Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Vol. 1 of 2 / Life, Letters to 1535

by Roger Bigelow Merriman

In July, 1533, occurs the first mention of serious disturbance due to the visions and prophecies of Elizabeth Barton, better known as the Nun of Kent[238]. Her reputation for holiness and for divine inspiration was so high throughout the land, that her mad follies were everywhere regarded with almost superstitious reverence. Cromwell, at the King’s command, caused her to be examined by Cranmer, but apparently did not succeed in eliciting the information he desired, for the investigation was continued by other interrogators who were less leniently disposed than the Archbishop[239]. The Nun was finally obliged to confess that ‘she never Hadd Vision in all her Lyff, but all that ever she said was fayned of her owne ymagynacion, only to satisfie the Myndeis of theym Whiche Resorted vnto her, and to obtayn worldly prayse[240].’ She and her accomplices were forced to read their public confessions on a scaffold erected at Paul’s Cross, while a sermon was preached in denunciation of the fraud. In the following spring she was condemned to death in Parliament, and in April she was executed with some of her accomplices at Tyburn[241].

But the destruction of the Nun was only of secondary importance for Cromwell’s plans; he was mainly looking for some mesh in which he could entrap others of whom he was in much more fear than Elizabeth Barton. Every effort appears to have been made to elicit from her a confession of communication with the divorced Queen, but without success. More and Fisher, however, were not destined to escape so easily. Because the Bishop of Rochester, after several interviews with the unhappy woman, had not reported to Henry her disloyal prophecies (which the Nun had already made in presence of the King himself), it was taken as a sign of treason and neglect of duty to the sovereign. The long letter which Cromwell wrote to Fisher in February, 1534, gives a detailed account of the numerous and unfounded charges against him[242]. This letter impresses the reader as having been written pro forma only. Cromwell must have realized that he could never hope to overcome two men who were so much his intellectual superiors as More and Fisher, in an argument. He therefore carefully avoided having any conversation with them, and wrote to them only in order to have some slight outward justification for his arbitrary action. Fisher sent pathetic letters to the King and the Lords, when Cromwell refused to accept his excuses or listen to his arguments, but in vain. His name was included in the Act of attainder of Elizabeth Barton and her accomplices which was passed in March, 1534, but his life was spared until the King could find a more valid pretext for actually destroying him[243].

The accusations in the case of Sir Thomas More were even more groundless than in Fisher’s. The only charges that could be proved against him were an unimportant interview with the Nun herself, a letter which he confessed to have written to her, warning her to leave political subjects entirely alone, and an insignificant conversation about her with a certain father Resbye, Friar Observant of Canterbury[244]. So much was made of these slight accusations, however, that More was forced to write a long letter of excuse to Cromwell. His explanations about the Nun and about his attitude on the Papal Supremacy appear to have been satisfactory; when he was examined by Cromwell and Audeley, all the inventiveness of his accusers seemed to be used to no purpose. ‘As the King did not find,’ says Chapuys, ‘as it seems he hoped, an occasion for doing him more harm, he has taken away his salary[245].’ But this unfortunately was not destined to be the end of the affair; if the King was not determined on the ex-Chancellor’s destruction, his Privy Councillor was; but Cromwell was forced to bide his time and wait for a better opportunity, so that further proceedings were stayed until the following April.

In the meantime the new Act of Succession had been passed in Parliament, and the oath of allegiance which it required was promptly tendered to More and Fisher, who finally consented to swear to the statute itself but not the preamble[246]. They were unwilling to give their reasons for rejecting the latter, but Cranmer cannot have been far wrong when he wrote to Cromwell that the cause of their refusal to accept it lay in its attacks on the authority of the Pope and the validity of the King’s first marriage[247]. The Archbishop, ever on the side of humanity, urged the King’s minister to accept the compromise which More and Fisher offered, but in vain. The ex-Chancellor and the aged bishop were committed to the Tower, which they never quitted again. For more than a year they remained there subjected to every sort of indignity, until on May 5, 1535, they were summoned by the King, and told that unless they swore to the Act of Succession and the Royal Supremacy, they would be treated no better than the Carthusian monks who had lately been executed[248]. They were allowed six weeks for reflection, but they replied that they would not change their opinion in six hundred years, if they lived so long. So strong was the popular feeling however, that it is doubtful if Henry would have dared to execute Fisher, simply because he said that ‘the King, our sovereign Lord, is not Supreme Head of the Church of England’; but when it was announced that the Pope, at a consistory held May 20, had created him a Cardinal, the King was so enraged that he threw all caution to the winds. He declared in his fury that ‘he would give Fisher another hat, and send his head to Rome for the Cardinal’s hat afterwards,’ and ordered both his prisoners to swear to his ecclesiastical headship before St. John’s Day, or suffer punishment as traitors[249]. Cromwell had endeavoured from the beginning to keep up the appearance of being reluctant to punish the aged bishop and his noble companion, and there is record that when he heard of the latter’s first refusal to abandon his beliefs, ‘he sware a great oath[250].’ But in spite of this there is every reason to think that he was the true cause of the ex-Chancellor’s death. It is not likely that Henry would have consented to the execution of a man whom he had formerly loved and respected as much as More, unless his counsellor had poisoned his heart against him. Moreover, the mentions of More and Fisher in Cromwell’s ‘remembrances’ are so frequent and of such a character, as to leave little doubt that he had determined to ruin them from the first. They both suffered death by beheading in the summer of 1535[251]. It was a terrible evidence of the ruthlessness of the forward policy to which Henry had now committed himself by the advice of his new minister. The most brilliant and cultivated Englishman of the time had been brought to the block to bear testimony to the King’s relentless anger; the gentleness and humility of the oldest prelate in the realm had not shielded him from Henry’s wrath and the swift, passionless blow of his all-powerful agent. Terror had mastered the country, and men wondered what the end would be[252].

But though Cromwell’s truculent measures had gained the day in England, they excited the anger and horror of continental Europe. Sentence of excommunication had been passed on Henry in the summer of 1534; public opinion would not have permitted the Pope longer to postpone the final blow, even if he had wished to do so. It now became more than ever necessary to defend the position of the King, and Cromwell was busily occupied in filling the pulpit at Paul’s Cross with preachers who were willing and able to expound the word of God to Henry’s profit and advantage[253]. In this he was greatly helped by Bishop Rowland Lee of Coventry and Lichfield, who later played such an important part in connexion with the subjugation of Wales. In seeking means to defend the Royal Supremacy Cromwell’s knowledge of the law stood him in good stead. In a letter written in the year 1538, Sir Thomas Denys tells how Cromwell three years earlier had advised him to ‘rede in a boke called Bratton[254] nott vnwrittyn this cccc yeres where he doth call the Kinges Grace Vicarius Christi, . . . wherfor,’ he continues, ‘I do rekyn a papiste and a traitour to be one thing[255].’ But the most drastic of the measures which Cromwell adopted to strengthen the power of the Crown was the famous Act about Proclamations, which he was able to force the Lords and Commons to pass in 1539. By this statute, all Proclamations made by the King and Council were given the force of Acts passed in Parliament, save when they touched the subject’s lives, lands, goods, or liberties, or infringed the established laws; and these exceptions were expressly declared inapplicable to those who should disobey proclamations concerning heresy. Cromwell had planned for the passage of this statute from a period at least as early as 1535. A letter[256] which he wrote to Norfolk in July of that year affords us interesting information concerning the origin of the measure. In a controversy about the best means of preventing the export of coin from the realm, the Chief Justice had delivered the opinion that ‘For the avoyding of any suche daungers . . . proclamacyons and polyces so deuysyd by the King & his cownsayll for any such purpose sholde be of as good effect as Any law made by parlyament or otherwyse[257].’ The Chief Justice probably came to this decision at a hint from Cromwell; in any case the latter saw that the good work which had been already begun could not be considered complete until the opinion expressed had been given legal form. From this time onward there occur in his ‘remembrances’ frequent mentions of an Act to be passed in Parliament to this effect, but the measure proposed was so radical, that with all his energy and unscrupulousness, it was four years before he was able to carry it through[258].

It is scarcely necessary to state that a legislative body which could be forced to consent to such a statute as this retained in practice but few traces of that independence of the Crown which it theoretically possessed. The passage of the Act about Proclamations marks the culmination of a process begun long before Cromwell came into power, but only perfected at the close of his ministry, by which the subserviency of Parliament to the royal will was secured. But though the system did not reach its highest development until 1539, the earlier years of Cromwell’s administration show such an advance over that of his predecessor in this particular, that we are justified in regarding the entire period of his ministry as the golden age of Tudor despotism. From the time that the Commons permitted the King and his counsellor to force on them the petition against the clergy in 1532, it is scarcely too much to say that the sole function of Parliament was to register the decrees which emanated from the royal council chamber.

Of course in order to render Parliament as ‘tractable’ as it was, it became necessary for Cromwell to regulate the choice of members for the King’s profit, and the success of his endeavours in this direction is little short of marvellous. Royal interference in elections was certainly not unknown before his time, but it had not attained the proportions which it was destined to assume under Cromwell, and it was often strongly resented by the people. It was only with ‘much difficulty,’ that Henry VII., in the year 1506, succeeded in forcing the citizens of London to abandon the right to elect their own sheriff, which had been granted them by the charter of Henry I.[259], and to accept the royal nominee to that office[260]. But thirty years later, the Crown had carried its encroachment on the popular liberties so far that it seemed to be usually regarded as a matter of course that a royal nomination should take the place of a fair election. If any protest was raised against Henry’s palpable infringement of ancient rights—and this was very rarely the case—the King and his minister affected to regard the complaint with a sort of indignant amazement. Let us examine the details of an election in Canterbury, which took place when Cromwell was at the height of his power. Writs had been issued for the choice of two members to Parliament from that city in early May, 1536. Between eight and nine in the morning of the eleventh of that month, the sheriff, John Hobbys, caused the commonalty of Canterbury to assemble in the accustomed place, where John Starky and Christopher Levyns were duly elected burgesses. After the voters had dispersed, about noon-time, John Alcok, the mayor of Canterbury, came to Sheriff Hobbys in great perplexity, with a letter from Cromwell and Audeley, which desired, on the King’s behalf, that Robert Derknall and John Bryges ‘shulde fulfill the seid romes.’ On the following morning the sheriff directed a humble letter to Cromwell[261], stating the facts, and begging that the election of Starky and Levyns might be allowed to stand, as the King’s wishes were not known until too late; ‘if your seid lettere had come to me byfore the seid eleccion,’ he pleaded, ‘I wolde haue done the best that had been in my powr to ‹have› Accomplished our Souereigne lord the Kinges pleasure and yours in the premysses.’ But the King’s minister gave no heed to the representations of John Hobbys: the fact that an election had already been held did not trouble him in the least: the King’s will was to be accomplished at all costs. On May 18 he addressed a significant letter to the Mayor and Burgesses of Canterbury, which was quite sufficient to induce the recipients to nullify their former proceedings. The phraseology of the letter is noteworthy: the King’s minister did not discuss the fact that his first message had arrived too late. He simply reminded the burgesses that the King’s pleasure had been signified to them, and that they ‘the same litle or nothynge regardynge but rather contemnyng’ had elected their own candidates, according to their ‘owne wylles and myndes contrarie to the kinges plesure and comandement in that behalfe.’ This of course was a thing whereat the King did ‘not a lytell marvell,’ and the burgesses were admonished ‘notwythstondynge the seyd eleccion’ to ‘procede to a new and electe thosse other, accordyng to the tenure of the former letteres’: they were also desired to notify Cromwell at once ‘if any persone wyll obstynatly gaynsay the same,’ so that the King’s minister might deal with the refractory burgess according to his master’s pleasure. Two days later Mayor Alcok replied with the following dutiful letter. ‘In humble Wise certefie you that the xx^th Day of this present monyth of Maye at vi of the Clok in the mornyng I John Alcok mayre of Cauntebury receyved your lettere Dyrected to me the seid mayre Sheryf and Comynaltie of the seid Citie sygnyfying to vs therby the kynges plesure and commaundement is that Robert Darknall and John Bryges shoulde be burgesses of the Parlyament for thesame Citie of Cauntebury by Vertue wherof accordyng to our bounde Dutye immedyatly vppon the syght of your seid lettere and contentes thereof perceyved caused the Comynaltye of the seid Citie to Assemble in the Court Hall ther wher appered the nombre of Fower score and xvii persones Citizens and Inhabitauntes of theseid Citie And accordyng to the Kynges plesure and Commaundement frely with one voyce and without any contradiccon haue elected and chosen the fore-seid Robert Darkenall and John Bryges to be burgesses of the parlyament for thesame Citie which shalbe duly certefied by Indenture vnder the seales of the seid Citizens and Inhabytauntes by the grace of the blyssyd Trynyte Who preserue you . . .[262].’ Such was the calm way in which parliamentary suffrage rights were made of no effect and the King’s pleasure enforced. It is important to notice in this connexion how careful Henry and Cromwell were to cloak their most unwarrantable proceedings by the preservation of ostensible constitutionalism. Never was the now farcical form of a fair election abandoned; never did the King fail outwardly to observe those legal restrictions by which the Crown was supposedly fettered, and the liberties of the nation theoretically preserved. The autocracy which Cromwell had done so much to establish was carried on ‘within and upon the already existing constitution,’ and the public protest was thus in great measure disarmed.

It is no wonder that the invaluable services which Cromwell rendered to the Crown were rewarded by an almost exclusive enjoyment of the royal confidence, which enabled him soon to do almost what he pleased with his two great rivals, Norfolk and Gardiner. At first he had cautiously held himself aloof from these men, but now that he had outstripped them in the King’s favour, his bearing towards them altered accordingly. It is a very significant fact that in his ten years of service, he never left the King for any considerable length of time, but often contrived to get Norfolk and Gardiner sent away—the one to cope with internal troubles, the other to act as ambassador to France. Cromwell succeeded in harassing them both while they were at Court, and in making them abandon every pretence to consistency. Chapuys, in a letter of December 9, 1533, tells us that Norfolk, hitherto the most pronounced of Catholics, uttered ‘a thousand blasphemies’ against the Pope, even more shocking than those of the King, calling him ‘an unhappy whoreson, a liar, and a wicked man; and that it should cost him (Norfolk) wife and children . . . and all that he possessed, or that he would be revenged on him. He has a good deal changed his tune, for it was he . . . who favoured most the authority of the Pope; but he must act in this way not to lose his remaining influence, which apparently does not extend much further than Cromwell wishes; for which reason, I understand, he is wonderfully sick of the Court[263].’ In the spring of 1535 the Duke was forced to surrender entirely, and retire to his estate at Kenninghall. Gardiner had to abandon the Secretaryship in 1534 in Cromwell’s favour. The new minister tantalized him in much the same way as he did Norfolk, and doubtless increased the enmity of the Bishop of Winchester, which he had first incurred at the time of Wolsey’s fall, and which five years later was to be such an important factor in effecting his own destruction.

Cromwell was perhaps the only man at the Court who, in the early days of his ministry, had the least suspicion that Anne Boleyn might sometime lose the royal favour. He was able to comprehend the King’s love for her better than anyone else, and to discern that when the royal passion had been satisfied, Henry’s affection for his second wife would be a thing of the past. The King’s chagrin that Anne had not brought him a male child, and the rage awakened by her subsequent miscarriage could not have escaped him. From thenceforth he must have become convinced that her ruin was ultimately certain, and he began to throw out hints that he no longer wished to be reckoned among her adherents. In April, 1536, it was notorious that there was a marked coolness between them, and a month later a very unexpected turn in foreign affairs brought matters to a head and forced him to take active measures against her, in order to save his own reputation with the King[264]. There is reason to think that he was the prime mover in the plot which led to her arrest. He certainly worked against her at her trial, and was present at her execution; in fact he took every possible step to forestall all chances of being included in her fall. His sudden abandonment of one whom a few years before he had done so much to support, should be enough to confute those who have seen in his previous devotion to the cause of Anne Boleyn an evidence that he favoured the Reformed faith. Anne was certainly a professed Protestant; she possessed the English Bible and read it; but it was only because her Protestantism was temporarily useful to Cromwell’s designs, which were to obtain for his master a divorce from Katherine, that he identified himself with her party during the first years of his ministry. When the divorce had been secured, and Henry had been declared Supreme Head of the Church of England; when the love which Anne had once enjoyed had been transferred to Jane Seymour, and Cromwell saw that to favour the cause of the unhappy Queen in opposition to the King might mean ruin and disgrace, he deserted her at once.