The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

by John Schofield

  The prayer continued, its evangelical flame burning brighter than ever:

  Of sins and evil works, alas, I see a great heap … but through thy mercy, I trust to be in the number of them to whom thou wilt not impute their sins; but will take and accept me for righteous and just, and to be the inheritor of everlasting life … Most merciful Saviour … let thy blood cleanse and wash away the spots and foulness of my sins. Let thy righteousness hide and cover my unrighteousness. Let the merits of thy Passion and blood-shedding be satisfaction for my sins …’

  The entire prayer, but especially the words in my italics, is pure Lutheran. Derived from St Paul, the teaching is not just that God, for Christ’s sake, forgives the sinner. It goes further than that. God entirely exonerates, He freely justifies. The righteousness that is found only in Christ is thereby imputed to the believer, so ‘there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 3:21–6; 8:1). And with this classic Lutheran confession, Thomas Cromwell bid the world farewell.29

  That same day, Henry married Catherine Howard. Three days later a gruesome double execution was staged, almost certainly on Henry’s orders. Barnes, Garrett and Jerome suffered the common fate of heretics. According to witnesses, death came mercifully quickly. Less than a stone’s throw away, three priests of the old faith – Thomas Abel, Richard Featherstone and Edward Powell – were hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors for resisting the Royal Supremacy. ‘Good Lord!’ a foreign witness exclaimed. ‘How do these people live? Here are the Papists hanged, there are the anti-Papists burned’. Two more of Cromwell’s loyal men – the Bible translators Rogers and Coverdale – sought refuge on the continent, where they stayed until Edward’s reign. Rogers went to Wittenberg, and after a recommendation from Melanchthon he accepted a pastorate in Germany. When he heard the news from England, Melanchthon called down the wrath of God on Henry for the slaying of Cromwell. In Rome, by contrast, it was noted approvingly that Henry had, at last, taken a turn in the right direction by punishing his recalcitrant chief minister.30

  Other players in the Cromwellian drama enjoyed mixed fortunes. Though the Calais sacramentaries had been fortuitously pardoned, most of the Calais conspirators were hanged and quartered. An exception was Botolf, the ringleader, who became one of the luckiest men of Henry’s reign. He was picked up in Louvain and then set free again thanks to a legal technicality. How he ended his days is not known. Adam Damplip was detained in London for two more years before being sent back to Calais to face more heresy charges, and there this incorrigible troublemaker eventually died a traitor’s death for receiving a French crown of Cardinal Pole. The main witnesses against Cromwell – Rich and Throgmorton – were rewarded for their services with lands and allowances. Bishop Sampson was not released until 1541. Lord Lisle, though never convicted, died in the Tower in March 1542, shortly after learning he had been pardoned. The fact that Henry did not release these men immediately after Cromwell’s fall suggests that the king was not entirely sure that the suspicions of collaboration with Pole and Rome were false.31

  Hugely contrasting fates awaited the two leading ladies in the story. Catherine Howard was barely on the throne before she began cuckolding her doting, but increasingly bulky and unappealing husband. Her affection for younger, more handsome men was soon uncovered, and like Anne Boleyn before her she was sent to the block – this time there is no room for any doubt about the queen’s guilt. Meanwhile Anne of Cleves, the rejected wife whose arrival in England provided the overture to the drama, was settling contentedly into her new life as the king’s ‘good sister’, with two fine houses, parks and servants, and an allowance of 500 shillings a year.32

  If, as Hall says, those who rejoiced at Cromwell’s demise really did outnumber those who lamented, then the mourners far outclassed their gloating rivals in eloquence. Shortly after seeing Cromwell die, Thomas Wyatt, the poet, penned his own epitaph of his patron, mentor and friend:33

  The pillar perished is whereto I leaned,

  The strongest stay of my unquiet mind;

  The like of it no man again can find –

  From east to west, still seeking though he went –

  To mine unhap, for hap away hath rent

  Of all my joy, the very bark and rind,

  And I, alas, by chance am thus assigned

  Dearly to mourn till death do it relent.

  But since that thus it is by destiny,

  What can I more but have a woeful heart,

  My pen in plaint, my voice in woeful cry,

  My mind in woe, my body full of smart,

  And I myself, myself always to hate

  Till dreadful death do ease my doleful state?

  Notes

   1. Hall, p. 838.

   2. Kaulek , pp. 190–91 = LP 15, no. 767.

   3. Kaulek, pp. 189–90 = LP 15, no. 766.

   4. Kaulek, p. 191 = LP 15, no. 785; SP 8, p. 264.

   5. Kaulek, p. 193 = LP 15, no. 804; SP 8, pp. 349–50.

   6. SP 8, pp. 364–5.

   7. S. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII: 1536-1547 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 107; Kaulek, p. 194 = LP 15, no. 804.

   8. Cranmer, Misc. Writings, p. 401. Diarmaid MacCulloch dates this letter to 12 June, unlike Cox and LP: See D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 270.

   9. Merriman 2, pp. 264–7.

  10. LJ 32 Hen. VIII, pp. 145–6, 149; G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation (London, 1977), pp. 292–3; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 107, 109, 313, fn. 108.

  11. The attainder is printed in Burnet 4, pp. 416–21.

  12. Kaulek, p. 195 = LP 15, no. 804, p. 378.

  13. For Luther and Müntzer, see Brecht 2, pp. 146–57, 172–94. For Zwingli, see G.R. Potter, Zwingli (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 413–14. The Lutherans agreed that Christian princes had duty to defend true religion, so a defensive war was acceptable. In 1538 Luther approved resistance to the Emperor, though with misgivings, should he attack the Lutheran states. In that case, Charles would be effectively waging war on behalf of the pope, not his own interests. Normally the Christian would be bound to render obedience even to an unjust government, but this did not apply to the pope because he was not a legitimate ruler. If he or princes on his behalf waged war, then resistance was justified. See Brecht 3, pp. 199–203; E. Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991), pp. 353–4. However, this hardly fits Cromwell’s case. Maybe he was planning something against the bishops, but not directly against Henry.

  14. Gray quoted and discussed in A. Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), p. 139.

  15. Foxe 5, p. 519; LP 15, no. 498, p. 217, II. cap. 49.

  16. Hall, p. 838; A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London, 1989), p. 201; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 118–19.

  17. CSP Span., 1553, p. 339.

  18. LP 12 (2), no. 101; Wright 2, pp. 241–2; ET, p. 209 = OL 1, p. 317: Nicholas Partridge to Bullinger – Audely ‘has conceived a great regard for you’.

  19. Merriman 2, pp. 268–73. The original is in Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 1/24–7. I am grateful to Lord Salisbury and the Librarian for allowing me to see a copy.

  20. Merriman 2, pp. 273–6 (See also the discussion on these letters in LP 15, nos 822–3, editor’s note); Foxe 5, pp. 401–2. Actually Foxe does not say for sure which of Cromwell’s letters moved Henry this way, but it is most likely this one.

  21. LP 15, nos 821–2; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 112–13.

  22. Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, pp. 114–15; Kaulek, p. 202 = LP 15, no. 901; LP 15, nos 844–5, 860–61, 908–9, 925; Burnet 4, pp. 446–9; Hall, p. 839. The elusive pre-contract documents had eventually arrived in February, though unfortunately there is no record of Henry’s reaction when he saw them, and surviving copies are damaged (LP 15, nos 267, 909). Later in July, when Anne’s divorce was arranged, the English claimed that the documents did not put the
matter beyond doubt after all: J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials under Henry VIII (Oxford, 1822), 1 (2), pp. 452–3.

  23. LP 15, nos 792, 890; SP 8, pp. 362, 376.

  24. LJ 32 Hen. VIII, pp. 157–9; LP 15, no. 498, p. 215, I.58; Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, p. 111.

  25. Kaulek, p. 194 = LP 15, no. 804; Kaulek, p. 198 = LP 15, no. 847, p. 418; CSP Ven., 5, no. 220; Merriman 1, p. 296; Kaulek, p. 207 = LP 15, no. 926.

  26. Foxe 5, p. 401; Merriman 2, pp. 277–8.

  27. Merriman 2, p. 129 (In a letter from Cromwell to Shaxton; for the context, see chap. 13).

  28. Merriman 1, p. 301.

  29. AC: see summary at the end of Article 21, and conclusion, in BSLK, pp. 83 (1), 134 (19–20, 24). For the last words and prayer, see Foxe 5, pp. 402–3; Hall, p. 839. Hall says that Cromwell ‘made his prayer’, but it is Foxe who supplies the words of the prayer. Its strong Lutheran tone may be the reason that Hall, perhaps writing while Henry was still alive, left them out. Richard Hilles reports a rumour that Cromwell, in return for a quick death, confessed that he had ‘offended the king’ (OL 1, p. 203). Hilles admits, however, that it was only a rumour, and he did not know whether it was true. Cromwell did indeed make purely general confessions like this, and not just on the scaffold; he made them in his letters to Henry from the Tower. But he consistently denied the specific charges of treason and sacramentary heresy. On the evangelical use of the word ‘Catholic’, compare also the title of Thomas Cranmer’s best known later work, Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament: Cranmer was contending for the Reformed doctrine, arguing that this was the one held by the ancient church.

  30. Foxe 5, pp. 438–9; Works of Coverdale, ed. G. Pearson (Cambridge, 1846), pp.xi-xii; J. Schofield, Philip Melanchthon and the English Reformation, pp. 144–5, 181; LP 15, no. 911.

  31. Lisle Letters 6, pp. 113–15, 180–82, 238; LP 15, no. 812; LP 16, nos 305 (2), 878 (80), p. 427; Foxe 5, pp. 520–22.

  32. Kaulek, p. 274 = LP 15, no. 930.

  33. Printed in Complete Poems of Thomas Wyatt, ed. R.A. Rebholz (Middlesex, 1978), p. 86.

  Epilogue

  In January 1541 John Wallop, Henry’s ambassador in France, reported a meeting he had just had with King Francis. Among other matters, Francis made some reference to Cromwell’s ‘naughty pretended intentions … as well concerning your highness as my lady Mary’. The rumour of Cromwell’s designs on Mary had stubbornly persisted, even though no evidence was ever produced.1

  Wallop presumably expected Henry to find this story diverting, but his flippancy was woefully mistimed. By now Henry had lost interest in tales of Cromwell’s alleged misdeeds, whether regarding Mary or not. One day in March, says Marillac, Henry was bitterly berating his ministers, because ‘upon light pretexts and by false accusations, they made him put to death the most faithful servant he ever had’. Thus out of all Henry’s prominent casualties, Thomas Cromwell became the only one to receive what amounted to a posthumous royal pardon.2

  Tudor justice had finally prevailed. For of Catherine Howard’s guilt there is no doubt. Anne Boleyn and the Exeters were definitely making mischief of some sort, though exactly what sort may remain disputed. And to say that More and Fisher really were Papalists is neither to applaud nor justify the manner of their deaths, but at least they were granted the honour of dying for deeply held convictions. They were not falsely accused of being, say, closet Pelagians, or of seeking the king’s injury. But the attainder of Cromwell is lies from first to last, as the king’s own words confirm.

  What moved Henry to anger with his surviving councillors is not clear – maybe the machinery of government was not running quite as smoothly as before – but this was no isolated royal outburst. Two years later the Gardiner party staged a coup against Cranmer, but this time they failed to win Henry’s support. Knowing what was afoot the king turned double agent and disclosed the entire plot to Cranmer. ‘Do you not think’, Henry demanded, with memories of Cromwell seemingly fixed in his mind, ‘that if they have you once in prison, three or four false knaves will soon be procured to witness against you and condemn you, which else now being at your liberty dare not once open their lips or appear before your face?’3

  It was convenient for Henry to put all the blame on Cromwell’s foes, though not especially convincing. As Shakespeare’s Brutus said of Mark Antony – ‘he can do no more than Caesar’s arm when Caesar’s head is off’ – so even wily Winchester, for all his craft and artifices, could never have touched a hair of Cromwell’s head without Henry’s sanction. It was the king himself who, uncontrollably infatuated by Catherine Howard, had used Gardiner and his faction to strike his ‘most faithful servant’ down. If proof is needed, let the king himself provide it. When Henry, in the last days of his life, named a Council of Regency for Prince Edward, Gardiner’s name was not on it. Sir Anthony Browne asked whether this was an oversight, but Henry told him to hold his peace; he had left Gardiner out deliberately because of his ‘troublesome’ nature. ‘Marry’, went on Henry, ‘I myself could use him, and rule him to all manner of purposes, as seemed good unto me; but so shall you never do’.4

  Why it ‘seemed good’ to Henry to reject his foremost minister for a giddy nineteen year-old girl, hopelessly ill fitted to be queen of England, only Henry will ever know. It did not ‘seem good’ to everybody except perhaps, though all too briefly, the victorious Gardiner party. Norfolk and other councillors assured Marillac that Anglo-French relations would be more productive now that the main ‘obstacle’ to them, that is, Cromwell, was removed. Yet not long after the demolition of this ‘obstacle’, Henry was at war not only with France but Scotland as well. Cromwell’s non-interventionist foreign policy was discarded, and his management of the national economy badly missed as inflation rose sharply in the 1540s. With the costs of Henry’s modest military successes quickly spiralling out of control, the king was forced to borrow huge sums from foreign money markets, debase the English currency more severely than ever, re-mint coins and levy yet more taxes from his long-suffering subjects. By the end of his reign, and for little substantial gain, the financial soundness bequeathed by his father and sustained by Cromwell was squandered, and Henry handed on to his heirs a crippling burden of debt that remained outstanding well into Elizabeth’s reign. ‘Would God England had a Cromwell’, exclaimed a harassed Dr Wilson, Principal Secretary to Elizabeth, one day – and he lived in an age overflowing with political and cultural talent.5

  To turn from the immediate effects of Cromwell’s downfall to his place in English history, I have argued that he was a reformer but not a destroyer of the old church. I also believe that he would have continued in this vein even if Henry, like the Scandinavian kings, had accepted the Augsburg Confession and granted Cromwell the authority to oversee the Reformation in England. His was a spirit that sought to reform for the better rather than uproot and begin again. His policy regarding shrines and monasteries may appear to run counter to this argument, but these were not exclusively Protestant or Cromwellian measures. The value of much medieval piety had been critiqued by Renaissance humanists like Erasmus as well as by reformers like Luther, and the English dissolution might even have gone ahead without Cromwell, though less efficiently. At the core of the Reformation lay the theology of salvation, not religious houses or traditions. Cromwell mastered the new learning from Germany with an accomplishment that many bishops failed to match, and by means of printed material, persuasion, evangelical appointments, articles and injunctions he used all his skill and ingenuity to restore England to the true faith of the Gospel – or, as Robert Aske accused him during the Pilgrimage of Grace, to fill the realm with heresy. This is a highly charged subjective issue, a matter of conscience even, so Cromwell is destined to remain for ever a controversial figure.6

  Even for those who would take Aske’s side, however, this is the head and front of Cromwell’s offending. Elsewhere the same Aske, in a more generous moment, conceded that Cromwell had done hi
m no personal harm. Aske’s candid admission sets in context the hostility that Cromwell faced from certain quarters, chiefly the established clergy and also, though perhaps to a lesser extent, the nobility. He was hated not for his ruthlessness or cruelty – those who machinated his ruin were far more ruthless than he – but because, to quote Marillac again, he was the ‘principal author’ of the Reformation in England. What his opponents feared and loathed was not the bloody, corrupt henchman of Merriman’s description, but the formidable intellect, energy and learning of this low born layman who had gained the king’s confidence and trust to the extent that he was appointed Vicegerent in the church. So long as Cromwell lived, the existing order felt threatened. He never persuaded Henry to be reconciled to Luther, but loyalists of the old religion were always afraid that he might.7

  It is one of history’s many ironies that the visions, hopes and prayers of this layman were eventually fulfilled in the spiritual realm but not the political. As a Reformer of the church he laid the foundation for the future Protestant England, but he neither visualized nor desired the future constitutional monarchy. Mindful of the previous troubled century, he saw a powerful Tudor monarchy as the guarantor of liberty, stability, civil peace and prosperity. He believed in a righteous kingly absolutism, a prince accountable to God alone. This prince, however, would govern through parliament, not by royal decree. Though the Royal Supremacy was believed to be the divine will, the means of implementing it on earth became parliamentary statute. Consequently Henry’s reign, and particularly Cromwell’s time, witnessed a strengthening of both crown and parliament, and it takes its distinctive place in English parliamentary and constitutional history, as well as church history.

  Knowing the course of the seventeenth as well as sixteenth century, it is easy for us to see an innate tension between the concept of a strong monarchy and an increasingly prestigious parliament. How long could such a parliament be expected to remain unquestioningly loyal to the royal will? The Tudor system needed a minister to manage parliament in the king’s interest, and in Cromwell it had one; but no generation can provide an absolutely fail-safe insurance against the mistakes of those who are to follow. No one in Henry’s reign could have foreseen the future conflict, still a century ahead, between a Stuart monarch implacably convinced of his divine right, and a parliament so assertive of its own rights that it could take up arms against the king and plunge the nation into the misery of civil war. With men like Cromwell administering it, the Tudor state proved to be an impressively stable one.