XI.
ON THOMAS LORD CROMWELL.
It is ever the fate of a disgraced minister to be forsaken by his friends, and insulted by his enemies, always reckoning among the latter the giddy inconstant multitude. We have here a spurn at fallen greatness from one of the angry partisans of declining popery, who could never forgive the downfall of their Diana and loss of their craft. The ballad seems to have been composed between the time of Cromwell's commitment to the Tower, June 10th, 1540, and that of his being beheaded, July 28 following. A short interval! but Henry's passion for Catharine Howard would admit of no delay. Notwithstanding our libeller, Cromwell had many excellent qualities; his great fault was too much obsequiousness to the arbitrary will of his master; but let it be considered that this master had raised him from obscurity, and that the high-born nobility had shewn him the way in every kind of mean and servile compliance. The original copy, printed at London in 1540, is intitled, A newe ballade made of Thomas Crumwel, called "Trolle on away." To it is prefixed this distich by way of burthen:
"Trolle on away, trolle on awaye.
Synge heave and howe rombelowe trolle on away."
The following piece gave rise to a poetic controversy, which was carried on thro' a succession of seven or eight ballads, written for and against Lord Cromwell. These are all preserved in the archives of the Antiquarian Society, in a large folio collection of proclamations, &c., made in the reigns of King Henry VIII., King Edward VI., Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, King James I., &c.
[Thomas Cromwell, called Malleus Monachorum, came of a good old Lincolnshire family. He was born about the year 1490 at Putney, where his father carried on the business of an iron-founder, which his enemies reduced to that of a blacksmith. His father died early, and in consequence of the re-marriage of his mother, he became a wanderer.
The author of the poor play, entitled The Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, which has been absurdly attributed to Shakspere, makes "old Cromwell, a blacksmith, of Putney," live to see his son "made lord keeper."
There is a fragment of a ballad on Cromwell without any beginning in the Folio MS. (ed. Hales and Furnivall, vol. i. p. 127), which ends as follows: