
V, who had engaged in wars on the continent. England had found itself at war with France
twice already during his reign, between 1512 and 1514 as part of the wider War of the League
of Cambrai between France and Spain, and again between 1522 and 1526. These earlier conflicts had proved very costly
and yet no territorial gains in France were made. Conversely, Henry had managed to compromise
the finances of England, which his father had worked carefully to put on a sound footing,
between 1485 and 1509. Cromwell, who was opposed to such costly overseas
adventures, managed to guide England through the most peaceful period it enjoyed during
Henry VIIIâs entire reign, a fact he should be credited with. Indeed, no sooner had he passed from the scene
in 1540, than Henry entered into a series of wars with Scotland and France in 1542,
which would drag on interminably for the remainder of the decade and which proved ruinous to
the Tudor stateâs finances. Cromwellâs role as an innovator in administration
during these years is also clear. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the leading
historian of Tudor England of the day, Geoffrey Elton, published several works which hypothesised
that Cromwell was responsible for a revolution in Tudor government. Cromwell, Elton argued, had fundamentally
overhauled the way the administration of Henry VIIIâs government worked in the 1530s. And while some aspects of that thesis have
subsequently been revised substantially, there is little doubting that Cromwell was largely
responsible for the emergence of the Privy Council in England. During the Late Medieval period, the king
had governed in association with a small royal council, usually composed of five to ten leading
nobles and church figures. Already under Henry VII, there was an increasing
reliance on professional administrators, who were not members of the aristocracy, but Cromwell
expanded the royal council into what subsequently became known as the Privy Council. This would eventually consist of between ten
and twenty people, occupying positions such as Secretary of State, Lord Chancellor, Lord
Treasurer and Lord Chamberlain. And the Privy Council would govern England
for centuries to come and is effectively the forerunner of the modern-day governmentâs
cabinet of ministers. Cromwell, more than anyone else in English
political history, was responsible for creating it. One of the more overlooked aspects of Cromwellâs
period of political ascendancy is his impact on the governance of Ireland. The English state had conquered much of the
neighbouring island, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but in subsequent years, the English
lordship there had been pushed back into the east of the country, by over two dozen independent
Gaelic lordships. Thus, by the early 1530s, the English presence
was largely restricted to the city of Dublin on the east coast and a number of counties
in its immediate hinterland. And the bulk of the country was actually controlled
by the Irish lords, such as the OâNeills and OâDonnells of Ulster and the OâBriens
of northern Munster, while many of the English lords there, such as the Fitzgeralds of Desmond
in the south of the country, had âGaelicisedâ, in that they had adopted the Irish language
and culture and the Irish political system. Moreover, Londonâs control over even the
Dublin-centred Pale or lordship, was very tenuous and real authority there actually
rested in the hands of the Fitzgerald earls of Kildare. Wolsey, though, had attempted to rejuvenate
English rule in Ireland and tried to reign in the House of Kildare. When Cromwell continued this policy, the Fitzgeralds
revolted against Henry VIII in 1534. This was a threat to Tudor rule, but also
an opportunity. The Kildare Rebellion which erupted in 1534,
was responded to by sending a small English army to Ireland. And it quickly crushed the rebellion and by
1535 the heads of the House of Kildare were under arrest and the earldom was temporarily
suppressed. There was now an opportunity to adopt a wholly
new approach to Ireland. Many English officials had arrived in Ireland
as part of the suppression of the rebellion and they now began petitioning Cromwell to
undertake a renewed programme for the conquest of Ireland, beginning by reducing the Irish
lordships immediately adjoining Dublin and its hinterland. But, while Cromwell was broadly favourable
to this approach, Henry VIII blocked it in 1537, arguing that it would prove too costly. Accordingly, Cromwell began to consider other
proposals, which suggested that Ireland could be reformed by having the Irish lords take
their lands from Henry VIII along with English titles of nobility. This policy of Anglicisation was adopted in
subsequent years, but it would soon be abandoned in favour of a programme of military conquest
and colonisation, a strategy which would eventually bring all of Ireland under English rule at
the end of the Tudor period. In this respect Cromwell was significant,
as one of the first figures to reinvigorate English rule in early modern Ireland. As significant as Cromwellâs work as an
administrator and in managing English foreign policy on the continent and in Ireland was,
he is mainly remembered during this time for the ongoing religious reform which occurred
in the mid-to-late-1530s and the expansion of the English Reformation. The split from Rome and the establishment
of the Royal Supremacy in the early 1530s, had divided England from the Roman Catholic
hierarchy within Europe, but the newly independent Church of England remained doctrinally Catholic. And there is little doubting that Henry VIII
always was and would remain, a traditional Christian. But the reforms which were required to ensure
the kingâs divorce from Catherine in 1533, had opened the floodgates for further reforms,
in large part because Cromwell was now at the heart of government and was increasingly
disposed to Protestant innovations, while Thomas Cranmer, a man who was becoming more
and more radical in his religious views with each new year, had risen to become the Archbishop
of Canterbury, as a result of his usefulness to Henry in the resolution of his âGreat
Matterâ. Together, Cromwell, Cranmer and a cohort of
other reformers, introduced a series of other religious reforms in the mid and late 1530s,
which gradually began to push England into the Protestant camp. One of the clearest early signs of this, occurred
in 1535, when a campaign to suppress or dissolve the religious houses within the Tudor dominions
was commenced with. Continental religious reformers had been deeply
critical of the monastic orders in Europe, which held enormous wealth and which were
deemed to be both corrupt and havens of idleness. Accordingly, some religious orders had been
dissolved, in the lands of newly Protestant states on the continent and Cromwell now elected
to push the king towards doing the same in England. Henry was won over, not by any theological
arguments, but by the simple reasoning that the exercise could generate an enormous financial
windfall for the crown treasury, if they were suppressed and their lands and assets confiscated. And this was money, Henry imagined, which
could be used to fund a new war in France, and indeed after Cromwell died, it was there
that Henry would squander most of what accrued. Having convinced the king, the suppression
campaign was commenced with, by the end of the 1530s hundreds of monasteries, friaries
and nunneries had been suppressed, bringing to an end the religious orders in the Tudor
dominions and having drastic implications for everything from poor relief, to local
landholding practices throughout England, Ireland and Wales. The foremost changes in religious practice
were reserved for the period between 1536 and 1538. In July 1536, the Ten Articles of Faith were
promulgated as part of the new religious doctrine of the Church of England. These were hardly radical and adhered to many
traditional Roman Catholic practices, but there were a number of innovations. For instance, while the Articles affirmed
that the body and blood of Christ were present in the Eucharist and that penance was necessary
for salvation, there were two issues which the continental reformers were challenging,
the Articles did state that Purgatory was doctrinally uncertain, but indulgences for
remission of sins should be rejected and images and icons in churches were of only limited
sanctity, all beliefs which were associated with the Lutherans in Germany and elsewhere. These beliefs were further strengthened in
the late 1530s, as Cromwell took a personal interest in rooting out what was deemed to
be âidolatryâ, the worshipping of saints and their relics and the use of too much iconography
in churches. Yet it would not be until the reign of Henryâs
son, Edward VI, that this campaign really took off, with English churches stripped down
to bare altars and all signs of ostentation removed. The Ten Articles were augmented and expanded
in 1537, with the compilation of a new book named, The Institution of the Christian Man,
more commonly known as The Bishopsâ Book. Compiled by the archbishops and bishops of
England in conjunction with political figures such as Cromwell, the Book effectively offered
a full set of instructions for how Mass should be conducted in England, as well as the status
of the sacraments, the decoration of churches and numerous theological matters. And in its totality, it moved the Church of
England further away from Catholicism and closer to Protestantism. For instance, the Book confirmed that henceforth,
only three of the seven sacraments, Baptism, the Eucharist and Penance, were actually ordained
as core sacraments by Christ. There were further proscriptions on the veneration
of saints and images. But most significantly, the Book leaned towards
the concept of Justification by Faith Alone, a core Protestant principle which rejected
the Roman Catholic belief, that salvation could be earned through good works. This new Lutheran and Reformed principle argued,
that salvation was only obtained through oneâs faith in God. With the inclusion of this principle in the
Book, Cranmer and Cromwell were inherently pushing the Church of England closer to outright
Protestantism. The religious reforms did not go unopposed,
across a country which was still overwhelmingly populated by traditional Roman Catholics. The most severe reaction came from the north
of the country, where discontent with the religious innovations became mixed with popular
unrest over economic conditions in 1536. The revolt which resulted, is known as the
Pilgrimage of Grace. It was sparked by the arrival of commissioners
which Cromwell had sent north to dissolve several monasteries there. These officials were attacked in October and
the rebels then occupied Lincoln. Simultaneously, a more substantial rising
erupted in Yorkshire, led by a local lawyer named Robert Aske. These rebels seized the city of York on the
24th of October and had amassed an army of 30,000 men by the early winter. Little could be done to quell the unrest in
the weeks that followed and the rebels devised a series of demands at Pontefract in December
1536, which included criticism of Cromwell and his role in government. Eventually the Pilgrimage failed, because
the Duke of Norfolk, who was sent north to suppress it, convinced Aske that some of their
demands would be granted and the rebel army dispersed. This weakened them and Norfolk was able to
deal with the remaining rebels in the late winter and early spring of 1537, in the process
executing approximately 250 of the chief troublemakers, Aske included. Cromwellâs downfall, though, would not arise
from regional rebellions such as that which broke out in the north of England in 1536. It would come from much nearer to home and
was brought about by several of the individuals with whom he had served in government for
the better part of a decade. The kingâs secretary had made many enemies
in the 1530s, notably the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, the most powerful magnate in
England and a man who viewed Cromwell as a commoner and an upstart. Furthermore, Norfolk was increasingly at the
head of a conservative faction, which disapproved of the course of religious policy. He was joined in his opposition to Cromwell
by other ecclesiastical and noble figures, notably Stephen Gardiner, the conservative
bishop of Winchester. From 1537 onwards, they began to exploit the
kingâs growing unease at the pace and extent of religious reform, to begin undermining
Cromwellâs position at court and in Henryâs eyes. They were able to do so because, despite the
extent, that England had lurched fitfully into the Protestant camp in the 1530s, Henry
was still a doctrinal Catholic himself. This reality would be further compounded at
the end of the decade, when a number of controversies coalesced to fatally undermine Cromwellâs
position. Surprisingly, some of the damage which was
inflicted on Cromwell at this time, came from France. Firstly, a controversy arose in the English
Pale around Calais in 1539, over the presence of several radical preachers there, who Cromwell
and Cranmer had purposefully removed from England. Then there were issues surrounding the official
publication of an English language translation of the Bible by Miles Coverdale that same
year. And Henry was uncomfortable with these developments. As such, they provided room for Norfolk to
promote the issuance of a series of Six Articles, just weeks later, which constituted a backlash
against the Protestant Ten Articles and The Bishopâs Book of 1536 and 1537. In these new Six Articles, renewed emphasis
was placed on clerical celibacy and the concept of transubstantiation, ideas which had been
railed against by the Protestant faction in the mid-1530s. And all of this brought the enmity between
Norfolk and Cromwell out into the open. Then, on the 29th of June 1539, when dining
with several other magnates and the king at Cranmerâs residence, a heated discussion
between Cromwell and the Duke erupted, during the course of which, Howard accused Cromwell
of dishonesty, to which the secretary suggested Norfolk was disloyal to his king. It was now a duel to see which of them could
win out in Henryâs good graces. Those who opposed Cromwell were presented
with a prime opportunity to fatally discredit the secretary in the months that followed. Beginning in 1538, Henryâs government had
opened negotiations with an alliance of small Protestant states in Germany, known as the
Schmalkaldic League. It was believed at this time, that Catholic
France and Spain were set to ally with each other, against newly Protestant England, and
Cromwell and others in government believed England needed allies of its own. Thus, by the spring of 1539, negotiations
had started to centre on a potential marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves, the sister
of William I, the duke of the duchies of JĂźlich, Cleves and Berg in western Germany. Cromwell greatly favoured the marriage alliance,
believing it to be the best means of securing the Protestant settlement in England, but
it soon soured. A treaty was signed between England and the
League in October 1539, but when Anne arrived in England in December, Henry decided she
was not attractive enough. All the same, he went ahead with the marriage
on the 6th of January 1540, but three days later, the union was quickly annulled after
he failed to consummate the marriage. Henry allowed Anne to remain in England and
granted her several residences, but Cromwell was badly damaged by the entire affair. The Anne of Cleves affair was the beginning
of the end for Cromwell. His enemies had him on the ropes now and in
early April, the French ambassador to England, Charles de Marillac, reported back to Paris,
that Cromwellâs days were numbered. Much as had happened with Wolsey a decade
earlier, Cromwell had not lost Henryâs favour, but the king was so swayed by a growing coalition
of individuals at court, who opposed the secretary, that he could not resist the temptation to
bring Cromwell down. Then, when a new parliament opened a few days
later, there was much talk of the scaling back of many of the religious reforms, which
had been introduced during the 1530s. Conversely, in a highly anomalous move, Henry
granted Cromwell a peerage in mid-April, when he bestowed the title of Earl of Essex on
Thomas and promoted him to the position of Lord Chamberlain. On the surface, there was an air of normality
returning to things at court. In the early summer, Cromwell was overseeing
the establishment of the Court of Wards, a new court which supervised the raising of
children who rose to the peerage while still minors and administered their estates during
their youth. But then just days later, Cromwellâs career
would come to a shuddering halt. On the 10th of June 1540, Cromwell arrived
at a meeting of the Privy Council. Upon his arrival into the Privy Council Chamber,
he was arrested by the Palace Guards on charges of treason and heresy. Revelling in his victory over his long-time
rival, the Duke of Norfolk came forward and removed the symbols of the Order of the Garter,
Englandâs highest noble order, from Cromwell. The secretary was then led away and taken
downriver to the Tower of London. Trumped up charges were placed against Cromwell,
the most ludicrous being, that the former secretary was conspiring to marry Henryâs
daughter, Mary, and thus place himself in line to become a royal consort when the king
died. Henry as ever, was nowhere to be seen in all
this. Cromwell wrote to him near Midsummer to appeal
for mercy, but he should have had more than enough knowledge of his monarch by now, to
be aware of how futile an endeavour this was. On the 28th of July, Cromwell walked out onto
Tower Green. In his last speech he denied having aided
heretics. His execution a moment later was botched. It took several blows before his head was
severed by the executioner. His head was then set on a pike on London
Bridge and the same day, Henry VIII married Norfolkâs niece, Catherine Howard, and a
conservative backlash against the Protestant reformation was initiated. Thomas Cromwell is an enigma. He rose from shadowy beginnings in Putney,
to become one of the most powerful individuals in England in the 1530s. Yet, while his career and work profoundly
impacted on the history of early modern England, the man himself remains impenetrable and largely
unknowable. Unsurprisingly, historiansâ views on Cromwell
have varied widely over the past 500 years. Most generations have tended to see him as
a Machiavellian schemer, who was willing to rip apart the social and religious fabric
of England, in an effort to ingratiate himself to the one man who could guarantee him power,
King Henry VIII. But others, following the work of Geoffrey
Elton, have concluded that Cromwell was a remarkable administrator, who fomented a revolution
in Tudor government which shaped how modern government cabinets function. Indeed, his power within the government is
even unclear. Was Cromwell effectively Wolseyâs successor
in the 1530s and did he dominate the government, or was Cromwell just one part of a wider council
of ministers, albeit one whose indefatigable energy as a bureaucrat and administrator,
ensured that he was involved in all the major decisions that were made at Whitehall and
Westminster, throughout the 1530s? In reality these divergent views have emerged
because Cromwell was a man of striking contradictions. For instance, he is someone for whom we have
evidence of his loyalty and kindness towards others. Cromwell was genuinely distressed about Wolseyâs
fall in 1529. And yet we also have evidence of how ruthless
he could be, notably in his pursuit of Anne Boleyn and her supposed lovers, when it suited
him politically in the mid-1530s. Indeed we get the sense that Cromwell tried
to foster an impression of a dour man, lacking in interest or emotion. This was an act. He was actually a cultured man, who had lived
in Italy at the height of the Renaissance, patronised the arts and music, and spoke multiple
languages. He provided alms and food for up to 200 poor
people outside his home every day in the 1530s and had a genuine commitment to social reform. Equally his religious views were relatively
moderate and although he set in motion the introduction of the Protestant Reformation
into England, he was no religious extremist or Puritan. Perhaps what he was above all, was a hard-working
bureaucrat, one who was possessed of an unflinching loyalty to his monarch. Even Henry, months after he had consigned
Cromwell to the grave, lamented that Thomas had been, âthe most faithful servant he
ever had.â Thus, what we are left with, is a peculiar
and enigmatic character. He rose on the strength of a sincere loyalty
to Wolsey and then he reached the peak of his powers by facilitating the borderline
megalomania of an increasingly tyrannical monarch. But in facilitating that same king, he was
given enough leeway to introduce a series of genuinely progressive reforms, ones which
improved the administration of the English government, introduced many sorely needed
changes in the functioning of the English Church and attempted to bring about a series
of societal and fiscal reforms, to a country which was on the cusp of enormous economic
and social changes. But it was a Faustian bargain, with a man
who was generally content to tear England apart, in order to see that his dynasty was
protected. And ultimately in 1540, Cromwell became just
one more victim of that same monarch. What do you think of Thomas Cromwell? Was he a âMachiavellianâ schemer who plunged
England into religious and social chaos, in order to acquire power, or was he a faithful
servant of the English state, who did his best to temper the worst impulses of a tyrannical
king? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
