A final opportunity was given to Cromwell to ingratiate himself with King and nobles when Henry took into his hands the revenues of St. Albans and Winchester, and of the colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. In this, even honest Cavendish could see that ‘Cromewell perceyved an occasion given him by time to helpe himselfe.’ The intricacies of the law of the period were such that annuities and fees out of the revenues of these colleges, granted by the King, after he had seized them, could only be good while Wolsey was living, because the King, having obtained his right to them by Wolsey’s attainder in the praemunire, could not retain that right after the Cardinal’s death[164]. Thus, to have the grants secure during the lifetimes of the recipients, ‘there was none other shifte but to obtaine my lord’s confirmation of their patents. Then began every man both noble and gentleman who had any patents out of Winchester and St. Albans to make suite to Mr. Cromwell to solicit their cause to my lorde to get therin his confirmation, and for his paines therin bothe worthily to reward him and every man to shewe him such pleasures as should be at all times in their small powers, whereof they assured him. . . . Now began matters to worke to bringe Master Cromwell into estimation in suche sorte as was muche hereafter to his increase of dignity; . . . and having the ordering and disposition of the landes of these colleges he had a great occasion of suitors, besides the continual access to the King, by meanes whereof and through his witty demeanour he grewe continually into the King’s favour[165].’
It is hard to realize how deeply Wolsey felt the seizure of his two colleges. They had been the pride and joy of his declining years. Instead of working earnestly to avert their surrender into the King’s hands, as a true servant would have done, Cromwell permitted and almost welcomed it, as a means to give him a chance to further his own ends, and wrote empty, and, it would seem, almost contemptuous letters of consolation to the Cardinal, of which that of August 18 is an excellent example[166]. Instead of going to his master in his sorrow and disgrace, as Wolsey repeatedly requested him to do, he held himself aloof, and under the pretext of looking after the Cardinal’s interests at Court, contrived for his own rise and advancement. It is true that he stood by Wolsey in the parliamentary crisis in 1529, and that it was largely through his efforts that Wolsey obtained his temporary pardon in February, 1530; but when, at the last, the Cardinal’s enemies turned against him a second time and secured his complete downfall, there is no record of Cromwell’s saying a word or doing a thing in his behalf. On November 29, 1530, Wolsey died, shattered and disgraced.
It is very unfortunate that there still exist so few of Cromwell’s letters during the last two years of Wolsey’s life. There are preserved at present only twelve letters from him during this period[167], seven of which are addressed to Wolsey. In none of them does he give evidence of a sincere desire to serve his master at all costs; the dominant note of the greater part of them is one of selfish and rather supercilious advice; of a morality easy and cheap, because the preacher of it evidently felt himself beyond the possibility of its ever being applicable in his own case. There is also very little trustworthy information about the means he employed to introduce himself to the King, except what has already been mentioned in connexion with Wolsey’s fall. Foxe asserts that Sir Christopher Hales, Master of the Rolls, commended him to Henry, and further affirms that Sir John Russell said a good word for him, in return for Cromwell’s saving his life at Bologna, so that the latter was enabled to have a private conversation with the King in Westminster Gardens[168]. Part of this story is obviously false; Cromwell could not have been at Bologna when Sir John Russell was (between 1524 and 1528), because he was occupied in England at that time, as his correspondence shows. To judge from this, little reliance can be placed on the rest of Foxe’s tale; and there are no contemporary documents that bear out his statements. Another story, which is perhaps more probable, is that of Chapuys[169], who states that at Wolsey’s death Sir John Wallop attacked Cromwell with insults and threats, so that the latter for protection procured an audience with Henry, whom he promised to make the richest king that ever was in England. Henry, it appears, was so struck with this offer, that he immediately made Cromwell a member of his Council, but told nobody about it for four months. This tale is in many respects similar to the account contained in Pole’s Apologia: but the story of the Cardinal does not mention the quarrel with Wallop, and the report of Chapuys does not say a word about the plan for the solution of Henry’s ‘grete matier’ by which Cromwell, according to Pole, completely fascinated the King. All the accounts, however, seem to agree that by some means he managed to secure an interview with Henry soon after Wolsey’s death, at which he clinched everything that he had already gained, and obtained the favour of the King by one master-stroke. Pole’s story of this interview contains information which leads us into the thick of Cromwell’s political career. Before we proceed to examine it in detail a brief chapter must be devoted to a description of the actors and past events of the great political drama in which Cromwell was to play a part, and to a further analysis of his own character and ideals.
CHAPTER V
THE CHARACTER AND OPPORTUNITY OF THOMAS CROMWELL
The condition of England at the time of Wolsey’s death was in many ways an extraordinary one. At home and abroad she had already begun to reap glorious fruits from the untiring efforts and masterful policy of the first Tudor. United under a powerful monarchy, which had strengthened itself at the expense of every other institution in the realm, she rested secure in the enjoyment of internal peace and of a high degree of estimation and respect in foreign lands. That she had lost nearly all those continental possessions which had been the proudest boast of Edward III. and Henry V. now proved an inestimable advantage. The wise Cardinal had made use of England’s insular position to such good advantage, that she had been able, at least up to the time when the political situation had been complicated by the question of the divorce, to keep the Emperor and the King of France in a state of constant anxiety concerning her real attitude, and often to force the two rivals to bid against each other for her alliance. In 1521 Henry had dedicated to Leo X. a treatise which he had written against the heresies of Luther, and had been rewarded with the proud title of ‘Defensor Fidei.’ Success abroad meant popularity at home, at least for the King, whose enthusiasm and winning manners endeared him to his subjects, and who usually contrived to shift the blame for the unwelcome measures of his government on to the shoulders of the Cardinal. As long as the national honour was upheld on the Continent without draining too deeply the resources of the people at home, the country seemed quite willing to trust the King to the full and to allow him to rule as well as govern.
Such was the bright side of the picture, the side which first claims the attention of the casual observer. A more critical examination of the state of the country, however, reveals an undercurrent of discontent, which was almost lost in the crowning years of Wolsey’s greatness, but which did not fail to make itself felt at a later day, when the allegiance of so large a part of the people had been alienated by the affair of the divorce. The surest proof that Henry and Wolsey were aware of this latent hostility is afforded by the infrequent assemblings of Parliament. Seldom did the King dare to face the representatives of the nation with the demand for a subsidy; he preferred to veil his oppressive financial exactions under the name of an Amicable Loan. The poverty of the nobles was notorious; and the distress of the poor people daily increased owing to a succession of bad seasons, thin harvests, and a few outbreaks of a devastating plague. Economic and agrarian changes contributed to swell the universal discontent[170]. The break-up of the old manorial system, the increase of enclosures for pasturage, and the substitution of convertible husbandry for the old three-field system all served to displace labour, and so temporarily to diminish the demand for it. Great distress among the agricultural poor was necessarily the first result of these changes: unfortunately economic science was not sufficiently advanced to enable men to discern that it was but a passing phase, and that as soon as labour had adjusted itself to the new conditions permanent advantages to it were bound to ensue. The country-folk contrasted their own wretched condition with the many reports which reached them of Henry’s sumptuous and luxurious Court: small wonder if the government was wrongly blamed for a large share of the misery which was inevitably the first consequence of sudden and great economic development. Finally all malcontents were united in opposition to the King’s attempts to gain a divorce from his first wife, during the closing years of Wolsey’s ministry; so that the maintenance and further strengthening of the powerful monarchy established at the accession of the House of Tudor promised in the near future to afford a problem of even greater difficulty than before.