Sometime early in April 1534, Henry made Cromwell his Principal Secretary in place of Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester. In an uncharacteristically clumsy manner, the normally astute bishop had offended Henry. He had opposed the Submission of the Clergy, and had showed an unwise lack of enthusiasm for the king’s Supremacy, though he did eventually comply on both points. Cromwell’s appointment was completed with the minimum of fanfare and ceremony, a strange irony considering that he would soon raise the prestige of this office to new, unprecedented heights. Even the date of the appointment is not certain. However, as Gardiner signed his last warrant as secretary on 3 February, and Cromwell his first on 15 April, it most likely occurred during the early part of that month. Cromwell’s steady rise to power was now virtually complete, and he had become Henry’s foremost minister of state. For his indiscretions, Gardiner was a little fortunate not to forfeit his bishopric. Cromwell did not crow, and he even wrote a friendly letter to ‘my very loving lord, my lord of Winchester’; but Gardiner’s pride was wounded by this setback, and he harboured a simmering resentment against Cromwell from this moment on.9
During summer 1534 Cromwell was closely monitoring affairs in Ireland, but these, like his Irish policy generally, will be discussed in Chapter 11. The situation in England was fairly quiet, as if the king, council and parliament were resting and recharging the batteries before a further bout of anti-Rome legislation later in the year. In September Pope Clement died, to be succeeded by Alexander Farnese as Paul III. The English agent in Italy, Gregory Casale, reported that the old pontiff passed away largely unmourned, and that the new one was welcomed with much rejoicing on the streets of Rome. According to Chapuys – he may have been a bit optimistic here – Norfolk and the marquis of Dorset tentatively suggested to Henry that now would be an opportune moment to seek some kind of reconciliation with Rome. Henry scotched the idea immediately. ‘Whoever is elected pope’, averred the king, ‘I shall take no more account of him than of any priest in this my kingdom’.10
The parliamentary session of November and December proved that Henry meant what he said. The Act of Supremacy confirmed Henry as Head of the Church in England, and omitted the clause ‘so far as the law of God allows’ that had been included in earlier drafts. It also gave Henry the authority to set wrongs to right in the church, and to authorise visitations whenever necessary – a hint of impending action to be taken against the monasteries.11
Then the Act of First Fruits and Tenths dashed any hopes the clergy might have had of enjoying their savings now that they no longer had to pay annates to Rome. Cromwell and Audley were its prime movers. The act was full of praise for the king’s mercy, wisdom and justice, and it rhapsodised on how blessed a land England was under his most benign rule. As a result it was sure that all clerics would be delighted to pay the equivalent of a year’s income, plus a further tenth of their yearly revenue, to the crown. The lack of any significant opposition – the act was passed by the end of November with barely a squeak from the clergy – serves as a powerful indicator both of the anti-clerical mood of the time, and also of the daunting efficiency of the new men around the king like Cromwell and Audley. The average yield in Henry’s reign has been estimated at £40,000 per annum, and thus the church paid nearly ten times as much to Henry as it used to pay the pope in Rome.12
It is frequently claimed that Cromwell plundered the wealth of the church. Maybe so; but what a lot of wealth there was to plunder, far more than was needful to minister to the spiritual wants of the nation. Not many of the clergy in England had sold all and given to the poor before taking up their calling.
Then a subsidy bill in November secured another £80,000 for Henry, even though the country was not at war. The justification was similar to that in the First Fruits – Henry’s wonderful character and beneficent rule. Cromwell had got this ploy off to a fine art, and we will find him using it again. He was proving a far more able manager of parliament than Wolsey had been, particularly in the delicate task of persuading the Houses to fill up the royal treasury. Whenever Henry wanted more money, Cromwell did not lecture parliament on the king’s right or entitlement; he appealed instead to the loyalty of the Commons and the Lords to their prince. Half admiringly and half enviously, Chapuys reported parliamentary affairs to Charles, ascribing most of Henry’s accumulating wealth to Cromwell, ‘who boasts that he will soon make of his master the richest prince in Christendom’.13
The most controversial legislation of the new regime concerned the capital crime of treason. Under the existing laws, mainly defined by the 1352 act in the reign of Edward III, opposition to the king’s Supremacy was not technically treason. Nor, embarrassingly for the government, was calling Queen Anne a ‘whore’, which is what a disconcerting number of people up and down the country were doing. As seen already, the activities of the Maid of Kent were not strictly treason either, and Henry had been forced to deal with her by attainder. Consequently a new treason bill, which had been some time under discussion, was debated in parliament in November, and made effective from 1 February the following year. As well as actual acts against the king or the state, treason was now defined as any desire maliciously expressed in ‘words or in writing’ to kill or harm the king, queen and heir, or to deprive them of their titles. It would also be treason to call the king a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper.14
Elton saw the unmistakable stamp of Thomas Cromwell on the new law. This may well be, but it might also be useful to recall that general comment on English affairs made by the Milanese ambassador that ‘His majesty chooses to know and superintend everything himself’. No decisive proof exists that Cromwell was the one who first suggested that words as well as actual deeds should henceforth count as treason, and an image of Cromwell steamrollering draconian legislation through parliament, flattening all opposition that stood in his way, would be exaggerated. The real author of the king’s supremacy in church and state was the king himself. This comment is, however, no more than a minor qualifier, because there is no doubt that Cromwell fully supported the act and that he presented it to parliament on the king’s behalf. Nevertheless, he was unhappy with a proposal to offer rewards to informers, perhaps because it could invite false charges, and this clause was soon dropped.15
The new law has gained a reputation for gratuitous severity among historians, but whether this is entirely justified is debateable. Under Edward’s act it was treason to ‘compass or imagine’ the death of the king’ (fait compasser ou ymaginer). The practical effect of this would depend on what ‘imagine’ meant. Did it mean to conspire and set the plot in motion, but fail to bring it to completion? Or was it enough to harbour hostile thoughts or intents, whether or not they were spoken or put into action? If it meant the latter, then in principle the new act was no more severe than the old one. Leaving aside the obvious difficulty of divining the secret motives of the heart, Edward’s act could technically condemn someone for a malicious thought or intention which might or might not result in any treasonable action. So why the Tudor law, which insisted on a malicious word, should be regarded as excessively harsher than Edward’s is hard to see, especially as Elton has given various examples of people being condemned for treason for little more than aggressive or ill-judged words before 1534. Having made this point, however, there is no denying that the new law was designed to give the government sweeping powers to repress any opposition to the new regime.16
These are the main acts of the parliamentary session of 1533–4. As Henry’s Principal Secretary, Cromwell now played the leading part in all government legislation, from the drafting of bills to debates in parliament. He also directed the clergy to preach the Royal Supremacy from the pulpits. He even told them what Scripture texts they should use. The favourite passages were Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:13–17, as well as the examples of godly kings in Old Testament times, and the obedience due to them. Slightly more difficult to determine is his exact role in the pamphlets, booklets and various other forms of l
iterature now being used to persuade and cajole the people to support the constitutional changes.17
The first set of such writings had appeared around summer 1531 dealing with the validity of a marriage to a brother’s widow. These were generally dry, uninspiring works composed by academic theologians and canon lawyers who supported the king’s divorce. Then the veteran lawyer and writer, Christopher St German, composed his ‘New Additions’, arguing that the king in parliament was ‘the high sovereign’ over the people with responsibility for their souls as well as their material wellbeing. This piece was completed two years before the Act of Appeals and three years before the Act of Supremacy. There is no real evidence that Cromwell had anything to do with these early works.18
The Glass of Truth, written in 1532, was a spirited little book. Henry may have had some part in its preparation, because it contains quite intimate family details about Catherine’s first marriage to Arthur. The work discusses the Leviticus and Deuteronomy texts once more, and slightly ingeniously it argues that Leviticus should be taken literally but Deuteronomy spiritually. To back up this novel line in exegesis, the Glass brings in St Augustine on Deuteronomy: ‘Every preacher of the Word of God is bound so to labour in the Gospel that he stir up seed to his brother, that is to Christ, which died for us; and the seed so suscitate [sic] must have the name of him departed, that is of Christ: whereupon we be called Christians’. A good try, perhaps, but it hardly carries much conviction in the matter of Henry’s marriage. A discussion follows on the pope’s power of dispensation, before we read that Arthur’s marriage to Catherine was consummated despite Catherine’s denials. They allegedly ‘bedded together at sundry times’; they lived together as married; and ‘some men of the great house’ avowed on oath that Arthur ‘did report himself unto them that he had carnally known her’, and not just for ‘youthful boasting’. The Glass does not deny that the pope was head of church, only that his dispensation to allow Henry and Catherine to marry was wrong because of Leviticus, and the pope cannot overrule Holy Writ. A hint of what is to come is contained in this thinly veiled threat: ‘methinketh the king’s highness and his parliament should earnestly press the metropolitans of this realm … to set an end shortly’.19
As Elton has noted, there is evidence, though it is not conclusive, that Cromwell might have had something to do with the production of the Glass. However, I would suggest that he had nothing much to do with its contents. Cromwell’s theological writings are few and far between, restricted in the main to a few select letters, the Ten Articles and accompanying Injunctions, and his last words and prayer. These will be discussed when we come to them chronologically; but the point can be made now that whenever Cromwell had something to say on theology, it was invariably quite arresting and incisive. He comes over as a man blessed with above average theological intelligence and insight, features that are conspicuously missing from the Glass. Though bright and breezy in parts, it contains nothing substantial or stimulating. The advantageous allegorising of Deuteronomy reads more like a hopeful novice trying his best to impress the king than a fine theological mind. There is certainly nothing Protestant about it.20
Two little known treatises by Jasper Fyloll had been published around 1532–3. Both tracts include familiar arguments for the Supremacy. Both read as though they were prepared with the aim of brow beating the clergy into submitting to the king. Fyloll had now entered Cromwell’s service, so maybe Cromwell approved these works. As with the Glass, however, there is no direct evidence for this. Cromwell habitually gets the credit (or the blame) for much of the stuff that appeared in print around this time, but he did not have the time to read everything his clients wrote. The only printing and publication activities known for certain to have been organized by Cromwell during these early years were Melanchthon’s Apology and those other unnamed Lutheran works that Christopher Mont was translating in his house (see Chapter 3).21
Sometime in late 1533 – when the new Act of Succession and Act of Supremacy of 1534 were already being planned – the Articles devised by the whole consent of the king’s most honourable Council were published. They take the Supremacy argument a stage further than the Glass of Truth with an attack on the institution of the papacy. They argue that in Scripture ‘there is no authority nor jurisdiction granted more to the bishop of Rome than to any other extra provinciam’ … and that the pope is ‘neither in life nor learning Christ’s disciple … he is both baste and came to his dignity by Symony’. Christian people should, therefore, reject papal authority and follow ‘Christ’s law, in which is all sweetness and truth, adjoining with it the laws of this realm, utterly relinquishing the other, in which is nothing else but pomp, pride, ambition’ and assorted other ills. The following year Edward Foxe and Richard Sampson – one evangelical and one Catholic – both wrote learned works supporting the Supremacy, mainly targeted at the clergy. Also in 1534, and for a larger audience, a tract appeared wittily titled A Little Treatise against the muttering of some Papists in corners. In this work there is, at last, definite evidence of Cromwell’s direct involvement. A letter in the hand of one of Cromwell’s clerks suggests that he had inspired it. The letter also reminds the clergy that they are not to live luxuriously, but should forsake pomp and pride and give what they possess ‘superfluously’ to the people.22
The Little Treatise is designed to show that whilst papal power is something that has grown up in Christendom over centuries, it is contrary to Scripture. This claim is reinforced by a plentiful supply of quotes from the New Testament and the church fathers. The message, therefore, is that the king’s Supremacy was based on an ancient truth recently discovered, to which mistaken medieval custom must give way. The author of the Treatise withholds his name, but gives occasional glimpses of Protestant thought. For example: ‘for Christ’s laws he (the pope) bringeth forth laws and traditions of his own devising’; now princes ‘begin to be lighted with the knowledge of Christ’s doctrine’, and can see the bad ways of the popes; the bishop of Rome is but a member of the church, not her head or leader on earth. On Christ giving the keys to Peter (Matthew 16:19), St Augustine is quoted as saying that ‘those keys He gave to His church’, not to the pope alone. The Treatise then censures popes for their luxurious living, contrary to the example of Jesus and apostles.
In substance and in style, the Little Treatise is far superior to the Glass of Truth. Instead of the routine and rather tiresome rant against the pope, it actually gets to grips with the crux of the matter of papal authority by discussing the Scripture text on which that authority is supposedly based (Matthew 16). It does not, however, liken the papacy to the antichrist or the monstrous seven-headed beast of the Revelation, as some Protestants were doing. And this may be a timely moment to note that the Reformers’ sharp attacks on the popes were aimed primarily at the Renaissance papacy of their times: men like, for example, Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, who brazenly used bribery and extortion to advance their personal careers before and during their papal reigns; and who, despite enforcing all clergy to make solemn vows of clerical celibacy, fathered a large brood of illegitimate children by various mistresses. It is unlikely that popes of more recent memory would have aroused the same hostility.23
As the decade advanced, talented Tudor writers supporting the Supremacy were increasingly offering their services to Cromwell. In 1534 William Marshall produced an edition of Lorenzo Valla’s Donation of Constantine, and the following year he produced his translation of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defence of the Peace (Defensor Pacis). The Valla project was Marshall’s own initiative, but Cromwell approved the Marsiglio work and provided the money to publish it.24
The Donation had been one of the scoops of the fifteenth century, if not the entire late medieval age. This document, in which the Emperor Constantine had allegedly committed the government of his western empire to Pope Sylvester I, was dramatically exposed as a forgery in 1440 by Lorenzo Valla, a leading humanist. Valla was supported by two other scholars working independen
tly of him – Nicholas of Cusa, who later became a German Cardinal, and an Englishman, Bishop Pecock.25
Marsiglio was a fourteenth-century thinker and writer. He was attracted to the concept of nation-state sovereignty in which the clergy were as accountable as any other group of men to courts and laws, and therefore subject to the civil power. Papal claims to power, he argued, were disruptive of civil peace, and the main cause of strife among nations. Essential functions of the priesthood consisted in teaching the Gospel and ministering the sacraments. Continuing in this proto-Protestant vein, Marsiglio challenged the papal claim to spiritual supremacy as St Peter’s successor. Marsiglio contended that Peter had no official superiority over the other apostles, and there was no proof from Scripture that Peter was ever a bishop of Rome.26
Either Marshall or Cromwell decided that Marsiglio would need to be adapted before he could be suitable for the Tudor state. Marshall’s translation left out about one fifth of the original work, and was not always scrupulously faithful to what it retained. Marsiglio supported an elective monarchy, whereas Marshall, wisely in Henry’s reign, defended the hereditary version. Marshall also omitted the passage where Marsiglio defended a quasi-democratic control over the ruler by the community. Then when Marsiglio wrote of the laws being made by the people, Marshall’s commentary explained that the author meant parliament and not the ‘rascal multitude’. This tactfully doctored English translation of Marsiglio was another imaginative initiative designed to convince people of the justness of the king’s cause, though unfortunately for him, Marshall had to admit to Cromwell that it had not sold particularly well.27
So how successful was this combination of legislation and literature in persuading the people to give their hearts as well as their outward obedience to the Royal Supremacy? On this question, the debate is likely to continue without ever being answered definitively. Historians may consult Tudor documents, but they cannot meet Tudor people and discover their private thoughts. The government at least was not troubled by serious organized resistance until the so-called Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537, a major uprising in the northern counties that had a variety of causes, though opposition to Cromwell’s reformist measures was undeniably a significant factor. A puzzling point, however, is that almost all the propaganda was aimed at convincing the people of the king’s rightful Supremacy; but apart from the succession legislation, surprisingly little seems to have been done, either by Cromwell personally or the government as a whole, to endear Queen Anne to a nation that still retained a great affection for Catherine.
The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell Page 11