An integral aspect of this reformation from within was something that, for the sake of convenience, can be called the infiltration policy. Evidence exists of an initiative of Cromwell’s to place supporters of the Royal Supremacy and the new learning in the monasteries and abbeys whenever the opportunity arose.
Even before his appointment as Vicegerent, Cromwell had somehow managed to get involved with ecclesiastical nominations. The abbot of St James in Northampton was appointed thanks to Cromwell sometime in 1533. Later he and his house were commended by the commissioners. Cranmer was playing his part as well, in tandem with Cromwell. In May 1533, Cranmer wrote to the abbot of Westminster putting forward one of his own nominees, Sir John Smythe, for a vacancy. About the same time Cranmer and Cromwell were discussing an appointment at St Gregory’s in Canterbury. A slight but amicable disagreement had arisen between them about whether the new prior should be an outsider or someone from within. Cranmer preferred the latter, but outcome is not known.12
Under the vicegerency, this infiltration stepped up a gear. John Barstabull thanked Cromwell for his preferment as abbot of Sherborne in Nicholas Shaxton’s diocese.13 When the abbot of West Dereham died, Thomas Legh asked Cromwell ‘whether it please you to prefer any friend of yours whom ye shall think most meet or convenient’, though this time Cromwell accepted Roger Forman, a candidate put forward by Legh.14 When Commissioner Thomas Parry accepted the resignation of the prior of St Swithin’s in Winchester, he mentioned to Cromwell that he had found, among the better religious sort, a certain William Basing, Doctor of Divinity. Besides being an educated man and ‘favouring the truth’, Basing had ‘never consented to any of the abominable spoils and sacrilege and other enormities here committed, but much lamented the same’. Henry’s approval was needed for this request, and Basing offered a generous gift of £500 for Cromwell’s ‘most benevolent and acceptable favour’ to obtain it, plus a renewed patent for Cromwell and his son Gregory for life.15 Basing quickly became prior. He sent profuse thanks to Cromwell, though with apologies that he was unable to pay the full £500 straight away because his predecessor had left him with too many debts to the king and others. Trusting nevertheless that Cromwell would ‘continue your goodwill towards me’, Basing besought Cromwell ‘for the love of God, to be good master to a poor friar, one Cosyn, wrongfully vexed in these parts … whom, I assure you, I never heard preach other than the true Word of God’.16 This is code for saying that Cosyn was Lutheran. Cromwell was content to wait for his fee, and within a month he issued a certificate licensing Cosyn to preach.17
Cromwell may have authorised his visitors to make recommendations and even provisional appointments on his behalf. Sometime in 1535, John Vaughan appointed Dame Joan Skydmore as prioress of Acunbury, subject to Cromwell’s approval. Soon after this Layton and Legh reported to Cromwell on the abbot of Fountains, who had allegedly neglected his house and lands, kept whores, stolen property, and confessed that even by the rules of his own order he ought to be deprived. To replace him they recommended a monk called Marmaduke, one of the better religious sort and quite wealthy too, for he ‘will give you six hundred marks to make him abbot here’, and pay his first fruits within two years. So, they added, ‘if ye have not therefore provided or promised such a room for any other of your friends’, Marmaduke would be a ‘right apt man’. Brother Marmaduke was duly advanced to abbot.18
Cromwell’s infiltration policy continued to be supported by Cranmer. When Cranmer heard that the Priory of Worcester might soon be vacant, he commended either Dr Holbeach, a monk of Croyland, or Richard Gorton of Burton-on-Trent, both known to him. He asked Cromwell to be good to these two and find suitable places for them; ‘for I know no religious men in England of that habit, that be of better learning, judgement, conversation, and all qualities meet for a head and master of a house’. Holbeach later became bishop of Lincoln. On the whole, however, Cranmer’s role regarding the monasteries was a surprisingly minor one, and as his biographer has said, the whole story of the dissolution could almost be told without mentioning his name. Cromwell was the man driving things along, and not just as some distant figure behind a desk in London. He frequently undertook evangelising and catechising himself. ‘Wherever the king goes’, says Chapuys, ‘Cromwell, who accompanies him, goes around visiting the abbeys and convents in the neighbourhood, taking inventories of their lands and revenues, amply instructing the people in this new sect’.19
The monastery of Winchcombe provides an example of Cromwell’s personal evangelising among the religious. Just before his appointment as Vicegerent he received a letter from Hugh Coper, a Winchcombe monk. Coper, whose letter flits between English and Latin, had been reading Daniel 7, from which he concluded, unconventionally for a monk, that the pope was the antichrist. He condemned Rome’s ‘abominable decretals’, and the ‘Papistical and monastical’ men who have ‘more hope and confidence in their laws and pardons … than in the blood of Christ’, which alone can cleanse from sin. Coper now believed in justification by faith through grace. His abbot – Coper called him ‘our bald bachelor’ – was resisting the new learning, and trying with his allies to stop the mouths of ‘the pure preachers of the Word of God, like our parish priest, Master Antony’. Coper begged Cromwell to deliver him from ‘this prison’ (de isto carcere). He was, he claims, enticed into the monastic order when not quite fourteen years old by ‘fair promises’. Coper’s letter then gives a grim, if a little biased, account of monastic life: ‘less charity and more malice and envy, less purity and cleanliness of living and more impurity, less quietness and more unquietness, more dissension and strife’ than among any other group of men. Some monks in the same house were not even speaking to each other, yet still they ‘boast of their goodness’.20
Cromwell went to Winchcombe during the summer of 1535.21 There he had appointed Antony Saunders, presumably Coper’s ‘Master Antony’, as a pastor there to preach to the monks, but Saunders was opposed by the abbot and others of the old faith. Saunders besought Cromwell’s help for him and for the schoolmaster in Winchcombe, who ‘doth favour the Gospel and doth edify the people’, but whose wages had been reduced by the angry abbot. Fortified by Cromwell’s visit, Saunders persevered in the evangelical cause against the abbot and an ally of his, a Bachelor of Divinity, ‘a great Goliath, a subtle Duns Scotus man’. Saunders was preaching justification by faith alone. Another letter of his to Cromwell includes a confession of faith so impeccably Lutheran that it sounds as though Cromwell may have handed Saunders a copy of Melanchthon’s Apology during his summer visit.22 It seems that the abbot and his ‘Goliath’ were slowly losing ground in their tussles with Saunders, because the abbot later indignantly complained that two of his brethren had eaten flesh during the first week of Advent. One interesting aspect of this case is that whilst Cromwell could and did help his evangelical field activists, he apparently did not have the authority to summarily sack the abbot. Despite being the king’s Vicegerent, he still had to work within the system. He could not, even if he had wanted to, pluck it up by the roots and overthrow it.23
Cromwell’s presence had a striking effect on another Winchcombe monk, John Placet. Placet was now seeking Cromwell’s ‘discreet and gracious counsel how to order myself’ on subjects troubling his conscience. These included ‘the authority of the bishop of Rome, St Patrick’s purgatory, miracles, dreams, fables, ceremonies, traditions innumerable, hurting and confounding simple souls’. Soon Placet was asking Cromwell’s permission to ‘take up such books as treat of purgatory’. He had found one ‘fair written’, which was nothing but ‘dry dreams, fancies and fables’. Another had ‘torn and tormoylyde [sic] Holy Scripture … it made the pope equal with the Holy Trinity, and to be of one nature with him in his Deity’. Placet recommended ‘my brother Overbury’, and asked that he might have permission to teach the Supremacy. He was also upset about ‘pyuysche papysche munkyschenes’ – a translation of this could be ‘peevish, popish monkery’. These medieval mysteries, wha
tever they were, had been ‘exalted to be equal with baptism’ by those who ‘trust too much by popish pardons, which I know hath diminished the faith … in the blessed blood of our Saviour’. From personal experience in the monastic life, Placet recalled many souls ‘almost in despair by much trust in pardons’.24
Placet was now a passionate supporter of the king’s Supremacy, quoting Romans 13, a chapter he wished ‘to God were written on every monk’s bed’. He was, he told Cromwell, ‘counted as a wretch’ for having composed a short treatise against papal authority. He promised to send his work to Cromwell, for ‘you were the very cause that I gave myself to such study, for which I thank God and you’. Placet was not alone in his change of heart. Some of his brethren ‘are as glad as I am to set forth the king’s power’. Placet recalled how, when Cromwell was among them, ‘ye full discreetly and Catholically declared the efficacy of our three vows, in which we trust too much, and I have found your saying true’. Placet was grateful that Cromwell, ‘considering my weakness and infirmity, hath excused my rising at midnight’, though this dispensation had caused some ‘murmur and grudging’ among the other monks, who were still required to rise from their beds at all hours to say prayers and sing Psalms. Placet could endure no longer ‘the burden and straightness of the religion, as their accustomed abstinence, the frayter and other observances’; so he asked if Cromwell could obtain for him a benefice, though ‘without changing my habit’.25
Placet’s ‘brother Overbury’ does not sound like a particularly orthodox monk, for he is found addressing Cromwell thus:
Faithful, trusty and dearly beloved minister unto the high power of Almighty God, of the which you have ministration under our sovereign lord the King, here in earth the only high and supreme head of this his Church of England, grace, peace and mercy be evermore with you: laud and thanks be to God the Father Almighty for the true and unfeigned faith that you have in our Saviour Jesu.
Overbury deplored the many ‘perverse men who do dilaniate [sic] the flock of Christ’. He assured Cromwell that he was devoting his time and energies to ‘study and exercise of the Holy Gospel’.26
Placet, meanwhile, was making good progress in his new faith. He begged Cromwell to permit him to ‘instruct the poor people there … to love God and obey their prince … and as you have commanded to declare the Holy Gospel meekly sincere and truthfully’. Placet sadly reported that he daily met people who, having sinned against ‘unlawful ceremonies’ and monastic regulations, sought absolution ‘by pardons and by the abbot’s power, little considering the blessed blood and passion of our Saviour, and true faith therein only’.27
Cromwell’s personal commitment was felt beyond Winchcombe. Thomas Redinge (sic), Prior of Kingswoode, thanked Cromwell for speaking the ‘divine word’ to him in his abbey. Because ‘the Word of God, the Gospel of Christ, is not only favoured … but also set forth, maintained and defended by your honour’, Redinge dedicated a book on the Supremacy to Cromwell. He also appealed to Cromwell to ‘close up the eye of justice, and open the eye of pity, mercy and compassion’ to him and his brethren of Kingswoode, to show ‘evangelical charity … and minister unto us, your daily bedmen’.28
Cromwell had now acquired a reputation among the religious. When evangelical monks ran into trouble with their more traditional brethren, they knew where to turn for help. Sometime in 1535 Friar Robert Ward found himself in difficulty with his local vicar and church authorities for saying that satisfactions are ‘but a superstition, and that only to believe in Christ is sufficient for our salvation’. Ward appealed to Cromwell, and despite being indicted for heresy, no harm came to him.29
Cromwell also had willing informers within the monasteries. Robert Marshall reported his vicar for not proclaiming the Royal Supremacy in church. One zealous monk threatened to report his abbot to Cromwell for failing to read the Injunctions immediately he received them, while the abbot of Kyngeswodd told Cromwell about a friar who allegedly preached contrary to the Word of God.30
It is not clear whether all these men were formally in Cromwell’s service, or whether voluntary zeal inspired them. They seem evangelical enough, though one who sounds a bit suspect is Andrew Boord, formerly of the Charterhouse. Various letters can be found from him to Cromwell, one recalling the ‘great thraldom’ he was in until Cromwell ‘of your gentleness, set me at liberty and clearness of conscience’. Now realising his former ‘ignorance and blindness’, he was anxious to serve the king. However, there is nothing explicitly Lutheran in his letters. When the prior of Henton wanted him to return to his monastic ways, Boord excused himself on the grounds that he was ‘not able to bide the rigours of your religion’. If Boord was now a man of the new faith, he was unwilling to expressly witness to it, though his excuse may have been an honest one given the austere monastic life of the Charterhouse. Another uncertain case occurred when Thomas Legh went to a priory in the diocese of Norwich. Legh found the monks begging to be ‘dismissed from their religion, saying they live contrary to God’s laws and their conscience’. As with Boord, it is not certain whether this was a genuine spiritual conversion or not, because Legh gave no reason why the monks were so anxious to escape the cloisters.31
Nevertheless, these are all examples of religious men who were, with varying degrees of sincerity and conviction, evangelical or evangelically minded. Many could be called Cromwell’s men; they were appointed either by him or on his recommendation to the king, and placed in a monastery with the deliberate aim of introducing the new learning there. Even those who may not have known him personally nevertheless recognised him as the national evangelical leader. For his part, reformation rather than dissolution is likely to have been Cromwell’s policy during these years, and so far as I can see, there is no compelling evidence that he envisaged a complete dissolution at this stage (1535–36). There would be little point in Cromwell trying to evangelize the monasteries if he was about to shut them all down.
There were also practical and political reasons for this more moderate approach. Although the wealth of a full national dissolution would fill Henry’s coffers, it could all too easily be squandered on the sort of dubious foreign ventures that Cromwell had opposed ever since his maiden speech in parliament (see Chapter 1). Further, the men most eagerly looking forward to acquiring church lands, and the accompanying prestige and influence, were the leading magnates like the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk; but Cromwell’s policy was always to strengthen the crown, not the nobility. Whereas a national sell-off would enrich these avaricious dukes, lords and earls, a reformation would bring all the religious houses, lands and wealth under the control of the king. Henry would then receive not a once in a lifetime windfall that could easily be misspent, but a regular, dependable annual source of income from the First Fruits and Tenths and other taxes. Moreover, Cromwell’s responsibilities now included commerce and economics; and it would have been far better for the Tudor economy if the nobility, gentry and merchants could be induced to invest their capital productively in trade and public works, rather than the comfy, virtually risk-free purchase of church lands.
Because Cromwell left no personal memoirs or an autobiography, it is impossible to be certain whether these really were his own thoughts. However, in one of Chapuys’s reports he says that whereas Henry had been ‘thinking of getting into his hands all ecclesiastical property and proceeds thereof’, he had recently had a slight change of heart. For the time being, Henry was content to let the clergy keep their property, provided they insured him an annual income of £30,000 sterling, plus the value of the First Fruits. Chapuys does not say so, but Cromwell may have been behind this.32
Cromwell’s policy for the monasteries reveals much about the character of the man. Many reformist ministers might have seen the monasteries as a major obstacle to the cause of reform that had to be removed, but Cromwell saw openings and opportunities there. He had quickly absorbed the lessons of recent church history. In Germany a monk had started the Reformation, and in England R
obert Barnes, now one of Cromwell’s closest allies, had formerly been an Augustinian friar. So Cromwell decided he could turn the religious to his advantage. By reformation and infiltration, underpinned by a vigorous personal involvement, he would make them, or some of them, agents for the Gospel rather than barricades against it. We will see him taking similarly inventive initiatives later in his career.
Meanwhile, though not strictly part of Cromwell’s terms as Vicegerent, he was also busy securing significant evangelical advances in the bishoprics as well as in the religious houses. Elizabethan historians like Foxe are unsure whether to thank Cromwell or Queen Anne for this development. On Latimer’s appointment as bishop of Worcester, Foxe credits Anne in one part of his history and Cromwell in another. The editor of the Parker Society opts for Cromwell, and contemporary evidence is overwhelmingly on his side.33
The testimony of the men themselves should decide the matter. We can begin with Latimer. In autumn 1535, when certain little problems arose regarding his appointment, Latimer wrote to Cromwell for help. The details are a bit complicated and not really important, but Latimer was concerned that ‘for lack of royal assent with your signification, my lord of Canterbury cannot proceed’ (emphasis mine). On the matter of the First Fruits, Latimer had intended to write to Henry on a certain sticking point; again the exact details are not clear, but Anne had told him he ‘should not need to move the king, but that it should be enough to inform your mastership thereof’. Obviously Cromwell was the one to sort out the administration of bishoprics and any problems that arose. Latimer would later thank Cromwell that ‘your lordship hath promoted many more honest men, since God promoted you, than hath many men done before your time, though in like authority with you’. His letter ends: ‘Blessed be the God of England that worketh all, whose instrument you be.’34
The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell Page 14