The Cromwell Enigma

by Derek Wilson

  Meanwhile, Antonio had been following the leads John Mill supplied. When he returned to the George Inn that ­afternoon he was obviously very pleased with his progress.

  ‘I met someone very highly connected,’ he said. ‘He is a Venetian doctor – a physician to the English king himself. He is going to arrange some introductions. He was also very interested to hear about you and your enquiries, and said he might be able to help you. I have invited him to supper.’

  I was not altogether pleased with my young friend’s ‘help’. It would, of course, have been churlish and ungrateful of me to say so, but I did approach the forthcoming interview with a certain reserve, because the name Dr ­Augustino was not altogether unknown to me. I remembered ­Cromwell describing him as someone not to be trusted, a master of intrigue who used his position of intimacy and trust with important patients to gather intelligence he could turn to pecuniary advantage. He had been some years in the service of Thomas Wolsey, the king’s first minister, only to desert him and provide confidential information to his enemies when Wolsey fell from power. I ordered our meal to be served in one of the hostelry’s smaller rooms, explaining that I did not want our conversation to be disturbed. This was certainly true, but I was also concerned that, in these uncertain times, our meeting should be observed by as few people as possible.

  Later, as we waited for our guest, Antonio asked, ‘What progress are your enquiries making? Do you understand Thomas Cromwell any better now?’

  It was a good question, starkly expressed. I had gained information about my quarry, but did I understand him? Attempting to answer Antonio’s question was a good exercise.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I see a young man, much like you: intelligent, talented, self-confident. In Florence he has learned much about business, politics, religion, art. He returns to his own country around fifteen ten, at the very time when a new royal regime is established, and he is ­immediately successful in all that he does. He renders valuable service to the house of Frescobaldi, but then he strikes out on his own as an international businessman and lawyer. I see a man whose progress is almost unstoppable. A man who worships the god of success and who is amply rewarded by that deity. I see this man, but do I understand him? I do not. ­Particularly I do not recognize in him a younger version of the man I met these five years since, in fifteen thirty-five. That man was passionate in his belief. Spreading his faith was now his purpose in life, more important by far than his own material advantage. He risked offending his king. At some time in those two decades something happened to change him.’

  ‘Perhaps the good doctor can help you to identify that change,’ Antonio said, ‘for here he comes.’

  The man who introduced himself as Dr Augustino de ­Augustinis, physician, diplomat and confidant to His Gracious Majesty, was of small stature and middle years. If I were to describe him in a word that word would be ‘neat’. His beard was immaculately trimmed, his shirt and hose fresh laundered, his doublet chastely ornamented in gold thread, and the pomander he wore on a chain around his neck was elaborately yet discreetly worked in silver gilt.

  ‘Signor Bourbon, this is indeed an honour. I was distraught to have been denied meeting you on your ­visit to England five years ago. Alas, I was absent on foreign embassy.’

  ‘My sojourn here was brief,’ I muttered. ‘I cannot think that it was much remarked upon.’

  ‘Oh, but indeed it was,’ the doctor responded. ‘Signor Cromwell often read witty poems from your Nugae. He held you in great esteem. And now, I understand, you are here to honour his memory.’

  I almost fell into the trap of satisfying his curiosity. Instead, I answered question with question. ‘Was your friendship with Cromwell a long one?’

  ‘Our relationship’ – he was careful to stress the word – ‘stretched over many years. We met first in Signor Speronti’s beautiful city of Florence many years ago. Neither of us knew then that it was our destiny to follow parallel careers.’

  Antonio commented, ‘Dr Augustino explained to me that it was he who introduced Cromwell to the royal court.’

  Our guest was quick to provide a corrective. ‘I introduced him to Thomas Wolsey, the Lord Chancellor. I was his physician.’

  ‘Cardinal Wolsey?’ I prompted. ‘The proud prelate everyone hated.’

  ‘Aye, and with cause – but that was in later years. At the time I speak of he was a churchman with a vision for reform, which is why I knew that young Cromwell would serve him well.’

  ‘Your reason?’ I probed.

  ‘In Italy Cromwell and I spoke much together about the corruption and worldly power of the clergy. We both ­visited Rome and knew it to be the fertile ground of all manner of whoredoms. Cromwell particularly denounced the hyp­ocrisy of monks and friars.’

  ‘He spoke true there,’ Antonio said.

  ‘Many men in those days both spoke and wrote about the notorious evils of churchmen. Yet no one, neither prince nor bishop, was able to clean out the Augean stables. Wolsey was different. He set about reform with a will. He began the work of closing convents, selling their lands and using the proceeds to found colleges where a better-educated breed of clergy might be trained. For this business he had need of a good lawyer to see his reforms through the courts. I immediately knew that Cromwell was the man for this task and I was proved right. He was tireless in visiting religious houses and sniffing out evil-doers. Then he applied the funds to the cardinal’s new centres of learning in Oxford and Ipswich.’

  ‘This obviously made them both many enemies,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Enemies who eventually turned His Majesty against them. Wolsey was blamed for failing to achieve the annulment of the king’s first marriage. Cromwell became ­tainted with the accusation of heresy. Now, Signor Bourbon, from what you know of him, think you that Cromwell was a ­Lutheran or an Anabaptist?’

  I sidestepped. ‘If I understood what those heretics believe I might be able to answer your question. But tell me, you and Cromwell both advanced from the cardinal’s service to the king’s, did you not? How did that come about? ­Cromwell once told me that he had remained loyal to the cardinal until the last possible moment. How was it that you prospered when your master fell from power?’

  This verbal swordplay continued as we made our way through the meal. Whatever snippets of information the doctor had hoped to glean, I believe he was a disappointed man when he eventually took his leave.

  I too experienced frustration. For the next few days my time was divided between gathering the miscellaneous fragments of information I had accumulated into some sort of continuous narrative and talking with members of ­London’s Italian community, some of whom had been among Cromwell’s close friends. Sadly, all they could tell me was of recent events. They could do little to help me fill in the many blanks that still littered the earlier years of the story I was trying to tell. I was pinning much hope on a second meeting with Sir Richard, but day succeeded day and no message arrived from him.

  A week passed. Then ten days. I began to make plans for my return to Nérac. What was happening to Queen ­Marguerite I knew not. Had the threatened marriage between Princess Jeanne and the Duke of Cleves taken place? Had my pupil been moved to the Rhineland to take up her new responsibilities? Were my pedagogic services no longer required? Though my employer had many more impor­tant matters to deal with, I imagined that she would be impatient for news from me – news I had been in no position to send.

  Then, but two days before the start of the Christmas ­season, Simon, Sir Richard’s page, came to the George bearing an invitation to call upon him.

  ‘Well, Master Bourbon, glad I am to see you again and ­under better circumstances than our last meeting.’ Sir ­Richard greeted me in his hall. We sat close by his hearth while Simon busied himself with flagon and poker, mulling wine.

  ‘Matters in London seem so different now,’ I said. ‘I would not have believed
things could change so rapidly.’

  ‘Life at court and in the city revolves around the king’s mood, and now that he fancies himself in love again, all is sunshine and mirth.’

  ‘Everyone talks about the new queen. I gather she is very young and beautiful.’

  Cromwell shrugged. ‘Young, certainly – not yet twenty. Well able, we hope, to bear the king more children.’

  ‘Another niece of the Duke of Norfolk, like Anne Boleyn, is she not?’

  ‘Niece, yes; like, no. Anne was highly intelligent – and devout. Too much, perhaps, for her own good. No one who knows Catherine Howard would apply those words to her. But the king is not looking for a wife to debate theology with. He wants a woman to make him young and lusty again. He rises early. Spends hours in the hunting field. Dances well into the night. And then to bed with his lissom bride. We shall have a merrier Christmas than of late years. Of that you may be sure.’

  ‘Then Norfolk and the Howards now rule the roost?’

  ‘Yes, the court is athrong with them, strutting, clucking and shaking their feathers. The queen’s relations flourish – titles, household offices, generous land grants.’

  ‘So the Catholic cause is now permanently established.’

  ‘Permanently?’ Sir Richard scoffed. ‘Nothing is perman­ent in England. The good Bishop of Winchester is sent on embassy to the Emperor and like to stay abroad for years. Norfolk is about to be despatched into the north to prepare for a royal progress next spring. The bishops are ­instructed not to proceed with the arrest of suspected heretics. In ­addition to all this, my cousin Gregory, Lord Cromwell’s son, is raised to the peerage, as Baron Cromwell.’

  ‘A gesture from the king to make amends for murdering his father?’

  ‘Kings do not admit to making mistakes. This is the nearest we are like to get. But tell me of your progress. Did you make contact with Stephen Vaughan?’

  I told Sir Richard about my visits to Antwerp and ­Florence, and he followed the tale avidly.

  ‘I always envied my uncle his time in Italy,’ he said. ‘His appetite for knowledge was insatiable. There was no new book he seemed not to have read; no scholarly argument he did not follow. His curiosity was an obsession.’

  ‘I well recall his agile mind,’ I said.

  ‘Agile and independent. That was what made him a good lawyer. He could listen to all sides in a case and unerringly discern the flaws in an argument.’

  For a while I contemplated the blazing logs, trying to find a way to frame my next question. ‘How did it come about,’ I asked, ‘that commitment to – what should we call it? – the New Learning? Was it a gradual development?’

  Sir Richard waved Simon away and did not speak ­until the door had closed behind him. ‘You press me to look into another man’s soul – a man about twenty years older than me. When I started on my legal career in my father’s ­office, Thomas was often engaged in cases for us. As he became increasingly involved in work for Wolsey he farmed out work to me. This was particularly in connection with closing down monastic houses and selling land, buildings and furnishings in order to finance the cardinal’s building projects. After a while I noticed that my uncle had a passion for the task.’

  ‘Passion?’

  ‘Yes. It was not just a routine matter of inventories and bills of sale. He took a delight in dispossessing the religious – “idle, licentious rogues”, he called them. He once told me he would see every house closed ere he was done. As you know, he achieved that goal. He also added an Act against sodomy to the statute book as soon as he was in a position to do so.’

  ‘So his whole reform programme – banishing the Pope from the English Church, dispossessing all the monks and nuns, pillaging shrines, removing images from churches, having the Bible printed in England – all that sprang from hatred of the old Church?’

  ‘Nay, that is too simple. I once thought that his experience of the Church in Italy must have soured him against the whole Roman system. But he had no love for over-­zealous, angry men who would pull up barren trees with no thought for what to plant in their place. I recall how angry he was when Simon Fish, one of our brothers at Gray’s Inn, wrote a violent attack on Wolsey and the clergy. Thomas personally denounced him to the cardinal. Imprecations, curses, anathemas were pointless distractions. The malady was too deep-rooted to be affected by them.’

  Who is able to number the great and broad bottomless ocean sea full of evils, that this mischievous and sinful generation is able to bring upon us unpunished!

  What remedy? Make laws against them? I am in doubt whether ye are able. Are they not stronger in your own parliament house than yourself?

  So captive are your laws unto them, that no man that they list to excommunicate may be admitted to sue any action in any of your courts . . .

  Set these sturdy loobies abroad in the world to get themselves wives, to get their living with their labour in the sweat of their faces, according to the commandment of GOD.

  (Simon Fish, A Supplication for the Beggars, 1528)

  ‘It seems, then, that he was a more complicated man than I realized.’

  ‘Aye, I doubt anyone ever knew him well. I was closer to him than most, but . . .’ The sentence tailed away. ‘The loss of his wife and daughters was a heavy blow, but he concealed his grief. What the world saw was a man working in the cardinal’s household with even greater energy, making passionate and clever speeches in parliament, keeping four or five secretaries busy with a volume of correspondence that would have swamped most men in his position.’

  ‘Perhaps he was filling his mind with all this activity to stop himself thinking about his loss.’

  ‘I am sure of it. And it undermined his health. He too came close to death. He asked me to find a priest to hear his confession.’ Sir Richard busied himself with the wine and spices, reheating the poker and plunging it sizzling into the flagon. ‘But it could not be any priest,’ he continued. ‘It had to be Richard Bisley.’

  ‘I do not think I have heard that name before.’

  ‘Few people have. And yet the more I think about it, the more I believe that it was his influence that led my uncle to release on the land the leviathan of change.’ He tentatively sipped from his steaming tankard. ‘When Thomas ­Cromwell recovered from his fever, he was a different man.’

  ‘Was that when he broke this crucifix?’ I asked, produ­cing the wooden talisman.

  My host’s eyes widened as he stared at the fragment. ‘So you have found that,’ he gasped. He took it from me and lightly ran his fingers over the head with its jagged crown. ‘The answer to your question is no. I cannot remember a time when my uncle did not wear and treasure this.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘Aye, there’s the mystery. Mayhap Bisley knows the ­answer, for I never did.’

  ‘Do you know where I might find him?’

  ‘He is one of the king’s chaplains. Or was. It is some years since I have seen him at court. I know he has a fellowship at All Souls, Oxford. If you think it worth the journey you might find him there.’

  ‘That is a temptation indeed.’ I took the fragment into my hand and gazed at it. ‘I am sure that this holds the key to everything. Your uncle kept it with his most important ­papers – the ones he was determined to keep out of the hands of his enemies. There was a note attached to it: ­“Remember Always”. But remember what? The mystery lures me on. Inside me there is a demon – or is it an angel? – who says, “You will never be at peace until you have solved this riddle.” Yet time is against me. I have already been too long from home. Now Christmas is upon us and that is like to delay me further. If I then make more delay by riding to Oxford—’

  ‘As to Christmas, why do you not come to court? We go this year to Hampton and there is room in my entourage for another guest. With the king in his present mood it bodes well to be a gay time. You will
find much to amuse you. You could then depart for Oxford soon after New Year. I doubt the university greybeards prolong their festivities overlong.’

  I thanked him for his tempting offer, but explained that Queen Marguerite would by now be impatient for my return.

  ‘Then what you must do is write to her and tell her that you are commanded to be a guest of King Henry. That shall surely please her. I will see that your letter is taken by royal courier.’

  I took little persuading, vain and foolish man that I am. Heaven and all the saints knew the dangers and discomforts my obsession had already visited upon me. Yet once again I allowed my curiosity to overmaster me. The knowledge I acquired would cause me still further discomforts.

  13

  A royal Christmas

  We arrived at Hampton Court palace in a small fleet of boats hired by Sir Richard to convey his party upriver. Snow was flurrying around as we made our way along a short avenue of flaring torches that illumined the way from the landing stage to the gatehouse. A large crowd had gathered to gaze upon the king, his young queen and the leaders of society attending the Christmas feast, but rows of royal halberdiers held them at a distance. The great court when we entered was keeping the dusk at bay with the light from hundreds of torches around the walls. Those walls were hung with laurel boughs and other greenery.

  Two of my fellow travellers were looking around with critical eyes.

  ‘’Tis even more splendid than when Wolsey had it.’

  ‘If that is possible. The cardinal’s dwelling, whether here or at York Place, was more royal than royal.’

  ‘As God’s word says, “How are the mighty fallen.”’

  ‘Aye, men never learn, do they? Wolsey, Cromwell. They grasp the torch of royal power till it burns them.’