Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  Rochford had brought with him various position papers making clear what the King was now wanting his Parliament and Convocation to accept: at least two documents look like survivors of these tracts.51 Their flavour can be gauged from the culminating flourish in one of them, which had none of the restraint which the compromise of 11 February imposed: the King’s supreme authority, ‘grounded on God’s Word, ought in no case to be restrained by frustrate decrees of popish laws or void prescripts of human traditions, but . . . he may order and minister, yea and also execute the office of spiritual administration in the Church whereof he is Head’.52 Both these extant pamphlets are in English. The King’s case as enunciated within the realm was now escaping from the decorum of Latin, for if such assertions were to be made in Parliament, as well as Convocation, vernacular prose was essential. They correlate with an interesting reminiscence of the 1531 Parliamentary session from the following summer. An elderly Derbyshire yeoman found himself hauled off to gaol in London for indiscreet talk about Queen Katherine and boasting acquaintance with Anne Boleyn. In an attempt to prove his innocence, Roger Dycker of Kirk Hallam enlarged on the conversation which had caused his troubles: a report by his parish priest, Roger Page, returning from London around midsummer 1531, that ‘the King was about to marry another wife, and that one Mr. Cromwell penned certain matters in the Parliament house, which no man a-gainsaid them.’ This indicates how sharply the Queen’s position had deteriorated since Easter, when John Creke had regarded her as his best hope of Court promotion, but gossip in the Derbyshire countryside about her humiliation was still enough to get a man arrested.

  Parson Page implied in this rich snippet of intelligence that the first time that the King’s new programme took public shape had been in the 1531 Parliament, and that for many observers Cromwell was the man most associated with it. It will not have been a coincidence that the man channelling the accusation against Dycker back to Westminster had been a genuine witness of the same events: one of the two knights of the shire for Derbyshire in that same Parliament, Sir Anthony Babington, who also happened to be a maternal cousin of Thomas Cromwell. Babington thus had two good reasons for acting on his irritation at a Derbyshire villager parading knowledge of Parliamentary proceedings and Lady Anne; Babington certainly took the case seriously, because Kirk Hallam is more than 20 miles from his home at Dethick.53

  The interesting word in Roger Page’s remark about Parliament is ‘penned’. His understanding was that Cromwell was responsible for the literary propaganda offensive presented to MPs and peers (an offensive for the time being confined to the Parliamentary chambers). We may speculate that he pulled a stray copy of one of these manuscripts from his travelling pack as he chatted with his parishioners in the fields outside Kirk Hallam, which would make sense of the slight disjunction in chronology between his mention of Parliament and his previous remark about the Aragon marriage. The reality is probably that, rather than writing such material himself, Cromwell was its orchestrator and co-ordinator: that is the pattern which developed thereafter, as he identified the people with the right talents for the job.54

  There is one remarkable possibility among various candidates for these documents: a fairly recent manuscript discovery in the archives of the Berkeley family at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, presumably left from Thomas Lord Berkeley’s attendance in early sessions of the Reformation Parliament, is explosive, indeed revolutionary. It is in an early Tudor hand, but its content was much older, for it is a petition presented to a Parliament in 1410 by a number of members of that Parliament who had Lollard sympathies. It suggested that the Crown should confiscate all temporal estates owned by the Church above the level of the parishes, and it was coupled with a brand-new petition which enlarged on the same themes of clerical corruption and greed with even more colourful and extended venom: ‘now of late, most gracious sovereign, they have been dandled and made wantons as some delicate fathers make wanton their children and giveth them their own appetites until they fall to great inconvenience.’55 A public rehabilitation of Lollardy was unprecedented in more than a century of their repression and persecution, yet here were freshly made copies of this venerable petition to a fifteenth-century Parliament, plus a suggestion for bringing it radically up to date.

  A further piece of evidence clarifies this most surprising of developments. A reference to the same document is lodged in Thomas Cromwell’s archive, in a list of Parliamentary bills which did not pass in the opening sessions of the Reformation Parliament. One item on the list is described as ‘A bill put up to the King in his Parliament by his Commons in anno domini 1410, concerning the temporal possessions being in the hands of the Church’.56 It seems oddly placed amid the newly failed bills (and the clerk itemizing it did a double-take on the date, first making it 1510, until he looked again at its heading), but then one sees from the Berkeley Castle document that the 1410 petition was paired with the new petition to Parliament, which presumably had no separate heading for the clerk to note.57 As propaganda, it sits well with Cromwell’s actions in this Parliamentary session; in autumn 1529, his chief preoccupation and the source of his public reputation was the defence of his master Cardinal Wolsey. It might even be moved forward to the fresh wave of literary fireworks prepared for the 1532 session of Parliament. If the petition was given a Parliamentary airing now, it was at the same time as the government allowed publication in print of that other text embraced by the Lollards long ago, the Disputatio inter clericum et militem. But while the Disputatio was given the cachet of Latin, the resurrected 1410 petition was an English text for an English audience.

  The price of winning hearts and minds for the King in a Tudor Parliament was eternal vigilance. The problem for official management was the constant difficulty of orchestrating three different arenas at the same time: Lords, Commons and Convocation (not to mention the fact that Convocation too had its upper and lower houses). That was shown when in late March a significantly large group in the House of Commons disrupted progress in the King’s hard-fought deal with the clergy on the not unreasonable grounds that, if all the clergy of the realm were implicated in Wolsey’s alarmingly open-ended violation of the praemunire statute, the layfolk of England might equally have sleep-walked into that crime. In the background was the Commons’ alertness to the slightest hint that such an accusation might preface some new ingenious royal financial demand; after all, that had just been the case for the clergy. Accordingly in late March the MPs sent a deputation to the King himself, perforce led by their Speaker, a no doubt deeply embarrassed Thomas Audley, to demand their inclusion in the pardon.

  This could have badly sabotaged the timing of a session rapidly drawing to its close. The King’s response, even in the anodyne framing of it by the fervently loyal Edward Hall, was decidedly sharp, as is confirmed by a more detached summary presented by Chapuys to his imperial master. By now there was a readily identifiable scapegoat for Commons anger at this rebuff, according to Hall: ‘some light persons said that Thomas Cromwell which was newly come to the favour of the King, had disclosed the secrets of the Commons, which thing caused the King to be so extreme.’ They would, after all, have heard of Cromwell’s part in the dramatic events in Convocation on 10 February. After a few days’ delay for face-saving reasons, Henry did indeed grant them the pardon they wanted, drawn up by Sir Christopher Hales and published on 29 March (with loving thanks and praise from the MPs, said Hall – they would know how to play the theatre of a royal tactical retreat). It was only just in time, for there was still vital official business to complete in what had not been a trouble-free session.58

  Over the following three days, 30 March–1 April, the sessions ended with an elaborate presentation of the King’s reasons for considering his marriage a sham, rehearsed separately to Lords and Commons. Lord Chancellor More must have been sickened at having to make the principal speeches for this tedious performance, though Sir Brian Tuke, the Clerk of Parliament, was not by temperament
likely to have felt similar agonies as he ploughed through the recitation of the European university judgements, twice. According to Ambassador Chapuys, never inclined to look for sweetness and light on such occasions, the Commons were not especially positive in their reaction.59

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  Altogether, apart from the King’s huge financial gain from the clergy, the immediate results of the three-month sittings had not been impressive. Ecclesiastical recognition of his Supreme Headship was distinctly provisional. The other Convocation of the English Church, for the Province of York, continued its meetings in York into May; it did concede a grant of money proportionate to its resources and much smaller number of dioceses, but then took the gilt off this gift by recording a solemn protest from Cuthbert Tunstall (now Bishop of Durham) against the supremacy, even in the terms granted by Canterbury Province. Tunstall had been one of the chief counsel for Queen Katherine in the early stages of the annulment process, and he was prepared to extend his awkwardness to the royal attack on the Church. The King took his protest seriously enough to write an elaborate and for him rather temperate response to the points the Bishop had made.60

  The King’s moderation to Tunstall reflected his realization that, as yet, he was not in a strong legal position. The immediate danger that Parliament would be asked to make a decision on the King’s marriage passed when the assembly was prorogued just before Easter 1531 till the following October. Chapuys reported back to the Emperor that Queen Katherine was ‘in great spirits at having escaped the determination of Parliament on the divorce’.61 Yet the Queen’s mood did not long survive Easter, when as we have seen she reversed her officers’ agreement to employ John Creke. The King anticipated formal settlement of his situation; on 14 July Katherine was excluded from accompanying the King on progress away from Windsor Castle, and she never saw her husband again.

  Henry now started to behave as if he were betrothed to the Lady Anne, even taking her hunting with him, which made it clear to the general public that henceforth he would act as if the twenty-two years of his marriage had never enjoyed legal existence. Anne began forming her own household in preparation for greater things.62 Although as late as November the Queen was taking her formal place on state occasions, it appears that husband and wife were never in the same room together; nor was Katherine ever allowed to see her daughter Mary. They were consigned to different great country houses in what was increasingly obviously house arrest, despite the punctilious ceremonial of their entourage, and right up to Katherine’s death their only communication was by private letters carried by trustworthy servants.63

  Through the year, Cromwell continued to promote the annulment case, chipping away at the opposition and recruiting useful helpers to the cause where he could. The proof comes from a reminiscence of Dr John Oliver, a canon and civil lawyer, and latterly Dean of King Henry’s replacement for what had once been Cardinal College Oxford. In 1536 Oliver was devastated to learn in an interview with Cromwell that ‘you had no sure argument that I had deposed [put away] those papistical dregs wherein I had been studied’ – by which Cromwell meant Oliver’s long studies at Oxford in the canon law of the Roman Church. The Dean wrote him an elaborate, pained and circumstantial refutation of that slur, reminding Cromwell of their very first meeting back in 1531. No doubt Oliver accentuated the positive in this, but there would be no point in outright lies to the only other person who had been present. It is worth quoting at length:

  I do not forget the first time that ever I spoke with your Lordship was in your law parlour in your old house at the Austin Friars concerning the Lady Dowager’s matter, wherein I plainly declared unto you my opinion to be against her purpose, and how that I never did speak for her but as I was enforced by the old [Arch]Bishop of Canterbury [William Warham] which was then alive [until August 1532]. Upon the which communication, you of your mere goodness having pity and compassion upon me, were contented to restore me to the King’s favour, and did indeed put me not only to be his Grace’s chaplain, but also procured unto me all that living that I have, which is much better than I am worthy.64

  The whole letter shows how Cromwell reeled in a canon lawyer to do his bidding. It tells us much about dating the process, beginning with Oliver’s reference to being granted a royal chaplaincy as one of the consequences of his first meeting with Cromwell; he had this title by late February 1532 (by which time he was fully plunged into business for the King). He was already involved in notarial formalities before Warham’s official John Cockes concerning the ‘determinations’ of the overseas universities on the annulment in June 1531. So probably this incident in Cromwell’s book-lined study (his ‘law parlour’) at Austin Friars took place that summer or autumn 1531 as Oliver was drawn into administration around the determinations, and at the very least no later than the turn of the year 1531/2.65 Oliver is also obliquely telling us of Cromwell’s continuing interest in the fate of Cardinal College Oxford and his success in saving it from dissolution when the Ipswich College disappeared. After the death of Dean Higden, reappointed as head of house on the College’s refoundation as King Henry’s College, Oliver succeeded as second Dean on 4 May 1533 and, as is apparent here, it was on Cromwell’s personal recommendation to the King.

  Yet there is still more to learn of the atmosphere of Cromwell’s household and his strategy from Oliver’s letter:

  And then for my further comfort, you were contented to put me in some experiments of the King’s civil causes, and to call me to your honourable board divers dinners and suppers, where in very deed, I heard such communication which were the very cause of the beginning of my conversion. For methought it were a stony heart and a blockish wit that could carry nothing away of such colloquy as was at your honourable board, and that made me to note them well, and when I came home to mete [compare] them with my English Bible. And I found always the conclusions which you maintained at your board to be consonant with the holy Word of God; and then I thought good to confer the English with the Latin through the whole Testament, and so I did . . . but for a further trial I went and conferred Erasmus’s translation with the Vulgar which they call St Jerome’s translation, and did interline Erasmus’s translation through the whole Testament in the other translation with my own hand . . . and then was I surely corroborate [strengthened as] an adversary to all papists at all communications and ever hath been since.

  Oliver is giving us the nearest echo we have of Cromwell’s ‘Table Talk’: the King’s Great Matter and his title to royal supremacy, presented over a good dinner rich in biblical citations, which Oliver checked out against what in the early 1530s can only have been William Tyndale’s English New Testament. Next in the hierarchy of Bibles in Oliver’s library was the Erasmus Latin rendering, which had so impressed Cromwell back in his Boston days, and then finally the Vulgate of Jerome. All this led to Oliver’s ‘conversion’ – pure evangelical jargon – triggering a transformation in theological outlook.66 Behind this outcome was the politician who decided on defending King Henry’s case with biblical arguments, and was eloquent in presenting it in terms beyond crude English patriotism. Oliver’s scholarly acceptance of its validity naturally cannot have been hindered by the fact that Cromwell held all the political cards, together with the key to preferments like the Deanery of an Oxford college – let alone the attractions of the cuisine in the house at Austin Friars. The Dean became one of Cromwell’s leading assistants in unravelling the Aragon marriage.

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  From the end of 1531, another entirely different aspect of Cromwell’s service to the King made an appearance, with momentous implications. For the first time, his horizons were widening beyond the obsession of the moment with the Great Matter. The mark of his next eight years of power was to be an omnicompetence as broad as Wolsey’s, which would mean casting his sights across the seas. Among much else, he confronted the unceasing conundrum posed by the Tudor Crown’s second greatest territory, t
he Lordship of Ireland: graveyard of English statesmanship over centuries. Even if his paternal ancestors really did come from Ireland, this distant lineage did not represent any useful present-day connection. He was going to have to learn about Irish complications the hard way.67

  A sign of what was to come appears in a letter written to the new Councillor from an Irish castle the day after New Year 1532.68 The writer thanked Cromwell for making sure his memoranda on Irish politics had been properly examined by the King and Council, and sent on more for their consideration. He was Piers Butler Earl of Ossory, one of the greatest men in that elite of formerly Norman nobility whose ancestors established themselves in parts of the island conquered by the English Crown in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A shrewd survivor who made loyalty to the Tudors his constant thread through the maze of Irish politics, Ossory knew England well. After a lifetime of struggle to establish his family’s supremacy against their traditional Anglo-Norman rivals, the Fitzgerald earls of Kildare (the ‘Geraldines’), he was looking for new allies at the English Court. He nursed a grievance at having to yield his long-standing claim to the family title of Earl of Ormond to Anne Boleyn’s father the Earl of Wiltshire, and the Earldom of Ossory created for him was never adequate compensation. He clearly doubted how much he could trust to his old family alignments with Wiltshire and the Duke of Norfolk, who were forming an unwonted alliance with the hated Fitzgeralds.

  The unfamiliar new name of Thomas Cromwell in the King’s circle therefore suggested a promising alternative route for bringing Ossory’s latest desires to royal attention. He had spent two rather unwilling years at the English Court from 1526 to 1528, developing a friendship with Cardinal Wolsey, but even before that he had found the Cardinal’s support extremely effective against the Geraldines and their followers. Now he acknowledged to Cromwell that ‘the acquaintance is but new betwixt us.’ So in all that time in England, despite Ossory’s intimacy with the Cardinal, he and Cromwell had never met: additional proof of how remote from Court Cromwell’s work for Wolsey had then been. Ossory’s wooing of the new force in Court politics was evidently well under way during autumn 1531, so this letter of January 1532 was just one rather important stage in an existing correspondence.