‘Many lamented but more rejoiced’
As Cromwell languished in the Tower anxiously awaiting news from court, the woman whom he had put on the throne was in the process of being ousted. On 24 June Anne had received orders from the council to remove herself from court and go to Richmond Palace. She confided to the Cleves ambassador that she feared she would meet the same fate as Catherine of Aragon. But Anne was no martyr. For all her sadness that the king did not want her, she was a pragmatist at heart and was prepared to submit with grace to what had become inevitable.
Henry’s lawyers continued to use Anne’s earlier betrothal to the Duke of Lorraine as the basis for the annulment. They claimed that this was why the king had been unable to consummate the marriage: it was ‘relative’ impotence, limited to one woman, they were careful to argue. No matter how urgently Henry might wish to be free of Anne, he was not about to have his manliness called into question. An ecclesiastical enquiry was duly commissioned, and a delegation of councillors, including the Duke of Suffolk, William FitzWilliam and Thomas Wriothesley, arrived at Richmond on 6 July to seek Anne’s consent to the enquiry. Apparently shocked by this sudden turn of events, Anne fainted. When she had sufficiently recovered herself, she refused to cooperate. This rather unconvincing show of defiance was perhaps derived more from a wish to preserve a vestige of pride than a genuine desire to save her marriage.
Three days later, that marriage was declared illegal. Anne consented to the decree and wrote a formal letter of submission to the king, saying that ‘though this case must needs be most hard and sorrowful unto me, for the great love which I bear your most noble person, yet, having more regard to God and his truth than to any worldly affection . . . I knowledge myself hereby to accept and approve the same.’ Confirming that the marriage had not been consummated, she referred to ‘your Majesty’s clean and pure living with me’, and offered herself up as his ‘most humble servant’.1 She reiterated the same in a letter to her brother later that month, declaring: ‘My body remaineth in the integrity which I brought into this realm.’2 Her capitulation enabled parliament to confirm that the marriage was invalid on 12 July.
Henry could now proceed with plans to marry Norfolk’s niece. These plans proceeded in direct parallel to those for Cromwell’s execution. This was scheduled for the morning of 28 July at Tower Hill. That Cromwell should be denied a private execution on Tower Green, away from the jeering crowds, was significant. On being condemned for treason, he had been stripped of all his honours. No longer the Earl of Essex, Lord Privy Seal or any of the many other titles he had enjoyed, he was to meet his death as a commoner.
Neither was Cromwell to be the only prisoner to die that day. Lord Hungerford, whose wife had appealed to him for assistance four years previously, was a former protégé of Cromwell, who had arranged his appointment as Sheriff of Wiltshire and rewarded him richly for his loyal service. But Hungerford had proved a good deal less loyal to the king, and was accused of harbouring a clergyman with known sympathy for the Pilgrimage of Grace. Moreover, he was said to have enlisted the services of a cunning man to predict the king’s death. This was treason, and Hungerford was swiftly indicted. The charge of ‘buggery’ was also added to the growing list.
There is no record of Gregory Cromwell’s activities during the run-up to his father’s execution. He had apparently resigned himself to keeping a low profile, even if he had been working behind the scenes with Ralph Sadler, Richard Cromwell and others. His wife Elizabeth, meanwhile, had written a series of letters to the king, pleading for his forgiveness and clemency towards herself and her husband. Only one of them survives. It was written in July 1540, shortly before the date scheduled for Cromwell’s execution. Elizabeth began by thanking Henry for his favour.
After the bounden duty of my most humble submission unto your excellent majesty, whereas it hath pleased the same, of your mere mercy and infinite goodness, notwithstanding the heinous trespasses and most grievous offences of my father-in-law, yet so graciously to extend your benign pity towards my poor husband and me, as the extreme indigence and poverty wherewith my said father-in-law’s most detestable offences hath oppressed us, is thereby right much holpen and relieved, like as I have of long time been right desirous presently as well to render most humble thanks, as also to desire continuance of the same your highness’ most benign goodness.
She went on to assure the King that:
considering your grace’s most high and weighty affairs at this present, fear of molesting or being troublesome unto your highness hath disuaded me as yet otherwise to sue unto your grace than alonely by these my most humble letters, until your grace’s said affairs shall be partly overpast. Most humbly beseeching your majesty in the mean season mercifully to accept this my most obedient suit, and to extend your accustomed pity and gracious goodness towards my said poor husband and me, who never hath, nor, God willing, never shall offend your majesty, but continually pray for the prosperous estate of the same long time to remain and continue.
This letter makes a lie of the affection that Elizabeth had formerly expressed towards Cromwell. No longer her ‘good lord and father’, he was now the perpetrator of ‘heinous trespasses’, ‘grievous offences’ and ‘detestable’ crimes.3 She may have been persuaded to write it by her brother, Edward Seymour, or Henry himself may have demanded it. Gregory can hardly have approved of his wife’s apparent disloyalty, but Cromwell himself might have been more understanding. His daughter-in-law had, after all, merely demonstrated the same pragmatism that had sustained him throughout his career.
On 24 July, four days before his execution was due to take place, Cromwell penned his last surviving letter. It was not a poignant farewell to his family or friends, but a justification to the Privy Council of his actions with regard to the seizure of booty from the governor of Picardy’s ships. It was thanks to Francis I that this useful additional charge had been added at the last minute. He had written to Henry VIII after Cromwell’s arrest, claiming that the minister had diverted the booty to his own profit. Cromwell emphatically denied any wrongdoing: ‘I answer to god I never barre Favour in the matyer otherwise thenne to Justyce,’ and called upon Norfolk, Gardiner and others who had been involved in the matter to testify to his actions. ‘That ever I hade any partte of that pryse or that I wer promyssyd Any part theroff my lordes assure yoursellfes I was not as god shall and may helpe me.’4 That the council had raised this petty dispute at such a time was probably intended to blacken Cromwell’s character still further, so that the king’s subjects and his international allies should be left in no doubt as to the fallen minister’s guilt. It was a callous, final blow to what little morale he had left.
The Spanish Chronicle claims that on 27 July Cranmer and Seymour were ordered to visit Cromwell in the Tower and inform him that he was to die the next day. With typical brutality, Seymour pronounced: ‘I am sure it is God’s will that you should live no longer. It seems you have learnt well from the Cardinal.’ But the prisoner was not to be provoked. Having lived under the shadow of the axe for seven long weeks, Cromwell’s terror had given way to a calm acceptance. He was observed to have ‘remained very pensive all that night’. Perhaps he had been told, at the last, that his sentence had been commuted from the horrors of the traitor’s death to the swifter beheading. Marillac reported: ‘Grace was made to him upon the method of his death, for his condemnation was to a more painful and ignominious penalty.’ But this was hardly likely to have brought him much comfort. More likely is that Cromwell had at last relinquished any hopes of persuading his royal master to relent. With the loss of hope often comes a strange sort of relief. Not so for his fellow prisoner, Lord Hungerford, who ‘seemed so unquiet that many judged him rather in a frenzy than otherwise’.5
When at last the hour appointed for Cromwell’s execution on 28 July came, the sheriffs of London were ordered to escort him from his lodgings to the scaffold. It was recorded that ‘he was brought forth with a thousand halberdiers, as a revolt was feared; and if all those who formerly wore his livery and called themselves his servants had been there, they might easily have raised the city, so beloved was he by the common people.’ In the event, no such catastrophe occurred. It was with great composure that Cromwell mounted the scaffold and prepared to deliver a short speech to the assembled crowds. Among them was the seasoned courtier Thomas Wyatt, who was in great distress. According to the Spanish Chronicle, Cromwell addressed his long-standing protégé with these words of comfort: ‘Oh, Wyatt, do not weep, for if I were no more guilty than thou wert when they took thee, I should not be in this pass.’6
If this was an acceptance of his guilt, Cromwell was apparently referring only to his political activities. In the speech he now gave to the onlookers, and which was subsequently printed and widely circulated, he began: ‘Good people, I beseech you pray to God for me.’ Then, seeing ‘a great many courtiers’ present, he addressed them:
Gentlemen, you should all take warning from me, who was, as you know, from a poor man made by the King into a great gentleman, and I, not contented with that, nor with having the kingdom at my orders, presumed to a still higher state, and my pride has brought its punishment. I confess I am justly condemned, and I urge you, gentlemen, study to preserve the good you possess, and never let greed or pride prevail in you. Serve your King, who is one of the best in the world, and one who knows best how to reward his vassals.7
No matter how greatly his former colleagues and rivals triumphed to see his downfall, they must have shuddered at this salutary warning. The fickle favour of their king meant that they might one day find themselves surveying the crowds from Cromwell’s vantage point, not their own.
Cromwell continued his speech in the traditional fashion, accepting the justice of his fate: ‘I am come hether to dye, and not to purge my self, as maie happen, some thynke that I will, for if I should so do, I wer a very wretche and miser: I am by the Lawe condempned to die, and thanke my lorde God that hath appointed me this deathe, for myne offence: For sithence the tyme that I haue had yeres of discrecion, I have liued a synner, and offended my Lorde God, for the whiche I ask hym hartely forgeuenes.’ It was entirely customary for condemned traitors to accept the justice of their fate in order to save those whom they left behind. The fact that Cromwell had been at such pains to persuade Henry to look benevolently on his son makes it likely that this was his intention. Moreover, later in the speech he declared: ‘I hartely desire you to praie for the Kynges grace, that he maie long liue with you, in healthe and prosperitie. And after him that his sonne prince Edward, that goodly ympe, maie long reigne ouer you.’ This reference to the prince may have been intended by Cromwell as another reminder to Henry that his son was the nephew by marriage of Gregory Cromwell.
The prisoner went on to reflect upon his life, and the great fortune to which he had risen: ‘And it is not unknowne to many of you, that I haue been a great traueler in this worlde, and beyng but of a base degree, was called to high estate, and sithens the tyme I came thereunto, I haue offended my prince, for the whiche I aske hym hartely forgeuenes, and beseche you all to praie to God with me, that he will forgeue me. O father forgeue me.’ This reference to his humble origins was a masterstroke: he knew that it had sparked much of the resentment against him, both among his fellow councillors and ordinary subjects alike. Yet it had not, of course, been something that could be included in the myriad charges against him: low birth was not a crime. By making such open reference to it, and pretending to share his adversaries’ disgust that someone so lowly could have risen so high, Cromwell sought to win sympathy from the assembled crowds, many of whom would have been drawn from the lower classes.
The condemned man then turned to the matter of religion.
I praie you that be here, to beare me record, I die in the Catholicke faithe, not doubtyng in any article of my faith, no nor doubting in any Sacrament of the Churche. Many hath sclaundered me, and reported that I haue been a bearer, of suche as hath mainteigned euill opinions, whiche is vntrue, but I confesse that like as God by his holy spirite, doth instructe vs in the truthe, so the deuill is redy to seduce vs, and I haue been seduced: but beare me witnes that I dye in the Catholicke faithe of the holy Churche . . . And once again I desire you to pray for me, that so long as life remaigneth in this fleshe, I wauer nothyng in my faithe.’8
Cromwell’s avowal that he died in the ‘Catholicke faith’ has been taken as an utter denial of his religious reforms. Indeed, it has been speculated that it had been written by others and ‘forced upon Cromwell’s dying lips’.9 Another possibility is that the printed version of the speech, contained within Hall’s Chronicle, did not faithfully record what Cromwell said. On 11 September Cardinal Pole confided to an Italian associate that he feared he was ‘wrong in writing of Cromwell’s coming to his senses, for his last words as printed do not give the same impression as the narrative of those who told of his end and last words.’ Pole concluded: ‘The judgment of men belongs to Christ, who knows the hidden things of the heart.’10 In fact, the speech that was recorded by Holinshed, Hall and Foxe, with a high degree of correlation between them, has all the hallmarks of Cromwell’s powers of reason and oration, and there is little reason to doubt its accuracy. It was a brilliantly ambiguous statement that enabled Cromwell apparently to conform to the traditional Catholic faith that his royal master now espoused, while upholding his personal reformist stance. It must be remembered that Cromwell had not aimed at supplanting Catholicism, but Roman Catholicism. Ridding England of papal authority had been necessary in order to secure Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and thereby further Cromwell’s own political career. Dissolving the monasteries, meanwhile, had aimed at least as much to swell the royal coffers as to root out corruption and restore the purity of the religious orders.
Cromwell may have personally harboured reformist views and planned to introduce evangelical ideas into England, but by the time of his arrest he had done nothing more than prepare the groundwork. In his final speech, he was reiterating the fact that he had remained a good Catholic, like his sovereign. He also denied the accusation that his enemies had tried to pin on him at the last, namely that he had joined the sacramentaries – a sect reviled by Catholics and reformists alike. By insisting that he did not doubt ‘in any sacrament of the Church’, he was facing this charge head-on. Meanwhile, the inclusion of phrases such as ‘not doubting in any Article of my Faith’ and, most tellingly, ‘I waver nothing in my Faith’, demonstrate that Cromwell had far from relinquished his personal beliefs as he faced his final moments. In all, it was a speech worthy of England’s most successful lawyer. He had said nothing that could bring down on him the censure of his king, but neither had he made himself a hypocrite by undermining everything he had spent the past decade striving for.
In acknowledging the justice of his fate and thus paying one final compliment to his royal master, Cromwell had completed the same performance as his late adversary, Anne Boleyn, four years earlier. Did he spare a thought for her, for Thomas More, and the others whom he had helped send to the block, as he now faced the same fate? When he knelt in prayer, though, it was more for his own soul than for theirs.
The chronicler Edward Hall describes how Cromwell ‘made his praier, which was long, but not so long as both Godly and learned, and after committed his soule into the handes of God’.11 The martyrologist John Foxe provides a full transcript of it. If this is accurate, then the condemned reformer’s final words were full of remorse at a life filled with sin and wickedness. However, it is suspiciously devout, and the turn of phrase does not tally with that of Cromwell’s final speech. The fact that it is only recorded in Foxe’s work gives further room to doubt its authenticity. It may have been a convenient way for the author to convince his readers that Cromwell died a true martyr.
‘I wretched sinner do submit my self wholly unto thy most blessed will,’ Foxe’s account began. ‘Willingly now I leave this frail and wicked flesh, in sure hope that thou wilt in better wise restore it to me again at the last day in the resurrection of the just . . . I have no merits nor good works which I may alledge before thee. Of sins and evil works (alas) I see a great heap . . . Let thy Blood cleanse and wash away the spots and fullness of my sins. Let thy righteousness hide and cover my unrighteousness.’ According to Foxe, the last words that Cromwell spoke in prayer – and in life – were thus: ‘Finally, that the weakness of my flesh be not overcome with the fear of death. Grant me, merciful Saviour, that when death hath shut up the eyes of my Body, yet the eyes of my Soul may still behold and look upon thee, and when death hath taken away the use of my Tongue, yet my heart may cry and say unto thee, Lord into thy hands I commend my Soul, Lord Jesus receive my spirit, Amen.’12
‘And thus,’ says Foxe, ‘his Prayer made, after he had godly and lovingly exorted them that were about him on the Scaffold, he quietly committed his Soul into the hands of God.’ Turning to the headsman, whom he saw standing ready, he said: ‘Pray, if possible, cut off the head with one blow, so that I may not suffer much.’13 Cromwell then placed his head on the block. He might have wished that his royal master had extended the same privilege to him as to Anne Boleyn. His executioner, a man named Gurrea, was no skilled swordsman from France, but ‘a ragged and boocherly myser, whiche very ungoodly perfourmed the Office’. The crowds looked on in horror as the king’s former chief minister ‘so paciently suffered the stroke of the axe’.14 One account makes the unlikely claim that two executioners hacked away at Cromwell’s neck and head ‘for nearly half an hour’.15 Had Norfolk, in a final act of cruelty, arranged for an inexperienced axeman to behead his old rival, or made sure that someone got him drunk first? Given the number of high-profile traitors who were executed on the king’s orders, there would have been a host of expert axemen well trained for the task. That Cromwell’s execution should be so botched was surely more than just bad luck.
After at least three blows of the axe, Cromwell’s head was at last severed from his body and held aloft to those who still had the stomach to look. What was left of it was then set on a spike on London Bridge, in a traditional warning to any would-be traitors. After it had been displayed there for the requisite period of time, it was buried with Cromwell’s body beneath the floor of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. In his will of 1529, Cromwell had meekly stated: ‘Whan so ever I shall departe this present lif, I bequethe my bodie to be buryed where it shall please god to ordeyn me to die,’ adding that his funeral should be performed ‘without any erthelye pompe’. Ironically, both these wishes were carried out – but surely not in the way that Cromwell had envisaged more than a decade before.16
If they had been shocked at the manner of his dispatch, few regretted Cromwell’s passing. As the Spanish Chronicle observed: ‘And so ended this Cromwell, who had better never have been born.’ The Roman Catholic powers of Europe rejoiced at his demise. Charles V’s chief secretary in Madrid reported just two days after the execution that he had heard ‘from England the news is that the King of that country has caused Cremuel, his great favourite, to be beheaded; the reason being, as it is understood, that he tried to persuade him to become a Lutheran. May this be the means of recalling the King to a sense of duty.’ Francesco Contarini added his voice to the chorus of derision, observing that Cromwell had ‘made a better end than the evil, of which he had been in great part the cause, deserved’.17
The contemporary chronicler Edward Hall, Cromwell’s old friend, provides what is perhaps the most balanced account of the popular reaction to his death:
Many lamented, but mo[re] reioysed, and specially suche, as either had been religious men, or fauored religious persones, for thei banqueted, and triumphed together that night, many wisshyng that that daie had been seuen yere before . . . Other who knewe nothyng but truth by hym, bothe lamented hym, and hartely praied for hym: But this is true that of certain of the Clergie he was detestably hated, & specialy of suche as had borne swynge, and by his meanes was put from it, for in dede he was a man, that in all of his doynges, semed not to fauor any kynde of Popery, nor could not abide the snoffyng pride of some prelates, whiche undoubtedly whatsoeuer els was the cause of his death, did shorten his life, and procured the ende that he was brought unto.18
A ‘Ballad on Thomas Cromwell’ was published shortly after his death, heralding the death of ‘that false traitor’. But this was swiftly followed by several rebuttals, such as ‘A Ballad Against Malicious Slanderers’, all of which were generally sympathetic to the fallen minister. The original ballad may have been penned or sponsored by the authorities, but the rest were the work of ordinary citizens. It was said that only the ‘common people’ of London, who had held Cromwell so ‘beloved’, were grieved by his death.19 Certainly he had been a great friend to the poor throughout his career, and had always taken care to listen to the grievances of the king’s ordinary subjects.
But there were others who felt a genuine and abiding grief at Cromwell’s passing. The records do not reveal whether Gregory Cromwell was present at his father’s execution, or whether he petitioned the king for permission to bury him under the floor of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower, as the family of Sir Thomas More had. Although no doubt deeply distraught at the loss of his beloved father, Gregory maintained his silence in the days after the execution. By contrast, his cousin Richard was so grief-stricken that he went about in open mourning. To show such respect to a convicted traitor was not just a sign of how much Richard had loved and revered his uncle, but of how courageous he was. Henry VIII had a dangerously low tolerance for even so much as hearing the name of a former favourite whispered at court after they had fallen from grace. He had not even been able to bear the sight of his younger daughter, Elizabeth, in the wake of Anne Boleyn’s fall because she had reminded him too much of her mother.
Cromwell’s former secretary Ralph Sadler also remained loyal to him. He had been a member of Cromwell’s household since he was a boy, and had served him faithfully ever since. Among the various signs of how high Sadler had esteemed his master was that he had invited Cromwell to be godfather to his first two sons. After Cromwell’s death, Sadler acquired Holbein’s famous portrait of his former master and kept it hidden away safely during the remaining years of Henry’s reign. If it had not been for his quick thinking, the painting would almost certainly have been destroyed and we would have had no accurate portrayal of the man who had once been the most powerful in England.
Cromwell was also mourned by those men – admittedly few in number by the time of his death – with whom he had struck up a friendship during his years at court. Principal among them was the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had narrowly escaped conviction and execution during the scandal of Anne Boleyn’s fall, thanks to Cromwell’s intervention. Wyatt wrote a poem lamenting the loss of his patron and friend:
The pillar perish’d is whereto I leant,
The strongest stay of my unquiet mind;
The like of it no man again can find,
From east to west still seeking though he went,
To mine unhap. For hap away hath rent
Of all my joy the very bark and rind:
And I, alas, by chance am thus assign’d
Daily to mourn, till death do it relent.
But since that thus it is by destiny,
What can I more but have a woful heart;
My pen in plaint, my voice in careful cry,
My mind in woe, my body full of smart;
And I myself, myself always to hate,
Till dreadful death do ease my doleful state.
By contrast, nobody seemed less troubled by Cromwell’s death than the man who had raised him to greatness. Far from keeping a respectfully low profile to mark the passing of his former minister and confidant, King Henry chose the very same day of Cromwell’s execution for his wedding to Katherine Howard. His eyes were now firmly set on the future, not the past.