[522] See a correspondence between Cranmer and a Justice of the Peace, Jenkins’s Cranmer, Vol. I.
[523] “I would to Christ I had obeyed your often most gracious grave councils and advertisements. Then it had not been with me as now it is.”—Cromwell to the King: Burnet’s Collectanea, p. 510.
[524] MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, E 4.
[525] He required, probably, no information that his enemies would spare no means, fair or foul, for his destruction. But their plots and proceedings had been related to him two years before by his friend Allen, the Irish Master of the Rolls, in a report of expressions which had been used by George Paulet, brother of the lord treasurer, and one of the English commissioners at Dublin. Cromwell, it seems, had considered that estates in Ireland forfeited for treason, or non-residence, would be disposed of better if granted freely to such families as had remained loyal, than if sold for the benefit of the crown. Speaking of this matter, “The king,” Paulet said, “beknaveth Cromwell twice a week, and would sometimes knock him about the pate. He draws every day towards his death, and escaped very hardly at the last insurrection. He is the greatest briber in England, and that is espied well enough. The king has six times as much revenues as ever any of his noble progenitors had, and all is consumed and gone to nought by means of my Lord Privy Seal, who ravens all that he can get. After all the king’s charges to recover this land, he is again the only means to cause him to give away his revenues; and it shall be beaten into the king’s head how his treasure has been needlessly wasted and consumed, and his profits and revenues given away by sinister means.” “Cromwell,” Paulet added, “has been so handled and taunted by the council in these matters, as he is weary of them; but I will so work my matter, as the king shall be informed of every penny that he hath spent here; and when that great expence is once in his head, it shall never be forgotten there is one good point. And then I will inform him how he hath given away to one man seven hundred marks by the year. And then will the king swear by God’s body, have I spent so much money and now have given away my land? There was never a king so deceived by man. I will hit him by means of my friends.”—State Papers, Vol. II. p. 551. It is not clear how much is to be believed of Paulet’s story so far as relates to the king’s treatment of Cromwell. The words were made a subject of an inquiry before Sir Anthony St. Leger; and Paulet meant, it seemed, that the “beknaving and knocking about the pate” took place in private before no witnesses; so that, if true, it could only have been known by the acknowledgments of the king or of Cromwell himself. But the character of the intrigues for Cromwell’s destruction is made very plain.
[526] Foxe’s History of Cromwell.
[527] A paper of ten interrogatories is in the Rolls House, written in Cromwell’s hand, addressed to a Mr. John More. More’s opinion was required on the supremacy, and among the questions asked him were these:—
What communication hath been between you and the Bishop of Winchester touching the primacy of the Bishop of Rome?
What answers the said Bishop made unto you upon such questions as ye did put to him?
Whether ye have heard the said Bishop at any time in any evil opinion contrary to the statutes of the realm, concerning the primacy of the Bishop of Rome or any other foreign potentate?—Rolls House MS. A 2, 30, fol. 67.
In another collection I found a paper of Mr. More’s answers; but it would seem (unless the MS. is imperfect) that he replied only to the questions which affected himself. The following passage, however, is curious: “The cause why I demanded the questions (on the primacy) of my Lord of Winchester was for that I heard it, as I am now well remembered, much spoken of in the parliament house, and taken among many there to be a doubt as ye, Mr. Secretary, well know. And for so much as I esteemed my lord’s wisdom and learning to be such, that I thought I would not be better answered, because I heard you, Mr. Secretary, say he was much affectionate to the Papacy.”—Rolls House MS. first series, 863.