Thomas Cromwell

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

  43. Roland Lee to Cromwell, 24 April [1533], SP 1/75 f. 167, LP 6 no. 381; Anne Countess of Oxford to Cromwell, 11 May [1533], SP 1/76 f. 33, LP 6 no. 468. For Cromwell’s rapport with the Dowager Marchioness of Dorset and other ladies of a certain age, see above, this page, this page, this page.

  44. LP 6 no. 737[7].

  45. Thomas Bedell to Cromwell, 12 May 1533, BL MS Cotton Otho C/X f. 164, LP 6 no. 461.

  46. Anthony Browne to Cromwell, 12 June [1533], SP 1/76 f. 198, LP 6 no. 631. The best accounts of what follows are Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 172–83, and T. A. Sowerby, ‘The coronation of Anne Boleyn’, in T. Betteridge and G. Walker (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama (Oxford, 2012), 386–401.

  47. [Anon.], The noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne, wyfe vnto the moost noble kynge Henry the .viij (London, 1533, RSTC 656).

  48. Canons of the King’s College Oxford to Cromwell, 19 June [1533], SP 1/77 f. 54, LP 6 no. 673.

  49. LP 6 no. 417[22].

  50. Edward Lee Archbishop of York to Cromwell, 27 September 1533, SP 1/79 f. 71, LP 6 no. 1158, recalling a conversation which would have been in the previous June.

  51. John Lord Berners to Cromwell, 11 April 1529, SP 1/53 f. 173, LP 4 iii no. 5456.

  52. Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, 113–14; I am drawing on his further account of the office up to 120.

  53. For a royal letter to a county sheriff outlining the process of fines for recalcitrants with the summoning of defaulters before Cromwell, see Henry VIII to the Sheriff of Oxford, 31 May [1534], SP 1/239 f. 191, LP Addenda 1 i no. 988 (misdated in LP). What appears to be a final round-up of actions against those owing the Crown money for distraint of knighthood occurs in the Chief Justice of Common Pleas’ Plea Roll for Hilary 26 Henry VIII [winter 1535], TNA, CP 40/1084, in which a commission of Cromwell, William Paulet and Brian Tuke prosecuted more than a hundred actions against esquires. It is puzzling to find these cases here. In a previous round of distraints in 1501 they had been recorded in a special Exchequer roll, TNA, E 159/279: Baker, Oxford History of the Laws of England 6, 162n.

  54. Princess Mary to Cromwell, 28 May [1533], BL MS Cotton Vespasian F/XIII f. 282, LP 6 no. 550.

  55. Thomas Audley to Cromwell, 4 November [1532], BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 281, LP 5 no. 1518.

  56. Sir Hugh Trevanion to Cromwell, 18 October [1533], SP 1/79 f. 191, LP 6 no. 1309, reminding Cromwell of their conversation during the coronation.

  57. Chapuys to Charles V, 11 July 1533, Spanish Calendar 4 ii no. 1100, at 739. See the commands for appropriate respect, particularly and pointedly directed at her household, in the proclamation of 5 July 1533, TRP no. 140.

  58. J. Leland, De Uiris Illustribus: On Famous Men, ed. J. P. Carley (Toronto, 2010), lii–liii; and what follows in Carley’s introduction is a wonderful reconstruction of Leland’s itineraries.

  59. See Carley, Libraries of Henry VIII, 318–21; D. G. Selwyn, The Library of Thomas Cranmer (Oxford Bibliographical Society 3rd series 1, 1996), 203–14.

  60. LP 7 no. 737[5]: a licence to travel abroad with six servants, first signed at Greenwich on 1 May 1533 and completed at Westminster on 6 June. In general, see D. Hay, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance historian and man of letters (Oxford, 1952), which has not yet been superseded.

  61. Two copies of the King’s declaration are TNA, E 30/1026–7, LP 6 no. 721, which notes that both are endorsed by Cuthbert Tunstall; otherwise the full text is given in Rymer (ed.), Foedera 14, 476–9. On the excommunication, see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 317–19.

  62. R. Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (Cambridge, 1991), 52–4.

  63. For Cranmer at Croydon both before and after this date, see BL MS Harley MS 6148 ff. 23v, 24v, 28r, LP 6 nos. 770, 702–4, 771. For Lee in Parliament, Chapuys to Charles V, 23 February 1533, Spanish Calendar 4 ii no. 1053.

  64. Lee’s certification of Convocation’s resolution on 14 June 1533 is TNA, E 30/1022, LP 6 no. 640; full text in Rymer (ed.), Foedera 14, 472. On the Lee manor-house at Stockwell, see Survey of London: 26, Lambeth: Southern Area, 81–2.

  65. Chapuys to Charles V, 16 June 1533, Spanish Calendar 4 ii no. 1081, at 706, where his comments on Lee and Fisher are linked. Lee’s letter to Cromwell about his tense negotiations with Tunstall, 4 May [1533], SP 1/76 f. 13, LP 6 no. 437.

  66. See the account of the christening in Ives, Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 184–5. Cromwell’s presence is attested only by the attendance list in a notarial instrument concerning the christening, which necessarily had to be a complete record: Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 105, 274, LP 6 no. 1111[4]. Richard Watkins the notary worked closely with Cromwell: see his letter about the election of a new abbot of Burton-on-Trent, Watkins to Cromwell, 27 June [1533], SP 1/77 f. 90, LP 6 no. 716.

  67. Cromwell to Henry VIII, SP 1/80 f. 50, LP 6 no. 1369. LP dates this letter to October 1533, but it probably predates the letter cited next.

  68. Cromwell to Henry VIII, 23 July [1533], SP 1/78 f. 25, LP 6 no. 887.

  69. Chapuys to Charles V, 20 November 1533, Spanish Calendar 4 i no. 1153, at 859.

  Chapter 10: Treason in Prospect: 1533–1534

  1. The best recent accounts of Barton are E. H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), 61–88, and E. H. Shagan, ‘Print, orality and communications in the Maid of Kent affair’, JEH 52 (2001), 21–33. For print and the Wentworth miracles, see Blatchly and MacCulloch, Miracles in Lady Lane, 21–3, 69–74; it is not certain whether the Wentworth girl’s name was Anne or Jane, as discussed at 27–9.

  2. See the denunciation of Dario’s reverence for her in a Cromwellian pamphlet of 1539, SP 1/143 f. 205r, LP 14 i no. 402. Previously Dario had been helpful to King Henry in 1529: Kelly, Matrimonial Trials, 158–9.

  3. Cromwell’s remembrances dateable just before 24 September 1533, partly in his own hand, give details of the printing: Cotton Titus B/I f. 493rv, LP 6 no. 1194. See E. J. Devereux, ‘Elizabeth Barton and Tudor censorship’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 49 (1966), 91–106. This lost work has to be distinguished from the earlier and apolitical printed account of Barton’s wonders partly preserved by William Lambarde.

  4. Where not otherwise referenced in this and subsequent paragraphs, see my account of these events in MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 103–5.

  5. Chapuys to Charles V, 20 November 1533, Spanish Calendar 4 i no. 1153, at 863.

  6. Cromwell to John Fisher, probably late February 1534, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 102v, LP 7 no. 238. See also the vivid description of events in the Council supplied by Chapuys to Charles V, 20 November 1533, Spanish Calendar 4 i no. 1153.

  7. He alluded to his presence in his letter to Cromwell of early March 1534, saying that he had not seen Father Risby from Christmas 1532 until Risby’s exposure at the Paul’s Cross sermon: BL MS Arundel 152 f. 296, LP 7 no. 287, and see text in E. F. Rogers (ed.), St Thomas More: selected letters (New Haven, 1961), 195.

  8. Gertrude Marchioness of Exeter to Henry VIII, [26 November 1533], BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV ff. 94–5, LP 6 no. 1464; Marchioness of Exeter to Cromwell, Wednesday [26 November 1533], SP 1/80 f. 116, LP 6 no. 1465. The correspondence is dateable from the Marchioness’s mention in her letter to the King of having just received his letter of pardon dated (Tuesday) 25 November from Greenwich, and from the Wednesday date of her letter to Cromwell. LP states that the draft of her letter to the King is corrected by Cromwell, but the corrections do not appear to be in his hand, and it is unlikely that he would have gone down to West Horsley in Surrey, from where she writes.

  9. [Anon.], Articles deuisid by the holle consent of the kynges moste honourable counsayle, his gracis licence opteined therto, not only to exhorte, but also to enfourme his louynge subiectis of the trouthe (London, 1533, 1534, RSTC 9177, 9178); the text is reproduced in Pocock 2, 523–31. P. Marshall, Heretics and Believers: a history of the Engl
ish Reformation (New Haven and London, 2017), 208.

  10. The three copies of the memorandum for the Council including the order for printing, one of them a draft extensively corrected by Cromwell, are described in LP 6 no. 1481[1–3]; for comment, see G. R. Elton, ‘The materials of Parliamentary history’, in Elton, Studies 3, 58–155, at 101. No copy of this printing is known to survive. On the Act, see also above, this page.

  11. J. G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the days of the Reformation . . . (CS 1st series 77, 1859), 280, from BL MS Harley 419 ff. 112f, which is an incomplete English translation of the Latin original at Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 298 pt iv, here at f. 29r. On Butley, Dickens, Late Monasticism and the Reformation, 65–6.

  12. See Edmund Bonner to Cromwell, ?April 1530, SP 1/57 f. 75, LP 4 iii no. 6346; 24 December [1532], SP 1/72 f. 150, LP 5 no. 1654; early February 1533, SP 1/74 f. 118, LP 6 no. 103.

  13. On Penizon, see A. Coates, English Medieval Books: the Reading Abbey collections from foundation to dispersal (Oxford, 1999), 126–7; also for his links to the Guildford family, below, this page, and R. Lutton, ‘Richard Guldeford’s pilgrimage: piety and cultural change in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England’, History 98 (2013), 41–78.

  14. On all this, see Bonner’s report, LP 6 no. 1425 (a reconstruction via Bishop Burnet of the now badly fire-damaged BL MS Cotton Vitellius B/XIV f. 71), and Gardiner and others to Henry VIII, mid-November 1533, LP 6 no. 1427.

  15. LP 6 Appendix no. 6, which lists various similar grants to ambassadors including Bonner, and others not on embassy, during 1533 and 1534. I am unconvinced by efforts to exonerate Gardiner from knowledge of this grant in G. Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic: the life of Stephen Gardiner (Oxford, 1990), 56–7. For Gardiner’s friendship with Benet, see their part in the will of John Purgold, Fellow of Trinity Hall Cambridge, 30 January 1527: Cambridge University Archives, Register of Wills 1 ff. 42v–43v; they had both been colleagues under Wolsey.

  16. Where not otherwise referenced below, my account of this Parliament follows citations in Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 182–99. He makes the point that this is the only session of the Reformation Parliament for which the journal of the House of Lords has survived, making it much easier to trace the timing and progress of particular pieces of legislation.

  17. Husee to Lisle, 7 January 1534, SP 3/5 f. 22, Lisle Letters 2 no. 108; Chapuys to Charles V, 28 January 1534, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 7, at 24. Hoyle, ‘Origins of the dissolution of the monasteries’, 290–91.

  18. Edward Lee Archbishop of York to Cromwell, 28 December 1533, SP 1/72 f. 164, LP 5 no. 1669. LP pardonably misdated this letter to 1532, as the final arabic 3 of the date is not well formed. It is however firmly dateable to 1533 by the fact of Lee’s presence in the 1533 Parliament and his absence from the session of 1534. Lee also thanks Cromwell for a favour in an ‘injunction’, probably concerning his back-taxes in the Exchequer, about which he had previously agitated to Cromwell on 21 November 1533: Lee to Cromwell, SP 1/80 f. 108, LP 6 no. 1451.

  19. On Cranmer’s attendance, Convocation and the Paul’s Cross preaching, see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 115.

  20. Sir George Throckmorton to Cromwell, 29 October [1533], SP 1/80 f. 47, LP 6 no. 1365; same to same, 14 June [1534], SP 1/84 f. 176, LP 7 no. 838.

  21. Sir George Throckmorton to Cromwell, 29 October [1533], SP 1/80 f. 47, LP 6 no. 1365; Sir Marmaduke Constable to Cromwell, 9 January [1534], SP 1/82 f. 41, LP 7 no. 31.

  22. On Gage, see especially Sir William Fitzwilliam to Cromwell, 10 August [1533], SP 1/78 f. 104, LP 6 no. 965, and Chapuys to Charles V, 3 January 1534, Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 1, at 4; William Lord Mountjoy to Cromwell, 10 October [1533], SP 1/79 f. 158, LP 6 no. 1252.

  23. Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 182.

  24. Loades (ed.), Papers of George Wyatt, 156.

  25. For general discussion, see MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s house divided, 620–30, and for the English legal background, Baker, Oxford History of the Laws of England 6, 563. For Tyndale and clerical sodomy, see H. Walter (ed.), Doctrinal Treatises and introductions to different portions of the Holy Scriptures. By William Tyndale . . . (Parker Society, 1848), 438–9; H. Walter (ed.), An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord . . . and W[illia]m Tracy’s Testament expounded. By William Tyndale . . . (Parker Society, 1850), 52, 171.

  26. On Stokesley and Wolsey’s downfall, E. V. Hitchcock (ed.), The Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, knighte, written by William Roper . . . (Early English Text Society original series 197, 1935), 38–9.

  27. T. More, The apologye of syr Thomas More knyght (London, 1533, RSTC 18078), ff. 211v–213v.

  28. What follows can be traced through the Lords Journals 1, 65–81.

  29. BL MS Harley 2252 ff. 34–5, LP 7 no. 399; see the text quoted in Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, 193.

  30. G. Gardiner, A letter of a yonge gentylman named mayster Germen Gardynare, wryten to a frend of his, wherin men may se the demeanour [and] heresy of Ioh[a]n Fryth late burned, [and] also the dyspycyo[n]s [and] reasonynge vpon the same, had betwene the same mayster Germen and hym (London, 1534, RSTC 11594). The date 1534 might seem decisive as putting publication after 25 March 1534, but More testified to Cromwell that Rastell had published another work with a 1534 date although he had in fact issued it before Christmas 1533: T. More, The vvorkes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, sometyme Lorde Chauncellour of England, wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge (London, 1557, RSTC 18076), 1422.

  31. For accurate discussion of the identification of Edward Foxe as recipient, see Butterworth and Chester, George Joye, 104–6.

  32. Field’s petition of late 1533 refers to events in the second half of 1532: SP 1/78 ff. 219–20, LP 6 no. 1059. Confusingly, there is extensive correspondence in Cromwell’s papers about a Thomas Phelips and his troubles at the hands of a Sir Thomas More just at this time. Both these were different men with the same names, and both came from Dorset; that case had nothing to do with religion, but see also below, this page.

  33. On Carew and Philips, Hall 2, 284, with pointed reference to Philips’s own earlier troubles; for Philips’s reports a year later on the welfare of the Marchioness of Exeter and the Countess of Salisbury, SP 1/140 ff. 218–19, LP 13 ii no. 1176. LP dates these too early, as Philips refers (f. 219r) to the care of one of the prisoners having lasted a year; the report is therefore of autumn 1539.

  34. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 101–2. John Day added his note on Cromwell’s involvement in the Frith case very late in his expansion of Foxe’s text, in fact in an appendix: Foxe 1583, 2149–50. As usual, one must subtract his updating of the titles of those involved, as he anachronistically describes Cromwell as already Vice-Gerent and a peer.

  35. BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 486, LP 5 no. 394; see above, this page. My discussion is shaped by G. R. Elton, ‘The law of treason in the early Reformation’, HJ 11 (1968), 211–36. Elton repeated this material in Policy and Police: the enforcement of the Reformation in the age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), 263–92. Some commentators place the previous Treason Act of Edward III in 1351, but sorting out the complications of his regnal years, sessions of Parliament and Old Style dating places it firmly in early 1352.

  36. For the text of the final Act, see Elton (ed.), Tudor Constitution, 6–12. See Chapuys’s account of his meeting with the Council on 16 May: Spanish Calendar 5 i no. 58, at 157.

  37. Effectively studied in J. M. Gray, Oaths and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2013), especially ch. 2.

  38. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 121–5.

  39. John Rookwood to Lord Lisle, 6 April [1534], SP 3/7 f. 14, LP 7 no. 441; Sir Thomas Palmer to Lord Lisle, 15 April [1534], SP 3/6 f. 102, Lisle Letters 2 nos. 156, 162. See discussion in Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic, 57–62.

  40. Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, 124–5: Gardiner’s last surv
iving signed signet warrant had been as long before as 3 February 1534. He had actually initiated this custom of the Secretary signing the warrants.

  41. Cromwell to Fisher, c. late February 1534, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/IV f. 102r, LP 7 no. 238.

  42. Cromwell to Cranmer, probably 18 April 1534, SP 1/83 f. 88, LP 7 no. 500. Significantly, this very important letter is not in Cranmer’s surviving letter-book. See also MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 124–5.

  43. Thomas More to Margaret Roper, c. 18 April 1534, More, The vvorkes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, 1430, LP 7 no. 575. More interestingly repeated his reminiscence and the remark about Gregory in another letter to Margaret Roper in 1534: ibid., 1448, LP 7 no. 1118.

  44. Hitchcock (ed.), Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, 74.

  45. BL MS Arundel 152 ff. 296f, LP 7 no. 287, and see text in Rogers (ed.), St Thomas More: selected letters, 193–201.

  46. On Horde, see Edward Lee Archbishop of York to Cromwell, 9 July 1535, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra E/VI f. 245, LP 8 no. 1011, and Edmund Horde Prior of Hinton Charterhouse to Cromwell, 1 September [1535], SP 1/85 f. 136, LP 7 no. 1127 (misdated by LP to 1534).

  47. A remembrance of Cromwell’s dateable by other content to late December 1533 or January 1534, BL MS Cotton Titus B/I f. 430, LP 7 no. 52.

  48. Thomas Salter to Cromwell, 7 August [1534], SP 1/85 f. 98v, LP 7 no. 1046, speaking of a visit on 5 June 1534. M. Chauncy, Historia aliquot martyrum Anglorum maxime octodecim Cartusianorum: sub Rege Henrico Octavo ob fidei confessionem et summi pontificis jura vindicanda interemptorum (London, 1888), 106, talks about Cromwell’s multiple visits to put the oath to the community ‘quoties ad nos venit’.