His part in securing the divorce of Katherine of Aragon and the succession of Anne Boleyn brought him still further quick and plenteous rewards. In rapid succession he became Lord Chancellor, the King’s Secretary, Master of Rolls, and lastly Vicar-General, so that he might be in a position to enforce the supremacy of his King over the Church. Sir Thomas More, late Chancellor, and Bishop Fisher, fell beneath the axe on Cromwell’s prosecution, their crime being a refusal to acknowledge the King’s spiritual supremacy.

A little later we find Cromwell one of those who on the fatal May 2nd, 1536, escorted the Queen he had helped to make, the hapless Anne Boleyn, to the Tower. And only a few days later we see him seated a witness at her execution. In his portfolio was later found that most pathetic and well-known letter addressed by Anne Boleyn to the King[[16]] praying for mercy, which letter was never passed on to the King.

For four more years the sun shone on the erstwhile solicitor and shearer, and he became first a Knight of the Garter, then a Baron and Lord Great Chamberlain, and finally Earl of Essex. Great riches and territory too came to him from the suppression of the greater monasteries and the confiscation of their property. But in 1540 the sun set on this phenomenal career, for on June 10th of that year, accused of high treason by the Duke of Norfolk, attainted by Parliament, he passed silently to that same block on Tower Hill to which he had assigned so many.

In the days when great officers of State held the lucrative office of Keeper of the Jewel House in addition to their other benefices was one William Paulet, who later became 1st Marquis of Winchester. Of good birth and a country squire, he was knighted in 1525, and the same year made a Privy Councillor. Shortly after he became a Member of Parliament as Knight of the shire of Hampshire, and also secured the curious appointment of “Surveyor of the King’s widows, and Governor of all idiots and naturals in the King’s hands.” This apparently led by easy degrees to Controller of the Royal Household. In 1536 Sir William Paulet was one of the judges at the trials of Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher, and also of the gentlemen with whom Queen Anne Boleyn was accused of too familiar consort.

THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX
KEEPER OF THE JEWEL HOUSE IN THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII

A year later the Knight became a Baron, under the title of Lord St. John, and Treasurer of the Royal Household, whilst not long after he became a Knight of the Garter and Lord Chamberlain. When Henry VIII died he was Lord President of the Council, and must have sincerely thanked God that he had so far survived and prospered and had seen the end of that monarch’s reign, with his head still on his shoulders. The Lord President was one of the eighteen executors of Henry VIII’s will, appointed to act as a council of regency during the minority of the boy King, Edward VI. In 1550 St. John sided with the Duke of Northumberland in the overthrow of Somerset, the Lord Protector, and as a result found himself on the winning side with an earldom, that of Wiltshire thrown in. He received also the offices of Lord Treasurer and Keeper of the Jewel House. A year later we find plain William Paulet of a few years ago created Marquis of Winchester.

When Edward VI died, the Marquis, as Keeper of the Jewel House, handed over the Crown Jewels to Lady Jane Grey, and saluted her as Queen. Nine days later, however, he was amongst the Lords who from Barnard’s Castle, which lay on the river-bank close alongside the Tower, proclaimed Queen Mary the rightful sovereign of these realms. Nor did the new Queen resent the late temporary aberration, but took him to her stony heart, and not only confirmed him in all his offices, but added that of Lord Privy Seal. The Marquis was really a wonderful person, for though his next appearance in history is as one of those who conducted the Princess Elizabeth to the dread doom of imprisonment in the Tower, we next discover him, a man well stricken in years, riding through London proclaiming the same princess Queen of England. Nor did Queen Elizabeth at once say, “Off with his head”; on the contrary, she confirmed him in his appointment of Lord Treasurer. Though now upwards of seventy years of age he was made Speaker of the House of Lords, and died in harness in 1572 at the venerable age of eighty-seven. The secret of this long life, apart from physical fitness, was the possession of the gift which perhaps we now call tact. If any proof were needed, it is only necessary to record that a plain squire rose to be a marquis and lived through four reigns during which heads fell as plentifully as apples in an autumn gale, and yet eventually died peacefully in his bed.

One of the best known Keepers of the Crown Jewels is Sir Henry Mildmay, who was appointed to the office in April, 1620, by James I, and retained that office not only through the reign of Charles I, but also through the Commonwealth, and was only dispossessed of it by Charles II on his Restoration in 1660. Besides being Keeper, or as he was termed Master and Treasurer of the Jewel House, Sir Henry was a Member of Parliament for Westbury in Wiltshire, and also at another period for Maldon in Essex. He was a persona grata with James I, and also, it would seem, with Charles I during the first fifteen years of his reign. But Sir Henry then forsook his sovereign and became one of the Committee of the Commons. His defection was considered so important that he was, by the Parliamentarians, continued in his office, in so far as concerned the drawing of the salary and emoluments thereof, though the situation was somewhat grotesque since he was of the party which was in open arms against the King, whose Crown Jewels he was supposed to guard.

Sir Henry was nominated, and sat as one of the judges who tried Charles I, but he with some courage or address escaped signing the death sentence, and afterwards claimed that he only accepted nomination in hopes of saving the King. Throughout the Commonwealth he remained Keeper of the Jewel House, though there were no jewels to guard, for these had been broken up, defaced, destroyed, and sold by the order of Parliament. But being one skilled in the etiquette of courts, he made himself useful as Master of Ceremonies to Foreign Ambassadors, and continued to enjoy the rich perquisites attaining to the office of Keeper of the Jewel House.