Popular as Henry doubtless was, Cromwell must have realized, when he thus threw himself heart and soul on the King’s side in the divorce case, that he had staked everything on the continuance of the royal favour. The best of the clergy were strongly against the cause of Anne Boleyn, and there were but few who disagreed with them. The general sympathy of the nation for Katherine was greater than ever. Chapuys tells us that Henry was urged by the crowd in the streets to take back the Queen, and that Anne Boleyn was not infrequently publicly insulted[208]. The mob, and still more the friars, spoke of her openly as a common prostitute, who ‘ruled the King and beggared spiritualty and temporalty also.’ A letter of the imperial ambassador tells us that the provincial of the Friars Observants at Greenwich (better known as Friar Peto) preached before the King, and told him that ‘the unbounded affection of princes and their false counsellors deprived them of their knowledge of the truth, and that Henry was endangering his crown by his marriage, for great and little were murmuring at it.’ The King concealed his vexation as best he could, but later ordered one of his chaplains to preach there in his presence, and contradict all that Peto had said. At the end of this sermon the warden arose, and answering for his minister in his absence, dared to say in Henry’s presence that the royal chaplain had lied. The King was very angry and had the warden and preacher both arrested[209]. Most of the Greenwich friars were eager to stand by their brethren, but some proved less incorruptible, and gave secret information against the steadfast ones.
The result of all these murmurings among commons and friars was that Cromwell was kept very busy in finding out and extirpating ‘sedycyous opynyons’ as they were termed. In order to clinch the advantages that were to accrue to Henry as a result of his newly-assumed ecclesiastical position, it was as necessary to discover and either destroy or convert the laymen opposed to it, as it was to keep in submission the clergy from whose hands it had been snatched. Henry could have probably found no abler man in the realm to accomplish this purpose than his new minister. Early in 1532 Cromwell began to create a system of espionage, the most effective that England had ever seen, that in a short time was to render unsafe the most guarded expression of dissent in politics or religion. The success which this organized method of reporting treason later obtained, is one of the most striking proofs of the relentless energy of its originator. But Cromwell’s efforts to extirpate sedition, and to encourage the new ecclesiastical system, were not confined to England alone during these first years of his ministry. The years 1531 and 1532 must not be passed over without some slight reference to his connexion with William Tyndale. There was no counsellor about the King, upon whom Cromwell could rely as an intelligent and consistent ally, to help him carry out his schemes of ‘political Protestantism.’ In this dilemma he turned to William Tyndale, who was at that time in the Low Countries. The theory of ‘one King, one law in the realm; no class of men exempt from the temporal sword, no law except the law of the land’ advocated in ‘The Obedience of a Christian Man,’ doubtless struck Cromwell, if he read the book. It was perhaps the nearest approach he had yet found in writing to the policy he was steadily pursuing; he immediately desired to induce the reformer to return to England and to enlist him in the defence of his great cause. The fact that Cromwell was able to persuade the King to permit him to attempt this is a good proof of his influence with Henry. In May, 1530, Tyndale had been denounced as a perverter of God’s word[210]; but so great was the change which the new minister’s accession to power had wrought in the royal policy, that Henry now allowed Cromwell to write to his old friend Stephen Vaughan in the Netherlands[211], and commission him to try and discover where Tyndale was, and induce him to return to England. To this request Vaughan sent a double reply to Henry and Cromwell, informing them that he had written to the reformer (three separate letters to different places, not knowing where he was) and had received his answer, in which Tyndale said that the news of what had lately happened in England made him afraid to go there[212]. In a confidential postscript to the letter to Cromwell, Vaughan writes in most glowing terms about the reformer, saying that he was of far greater knowledge than the King’s Highness took him for, as plainly appeared by his works. ‘Would God he were in England.’ As usual Vaughan’s enthusiasm had run away with his discretion. He was the exact opposite of Cromwell in this respect; he was ever full of emotion and feeling, while his master was to the last degree practical and calculating.
In spite of his first rebuff, Vaughan persevered in his attempts, and on the 25th of March sent Cromwell another letter, in which he expressed a little more hope of getting Tyndale to go to England[213]. Three weeks later his efforts received some more substantial reward, for on the 18th of April he wrote to Henry[214], that he had at last obtained an interview with the reformer, and that though the latter still refused to comply with his request, his words had been such as to arouse the enthusiasm of Cromwell’s agent more than ever. With this letter Vaughan sent to Henry the manuscript of Tyndale’s new book against Sir Thomas More, called the Answer, which the reformer did not wish to put in print till Henry had seen it, because the latter had been displeased at the hasty and unlicensed printing of his former work, The Practise of Prelates. The letter and the book were not destined, however, to have the desired effect on the King. The Answer was sufficiently plain to indicate that Tyndale’s religious beliefs were not of the sort that would ever be serviceable to Henry; the reformer was altogether too full of Protestantism for its own sake, to suit either the King or his counsellor. For once Cromwell had mistaken his man. To say that the King was thoroughly vexed and annoyed, when he had perused Vaughan’s letter, and the enclosed work, is a mild statement of the facts. The original letter which Vaughan wrote is not extant, but there is a copy of it in the British Museum which ends most abruptly with the words ‘To declare to your Magyste what In my pore Judgement I thynke of the man, I asserteyne your grace I haue not communyd with A man[215]’; a fact which suggests the possibility that the irritable King vented his anger on the unoffending sheet of paper, and tore it in two. The letter with which Cromwell, at the King’s direction, replied to Vaughan, is a still surer index to the impression which the latter’s report had produced on the King. What with the precipitation of his emotional, enthusiastic, and unpractical friend, Cromwell must have been placed in a very awkward position. The many corrections and interlineations in the draft of the letter he wrote in reply to Vaughan, sufficiently reveal his great perplexity and bewilderment[216]. The subject-matter of the letter will speak for itself. The rage of the King is vividly described, and Vaughan is repeatedly warned to abandon the reformer: but in spite of everything he continued to attempt to persuade Tyndale to return. He had two more fruitless interviews with the latter, described in his letters to Henry of the 20th of May, and to Cromwell on the 19th of June[217], and after that came back to England for the summer. In November he returned to the Netherlands, and wrote again to Cromwell warmly on Tyndale’s behalf, but not a word did he receive in reply[218]. In the meantime Henry and Cromwell had dispatched Sir Thomas Elyot to arrest the reformer and bring him home[219]. Vaughan finally saw the danger he ran in advocating the cause of the author of the ‘venemous and pestiferous workes,’ and dared say no more. The rest of his letters during these two years do not even once mention him. The whole Tyndale episode is noteworthy as the nearest approach to a mistake in Cromwell’s internal policy. Henry’s anger probably gave him a clear warning that many more such would bring him to certain ruin. He was saved from serious consequences in this case, only because he had amply atoned for it by his brilliant success in obtaining the submission of the clergy.
Cromwell was also occupied, during these two years, in re-establishing Wolsey’s foundation at Oxford, under the new name of King Henry the Eighth’s College. He was appointed receiver-general and supervisor of all the lands belonging to it; and the adjustment of claims, transfer of property, new foundation and charter kept him very busy, and gave him an excellent opportunity to display his legal talent. He also superintended the building of a new palace at Westminster, regulated the wages of the men working on the fortifications at Calais, and was also busy with minor duties in the King’s own household—the care of the royal plate and jewels, and even the drawing of patterns for Henry’s robes of state[220]. From the close of the year 1529 until his fall, the best index to the various occupations in which he was engaged is afforded by his famous ‘remembrances.’ These consist largely of short and usually incomplete sentences, sometimes even single words, jotted down at odd moments by Cromwell or his chief clerk, on loose sheets of paper—often on the backs of letters and drafts of important documents. They are for the most part absolutely disjointed and unconnected in matter, form, and handwriting. Sandwiched in between apparently careless phrases which later expand into the most drastic of parliamentary enactments, we find minute details concerning the wages of labourers, the cost of New Year’s presents at the Court, or even matters of a private nature: next to a memorandum for the signing of a letter for some Spaniards occur the significant words, ‘To Remembre the Auncyent Cronycle of magna Carta and how libera sit Cam into the Statute[221].’ The less important items are of course by far the more numerous, especially in the first six years when the King loaded his new minister with details of the greatest variety and complexity. Towards the last the ‘remembrances’ are fewer in number, and deal less extensively with minor matters; but even up to the very end we find ample evidence that the King’s minister carried in his head an amount of detail of a comparatively unimportant nature, which would have been quite impossible for a man like his predecessor. The Cardinal, absorbed in studying the great diplomatic combinations of continental Europe, had shamefully neglected minor affairs at home. Cromwell, in his ten years of power, not only atoned for the errors of Wolsey, but also familiarized himself with every detail of domestic administration to an extent that no King or minister had ever done in England before. It would have been almost impossible to carry through the tremendous changes which had followed the divorce, without the aid of a counsellor of the peculiar talents of Thomas Cromwell.
The thread of our narrative now becomes so complicated, when the new minister is at last fully installed in the King’s service, that it will be necessary to depart from the chronological order of events hitherto followed, and to treat separately each phase of Cromwell’s policy, up to the reaction of 1539. The Internal and Foreign Administration, Suppression of the Monasteries, of the Pilgrimage of Grace, &c., all move on hand in hand, and in order to understand their bearing on one another, it is only needful to remember that they were all the work of one man, and were proceeding in general at the same time.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI
THE SUPPLICATION OF THE COMMONS AGAINST THE ORDINARIES.
Four drafts of this petition exist to-day in the Public Record Office. One of them is written in a hand which may be recognized in the greater part of Cromwell’s correspondence of the time, and which is probably that of his chief clerk; it is corrected and revised by Cromwell himself. Of the other three, one, which is uncorrected and probably a final draft, is also written by the clerk—and the other two, chiefly in a strange handwriting, are filled with interlineations by Cromwell. The following copy was made from the first of these drafts (Cal. v, 1016 (4)). The words in brackets are crossed out in the original manuscript: the words in italics are inserted between the lines. All the corrections are in Cromwell’s hand.