The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  As noted already, Pole’s account of the English schism, and of Cromwell’s allegedly decisive role in it, has not convinced Elton or Mayer, Pole’s most recent biographer. Such scepticism is understandable. Henry’s wish to divorce Catherine, his aim of supremacy over the church and his desire for monastic acquisitions all pre-dated Cromwell’s rise to power. The point about Machiavelli and the Prince is probably true, though over-dramatised. The timing of the Apologia is also a little suspicious. It was written when Francis and Charles were, for once, at peace, and the dream of a crusade against schismatic England might at last be realised.14

  Charles’s reaction to this assault on Cromwell – a man he and Chapuys had previously looked on with some regard – is not known. However, the position of foreign ambassadors in England was now uncertain. Castillon feared for his safety and asked to be recalled. Henry and Cromwell were more concerned about the departure of Chapuys in March 1539. Castillon was soon replaced by Charles de Marillac, but Chapuys did not return until after Cromwell’s fall.15

  The English government now mobilised the nation to prepare for war. In March writs were issued to summon a new parliament, the first for three years. Then, in response to an order from Charles to detain all ships in Antwerp, Henry issued a similar order for ships in English ports. Cromwell instructed Ambassador Bonner in France to apologise to Francis in case any French vessels were affected, and to try and find out whether Francis ‘would be our enemy if the emperor would declare himself against us’. Bonner should let Francis know that ‘from time to time and by little and little, his ships shall be delivered, and no damage done unto them’. Cromwell urged Ambassador Wyatt to find out more about Charles’s intentions. Henry appealed to Francis to arrest Cardinal Pole should he enter French territory. Concerned but undaunted by the emperor, Cromwell was now rallying anxious English hearts: ‘We trust to God’, he urged his servant Wriothesley. ‘He is our hope. What should we fear? He will defend His own cause; how and after what fashion, we leave it to His divine providence. Be ye always of good comfort. We lack neither heart nor courage’.16

  Preparations for defence against an invasion, begun the previous autumn, continued apace throughout 1539. All along the south coast, the Thames, in Calais, on the coasts of Essex and Suffolk, and as far north as Berwick, officers appointed by Cromwell were superintending defence fortifications. From Calais Cromwell heard reports of hoarding, and he magisterially rebuked the deputy, Lord Lisle. In almost every county, including Wales, plans were laid to raise able-bodied men for war, and provide training and arms. Cromwell directed that a warrant be made for the order of beacons throughout the country. The people’s response was heartening. At Harwich, wrote one officer to Cromwell, ‘ye should have seen women and children work with shovels in the trenches and bulwarks there’.17

  Cromwell made sure that ambassadors Chapuys, Castillon and Marillac saw for themselves the resistance that an invading army would have to face. Before he left, Chapuys warned Charles how well prepared England was. Marillac received a guided tour of coastal defences at Portsmouth and Southampton, and his despatches to Francis and Montmorency give vivid accounts of life in England during spring and early summer. In April Cromwell mustered 10,000 men, with another 50,000 expected imminently. No one was exempt; even strangers living in England were called up. Five or six ships sailed round the country as patrol boats, sending messages to each other and to coast guards by fires. If any foreign vessel approached the shores of England, the whole country would be alerted instantly. Henry had nearly 150 warships; at least 90 were well equipped, and thirty more would be soon. The government had taken the names of all French subjects in England. All this and more was dutifully reported to King Francis.18

  Intelligence and security were also tightened. In March, the earl of Westmoreland advised Cromwell that he had detained a priest for speaking ill of Henry, and two Irishmen, a monk and a friar. The Council of the North confirmed the facts. The priest was Robert More, and letters for the pope and Pole were found on the Irishmen. The monk was questioned but refused to co-operate, so on Cromwell’s orders he was sent to the Tower to ‘see him set in the brakes, and by torment compelled to confess the truth’.19

  In April Cromwell received an intelligence report from Thomas Cheyne that fifty great ships of war were ready to sail from Holland. Cheyne asked for instructions, because Henry had ordered that people should not be levied unless the danger was real, for fear of wearying them with too many false alarms. Cromwell instructed Cheyne to put two patrol boats to sea. Two days later the ships were sighted, anchored at the North Foreland. Cheyene sent another vessel to watch them. Next day he suspected that the ships were really bound for Constantinople. Four days later Stephen Vaughan, in Flanders, heard that Charles was about to recall the ships, and he dashed off a letter to London. Soon Cromwell was able to tell Henry that Charles’s fleet had been ‘undoubtedly prepared for Barbaria’. The danger had passed – it may have been a false alarm – but the intelligence network was working well.20

  Not surprisingly in view of the reports being sent out of England, foreign enthusiasm for an invasion quickly subsided. Cromwell heard from Norfolk, in Berwick during spring, that King James of Scotland had promised not to break his truce with Henry, even though the Scots clergy were eager to see England invaded and conquered. The prelates feared that James, urged on by lords and gentry, might follow the example of Henry in England and bring the clergy into submission. However, Norfolk remained suspicious of Scottish intentions.21

  On the continent, Cardinal Pole had to report sadly that Charles was unlikely to take action against England. Charles confided to the Venetian ambassador that he had little appetite for an invasion, despite appeals from Rome and Pole. Neither was the emperor, to Pole’s chagrin and Cromwell’s delight, keen on a trade embargo; and he had even refused Pole’s requests to detain Englishmen living in his dominions. The pope continued to try, but Charles pleaded that unresolved issues in Germany had to be dealt with before he could turn his mind to England. With King Francis, Pole had even less joy. Stalling just as adroitly as Charles, Francis purred piously about sending a joint Franco-Imperial embassy to England, which would urge Henry to return to the obedience of the church. Nothing came of it.22

  If a nation’s military strength is measured by the successful conquests it makes, then England under Thomas Cromwell had little to boast of. If, however, another criterion is applied – if the test of strength is the ability of a nation to defend itself against all dangers – then Cromwell’s England was as powerful as any country in Europe. Cromwell had always been opposed to English involvement in foreign wars, because he had grasped one of the fundamental tenets of military strategy. On paper and on the continent England was weaker than France and the empire. At home in the Channel, properly defended, she was stronger than both.

  Ironically, Cromwell enjoyed more success as Henry’s all-embracing minister for foreign affairs, national defence, intelligence and security than he did with his German Lutheran brethren. He was increasingly concerned at the Germans’ apparent lack of enthusiasm to persevere with Henry, especially when news reached England that, at the Frankfurt Interim, the Schmalkaldic League had promised Charles that it would admit no new members for eighteen months. Theoretically, therefore, England could not have joined the League even if Cromwell had managed to persuade Henry to accept the Augsburg Confession. Cromwell urged emissaries Christopher Mont and Thomas Parnell to stress to the Germans how Henry, ‘being a prince that favoureth the Word of God above all other things’, still earnestly desired an alliance with them. Mont was to press for an answer, to remind them that Henry was the first prince in Europe to cast off papal authority in his realm, and urge them to consider an alliance in the face of hostility from Rome and now the emperor as well. The result was a huge disappointment. Letters from Germany regretted Henry’s refusal to endorse the Augsburg Confession, and, when a delegation eventually arrived on 23 April 1539, it was a minor one compared w
ith the previous year. Led by Franz Burkhardt and the Hessian noblemen, Ludwig vom Baumbach, the League’s answer to Henry contained the news that English evangelicals had dreaded. In view of Henry’s support for private masses and clerical celibacy, the Germans saw little point in any further negotiations on theology. Some sort of relationship between Henry and the League might still be concluded, though not full membership. Even for this uninviting offer, the League’s terms were derisorily one sided. Henry would have to pay 15,000 crowns a year for eight years, and an extra 30,000 crowns if war broke out; Henry could also recruit mercenaries from Germany if necessary. Henry was hugely displeased, and a crisis point in Anglo-Lutheran relations had now been reached.23

  Cromwell could not meet the Germans on their arrival because he was ill with tertian fever. Desperately trying to salvage something from the wreckage, he wrote to Henry from his sick-bed, and this letter affords some insight into the tactical approach that Cromwell was likely to use in trying to reason with Henry. After profuse regrets that he was unable to attend on the king, Cromwell assured Henry that Melanchthon and the German princes remained well disposed towards him, though they were saddened by his stance on private masses and priestly marriage. Cromwell quoted Melanchthon on the subject, knowing Henry’s admiration for him. He reminded Henry that some nuns discharged from monasteries in England were not forbidden to marry. Then he brought in the prospect of the marriage to Anne, confirming that John Frederick remained supportive. At this point the letter takes a subtle turn. The Schmalkaldic League, said Cromwell, was ‘steadfast and constant’; but the German princes expect a crisis in Europe at any time, so that ‘either the evangelicals must destroy the Papists or else the Papists them’; and we trust ‘it shall no more be in their power than in the devil’s power to overcome Christ, the true Protector of the Gospel’. The Anglo-German alliance was ‘very formidable’ to Rome and the Papists, and ‘if your Majesty shall happen to join with them, the Papists in my judgement shall be half desperate’. This was the reason why, at the Frankfurt Interim, Charles was so anxious that the League should admit no new members.24

  Perhaps a paraphrase of this letter may be offered. Behind Cromwell’s deferentially couched language lay an urgent appeal to Henry to put aside his bickering and make up his mind. Why make such a fuss over priestly celibacy when you let some of our own nuns marry? See what Melanchthon – the reformer you really and genuinely admire, and who dedicated his Loci to you – says about it. Accept, therefore, the Augsburg Confession and make a treaty with the League, for Rome and the emperor are seeking to destroy England. Do not be angry with the League for agreeing not to receive any more members for now – they did this only under pressure because the Papists and the emperor are afraid of the growth of the Gospel.

  Had Cromwell been able to meet Henry face to face and argue thus, the English Reformation might have taken a different turn at this critical juncture. But his fever persisted; he was unable to attend the opening of parliament on 28 April, and a meeting with the Germans scheduled for the following day had to be postponed. Cromwell did eventually see them on 2 May at his home, though while still unwell. Norfolk, Suffolk, Audley and Tunstall were also present – three of the old faith and one of the new. No report of that meeting has survived, but on 5 May Audley announced to the Lords that Henry would be setting up a committee to discuss religious differences. On it would be Cromwell, presiding as Vicegerent, and a selection of senior clergy fairly evenly divided between evangelicals and Catholics, which suggests that the balance had not yet swung too far against the reformers. One name notably absent from the proposed committee was Stephen Gardiner, probably a small Cromwellian victory. By the time that Cromwell had recovered from the fever on 10 May, Nicholas Hare, a Norfolk supporter, had been elected Speaker of the House of Commons.25

  About this time the possibility of the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves surfaced again. One potential problem was Anne’s pre-contract with Lorraine’s son, and this was dealt with in a report from Wotton and Birde, Henry’s envoys in Germany, to Cromwell dated 3 May. During preliminary discussions with Cleves, they had feared that the whole matter was ‘made and sealed up’; but then Cleves’s Chancellor assured them that the contract had been made between the parents, and ‘the parties as yet have not given their consents, but are at their liberty to do what they will’. If Anne did not marry Lorraine, however, Cleves might have to make a compensation payment. Cromwell discussed this with Henry, and it was decided to send Wotton and William Peter, another agent in Cromwell’s service, to Cleves to settle the matter once and for all. Instructions signed by Cromwell directed Wotton and Peter to personally inspect all the relevant documents and be sure of the facts. If Anne really was promised to Lorraine’s son, and if it was impossible now to break that promise, then a marriage with her sister might be feasible; but Cromwell insisted that Peter and Wotton must report back to Henry before making any commitment, and that no further marriage talks should take place until Henry gave his approval. They were also ordered to ask permission to see the Cleves sisters themselves, and arrange for portraits to be sent to England.26

  Two significant facts emerge from these discussions. The first is that Henry, despite his disappointment with the Lutheran delegation, did not cancel the Cleves negotiations, even though he had ample reason and opportunity to do so. This will prove that he was seriously interested in Anne, and not being led along unsuspectingly by a devious Cromwell. The second point is that, on Cromwell’s own orders, negotiations regarding Anne would have to stop if it turned out that the pre-contract was a serious problem, at least until Henry had decided what to do next. This, hopefully, should to be enough to answer fanciful theories that Cromwell was rashly determined on this marriage at all costs, or that he ordered his agents to exaggerate Anne’s qualities to Henry, or that Hans Holbein was bribed by Cromwell to produce a flattering portrait of Anne in order to deceive Henry. Which of Henry’s ministers, unless he was completely mad, would have dared to play such a crude trick on his king? The argument dismisses itself. Despite his hopes for the Cleves marriage, Cromwell applied no undue pressure to anyone, except to establish all the facts and report them to Henry.

  As Peter and Wotton were setting off for Germany, Cromwell was carrying on the evangelical struggle at home. On 10 May the posthumous attainder of the Exeters was presented to the Lords, and during the debate a silk tunic was held up to view. The striking scene is described in a letter from John Worth to Lord Lisle. ‘On the side of the coat there was the king’s grace’s arms of England, that is the lions without the flower de lys, and about the whole arms was made pansies for Pole, and marigolds for my lady Mary’. In between the marigold and the pansy ‘was made a tree to rise in the midst, and on the tree a coat of purple hanging on a bough, in token of the coat of Christ, and on the other side of the coat all the Passion of Christ’. The propaganda message was that Pole intended to marry Mary, ‘and betwixt them both should rise again the old doctrine of Christ’. Worth had received his information from a certain Sir George Speke. Many have assumed that it was Cromwell who held up the tunic. This could well be so, though Worth does not confirm it. The words seem to be Worth’s summary of what was said, because it is a bit unlikely that Cromwell would have referred to the papal religion so nostalgically, even affectionately, as the ‘old doctrine of Christ’. Nevertheless, the theatrical gesture was clearly designed to remind parliament that the threat from abroad, though it had receded of late, had not disappeared entirely.27

  Still in May 1539, Cromwell received further encouragement from the Lutheran King Christian III of Denmark. Cromwell had persuaded Henry to send Robert Barnes to Copenhagen to discuss Anglo-Danish relations. Assuring Henry of his goodwill, Christian suggested a meeting of English and Danish diplomats and representatives of the Schmalkaldic League, possibly in England. Helpfully for Cromwell, Christian was urging Henry to accept the Augsburg Confession and join the Protestant alliance. Henry, however, was unyielding. On 16 May
Norfolk introduced the infamous Six Articles to the House of Lords, and Henry’s last meeting with his German visitors on 26 May ended with a bad-tempered row over clerical celibacy.28

  The Act of Six Articles enforced by law the doctrine of transubstantiation, though the word itself, possibly because of its connotations, was left out. It affirmed the medieval practice of communion in one kind only, but it did not condemn both kinds outright. Vows of chastity and private masses were defended. Clerical celibacy was declared to be a ‘law of God’, not some mere church law or tradition, and with this sweeping dismissal of Lutheran arguments, Henry showed himself more resolutely opposed to the marriage of priests than any medieval pope had ever been. Auricular confession was also upheld, though this time as a commendable practice and not a divine law. However, the act failed to assert the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass, and, much to the chagrin of Bishop Tunstall of Durham, it also watered down somewhat the medieval teaching on confession. Henry had achieved the uncommon feat of producing something very anti-Lutheran, but at the same time inadequately Catholic.29

  Cromwell had already realized that this was a battle the evangelicals had lost. He even advised his supporters to restrain their opposition to it during debates in parliament.30 His reasons have puzzled some writers, but Cromwell knew Henry’s convoluted psychological make-up better than most men did, and he had read the situation with his customary shrewdness. Though Henry enjoyed debating theology, the Lutherans were not interested in wrangling with him over communion in one kind, private masses and clerical celibacy. Earthy, no-nonsense Saxons like Martin Luther and John Frederick had little time for Henry’s home-grown, half-baked so-called ‘middle way’ religion. (It should really be called the ‘muddled way’ because there is so little coherence or purpose in most of it.) Henry took umbrage at this disinterest, so he responded by enforcing his peculiar opinions in law. Wounded pride as much as religious conviction brought the Six Articles onto the statute books of England. As Cromwell knew, Henry did not want to end all dealings with the Lutherans, because unless Henry chose to humble himself before the pope, the Germans were the only religious allies he could hope to have. What Henry wanted was for the Lutherans to treat him with more respect, to send Melanchthon to England and conclude a settlement more congenial to him than the Augsburg Confession. Better, therefore, to humour the prickly king and let him have his Six Articles; and then, maybe after a short cooling off period, Cromwell could try to soften the effects of the act somehow and even get it modified. It was an illustration of discretion proving the better part of valour. Besides, though the act was a bitter pill for evangelicals to swallow, it did not actually overturn any Cromwellian reformist measure thus far, and it was only one part of a broad picture. The shrines were crumbling and the monasteries dissolving, evangelical preachers still enjoyed access to the pulpits and Cromwell’s protection, and progress on the Great Bible was encouraging. The Six was a setback for sure, but the Protestant cause was far from beaten.