Cromwell’s university reforms were well received, at least in official replies. The fellows of Magdalene College at Oxford sent him thanks for royal directives, for the reformation of learning, and in particular the requirement for tuition in Greek. Cambridge students thanked him for having done more good for the advancement of learning than any previous chancellor. However, Legh counselled Cromwell to keep a watchful eye on Cambridge and make sure that his injunctions were obeyed, because a number of tutors there still favoured the scholastics.53
The year 1535 had been a most gratifying one for Cromwell. It saw reforms to the monasteries and the universities, and a marked improvement in Anglo-Lutheran relations. Hopes were high that Melanchthon might come to England. Foxe, Heath and Barnes were in Germany as guests of Luther and Melanchthon, and in December Foxe addressed a conference of the Schmalkaldic League. Melanchthon was being read not only at Oxford and Cambridge, but also in the monasteries where religious evangelicals, backed by Cromwell, had gained an entrance. The Protestant Reformation of England was now underway in earnest, directed and energised by the most powerful man in the country apart from the king.
Notes
1. LP 7, no. 420.
2 For background and details of the vicegerency, see F. Logan, ‘Thomas Cromwell and the Vicegerency in Spirituals: a revisitation’, EHR 103 (1988): 658–67.
3 Foxe 5, p. 368–9, 378; Wright, p. 112. On the government’s monastic policy, and the notable lack of evidence for a master plan during the early and middle 1530s, see J. Youings, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London, 1971), pp. 13–14, 21; R. W. Hoyle, ‘The Origins of the Dissolution of the Monasteries’, HJ 38 (1995): 275 – 305; F. Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2003), pp. 143, 148. The classic Catholic account of the monasteries remains D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. 3: The Tudor Age (Cambridge, 1971), especially chapters 20–24.
4 Ellis 5, p. 18; LP 4 (3), no. 6011; CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 211, p. 325; no. 232, pp. 366–7; J. Guy, ‘Communications – The Tudor Commonwealth: Revising Thomas Cromwell’, HJ 23/3 (1980): 683; S. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament: 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 101.
5 CSP Span., 1529–30, no. 492, p. 800; CSP Span., 1531–3, no. 1056, p. 623.
6 CSP Span., 1536–8, no. 43, pp. 83–4.
7 D. M. Loades (ed.), The Papers of George Wyatt, Camden Soc., series 4, 5 (1968), p. 159; G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation (London, 1977), pp. 236–7.
8 PRO SP 1/102, fols 5–6 = LP 10, no. 254. On this see also the comment in Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, p. 220, footnote 4.
9 Youings, Dissolution, pp. 35–6; Elton, Tudor Const., p. 379; Wright, pp. 75–6; LP 9, nos 621–2, 630, 651.
10 LP 10, no. 364; LP 9, nos 457, 533; Wright, pp. 136–7. For some conflicting evidence from the visitors, see Knowles, Religious Orders 3, pp. 480–82.
11 The injunctions are printed in Youings, Dissolution, pp. 149–52.
12 Merriman 1, p. 347; LP 5 no. 1428; LP 10, no. 916; Cranmer, Misc. Writings, p. 240–41. In the latter, the editor’s footnote suggests that the abbot – William Boston or Benson – was a man of shallow convictions, while Ellis calls him a man who ‘bent with the times’ (Ellis 11, p. 273). Maybe, but the point is still valid. Pliant abbot or genuinely evangelical abbot, Cromwell and Cranmer could still infiltrate the religious orders. See also Cranmer, Misc. Writings, pp. 251, 270, 275.
13 LP 8, nos 852, 802 (27), 962 (14).
14 Ellis 10, p. 362; LP 9, no. 808.
15 PRO SP 1/102, fols 214–15 = LP 10, no. 480.
16 PRO SP 1/103, fol. 53 = LP 10, no. 588.
17 BL Cottonian MS Cleopatra E. VI, fol. 257 = LP 10, no. 723.
18 LP 9, no. 1164; Wright, pp. 100–102; LP 10, no. 424.
19 Cranmer, Misc. Writings, p. 310; D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 135; CSP Span., 1534–5, no. 205, p. 542.
20 PRO SP 1/86, fols 161–4 = LP 7, no. 1367.
21 LP 8, no. 1111; LP 9, no. 4.
22 PRO SP 1/89, fol. 145 = LP 8, no. 171; BL Cottonian MS, Cleopatra E. IV, fol. 47 = LP 9, no. 747.
23 LP 9, no. 934.
24 PRO SP 1/95, fols 135–6 = LP 9, nos 134–5.
25 PRO SP 1/96, fols 127–8 = LP 9, nos 321–2.
26 BL Cottonian MS Cleopatra E. VI, fol. 261 = LP 9, no. 1134.
27 PRO SP 1/100, fol. 103 = LP 9, no. 1145.
28 PRO SP 1/89, fol. 57 = LP 8, no. 79.
29 Elton, Policy, pp. 40–41; LP 8, nos 625–6.
30 LP 8, no. 959; LP 9, nos 314–15.
31 Ellis 10, pp. 295–308; Wright, p. 82.
32 CSP Span., 1534–5, no. 112, p. 332.
33 Foxe 5, p. 135; 7, p. 461; Sermons and Remains of Latimer, ed. G.E. Corrie (Cambridge, 1845), pp. xv, xviii.
34 Latimer, Remains, pp. 368–9, 410–11.
35 LP 10, nos 835, 1257 (9); LP 11, no. 117.
36 LP 6, nos 1226, 1067; 8, no. 839; MacCulloch, Cranmer, p. 125.
37 SP 2, p. 539.
38 Wright, pp. 77–8, 183; G. Williams, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff, 1997), p. 61; LP 10, no. 227.
39 Cranmer, Misc. Writings, pp. 239, 262–3, 269.
40 Cranmer, Misc. Writings, pp. 276, 295–6; A. Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), p. 219.
41 Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. J. Bruce and T. Perowne (Cambridge, 1853), pp. 5–6; Ellis 2, pp. 46–7.
42 BL Additional MS 19398, fol. 49 = LP 8, no. 1056.
43 Anne’s religion has been a subject of much discussion. By a majority she was evangelical: see M. Dowling, ‘Anne Boleyn and Reform’, JEH 35 (1984): 30–45; E. Ives, ‘Anne Boleyn and the early Reformation in England: The contemporary evidence’, HJ 37 (1994), pp. 389–400. But not everyone is persuaded by Anne as the evangelical princess. For a touch of scepticism see G.W. Bernard, ‘Anne Boleyn’s religion’, HJ 36 (1993), pp. 1–20. For a defence of Foxe’s account of Anne, see T.S. Freeman, ‘Research, Rumour and Propaganda: Anne Boleyn in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, HJ 38/4 (1995):797–819
44 The standard work on the Anglo-Lutheran diplomacy of the 1530s is R. McEntegart, Henry VIII, The League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation (Woodbridge, 2002). For full details of the Anglo-Lutheran discussions during 1535–36, see his chapter 2.
45 McEntegart, Henry VIII, pp. 26–7; LP 8, nos 174, 270, 272 (p. 110), 273; D. Crouzet , La Genèse de la Réforme Française, 1520–1562 (Paris, 1996), p. 332 ; C.L. Manschreck , Melanchthon, The Quiet Reformer (Westport, Connecticut, 1975), pp. 222–5.
46 McEntegart, Henry VIII, pp. 27–38; Merriman 1, p. 416; CSP Span., 1534–5, no. 201, p. 538; no. 213, p. 550.
47 W. Underwood, ‘Thomas Cromwell and William Marshall’s Protestant Books’, HJ 47/3 (2004): 517–39.
48 For fuller discussion of the theology of the Loci, see J. Schofield, Philip Melanchthon and the English Reformation (Ashgate, 2006), pp. 61–7. What follows above is largely a summary.
49 For an analysis of Henry’s Assertion and Luther’s reply, see J. Schofield, ‘The Lost Reformation: Why Lutheranism failed in England during the Reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI’ (Newcastle Ph.D., 2003), chap. 1.
50 Wright, pp. 70–72.
51 C. H. and J. W. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1842–1908), vol. 1, p. 375; Merriman 1, p. 421, no. 116; LP 9, no. 964. For the significance of Cambridge University in the Reformation, see Ryrie, Gospel and Henry VIII, pp. 170–83.
52 Cooper, Annals of Cambridge 1, p. 376.
53 LP 9, nos 312, 708.
PART II
Cromwell and the Royal Ladies
7
Her Special Friend
Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s wife for nearly twenty-five years, was now officially and humiliatingly downgraded to the status of princess dowager. Anne Boleyn
reigned as queen in her place, although when Chapuys habitually called Anne the ‘concubine’ or ‘mistress’, he was echoing the secret sentiments of more than a few English hearts. The feelings of the two royal ladies for each other can be left to the imagination and need no discussion here. This chapter will examine the strong but contrasting views each of them entertained about Thomas Cromwell. One called him ‘my special friend’, while the other wished she could see his head struck off. The sweet words fell from Catherine’s lips, the shrill ones from Anne’s (and this is not a misprint).
Divided though Catherine and Cromwell were spiritually and politically, Cromwell struggled to disguise a strong personal admiration for the Spanish queen during her sorrowful last years. With Anne it was all so different; his relations with the Boleyns were never noticeably close. A number of reasons would easily account for this. He came from the service of Wolsey, a man Anne had cordially detested. Worse, he had remained loyal to Wolsey after Anne and her party had finally managed to get rid of him. Cromwell was also Lutheran, while her religious outlook was shaped by reading the French Christian humanists. This difference in religion might not have mattered too much, as they could both have formed part of a broad evangelical front; but Cromwell’s Lutheranism was a provocation to Anne because the Germans were still supporting Catherine in the divorce controversy. Cromwell’s policy of engagement with the Lutherans had to be conducted in spite of Anne, not because of her. The Elector of Saxony, the most powerful of the Lutheran princes, was at first unwilling to consider establishing diplomatic relations with Henry for fear of needlessly antagonizing Charles V. With some difficulty Cromwell had to persuade the politically cautious Elector that England might be fertile ground for the Gospel. Anne was further incensed by Cromwell’s increasingly good working relationship with Ambassador Chapuys. Anne hated Chapuys, and the feeling was mutual.1
Between Cromwell and Anne, any real evidence of the warmth that undoubtedly existed between Anne and Archbishop Cranmer is elusive. Capello, the Venetian ambassador, called Cranmer Anne’s ‘tutor’. Cranmer was grief-stricken when Anne perished on the scaffold, but Cromwell carried on as if nothing much had happened, and he quickly took the Reformation to new levels. An undated letter from Anne to Cromwell on a minor matter is signed ‘Your loving mistress, Anne the Queen’; but this may be no more than a customary Tudor civility.2
Contrary to many popular accounts of the Tudors, Anne was never Cromwell’s patroness. Cromwell was Henry’s appointment, not Anne’s. It was not Anne’s recommendation, but Cromwell’s abilities, his capacity for hard work, his successful implementation of parliamentary legislation, and not least his ability to induce parliament to part with money and fill up the royal coffers that impressed Henry to advance him. Neither in his political rise, nor in his evangelical conversion, was Cromwell one tiny iota beholden to the queen. From the day he set out to court to ‘make or mar’, Thomas Cromwell was the king’s servant, indebted to Henry and to nobody else. Should Henry’s love for Anne ever fade, Cromwell was duty bound to serve and support the king.
The next chapters will trace Cromwell’s surprising relationships with the two queens. The story begins around the time of Catherine’s ‘trial’ at Dunstable in spring 1533. Cromwell seems to have deliberately avoided taking any overtly hostile stance against her. The luckless duke of Suffolk was the man sent by Henry to Catherine to demand that she should renounce her queenly title and move from Buckden to Somersham. Both demands met with a swift rejection. On one of these visits, Catherine locked herself in her room and dared the visitors to break the door down. Chapuys absolved Suffolk for this hounding of Catherine – he was only obeying orders, and doing so reluctantly. Chapuys put all the blame on the ‘iniquity and detestable wickedness’ of Anne, now plotting the ruin of Catherine and also Princess Mary who was now also officially downgraded, being known merely as ‘Lady Mary’.3
Chapuys was also discussing Anglo-Imperial relations with Cromwell. Again and again he stressed the harm this second marriage was doing. Cromwell listened patiently; he replied that Henry was acting out of his ‘love and affection for Lady Anne’, and that ‘if his conscience was at rest, nobody had a right to interfere’. Without wanting to read more than is warranted into these words, there does seem to be a curious absence of any deep, religious conviction in Cromwell’s attitude to the Great Matter. Cromwell did not take the normal line that Henry was under some kind of moral duty to put Catherine away because their marriage contradicted the Levitical law. His position was more pragmatic than dogmatic. Henry was in love with Anne, Henry was the king and his conscience was at peace; he was acting on the advice of numerous theologians and divines in England and abroad. Besides all this, Cromwell was Henry’s servant not his master, with no right to gainsay the king.4
Cromwell was also moved by Catherine’s performance at her trial. ‘I am told’, Chapuys wrote to the emperor, that Cromwell had said that ‘no human creature’ could have given ‘a more wise or courageous answer’ than the one Catherine gave to her examiners. Cromwell added that ‘God and nature had done great injury to the said Queen in not making her a man, for she might have surpassed in glory and fame almost all the princes whose heroic deeds are recorded in history’. Cromwell followed this up with ‘many other things in praise of the queen’. An unnamed confidant at court had supplied this information to Chapuys.5
The case went against Catherine, but Anne’s joy at seizing her crown did not last long. As early as 3 September, four days before the birth of Elizabeth, Chapuys reported signs of tension between Henry and Anne. When something she said had riled Henry, he told her roughly she should ‘shut her eyes and endure, as those better than herself had done, and she ought to know that he could at any time lower her as he had raised her’. Chapuys hoped that this was more than just a lover’s tiff, because ‘those who know the king’s nature and temper’ see this as a ‘good omen and a sign that the king will soon begin to think of recalling the queen’. At this advanced stage of Anne’s pregnancy Henry was an anxious man, trusting in the predictions of ‘his physicians and astrologers’ that Anne would indeed bear him a son. Seven days later, and with scarcely concealed pleasure, Chapuys reported the birth of a girl, ‘to the great disappointment and sorrow of the king, the lady herself and others of her party, and to the great shame and confusion of physicians, astrologers, wizards and witches (sorciers et sorcieres), all of whom affirmed it would be a boy’; but the people rejoiced at their discomfort.6
Henry’s employment of astrologers is not as strange as it may sound. Many Renaissance humanists were interested in astrology, and many courts had a resident astrologer. It was seen not as black magic but as a real science, a study of the heavens and their influence, if any, on events on earth. However, the reference to ‘wizards and witches’ – apparently intended as a separate group from the more respectable ‘physicians and astrologers’ – is puzzling. Unfortunately Chapuys does not elaborate; but his words can only mean that Henry, desperate for a son, had been seeking advice and help from all kinds of sources, disturbingly reminiscent of King Saul and the woman of Endor (1 Samuel 28).
Chapuys tried to capitalize on the king’s disappointment. He tried a bit of flattery on Cromwell, hoping he might use his influence with Henry to persuade the king to restore Catherine. Again Cromwell avoided the subject of the validity or otherwise of the Aragon marriage; he simply replied that Chapuys was asking for the impossible, because Henry’s ‘love is far too passionate and strong’. Chapuys sounded out Norfolk as well, only to receive the same answer. Nevertheless, the miscellaneous memoirs of the French diplomat, du Bellay, include a story that Henry did have a plan should relations with King Francis worsen significantly: Henry could, if only as a last resort, make peace with Charles by taking Catherine back and keeping Anne as the royal mistress, and that Anne lived in a near-constant fear that some settlement might yet be made to her loss.7
However, Henry’s attitude later that year supports the view of
Cromwell and Norfolk that the king was still in love with Anne. Now very angry with Mary for refusing to formally accept his divorce, he decided to take away her servants and staff, and make her live as ‘demoiselle d’honneur’ to Elizabeth. Catherine and Mary, naturally aggrieved, asked Chapuys to speak to Cromwell ‘and see what can be done to arrest the blow’. Chapuys did so. He warned Cromwell that Charles may be forced to act if such flagrant injustices were not stopped immediately. Cromwell tried to diffuse the situation. He assured Chapuys that he was working hard to restore good relations between Henry and Charles; and that he was doing, and would continue to do, all he could for Catherine and Mary.8
The immediate outcome of this encounter is not known, but subsequent letters from Chapuys suggest that he was encouraged. Cromwell was now showing ‘great affection’ for the emperor’s subjects in England and trading with England, and he promised to do ‘all he could in the queen’s favour, so that no injury should be done to her’. Cromwell recalled that during his examination of the Maid of Kent he had thoroughly satisfied himself that Catherine had no dealings with her; and for this Cromwell praised Catherine highly, saying that ‘God had directed the sense and wit of the queen’ for refusing to meet and pay any heed to the Maid.9
To some degree, Cromwell succeeded in calming troubled waters. Chapuys kept a watchful eye on Catherine and Mary. He also monitored Cromwell’s movements to make sure that Cromwell was as good as his word. Occasionally he suspected that Cromwell might have been fobbing him off, but for the most part he seemed satisfied with Cromwell’s good intentions. However, there was little Cromwell could have done in the face of Henry’s wrath against his ex-wife and daughter. What is really striking from these letters is that when Catherine and Mary felt desperately in need of help, they both saw Cromwell as the only one on the council able and willing to provide it.10
The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell Page 16