Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  It is hardly surprising Chapuys did not know what to make of what would in principle be pleasing intelligence. In the echo-chamber of angry conservative noblemen who apart from Master Secretary were his chief informants around the Tudor Court, it was self-evident that the heretical Queen and the heretical minister were hand in glove in efforts to destroy true religion. Previously, the ambassador had been puzzled by Cromwell’s apparently positive attitude to Katherine of Aragon’s daughter Mary. In October 1534 Cromwell went so far as to say that King Henry loved Mary ‘a hundred times more than his last-born’ and that personally he ‘had no doubt that in time everything would be set to rights’. Chapuys suspected this was intended ‘to bamboozle the world in general [amuser le monde]’ and lessen the Emperor’s fears about Mary’s treatment, but if Cromwell indeed meant to confuse, it seems a high-risk strategy.2

  Cromwell’s remark was made at a time in autumn 1534 when the King’s affections had apparently moved away from Anne to first one then another young lady of the Court. Anne’s stock fell further with another biological setback, a miscarriage of her second child.3 It is always difficult to judge the seriousness of such emotional breaches in a relationship which had always been about high emotion between two strong-willed people, but then the King’s relationship with his elder daughter Mary was equally stormy and changeable, beyond the usual teenage reasons. Henry’s fury with Mary at her refusal to play his shadow-game with royal titles was balanced by his genuine affection for her, and Cromwell was perfectly aware of the contradiction. Coming to Court affairs after Mary’s eclipse in status, he had so far not seen much of her – in that dispatch of 24 October 1534 Chapuys said that as far he knew they had only ever met once – but, as we have seen, the record of their contacts so far consists of her asking him for favours. He would make his own calculations about placing himself in the triangle of husband, wife and stepdaughter.

  That vigilance makes it all the more intriguing that Cromwell was prepared in June 1535 to speak to Chapuys of his deep rift with Queen Anne, because it came at a moment when the royal marriage seemed very much back on track. The centrepiece of events that summer was a royal progress around western England and on to the south coast. King and Queen triumphantly paraded before their subjects with every appearance of harmony, in one of the most politically significant and successful progresses of the Tudor age, prolonged into late October by the King’s characteristic fears of plague back in the capital.4 It ran alongside the belated inauguration of Thomas Cromwell’s vice-gerential visitation, taking advantage of the royal presence to lend authority to what could have been a shaky start, given Cranmer’s recent experience. Joining the royal couple at Winchcombe in the Cotswolds on 23 July, three weeks after their departure from Windsor, Cromwell personally involved himself in its work when he could.

  It was certainly time to begin turning vice-gerential powers into visitation, because spring 1535 exposed an extraordinary eight months of scandalous impersonation in the provinces worthy of Gogol’s Khlestakov. This Government Inspector avant la lettre was a parish priest gone to the bad called James Billingford. He was from a respectable Norfolk gentry family with links to the Duke of Norfolk, but also bizarrely an Edmund Billingford (probably his elder brother) became one of Cromwell’s extended gentry entourage.5 In the 1520s James was Rector of South Elmham St George in Suffolk, presented to the living by a local gentleman likely to have been his brother-in-law.6 One can imagine the deep boredom of a high-spirited young graduate in his Waveney valley rectory, under the eye of his relations, and with a couple of curates to do any real work. South Elmham was a principal lordship of Bishop Nix of Norwich, and the episcopal manor-house was actually in Billingford’s parish. Maybe it was after witnessing the collapse of the aged Bishop’s resistance to Archbishop Cranmer’s visitation in September 1534 that the Rector of St George had the idea of embarking on a wild adventure of deception and extortion from monasteries. If his brother was already by then linked to Cromwell, family talk could also have provided inspiration for this parody of visitation.

  James Billingford was evidently adept at namedropping and acting like a gentleman. Banking on the state of nerves about monastic dissolution up and down the country, he went on tour claiming to be the official representative of various prominent people, Cromwell included. He kept himself and his Osip-like attendant in high style on their Tudor road-trip; there were some riotous evenings dicing and carding in assorted hostelries between the serious business of intimidating abbots. From early in Billingford’s campaign that September in his native East Anglia, two letters forged in Cromwell’s name survive in the minister’s papers. They demanded money with menaces from a couple of Norfolk monasteries, since ‘the King of his regal power’ was undertaking selective dissolutions and reform of abuses. The letters have deceived some modern historians into thinking they represent Cromwell’s authentic methods of procedure; whether their amateurish production equally duped the monastic heads of house is not clear.7

  Despite some near-misses that winter, it was May Day 1535 before Billingford’s extended spree of deception in the Midlands fatally collided in Oxfordshire with cold scepticism from one of Cromwell’s friends, the local JP Anthony Cope.8 Billingford at first tried to present it as all a big joke to that gentleman (who happened to be a classical historian of some distinction, used to dissecting tall tales), before resorting to dark talk of all the monastic conspiracies he could reveal to Master Secretary. Cope recommended a merciful discharge for the ‘poor lad’ his servant. James’s own fate is alas unknown, though when the commissioners for the Valor ecclesiasticus did their work that same spring, one of his former curates was listed as Rector of South Elmham St George in his place.9 It must be said that Cromwell had a distinctly soft spot for wild young men whom the rest of the world deplored – maybe he remembered his own adventurous early days, and hazarded that some of them combined wildness with talent.10

  Once Cromwell had emerged from the dire distraction of Carthusian and other executions that spring and summer, Billingford’s remarkably long-lasting scam needed remedying by something more official and systematic – not least to quell the widespread confusion and demoralization which the trickster’s pseudo-visitatorial adventures had caused among regular clergy. The royal progress in summer 1535 provided the perfect launchpad. The visitation was far more comprehensive than has been understood until recently: over seven months, the visitation commissioners visited over 85 per cent of the kingdom’s religious houses and secular cathedrals, hospitals and major chantry colleges, including colleges in Oxford and Cambridge Universities.11 Cromwell allowed two existing arrangements of visitation to stand. One, set up under his own powers the previous year, was for the orders of friars. The other was for the Gilbertine Order, whose Master was Robert Holgate, an evangelically inclined protégé of his. Though some of Cromwell’s visitors did on occasion infringe Gilbertine privilege, the order was quietly exempted from suppression which ought substantially to have affected it under the legislation of 1536. Was this because, uniquely among the religious, the Gilbertines were a purely English order uncontaminated by foreign interference?12 By contrast, the Abbot of Welbeck’s long-standing royal grant of visitation for his Premonstratensian Order in the realm, which Roland Lee had already suggested back in 1532 needed curbing, was effectively ignored and superseded by the vice-gerential visitors. This makes all the more telling Cromwell’s decision to preserve Holgate’s independent jurisdiction.13

  One of the visitation’s main tasks, like Cranmer’s metropolitical visitation over the previous year, was to gather more formal acceptances of the royal supremacy and Boleyn succession. That was paired with a vigorous nationwide campaign in summer 1535, featuring sermons and detailed alterations of the liturgy removing references to the Papacy, supervised (under careful government scrutiny) by the diocesan bishops.14 Nevertheless, the inquiries of Cromwell’s visitors had diverse purposes, not all negative. Often their findings hav
e been seen to further a complete suppression of monasteries, and to concentrate on ferreting out sexual scandal, but their investigations covered many other topics on which arguably reform was needed, at least from an evangelical humanist point of view: for instance, detailed provisions for preaching and biblical study to enrich the devotional life of monastic communities.

  As so often in Cromwell’s innovations, purposes changed to suit new circumstances. During the royal progress the Vice-Gerent personally visited Winchester College, feeder school for New College Oxford, in company with Dr John London the Warden of New College, and prescribed it a revised curriculum. That irresistibly recalls Wolsey putting his name to a textbook for Cardinal College Ipswich.15 The visitors also made detailed provisions for changes at Oxford and Cambridge, and there were no inquiries into moral lapses there, so the visitation’s purpose was never universal dissolution. One glaring and consistent absence from the visitors’ inquiries anywhere was much concern with proper attendance at or conduct of community worship, a staple matter of inquiry for centuries in bishops’ visitations. The vice-gerential team, not least the Vice-Gerent himself, apparently had no great investment in the traditional liturgy of the Western Church.16

  Consistent with that contrast with past practice on visitation, the personnel of Cromwell’s visitation were a new mix for a new purpose. They were civil and canon lawyers of Oxford and Cambridge, and straddled the boundary between clerical and lay status, for such lawyers might choose whether or not to take holy orders. Church benefices or headships of collegiate institutions generously bolstered their incomes regardless, but their experience in diocesan or metropolitical administration gave them little rapport with the monastic life which was now their prime concern. Closeness to Cromwell was the main criterion for selection. Dr John ap Rhys, vice-gerential Registrar, was married to Cromwell’s niece, and we have previously met Dr Ellis ap Rhys (no relation) as Sub-Dean of Cardinal College Ipswich. Dr Francis Cave was from a family long friendly with Cromwell, while Dr John Tregonwell was Roland Lee’s colleague in visiting Thetford Priory for Wolsey in 1528–9. There were only three ordained clerics in the team, but they were similarly tied to Cromwell’s circle: Dr John London’s connections to him have already become apparent, Dr Richard Leighton was his Rector at Stepney and Dr Adam Beconsaw was one of the Essex parsons who hosted young Gregory Cromwell’s peripatetic education in autumn 1533.17

  Marshalled thus, the list reveals how close were Cromwell’s ties to canon and civil lawyers, but then many of them had been involved alongside him in sorting out technicalities of the King’s Great Matter. Additionally, hovering behind virtually all of them was another canon lawyer, Bishop Roland Lee, via friendship or relationship: not least his boisterous cousin Dr Thomas Lee, or equally boisterous former colleague in Wolsey’s service Ellis ap Rhys, whom Bishop Lee stoutly defended to Cromwell against justified complaints from his fellow-visitors about personal indiscretion and ostentation.18 This boisterousness is repeatedly evident in the visitors’ letters or comments from others both favourable and abusive; one feels they were having an extremely good time, sometimes with uncomfortable shades of James Billingford. Their reunions after travels would generally have been convivial, though the high spirits also resulted in vicious rows. Noticeable too is how Cromwell tended to match the visitors with the regions they knew best: the Welshmen went to Wales, Cornish Dr Tregonwell to the West Country, Northamptonshire Dr Cave to the Midlands, Drs Leighton and Lee eventually to their native North. Generally this worked, quelling future local trouble, but the opposite was true of that last-named pair in the Province of York; the northern rebels of 1536 hated both Leighton and Lee and would have loved to exact vengeance for their visitations. As so often, Cromwell’s touch faltered in the North.

  Cromwell remained close to the King and Queen for much of August, September and October as they travelled around south-western counties, mixing his government duties with close personal supervision of his visitation. He prolonged his absence from London so much that by late September his household were growing anxious about provisioning and re-engaging staff laid off for the summer.19 This may have been the longest period away from London that he enjoyed in the 1530s, and it was certainly one of the longest times he spent on a royal progress, which normally left him behind on government drudgery back in the capital. The western progress and visitation in 1535 had still wider significance. When the North rose in rebellion a year later, nearly bringing down the regime, the equally traditionalist West Country and border country with Wales beyond it remained quiet. They had been gratified by the royal presence but will also have noted how closely King and minister were aligned, and that the principal secular hosts in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire were gentry openly identified with evangelical reformation. In these regions, the traditional fiction which sustained English rebellions – that the King was ignorant of his evil ministers’ conduct – was difficult to sustain.

  The evangelical tone of the summer progress launching the visitation is very noticeable; Henry did not discourage it, fresh from having destroyed those twin symbols of traditional religion, Thomas More and John Fisher. Never predictable in matters religious, the King achieved a first at this time by commissioning the first Bible printed in the British Isles, published in July 1535 – yet not an English but a wholly Latin text, consisting of selections from the Vulgate Old Testament and all of the New Testament.20 He took a keen interest in this project, furnishing it with a very personal preface which discreetly plagiarized Erasmus rhapsodizing on the central spiritual role of a prince in his kingdom. Among other wise pieces of counsel, the King commended the typeface, which he had personally chosen for ease of reading. He was beginning to have trouble with his eyesight and was using spectacles for reading, though his preface did not confide this to his subjects. In fact, the royal Latin Bible project remained incomplete; a promised second volume with the rest of the biblical text never emerged from the press, and even this first book is exceedingly rare. Cromwell had more ambitious ideas on biblical instruction, as we will see in Chapter 15.

  Ambassador Chapuys heard how effective the evangelical preaching of Court chaplains had been with West Country people, though he consoled himself that those hearkening to the message were mere ‘simpletons [idiotes]’ who would soon return to truth in the right circumstances.21 The furthering of religious change was a purpose which Cromwell and Anne Boleyn shared whatever their other differences. Staying at Winchcombe in late July, the Queen took the trouble to send her chaplains down the road to Hailes Abbey, Cistercian home of one of late medieval England’s more controversial relics, the Holy Blood, to bring sceptical reports back to the King. The relic may even have been removed for a while, before it was destroyed in Cromwell’s more general round-up three years later.22 From this time on, the cataloguing of relics in a sarcastic spirit, together with occasional confiscations, became a major part of the vice-gerential visitors’ work.

  By contrast with the Queen’s forcefully negative intervention, Abbot Sagar alias Whalley remembered gratefully Cromwell’s own ‘comfortable words’ when he visited Hailes Abbey. It sounds distinctly as if Master Secretary was pouring oil on waters troubled by the Queen, and certainly he told the Abbot to get in touch in the event of problems; he also contrived that the Abbot became a royal chaplain.23 Cromwell’s interventions were not confined to Hailes. He took a particular interventionist interest in this whole area, which he knew of old through his friendships at neighbouring Winchcombe Abbey going back to the days of the great Abbot Kidderminster. The royal progress was the ideal moment to revive that old relationship, and Cromwell arranged a second stay at Winchcombe Abbey a couple of weeks after the royal couple had left.24 His effect on the monastic community was galvanizing (or divisive, if one prefers), reminiscent of his personal concern for the London Charterhouse.

  It is possible that one monk of Winchcombe, John (surnamed in religion Placet or Placidus), had long-standing family links
to Cromwell’s household, as his surname in the world was Horwood, like the John Horwood who received a generous legacy in Cromwell’s will of 1529. He was anyway an old servant of Abbot Kidderminster, and they would have got to know each other then.25 Now Placet played a major role in the evangelical faction within the abbey, inspired by personal conversations with Cromwell from which he recalled that the minister ‘full discreetly and catholicly declared the efficacy of our three vows in which we trust too much’ – that is, the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Placet followed the royal progress for a further conversation with Master Secretary in Hampshire in early October.26 He and his sympathizers in the abbey allied with an evangelical Oxford don of Merton called Anthony Saunders, whom Cromwell personally appointed to preach at Winchcombe – probably prompted by the evangelical local gentleman and Oxford graduate Richard Tracey, whose father William’s posthumous exhumation for heresy in his will had recently been a national cause célèbre. Tracey was now himself on familiar terms with Cromwell, who had taken a close interest in his father’s case.27

  As local factions jostled for Cromwell’s favour, a great many eyes, not least in Oxford, were watching the developing situation in the great reforming abbeys of the Cotswolds.28 The Abbots of Winchcombe and Hailes proved unhelpful to Anthony Saunders. Abbot Sagar of Hailes actually sponsored a rival preacher, a more conservative don from Magdalen College Oxford, George Cotes. Cotes aroused strong opinions and created puzzling alliances of disapproval across the religious divide; Cromwell seemed to think well of him despite it all.29 Sagar may already have realized this curious regard for Cotes, and he covered his back by sending the preacher off to follow the Court down to Wiltshire to take the oath of succession, which so far Cotes had contrived to avoid. There was a remarkably intimidating trio of oath-takers in this ceremony – Cromwell himself, plus Dr Richard Leighton and Captain of the Guard Sir William Kingston – but Cotes was by then safely ensconced at Hailes. Hugh Latimer found him an unwelcome presence in the diocese on taking up office as Bishop of Worcester that autumn.30*