The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  The new archbishop of Dublin, George Browne, was appointed on Cromwell’s recommendation. After arriving in Dublin in July 1536, he wrote to Cromwell with hearty thanks for his ‘benevolent and great goodness’. Browne was now at the ready to ‘execute and follow all your pleasure and commandment … and good counsel, trusting that it shall be to the pleasure of Almighty God’; he would do all in his power ‘to fulfil and accomplish all my promises made unto your good lordship’. Browne was true to his word, and his opening sermon on Irish soil received a glowing report by Martin Pelles in a letter to London. Browne had ‘set forth the Word of God in his sermon sincerely’, with the result that the ‘learned and unlearned both do give him as high praise as I have heard given to any other man’; those that ‘favour the Word of God are very glad of him and pray for him so to continue’. Pelles was probably a government agent, and in his reports from Ireland he was bubbling over with ideas about how best to govern the country.33

  But as in England, the new learning soon encountered opposition, some of it quite inventive. One mischievous monk embarrassed Browne by spreading a story that Browne was failing in his duty to preach the Royal Supremacy and the ‘sincere word of God, avoiding all superstition’. This report reached the ears of Henry and Cromwell, and the intensely irritated archbishop had to send strenuous denials to London.34

  As in England, so in Ireland, the keenest resistance to reform came from the clergy, who preferred their Seven Sacraments, saints and medieval piety to justification by faith alone. Thomas Agard, probably a government employee, reported to Cromwell that ‘the blood of Christ is clean blotted out of men’s hearts’ by the pope and his followers, especially the Observant Friars. Browne was preaching the Word of God, supported by other leading figures on the council, but resentment quickly surfaced when ‘abuses’ were criticised. Browne himself complained to Cromwell of opposition from the bishop of Meath, who was trying to undermine him, and how some clergy refused even to proclaim the king’s Supremacy. Out of twenty-eight cathedral clergy, Browne found only three with ‘any learning’, and hardly any favoured the Gospel. This dispute between Browne and Meath rumbled on interminably with accusations, defences and counter-accusations from both men stacking up on Cromwell’s desk.35

  Bickering among Irish ministers was endemic almost from the moment Grey arrived in Ireland. Anthony Colley, son-in-law to Lady Skeffington, widow of the late deputy, complained that letters to Cromwell were being intercepted, and that dissatisfaction with the new deputy was widespread, partly because of his hostility to the previous deputy’s staff. Colley asked for an impartial commissioner to be sent over. Lady Skeffington personally joined in the complaints about Grey. Then, on Grey’s behalf, one Matthew King assured Cromwell that these complaints were untrue. Others on the council weighed in on Grey’s side, pointing to English achievements in Ireland since Kildare’s defeat and the surrender of his lands to the king. Cromwell took these reports up with Grey, who naturally put up a vigorous defence of his record as deputy.36

  But reports of bad feeling on the council persisted. Browne suspected the Treasurer, Brabazon, of misleading Henry regarding the revenues of the bishopric of Dublin, while relations between Browne and Grey were deteriorating alarmingly. Browne complained to Cromwell of opposition not only from the clergy but also from Grey, who tried to imprison him (Browne) and subsequently expel him from his house. Grey was frustrating the Reformation of the church, Browne alleged. The only way Browne could get the pope’s name written out of service books was by sending his own servants to do it because the clergy, with Grey’s connivance, ignored his directives. Grey was now under attack from other members of the Irish council, and in 1538 articles were drawn up against him. The main charges were that he had favoured the Geraldines in Ireland and abused his authority and trust. It fell to Cromwell to try and sort all this out, which meant asking for, and having to study, detailed and lengthy statements from all parties.37

  Frustrating and time wasting though this turned out to be, the news was not all bad. Grey was partly successful in extending English influence in areas beyond the Pale, and he did so to the ‘joy of the inhabitants’, at least according to reports that reached Cromwell. This raises the subject of the government’s attitude to the Gaelic Irish.38

  The act for the ‘English order, habit and language’ relating to ‘the part of the land that is called the English Pale’, was passed in the Dublin parliament of 1536. It condemned the diversity between the people of Ireland ‘in tongue, language, order and habit’, which deceived them into imagining they were ‘of sundry sorts, or rather of sundry countries, when indeed they be wholly together one body whereof his highness is the only head under God’. This preamble suggests that although the English language and English laws were intended to have priority in Ireland, as in Wales, the natives were not to be set apart as a class of untouchables. The emphasis was on unity – all the Irish were the king’s subjects.39

  If this was the government’s will for the Pale, then it might suggest that some sort of rapprochement towards the Celts was envisaged, at least by Cromwell. It was Cromwell who persuaded Henry to appoint Dr Richard Nangle, an evangelically minded Irish speaking professor of theology, as Bishop of Clonfert in the west of Ireland. Unfortunately for him, he too ran into opposition from local clergy. Browne got embroiled in the row, and accused Grey of refusing to support Nangle even though he knew that the king and Cromwell had sent him to Ireland. But the very fact that Nangle provoked hostility at all indicates that at least some Gaelic people were listening to him, just as Browne had attracted interest in Dublin. And the deliberate choice of a man competent in the native language suggests willingness by Cromwell to win over the Gaelic Irish if possible, and entice them into the kingdom rather than treat them as an underclass under some kind of apartheid system. The natives were not beyond redemption in Cromwell’s eyes. Nor was Nangle the only occasion on which Cromwell made use of Gaelic speakers. He once produced some of them from within his service to examine an Irish monk suspected of treason who could not speak (or pretended he could not speak) English.40

  Meanwhile, Grey’s problems were mounting. Antagonism towards him on the Irish council increased, and reports reached not only Cromwell but also Henry. Many Irishmen were now confidently expecting the deputy’s dismissal, though he was not actually recalled to England until 1540, and partly at his own request. Browne was not sorry – only ‘Papists would miss him’. Grey was committed to the Tower in June 1540, coincidentally the same month as Cromwell, though the two men’s falls were not connected. Convicted for various offences connected with misrule in Ireland, Grey was executed the following year.41

  This short survey of Ireland is confined to one small period of Tudor rule, the years that Cromwell was Henry’s chief minister. It can hardly be called a resounding success. Cromwell had three main problems to tackle: years of neglect before his term began, Henry’s exasperating unwillingness to invest, and fractious backbiting among those appointed to govern. Cromwell could do nothing about the first; he had to manage as best he could with the second, and then try to sort out the undignified squabbling from an inconvenient distance. It is not surprising that little real progress was made.

  However, the picture is not all bleak. One might even venture to claim that the ingredients for a good Irish policy were present. A chief minister who understood Ireland, and took Irish affairs seriously, was an advantage in itself. Attempts to bring order and better administration to Ireland were overdue, uncontroversial and generally welcomed. Sooner or later someone would have had to implement reforms like these. Irish opposition to the king’s Supremacy was certainly no worse than in England, and despite the troubles he faced, Browne found willing listeners to his evangelical preaching. Then both before and after the Kildare rebellion, Cromwell preferred diplomacy and persuasion to force or the threat of it. Military conquest and harsh repression did not feature in his plans. As Dr Nangle’s appointment showed, Cromwell made some att
empt to reach the hearts and minds of the Gaelic people. The general policy with Gaelic chiefs seems to have been to live and let live, and try to extend English influence little by little.

  Although the story of English rule in Ireland all too often makes depressing reading, this brief Cromwellian period – though too brief to make any real, lasting impact – does read like one of the few brighter, or at least less gloomy, interludes. At worst, no major blunder was committed to burden and bedevil successive generations. Maybe Cromwell regretted not replacing Grey sooner. Ironically, a touch of the ruthlessness that popular accounts of the Tudors ascribe to Cromwell might not have been entirely amiss in dealing with Grey and his wrangling council. Often the key to a successful policy lies in the one appointed to execute it, and Grey turned out to be a huge disappointment for Cromwell. If Cromwell had had a Rowland Lee – a man more after his own heart – as deputy, more good might have come of it.42

  Wales, Ireland and Calais all came under the category of domestic affairs. An insight into Cromwell’s negotiations with foreign ambassadors has been given already in Chapter 9. Similar discussions with Chapuys and the French continued almost weekly, but two or three thick volumes would be required to treat all of them in detail. Suffice to say that Cromwell continued broadly pro-Imperialist, though this was never the equivalent of an article of faith; he would do whatever he felt was in Henry’s and England’s interests.

  Foxe noted approvingly that during Cromwell’s period England was never at war, and that his policy was to ‘nourish peace’ with Charles, Francis, the Scots and even Rome if the pope was willing. Cromwell seems to have believed that whereas close relations with France would inevitably drag England into a continental war against Charles, friendship or an alliance with Charles would be sufficient to deter French adventurism and aggression, perhaps without the need for conflict. Whilst Cromwell was prepared to offer English soldiers and funds to help Charles against the Turk as part of an Anglo-Imperial treaty, he was determined to avoid the inconclusive and often wasteful foreign ventures that had been a feature of Henry’s reign in Wolsey’s time, and would become so once again after Cromwell’s fall. When, in early 1535, the French were suggesting that Henry might join Francis and make war on Charles, Cromwell resisted. He assured Chapuys that ‘I will never allow the king my master to carry war across the channel, or try to gain one more foot of land on the continent than he has already’. It was a promise he managed to keep.43

  Chapuys also noticed that Cromwell was very friendly with the Scots ambassador. At the peace treaty with Scotland in May 1534, Cromwell was part of the English negotiating team, along with Audley and Edward Foxe. The treaty held during Cromwell’s lifetime, though not Henry’s. From time to time Cromwell hinted diplomatically to King James that he might consider doing in Scotland what Henry had done in England, and establish his Supremacy in his own kingdom.44

  Though allegations of an elaborate Cromwellian spy network are often exaggerated, Cromwell nevertheless prized a good spy in both his foreign and domestic policy. It seems, however, that he was expected to pay their wages and expenses himself rather than from government funds, because he once complained to Cranmer that his spies ‘in foreign realms, at Rome and elsewhere cost me above 1,000 marks a year’. Some of his spies came from unexpected quarters, like the Irish-speaking agents in his service (see here). The movements of two suspicious Observant Friars were once reported to Cromwell by another friar named Lawrence, who, displaying a cunning not normally required for his order, recommended that they should not be arrested just yet, but rather kept under observation to discover what their ‘cankered intents’ really were. Lawrence suspected that a London merchant was bankrolling them. The outcome is not clear.45

  Cromwell received regular reports on diplomatic events in Europe, and his agents could be quite resourceful. With the help of a page servant to a Portuguese dignitary, Richard Herman’s brother managed to get hold of some of the pope’s letters to the king of Portugal, and made copies for Cromwell. Simon Heynes in Paris befriended Jacob Sturm from Germany, and through his good offices Hayes secured duplicates of correspondence between King Francis and the German princes at the time when Francis had invited Melanchthon to France. Another alert agent discovered that Reginald Pole, now in exile on the continent, was staying in the old palace in Liège.46

  As well as domestic and foreign policy, Cromwell’s responsibilities also extended to finance, trade and economics. This, however, is a subject more appropriate for specialist journals than a biography, and even then it is fraught with more difficulties than are usually present in historical research. When assessments of contemporary economic trends and policies can be highly subjective and debateable, similar exercises undertaken on the Tudor age 500 years ago face near insuperable obstacles. The following section is, therefore, a very general survey of Cromwell’s policy in this area included mainly for completeness, and to show how varied and wide-ranging his workload was.

  As a rule, Cromwell preferred to see government income and expenditure managed by departments of state or courts than by the royal household. The Court of Augmentations was made responsible for revenues received from the monasteries. Another court was set up to administer the First Fruits and Tenths and other income from the church. Altogether six different courts or departments existed in Cromwell’s time, each with its own terms of reference and officials. As far as his own office of Principal Secretary was concerned, Cromwell, like Henry VII before him, liked to exercise close personal control over income and expenditure, even to the extent of attending to some fairly routine accounting.47

  The English coinage had been debased under Wolsey, and it would be debased more frequently and drastically in Henry’s last post-Cromwell years. However, in a royal proclamation in summer 1538 it was revalued. How much of this can be credited directly to Cromwell’s management of the Tudor economy is hard to say, but a welcome degree of financial stability attended his tenure of office. The cloth trade, the source of much profit and wealth, generally did well in the 1530s, though customers were becoming increasingly discerning and selective – European buyers were insisting on white or unfinished cloth, as the Merchant Adventurers kept stressing to the government. Cromwell listened to the merchant classes and supported trade in various ways. He relaxed price controls without abolishing them entirely, but he was unwilling to restrict foreign competition as much as the Tudor business community would have liked. An act of 1531 had virtually banned all export of foreign exchange unless licensed by the Lord Chancellor; but Sir Richard Gresham, a merchant who knew Cromwell, seems to have convinced him that such severe restrictions were harmful to trade. Cromwell then successfully persuaded Henry and the council to allow free exchange. He also supported Gresham’s proposals for a London bourse (Stock Exchange), and he introduced a bill in the 1539 parliament. It won the support of the Lords, but it turned out to be another of Cromwell’s bills that failed to pass the Commons – Elton suggests simply for lack of time. It was left to Gresham’s son, Thomas, to make the Royal Exchange of London a reality in Elizabeth’s reign.48

  The following table, taken from the much respected Phelps Brown researches, shows the indexes of price rises for food (1) and industrial products (2) in the period 1501–1600 (1471–5 = 100):49

  (1)

  (2)

  (1)

  (2)

  1501–10

  106

  98

  1551–60

  315

  186

  1511–20

  116

  102

  1561–70

  298

  218

  1521–30

  159

  110

  1571–80

  341

  223

  1531–40

  161

  110

  1581–90

  389

  230

  1541–50

  217

  127

  1591–1600
/>
  530

  238

  Readers will hardly need reminding that statistics, even when expertly researched and prepared, may need to be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, these facts speak for themselves eloquently enough. The Cromwellian 1530s resemble a monetary oasis compared with most of the rest of the century, and especially the periods just before and after. Uncommonly low inflation combined with a strong currency and a healthy trading position is, as anyone with a bare smattering of economics can appreciate at a glance, a huge economic success story.50

  Like most prominent ministers of his time, Cromwell favoured moderate state intervention in economic affairs. He introduced a bill that would have prevented wealthy landowners buying up farms to turn them over almost entirely to pasture in order to profit unfairly from the wool trade, a practice allegedly responsible for rising food prices. From now on, no one would be allowed to keep more than 2,000 sheep; at least one eighth of leasehold land had to be reserved for tillage; and restrictions were placed on the amount of such lands any one person could own. Cromwell had high hopes of this bill, and he boldly promised Henry that if it passed successfully it would be the ‘most beneficial’ thing done for your people ‘since the time of Brutus’. Cromwell managed to steer his bill through the Commons only to see the Lords block it, perhaps because it clashed with vested interests. About the only major provision of the draft that became law was the maximum allowance of 2,000 sheep per person. This disappointment may have somewhat dampened his enthusiasm for trying to regulate the economy more than was really practicable.51