The Cromwell Enigma

by Derek Wilson

  ‘Madman! Madman!’ Valdes growled. ‘I could not believe he was bent on closing with us. In that weather! He could have sent us both to the bottom.’

  The Spaniard explained that he had been forced to hoist more sail to draw clear of the Hope. ‘So, what did your ­pirate dog do? Fired his bow cannon! He thought to scare us, I think.’

  ‘He had no chance of hitting your ship in that weather,’ I said.

  ‘You are right, but this hellhound had the devil’s luck. One shot struck our rudder. No serious damage but it was jammed. For the moment we were helpless.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Valdes shrugged. ‘What every good Catholic sailor would do: I prayed to St Elmo, and the storm died. Just like that.’ He slapped his hand on the table.

  ‘That must have made it easier for Doughty to grapple the San Gabriel.’

  ‘Of course. But to grapple is one thing. To capture is quite another. The San Gabriel may be a small fighting ship. She has only four cannon – two port and two starboard – and they were useless. With no steerage I could not bring them to bear. But I have a fine fighting crew and I keep them well practised with handguns and crossbows. So we were quite ready for Master Doughty and his seaport dregs.’ He gave a growling laugh. ‘He soon discovered my porcupine has more quills than he expected.’ Captain Valdes gloated as only Spaniards can, as he described the brief action that resulted in his capture of the Hope.

  ‘And what will happen now?’ I asked somewhat nervously.

  ‘We should make port tomorrow morning unless the tide and the estuary currents are against us. There I will deliver what is left of this heretical crew to the authorities.’

  ‘Were many of Doughty’s crew killed?’

  Valdes shrugged. ‘A dozen.’ Again the gruff laugh. ‘The others will wish they too had died before the Inquisition is finished with them. They are bound for the galleys.’

  ‘And me?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Do not concern yourself, Señor Bourbon. We have no quarrel with Navarre. I am sure you will soon find a ­coaster to give you passage to Calais.’

  I stood up and was relieved to discover that my legs supported me as I crossed to the stern window. It afforded a view of a wide expanse of water with, beyond it, a flat landscape extending to the horizon of what seemed to be marshland dotted with fishing villages.

  I turned to face the captain. ‘And where exactly are we?’

  He rose and went to the door. ‘You will excuse me, Señor. I must go and make sure my prisoners are as uncomfortable as possible. Where are we? Making our way up the Scheldt – towards Antwerp.’

  * * *

  * ‘Man proposes but God disposes’, Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

  5

  Antwerp

  I am never at rest. I am now at Bergen op Zoom, now at Bruges, now at Ghent, now here, now there, so that not without exceeding trouble can I satisfy all those to whom I minister.

  (Letter of Stephen Vaughan, 1540)

  Captain Valdes’ estimate of our arrival time proved optimistic. The sun was well past its zenith before the Spaniard’s two ships dropped anchor in the roadstead of the imperial city of Antwerp. Valdes had the Hope’s boat lowered and invited me to accompany him ashore. I suspect that he wanted me to be a witness to his hero’s welcome. Word of the capture of an English privateer had obviously spread. A crowd of local people some three or four deep lined the quay and cheering began as soon as Valdes climbed the stone steps from the water.

  The welcoming party dispersed when the captain set off for the harbour master’s office. One of the Spanish crew carried my chest ashore and left me by the wall of one of the warehouses while he, doubtless, made his way to the nearest tavern. Only then did I start to consider carefully what my next move should be. My sickness and Doughty’s potion (now that my brain was clear I realized that the lewd fellow had drugged me to keep me out of the way while he went in pursuit of his prey) had left me very weak. My first necessity was obviously a good wash and a change of clothes. A group of casual dock workers were sitting nearby playing at dice on an upturned keg. With a mixture of French and Spanish I managed to make my requirements known. After the usual haggling over price I acquired a guide who ­loaded my trunk on a handcart and conveyed me to what I was assured was the ‘best inn of Antwerp’.

  The sign of the Golden Fleece lay in the heart of the city’s business centre, close by the colonnaded cloister of the bourse. I had only been in Antwerp once before and that some years earlier. I remembered being very impressed with it then, but now it seemed somehow bigger and busier. The large enclosure was thronged with merchants from many nations, standing in twos and threes. The air was abuzz with men doing business in a variety of languages. What an amazing spiritual power is exerted by money! Throughout Europe Catholics and Protestants were at each other’s throats. Any Christians striving for peace and reconciliation were helpless swimmers battling powerful partisan currents. But here, where divine Mammon held sway, papists and heretics cheerfully joined together in financial liturgy.

  If the tariff at the Golden Fleece was typical, innkeepers prospered mightily in this mercantile Jerusalem. However, their standards were correspondingly high. The first-floor chamber I was allotted was clean and comfortable. The dinner I ordered to be brought to me was excellent – though by then I was so hungry that I would probably have found cowhide palatable.

  Sated at last, I took up pen and paper and, with a ­flagon of Flemish beer at my elbow, settled to write a report of the strange sequence of events that had seen me cast up, ­Jonah-like, on this unfamiliar shore. I certainly felt an affin­ity with the ancient prophet of Israel. Unlike him I had not been running away from Jehovah, but the destination I had chosen was, apparently, not the one intended by Providence. I thought again of all those gargoyle-featured traders in the bourse, their gaze fixed only on gold, and imagined myself standing in the middle of that courtyard denouncing the wealthy worldlings in torrents of fiery oratory, ordering them to repent in sackcloth and ashes. Imagined it, shuddered and quickly unimagined it! I was not the stuff of which martyrs were made. Yet I could not doubt that I had been brought here for a purpose – a purpose more obvious and less daunting. I set aside the sheet of paper, took ­another and began a new letter to Master Stephen Vaughan at the English merchants’ house.

  I knew not whether he was in town or, if he was, whether he would be too busy – or, perchance, disinclined – to meet me. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise to receive a reply early the following morning.

  To Master Nicholas Bourbon, emissary of Her Royal Highness, the Queen of Navarre, greeting. I bid you welcome to Antwerp and pray you have a pleasant stay. Should you be in need of any assistance during your residence here be assured that my brothers and our servants at the English House are at your disposal. We were all amazed and greatly grieved at the news from London and render you thanks for your words of sympathy. I fear His Majesty and, indeed, all men of goodwill who strive for peace in Europe will very soon come to lament the loss of our dear friend. I must tomorrow journey to Brussels, but would fain learn from you at first hand what has passed in London in recent days. If you are able to call here this evening I shall be much obliged.

  In haste,

  Stephen Vaughan, Governor of the English House in Antwerp

  My impression of the man who welcomed me to the quay­side cluster of warehouses, offices and living quarters that made up the headquarters of the English merchant community was one of ‘middleness’. That is to say, he was ­middle aged, of middle height and of a middling personality. ­Master Vaughan was affable and, as I gathered during the evening, much liked and respected by his colleagues, but his quiet demeanour was not such as would display passions – or rouse them in others.

  The same was not true of his two companions, who with us made up a semicircle before a good fire in th
e small ­tapestry-hung room Vaughan had chosen for our meeting. John Rogers, the community’s chaplain, had a face deep-lined with enthusiasm and, as I soon discovered, volubly expressed his convictions. Simon Carteret, the eldest of the trio, spoke little, but his contributions were highly flavoured and sauced with an acerbic wit. My hosts pressed me for the latest news from London, though they were obviously well informed by the messengers who arrived in the port on almost every tide.

  It was Rogers who summed up the reaction of them all to the recent events. ‘We thought . . . we believed . . . we prayed that we should see the march of Antichrist halted. The victory was there for the taking. England, France and the ­German princes all united to resist the imperial hellhounds out of the Roman kennel. ’Twas what ­Cromwell was patiently working to achieve. We hoped to bring in your Navarre,’ he nodded at me, ‘and Milan, and other small princedoms and free cities and, in time, Denmark and Poland. All would see that Charles V is not invincible. Doubt not the Lord can do this. He will deliver his people from the shackles of Antichrist, just as he delivered them of old from captivity in Egypt.’

  ‘That did take him forty years,’ Simon said quietly. ­‘Perhaps we should not rush him.’

  From the exchange of glances, I gathered that the chaplain’s zeal was a cause of some amusement and perhaps embarrassment among his colleagues. After a pause, I asked, ‘Was Thomas’s vision really that large? A growing alliance of states to confront the might of the Catholic Emperor?’

  ‘We have often debated that question,’ Vaughan said. ‘I knew him, I think, better than most. He was a distant rela­tive of my wife. I met him a few times even before we were in Wolsey’s pay together. That must be almost . . . what . . . twenty years ago. I like to think he was more open with me than with most others, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘If he did have a grand design he never discussed it with me.’

  ‘He could not reveal his true intentions.’ Rogers leaned forward, prodding the air with a thrusting finger. His ­ideas were so radical—’

  ‘Come now, John,’ Carteret interrupted. ‘Since he kept his own counsel, how can we say what his thoughts and plans were?’

  The chaplain jumped up and stepped to the door. ‘A moment, friends. I’ll show you how I know – or deduce – just how advanced our friend’s convictions were.’ He went out, but was back almost immediately, carrying a small, cheaply bound book. ‘Now, Master Bourbon,’ he said, settling himself, ‘the name Heinrich Agrippa will be well known to you.’

  ‘Indeed, though only by report.’ Few if any men in my lifetime had been more talked about or more controversial. Even now, some five years after his death, men still spoke – some through clenched teeth – of this doctor, lawyer, philosopher and, if his detractors were to be believed, necromancer. He had been feted in – and thrown out of – many of the courts of Europe. He was fortunate not to have attracted the fatal attention of the Inquisition.

  ‘Antwerp was the only place where the poor man found refuge in his latter years,’ Rogers explained. ‘His major works were published here. This is one of them, ­Agrippa’s treatise, The Vanity of Sciences and Arts. I had it by me two years since when I was last in London. Lord Cromwell begged the loan of it and devoured the whole book in less than a day. He enjoyed it so much that, as he said apologetically, he could not refrain from marking certain passages. By your leave, I will read one.’ He thumbed his way through the pages, found his place, and declared:

  ‘A royal or imperial or episcopal court is nothing else than a convent of noble and famous knaves, a theatre of the worst satellites, a school of the most corrupt morals, and an asylum for execrable sins. There pride, arrogance, haughtiness, extortion, lust, gluttony, envy, malice, treachery, violence, impiety, and cruelty, with whatever other vices and corruptions there may be, dwell, rule, and reign. There rape, adultery, and fornication are the sport of princes and of nobles, and even kings’ mothers are pimps to their sons. There virtue suffers wreck unspeakable. There the just man is oppressed by the unjust, the man of simple mind becomes a jest, boldness and impudence obtains promotion. There none prosper but flatterers, whisperers, detractors, denouncers, slanderers, syco­phants, liars, reputation-killers, authors of discord and outrage among the people. Whatever there is worst in every beast, seems to be brought together in the single flock of the court fold.’

  We laughed, but Rogers continued in great earnest. ‘And here is what Cromwell wrote in the margin, “God be praised for such truth-tellers.”’

  Carteret scoffed. ‘Nothing original in that. Many men have said as much. Ever since Erasmus—’

  ‘Pchah!’ Rogers spluttered. ‘Erasmus! Everything is Erasmus with you, Simon. The man was a mere cynic.’

  ‘I prefer the word “satirist”,’ Simon replied, ­elaborately calm. ‘He used humour to make people see their follies. Sadly, satire is dead. Luther killed it.’

  The chaplain scowled, face reddening. ‘What mean you by that? Luther spoke plain truth. Would you have him silenced?’

  Vaughan hastily interposed. ‘Easy, John. Let not ­Simon rile you. There is a point to be made here. Times have changed. In our young days, we could make jest of men’s errors, whether princes or popes. Now, all mockery is judged treason or heresy.’

  ‘’Twas, then, brave of Cromwell from within the court to condemn the court,’ I suggested. ‘To be at King Henry’s right hand and yet . . .’

  Vaughan smiled. ‘Aye, that was part of his genius. He had the king’s trust and held it. Many tried to break that bond over the years but—’

  ‘Henry liked him?’ I ventured.

  Vaughan frowned. ‘“Like” is not the word I would use. They were well matched.’

  ‘What you should say,’ Carteret suggested, ‘is that ­Cromwell managed the king well. He was master of all a royal councillor’s subtle arts. Had learned them well. All those years in Florence. Nowhere better for such an eager prentice to study his craft.’

  ‘How many years was he there?’ I asked. ‘I knew he had many friends among the Italian community in London but he spoke little of his time in their country – at least in my hearing.’

  Vaughan stood up to throw another log on the fire. When he resumed his seat it was some moments before he ­answered. ‘You are asking me to look down a deep well. The bottom is obscure. Dark, yet surfaced with ripples and distorted reflections.’

  Simon scoffed. ‘Come, Stephen, you sound like a cabbalist, creating mysteries merely to impress. ‘’Twas a plain enough question.’

  ‘No, my friend.’ The response was snapped out sharply. For the first time Vaughan looked angry. ‘Thomas never spoke of his beginnings and there are many who have broidered on his silence. Rumours. Scandals. Calumnies. In the family it was said . . .’ He drifted into frowning silence.

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted.

  ‘’Twill do no good to repeat old stories. Whatever ­shadows may have lain across his early path were banished by the brilliance of his later career. All I can say is that he left England when he was scarcely more than a boy – suddenly. That must have been more than forty years ago, in the time of this present king’s father. He went to Florence. Joined the banking house of Frescobaldi, began as a ­menial, was soon promoted to clerk and rose rapidly, because the mercantile life came naturally to him.’

  ‘And politics, too, I’ll warrant. Some say he knew ­Machiavelli well,’ Simon suggested.

  ‘Some say! Some say! You mean Pope Paul and ­Cardinal Pole say.’ Once again Rogers bridled at the older man’s words. ‘Only those who would belittle Cromwell’s achievements and accuse him of base motives say this.’

  ‘That was never my meaning,’ Carteret responded ­calmly. ‘’Tis no calumny to say a politician knows his craft well. Our friend would never have achieved what he did without studying how to manipulate princes. Think you he would have lasted as long as he did in royal service, or achieved so much, with
out a mastery of the subtle arts of dissimulation? Did not our Lord direct us to be as “gentle as doves and as wise as serpents”? ’Twas something Thomas took to heart – and I am glad for it.’

  Rogers was not to be mollified. ‘We all know the lies spewed out by Rome: “Machiavelli was a man lacking in piety and morals, and Cromwell sucked up his ­diabolical teaching like mother’s milk.” What nonsense! The ­Italian’s perverse writings were not even published when our friend had the making of policy, and as for the two being copesmates in Florence, that is malicious tittle-tattle. I ­never once heard Thomas mention Machiavelli’s name. Did you, Stephen? You could as well say the Emperor and I are close friends because we both happened to be in ­Brussels last year.’

  Vaughan frowned and appeared to be choosing carefully the words of his reply. ‘As I recall ’twas ’thirty-six or ­’thirty-seven before he read the Florentine’s works – the Italian printing of ’thirty-two. He liked to keep up his reading of that language, but he was not a philosopher. His mind ever had a mercantile cast.’

  ‘Mercantile?’ I queried.

  ‘Your philosopher begins with a proposition and proceeds from axiom to intricate axiom to prove it. Thomas had no patience to weave his way through that esoteric laby­rinth. He was a merchant. As he bargained over the price of alum or worsted, so he concluded policy by negotiation.’

  ‘Mean you that he compromised Gospel truth?’ Rogers bristled.

  ‘Not at all. He knew what he believed, but in dealing with those who did not share that belief, such as the king, he would rather settle for part truth than make no deal and risk losing all – including his life.’

  ‘Hard to drive a landspike ’twixt that and Machiavellianism,’ Carteret muttered.

  Silence fell on the company and when the conversation resumed it drifted into the calmer waters of local Antwerp affairs, which I could not follow. My mind had been taken hostage by the name Machiavelli. I had, of course, read the book that had caused so much alarm since its publication and translation into other languages – but then who had not? It was the talk of all the salons – for a while. The Florentine had given voice to the realism that churchmen found shocking, but was that worse than the pious sophism they themselves so often smeared over their ignoble deeds?