As soon as the arrest of June 10 was known, the majority of those who had most eagerly sought after the favor of Cromwell, and especially Bonner, bishop of London, immediately turned round and declared against him. He had gained no popularity by promoting the last bills passed to the king's advantage; and the news of his imprisonment was therefore received with shouts of joy.[336] In the midst of the general defection, one man alone remained faithful to the prisoner—this was Cranmer. The man who had formerly undertaken the defence of Anne Boleyn now came forward in defence of Cromwell. The archbishop did not attend the Privy Council on Thursday, June 10; but being in his place on the Friday, he heard that the earl of Essex had been arrested as a traitor. The tidings astonished and affected him deeply. He saw in Cromwell at this time not only his personal friend, not only the prudent and devoted supporter of the Reformation, but also the ablest minister and the most faithful servant of the king. He saw the danger to which he exposed himself by undertaking the defence of the prisoner; and he felt that it was his duty not recklessly to offend the king. He therefore wrote to him in a prudent manner, reminding him, nevertheless, energetically, of all that Cromwell had been. His letter to the king was written the day after he heard of the fall of the minister. 'I heard yesterday in your grace's council,' he says, 'that he [Cromwell] is a traitor; yet who can not be sorrowful and amazed that he should be a traitor against your majesty, he that was so advanced by your majesty; he whose surety was only by your majesty; he who loved your majesty (as I ever thought) no less than God; he who studied always to set forwards whatsoever was your majesty's will and pleasure; he that cared for no man's displeasure to serve your majesty; he that was such a servant, in my judgment, in wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, and experience, as no prince in this realm ever had; he that was so vigilant to preserve your majesty from all treasons that few could be so secretly conceived but he detected the same in the beginning? If the noble princes of memory, King John, Henry II., and Richard II. had had such a counsellor about them, I suppose that they should never have been so traitorously abandoned and overthrown as those good pious princes were.... I loved him as my friend, for so I took him to be; but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace, singularly above all other. But now, if he be a traitor, I am sorry that ever I loved him or trusted him, and I am very glad that his treason is discovered in time. But yet again I am very sorrowful, for who shall your grace trust hereafter, if you might not trust him? Alas! I bewail and lament your grace's chance herein, I wot not whom your grace may trust. But I pray God continually night and day to send such a counsellor in his place whom your grace may trust, and who for all his qualities can and will serve your grace like to him, and that will have so much solicitude and care to preserve your grace from all dangers as I ever thought he had.'[337]
Cranmer was doubtless a weak man; but assuredly it was a proof of some devotion to truth and justice, and of some boldness too, thus to plead the cause of the prisoner before a prince so absolute as Henry VIII., and even to express the wish that some efficient successor might be found. Lord Herbert of Cherbury thinks that Cranmer wrote to the king boldly; and this is also our opinion. The prince being intolerant of contradiction, this step of the archbishop was more than was needed to ruin him as well as Cromwell.
Meanwhile, the enemies of the prisoner were trying to find other grounds of accusation besides that which they had first brought forward. Indeed, it seemed to some persons a strange thing that he who, under Henry VIII. was head of the church, vicegerent in spiritual affairs, should be a heretic and a patron of heretics; and many found in this charge an 'occasion of merriment.'[338] They set to work, therefore, after the blow, to discover offences on the part of the accused. After taking great pains, this is what they discovered and set forth in the bill of attainder: 1. That he had set at liberty some prisoners suspected of treason; a crime indeed in the eyes of a gloomy despot, but in the judgment of righteous men an act of justice and virtue. 2. That he had granted freedom of export of corn, horses, and other articles of commerce; the crime of free trade which would be no crime now. Not a single instance can be specified in which Cromwell had received any present for such license. 3. That he had, though a low-born man, given places and orders, saying only that he was sure that the king would approve them. On this point Cromwell might reasonably allege the multiplicity of matters entrusted to his care, and the annoyance to which it must have subjected the king, had he continually troubled him to decide the most trifling questions. 4. That he had given permission, both to the king's subjects and to foreigners, to cross the sea 'without any search.' This intelligent minister appears to have aimed at an order of things less vexatious and more liberal than that established under Henry VIII., and in this respect he stood ahead of his age. 5. That he had made a large fortune, that he had lived in great state, and had not duly honored the nobility. There were not a few of the nobles who were far from being honorable, and this great worker had no liking for drones and idlers. With respect to his fortune, Cromwell incurred heavy expenses for the affairs of the realm. In many countries he kept well-paid agents, and the money which he had in his hands was spent more in state affairs than in satisfying his personal wishes. In all this there was evidently more to praise than to blame. But Cromwell had enemies who went further than his official accusers.[339] The Roman Catholics gave out that he had aspired to the hand of the king's daughter, the princess Mary. This would have been a strange and sympathetic union, between the Malleus monachorum and the fanatical Mary!
These groundless charges were followed by the true motives for his disgrace. It was alleged that he had adopted heretical (that is to say, evangelical) opinions; that he had promoted the circulation of heretical works; that he had settled in the realm many heretical ministers; and that he had caused men accused of heresy to be set at liberty. That when any one went to him to make complaint of detestable errors, he defended the heretics and severely censured the informers; and that in March last, persons having complained to him of the new preachers, he answered that 'their preaching was good.'[340] For these crimes, the acts of a Christian, honest and beneficent man, condemnation must be pronounced. Cromwell indeed was guilty.
THE LEADER OF THE PROSECUTION.
The conduct of the prosecution was entrusted to Richard Rich, formerly speaker of the House of Commons, now solicitor-general and chancellor of the court of augmentations. He had already rendered service to the king in the trials of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More; the same might be expected of him in the trial of Cromwell. It appears that he accused Cromwell of being connected with Throgmorton,[341] the friend and agent of Cardinal Pole. Now the mere mention of Pole's name would put Henry out of temper. Cromwell's alliance with this friend of the pope was the pendant of his scheme of marriage with the lady Mary; the one was as probable as the other. Cromwell wrote from his prison to the king on the subject, and stoutly denied the fable. It was not introduced into the formal pleadings; but the charge was left vaguely impending over him, and it was reasserted that he was guilty of treason. Cromwell was certainly not faultless. He was above all a politician, and political interests had too much weight with him. He was the advocate of some vexatious and unjust measures, and he acted sometimes in opposition to his own principles. But his main fault was a too servile devotion to the prince who pretended that he had been betrayed by him; and of this he had given a lamentable proof in the case of Anne Boleyn.
His enemies were afraid that, if the trial were conducted openly before his peers according to law, he would make his voice heard and clear himself of all their imputations. They resolved therefore to proceed against him without trial, and without discussion, by the parliamentary method, by bill of attainder; a course pronounced by Roman Catholics themselves 'a most iniquitous measure.'[342] He ought to have been tried, and he was not tried. He was, however, confronted on Friday, June 11, the day after his arrest, with one of his accusers, and thus learnt what were the charges brought against him. Conducted again to the Tower, he became fully aware of the danger which was impending over him. The power of his enemies, Gardiner and Norfolk, the increasing disfavor of Anne of Cleves, which seemed inevitably to involve his own ruin, the proceedings instituted against Barnes and other evangelists, the anger of the king—all these things alarmed him and produced the conviction in his mind that the issue was doubtful, and that the danger was certain. He was in a state of great distress and deep melancholy; gloomy thoughts oppressed him, and his limbs trembled. The prison has been called the porch of the grave, and Cromwell indeed looked upon it as a grave. On June 30 he wrote to the king from his gloomy abode an affecting letter, 'with heavy heart and trembling hand,' as he himself said.
EXAMINATION OF CROMWELL.
About the end of June, the duke of Norfolk, the lord chancellor, and the lord high admiral went to the Tower, instructed to examine Cromwell and to make various declarations to him on the part of the king. The most important of these related to the marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne of Cleves. They called upon him to state all that he knew touching this marriage, 'as he might do before God on the dread day of judgment.' On June 30 Cromwell wrote to the king a letter in which he set forth what he knew on the subject; and he added: 'And this is all that I know, most gracious and most merciful sovereign lord, beseeching Almighty God ... to counsel you, preserve you, maintain you, remedy you, relieve and defend you, as may be most to your honor, with prosperity, health and comfort of your heart's desire ... [giving you] continuance of Nestor's years.... I am a most woeful prisoner, ready to take the death, when it shall please God and your majesty; and yet the frail flesh inciteth me continually to call to your grace for mercy and grace for mine offences: and thus Christ save, preserve, and keep you.
'Written at the Tower this Wednesday, the last day of June, with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your highness' most heavy and most miserable prisoner and poor slave,