EARLY IN CROMWELL’S career in Wolsey’s household, John Foxe had remarked: ‘He seemed more mete for the king then for the Cardinal.’1 Cromwell’s rapid rise to power after his arrival at court in November 1529 certainly bears this out. Within the space of just one year, he was well on his way to replacing the fallen cardinal as chief minister to Henry VIII.
Contemporaries were quick to draw comparisons between these two low-born men. Eustace Chapuys reported on a conversation he had had with Cromwell, during which he had remarked: ‘I had often regretted he [Cromwell] did not come under his master’s knowledge and favour at the same time as the Cardinal, for being, as he was, a more able and talented man than the latter, and there being now so many opportunities to gain credit and power, he might undoubtedly have become a greater man than the Cardinal, while the King’s affairs would have gone on much better … I told him that I considered the King, his master, very lucky in possessing such a man as himself under present circumstances and in these troubled times.’2
It is interesting to speculate whether the rise of two men of such humble origins as Cromwell and Wolsey in Henry’s service was more than a coincidence. Did the king consciously choose them because of their backgrounds, rather than in spite of them? Henry had already shown himself to be comfortable around low-born men in his private domain, perhaps because of his deep-seated insecurity as a king with tainted royal blood. The same insecurity could have motivated him to appoint advisers whom he could trust not to conspire for his throne by virtue of the fact that there was not one drop of royal blood in their veins. Perhaps, too, there was an understanding between Henry and the men he promoted: they knew that just as he had raised them, so might he destroy them. Although this understanding was for the most part unspoken, the king did remind men such as Cromwell of it whenever he judged they had forgotten their place.
But there were also more positive reasons why Henry favoured Cromwell and Wolsey. Both men boasted significant skills that their noble colleagues lacked and benefited from a range of practical experience that proved useful in their royal service. They were also extremely industrious and had a staggering capacity for hard work – something that could not be said of most noble courtiers, whose positions had come to them by right. That the two men had even aspired to a career in the king’s service proves that they had considerable vision and ambition. This same ambition was the driving force for both men once they had gained a foothold in Henry’s service; it gave them the energy and motivation to continue striving for ever greater advancement, which in turn gave them an edge over their more complacent rivals.
Perhaps there was something here that Henry recognised in himself: as merely the spare heir for the first eleven years of his life, he too had been the rank outsider. And even though his rule was now uncontested, he never enjoyed the luxury of complacency. He was forever trying to prove himself through his feats of arms and displays of kingly magnificence. This formed a sharp contrast to the nobles with whom he was surrounded, whose natural sense of entitlement was irksome to Henry. It is to his credit that he overturned centuries of royal tradition and risked the scorn of his international rivals by making his court a meritocracy, which opened the way for men of genuine talent such as Cromwell and Wolsey.
Cromwell might have been a convenient replacement for Wolsey, but there was a significant difference in his relationship with the king. While Henry, in his younger days, had been content to leave even the weightiest of business to the cardinal, it was now clear that he intended to exercise a much tighter control. Partly this was because Henry no longer spent the majority of his time hunting and pursuing the other pleasurable pastimes of his youth, but it was also because Wolsey’s failure to secure an annulment had forced him to play a more active role. ‘I do not choose any one to have it in his power to command me, nor will I ever suffer it,’ he told the Venetian ambassador.3 It was a decisive moment for Henry in his relationship with the men who served him: never again would he be prepared to cede authority to the same extent as he had with Wolsey. He made it known that ‘he had determined to take the management of his own affairs and had appointed several councillors’.4
Cromwell realised this and was always careful to let Henry decide upon matters – or at least to make him believe that he had. As he ruefully remarked to Chapuys: ‘The king, my master, is a great king, but very fond of having things his own way.’5 Towards the end of Cromwell’s career, the French ambassador would reflect that the minister had been ‘very assiduous in affairs … he does nothing without first consulting the King’.6 The trouble was, Henry was far from consistent, and his actions did not always, or even often, derive from a clear political strategy. His capricious nature would become ever more prominent in the years to come, which made the task of anticipating the royal will fraught with danger. Moreover, it was not unusual for the king to change his mind without warning, and to lash out at those who had begun to enact what they believed was his final decision. This was the volatile and potentially deadly environment into which Cromwell now stepped.
It is not clear exactly when Thomas Cromwell formally entered the king’s service. As early as May 1530, Henry’s daughter Mary had sought his intercession with the king, assuring him: ‘I am advertised that all such men shall first resort unto you to know the king my father’s pleasure.’7 In August, his former patron Wolsey had referred to his ‘opportunities of access to the King’s presence’, which implies that Cromwell was already in a position of some influence.8
Although they had been close allies, Wolsey’s death accelerated his protégé’s rise to power. In the closing weeks of 1530, Cromwell was appointed a member of the council. This was an astonishing promotion for a man who had only been at court for little over a year, and contemporaries were quick to speculate about what lay behind it. Chapuys claimed that the diplomat and politician Sir John Wallop had levelled so many vicious insults and threats at Cromwell upon Wolsey’s death that he had sought the king’s protection. In the private audience that followed, so the story goes, Cromwell addressed Henry ‘in such flattering terms and eloquent language’ and promised to make him the richest king in the world. As a result, ‘the king at once took him into his service and made him councillor, though his appointment was kept secret for four months’.9 This theory is propounded by other sources, notably the Spanish Chronicle, which concurs that ‘Cromwell was always inventing means whereby the King might be enriched and the crown aggrandized.’10
John Foxe tells a different version. He claims that Cromwell had been quietly gathering information against the bishops of the kingdom, proving that they owed a greater allegiance to the Pope than to their own king. When he had amassed enough evidence, Cromwell apparently sought an audience with Henry, but the latter was reluctant to grant it because the lawyer had been slandered ‘by certain in authority about the king, for his rude manner and homely [unpleasant] dealing in defacing the monks’ houses and in handling of their altars’. Sir John Russell, whose life (Foxe claims) had been saved by Cromwell several years earlier, eventually intervened and Cromwell was admitted to the royal presence. As soon as he had heard the lawyer’s revelations, Henry sent him to the convocation house so that he might confront the prelates in the king’s name. ‘From that time forward Cromwell began to be better known and dearer unto the king,’ Foxe concludes.11
These accounts are credible to an extent, but probably owe more to the wisdom of hindsight than the reality of the situation when Henry first met Cromwell. It is entirely possible that Cromwell used the prospect of financial gain to win favour with Henry, and that he stoked the king’s resentment against his bishops, but his appeal was due to more than that. Although the king was, as the French ambassador Marillac described him, ‘so covetous that all the riches in the world would not satisfy him’, he was not so gullible that he could be dazzled by such promises held out to him by a man he hardly knew.12 Neither does Chapuys’ later claim that he promoted Cromwell on a sudden whim explain why the king relied on him ever more during the years that followed.
Cromwell was a man of great personal charisma, as well as ability, and had such a sharp wit that even his enemies could not help laughing at his humorous asides. He was also a man of voracious intellect, and since returning from the Continent he had built up a library so impressive that even the likes of Edmund Bonner, Wolsey’s former chaplain and future Bishop of London, sought to borrow from it. Far from being cowed by authority, Cromwell had a natural irreverence and was not afraid to poke fun at or criticise even the highest-ranking members of the court.
Cromwell’s success also derived from his skill at finding out men’s desires – and making it his business to satisfy them. In 1517, he had accepted a commission from a church in Boston, Lincolnshire, to travel to Rome in order to secure a renewal of their papal grant to sell indulgences. Rather than joining the long line of supplicants for Pope Leo’s favour, Cromwell had first gone to the trouble of ascertaining that the pontiff’s greatest pleasures included hunting and sweet delicacies. He had promptly made his way to a forest where he knew the Pope would be hunting, and when Leo came riding by he attracted his attention by arranging the performance of an English ‘three man’s song’ and presented him with a selection of sweetmeats and jellies ‘such as Kings and Princes only, said he, in the Realm of England use to feed upon’.13 The Pope was surprised and delighted in equal measure, and immediately granted all of Cromwell’s requests.
By the end of 1530, Cromwell had been around Henry long enough to judge that he would respond well to a similar approach. The king’s chief desire was well known to the entire court and kingdom: to set aside Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Cromwell had already started work in trying to achieve this, but he rightly judged that it was not Henry’s sole desire. A vain and indulged king, he was always spending lavishly in order to reinforce his magnificence, and thereby his authority. To maintain this lifestyle without bankrupting his kingdom, Henry desperately needed to swell the royal coffers. Cromwell’s pledge to make him rich was therefore extremely well judged. From now on, he enjoyed increasingly privileged access to the king, and even attended him alone – a sure sign of the highest possible favour. John Foxe was not exaggerating when he described Cromwell as ‘the most secret and dear counsellor unto the king’.14
Even though he was the lowest-ranking member of the council, Cromwell did not display any sense of inferiority. Bolstered by his favour with the king, as well as his natural irreverence, he was quick to voice his opinions. The Spanish Chronicle claimed that ‘always … he was the first to speak’ in council meetings. Quick-witted and clear-sighted, he had no patience for the long debates that were a feature of the gatherings. On one occasion, he interrupted: ‘Enough of that, and let us go to business.’15 It is easy to imagine how irksome this opinionated and outspoken newcomer was to the more established members, notably the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the aged Archbishop Warham. They hated the fact that no sooner had they got rid of one low-born upstart than he had immediately been replaced by another. George Cavendish wryly observed:
With royal eagles a kite may not fly;
Although a jay may chatter in a golden cage,
Yet will the eagles disdain his parentage.16
Foremost among these ‘eagles’ was Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who soon emerged as the chief challenger to Cromwell’s authority. He had been quick to capitalise upon Wolsey’s fall, as the Venetian ambassador reported in November 1530: ‘[The king] makes use of him in all negotiations more than any other person … and every employment devolves to him.’17 Even Suffolk could not challenge his authority. Henry had made his old friend President of the Council in February 1530, but he attended council meetings so irregularly that this office lapsed after only a few months. This was at least partly due to Suffolk’s private opposition to the annulment. Although he had been happy to ally himself to the Boleyns in order to get rid of Wolsey, he sympathised with Queen Catherine and, as a religious conservative, was opposed to the idea of separating England from Rome. Not wishing to risk his royal master’s ire, though, he wisely distanced himself from political life as much as possible, no doubt hoping the storm would soon blow itself out.
But Norfolk was not lacking other allies. Embittered by Cromwell’s rise, Stephen Gardiner soon threw in his lot with the duke. He had confidently expected the king to enhance his authority as secretary so that he might aspire to become chief minister, but Cromwell seemed to have snatched this prospect from under his nose and Gardiner despised him for it. The two men engaged in a number of verbal and written spats, but Cromwell always maintained an air of superiority, mixed with vague amusement. On one occasion, he upbraided Gardiner: ‘Your said letters [were] not so friendly conceived, as I think my merits towards you have deserved.’18
The rivalry between the king’s men was now the fiercest that it had ever been. For all that he loved a convivial court, Henry was apparently content to let his advisers battle against each other, perhaps judging that for as long as they were intent upon each other’s destruction, they would not plot against him. But before long, he too seemed to have been infected by the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia. Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, soon learned this to his cost. His royal blood inspired his enemies to spread rumours that he had his eyes on the throne. Word reached the king of talk among Courtenay’s affinity in Devon and Cornwall that the marquess was heir apparent to the throne. Much as he loved Courtenay, Henry did not hesitate to have him thrown out of the privy chamber. His cousin was justifiably aggrieved because he was almost certainly innocent of any wrongdoing. The source of the rumours was a disgruntled Cornishman who accused Courtenay of unlawful retaining. But this was an act of revenge for having lost out in a land dispute with Courtenay’s father-in-law after the marquess had intervened.
The level of Cromwell’s involvement in Courtenay’s disgrace is not clear, but there was no love lost between the two men, who were as different in ideology as they were in blood. Courtenay was firmly espoused to the old religion and knew that this rising star in Henry’s court had reformist ideas that threatened to overturn all of that. But, for now, he found himself out in the cold and would have to fight to regain his place in Henry’s trust.
In the battle for influence with the king that raged among those men who remained, Cromwell enjoyed a distinct advantage: he had learned from Wolsey’s example. Like the late cardinal, he strove to make himself as indispensable as possible to the king. Having built up experience in a wide range of disciplines – from law and land ownership to trade and diplomacy – Cromwell soon proved himself a true polymath. Among a myriad of other tasks, he managed the sale and receipt of royal land, supervised building works at the Tower of London and Westminster, and decided the fate of prisoners and felons who were brought before him.
An indication of Cromwell’s increasing pre-eminence came in January 1531, when a new parliament opened for business. Although it had been little more than a year since his first entry into the Commons, Cromwell now clearly held sway. By the end of the session in March, twenty-nine bills had reached the statute book, most of which had been instigated by him. By the summer, news had reached as far as Derbyshire that ‘one Mr Cromwell penned certain matters in the Parliament house, which no man gainsaid’.19
But there was one legal matter above all others that Henry wished Cromwell to focus his efforts upon: the annulment. Cardinal Pole claimed that Cromwell had first planted in Henry’s mind the idea of a break with Rome, and that he went on to orchestrate the whole affair. However, there is little evidence to corroborate this. Rather, during the early days of his service to the king, Cromwell appeared to be simply acting as Henry’s agent and draftsman on matters relating to the divorce, working behind the scenes to carry out a policy that had been formulated elsewhere. It is likely that Cromwell soon began to play a more proactive role in proceedings, however, and the fact that he suddenly ‘burst into prominence’ in the matter suggests that he had been preparing the groundwork for some time.20 He brought a much-needed fresh insight to a tired, protracted campaign, and offered his royal master a new glimmer of hope that it might soon reach a successful conclusion.
It is a sign of Cromwell’s perceived influence with the king that he was soon besieged by a bewildering number of requests for assistance. Some of the highest-ranking men at court began to seek his help, including Henry’s closest friend and brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and the ageing Henry Bourchier, second Earl of Essex, who had served both Henry and his father in various official capacities. It was anathema to these blue-blooded courtiers to go cap in hand to the son of a blacksmith. They would never have done so if they had not been convinced of his power.
Always quick to spot potential among the men who served him, Henry began to heap further promotions on his new favourite. Early in 1531, Cromwell was appointed to act as receiver-general and supervisor of the college lands that had been acquired from the late cardinal. He was officially confirmed in this position a year later, on 9 January 1532. His associates – even those with a tenuous link to him – were quick to seek his favour. Later that year, Wolsey’s illegitimate son Thomas Winter wrote a begging letter to Cromwell, assuring him: ‘All my hope is in you. You are now placed in that position which I and all your friends have long wished for and you have attained that dignity that you can serve them as you please.’21 By contrast, the Duke of Norfolk, for whom the blacksmith boy’s promotion was galling, did his best to put Cromwell firmly in his place. Referring to the arrangements for the forthcoming ennoblement of his niece, he sent the following peremptory note: ‘I wrote to you that you should provide crimson velvet for three countesses. The king’s pleasure now is that no robes of estate shall be now made but only for my wife. I send you the pattern.’22
But there was little Norfolk could do to check his rival’s seemingly inexorable rise in the king’s favour. The greatest honour of Cromwell’s royal service came on 29 September 1531, when he was appointed to the inner ring of the council. This put him directly alongside the likes of Suffolk, Norfolk and the other high-ranking members. Cromwell was the only commoner, but Henry gave him wider-reaching powers than many of his colleagues. They included overseeing criminal prosecution, customs duties and payments due to the king, as well as drafting parliamentary legislation on a raft of different issues. The latter role enabled Cromwell to gain influence over elections to the Commons, which enhanced his influence still further. He also took control of the king’s legal affairs, working closely with his ally Thomas Audley, who had been appointed king’s serjeant that year. By April 1533, Chapuys, that faithful weathervane of the Tudor court, was reporting to his master that Cromwell had supplanted Norfolk as the man whose favour needed to be cultivated: ‘Cromwell informs me now of all court affairs and is the man who enjoys most credit with the king.’23
Like Cromwell, Audley’s background was in law, and he had been steadily rising through the ranks since 1523. A skilful and persuasive orator, he had made his mark in parliament that year by speaking on behalf of Wolsey when Thomas More had launched an attack on the cardinal’s tax demands. This had brought him to the attention of both Wolsey and the king, and it was probably the former who had arranged for him to be rewarded with a succession of honours and offices. In July 1525, he had been appointed to the king’s council in the marches of Wales, and the following year he had been made attorney-general in the duchy of Lancaster. By March 1527, he was a member of Wolsey’s household, and in July he entered Henry’s privy chamber as a groom. When his patron fell from grace in 1529, it was rumoured that Audley had his eyes on the lord chancellorship, but he was thwarted by his rival More.
Undeterred, Audley continued to seek new preferments. Shortly after Wolsey had been thrown out of court, he was named speaker of the Commons. This was said to be at Henry’s own instigation: clearly he was impressed by this able and eloquent administrator. Audley gained further renown during the so-called Reformation Parliament, which began in 1529. Working in close partnership with Cromwell, he helped to steer through a raft of legislation during the next five years that paved the way for the annulment and break with Rome. That he had secured the king’s favour was revealed soon afterwards, when John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, accused the Commons of promoting the Church’s destruction and levied a series of insults against Audley and his associates.
Fisher was one of the most steadfast and outspoken conservatives in Henry’s realm. Although he had robbed the bishop of political power in 1513, Henry still held him in high regard as the foremost theologian of his kingdom. Horrified by the rise of Lutheranism during Henry VIII’s reign, Fisher had devoted his energies to preaching and writing against such heretical beliefs. For a time, this chimed with the king’s own views and he rewarded Fisher with a public display of his esteem, putting a companionable arm around the bishop’s shoulders. But the onset of the king’s Great Matter rapidly soured relations between the two men. Fisher became one of its fiercest opponents – and, by default, one of the queen’s most influential supporters.
Fisher’s outburst against the Commons in 1529 prompted Audley to protest to his royal master at being compared to heathens and infidels. Henry did not hesitate in ordering Fisher to moderate his comments. Undeterred, shortly afterwards the bishop likened himself to John the Baptist for his belief in the indissolubility of marriage, which by implication cast Henry VIII as Herod and Anne Boleyn as Salome. He would live to regret it.
By contrast, Audley’s religious sympathies were more obscure. His role in pushing through reform has led to the assumption that he was a committed Protestant. But his motivation was always to further the king’s wishes, and there is little evidence to suggest that he shared the increasingly radical stance of Cromwell and his allies.
The year 1531 proved decisive for Henry. Frustrated by his wife’s refusal to acknowledge that their marriage was invalid, he had Catherine thrown out of court. She was obliged to live in a succession of increasingly uncomfortable lodgings well away from London while her husband and his men put the legislation in place that would sever her ties with him forever. The king subsequently sent a delegation of his most trusted men to try to persuade the queen to submit to their master. It included the Duke of Norfolk, who had more of a vested interest in the annulment than any other. Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was also present. He had continued to throw his weight behind the king’s Great Matter since providing testimony about Catherine’s marriage to Arthur.
The more reluctant members of the entourage included the Duke of Suffolk. When his royal master demanded an account of his meeting with Catherine, the duke told him that she had shown herself willing to obey her husband in all things except those which conflicted with her allegiance to two higher powers. Henry was immediately suspicious. ‘What two powers,’ he demanded, ‘the pope and the emperor?’ ‘No Sire,’ Suffolk replied, ‘God and her conscience.’24
Sir Henry Guildford was another man who had been obliged to suppress his personal views in order to carry out the unsavoury task. Not only had he refused to testify against Catherine two years previously, he had also defended her in a council debate. Although his loyalty to the king made him fall in with his desires, he was ideologically opposed to the annulment and was heard to remark that all lawyers and theologians arguing for the Great Matter should be put in a cart, shipped to Rome, and there exposed for the charlatans they were.
Guildford also made clear his dislike of Catherine’s rival. Anne was fully aware of this, and in June 1531 she threatened him with the loss of his comptrollership when she became queen. Undaunted, Guildford retorted that he would save her the trouble and went at once to find his royal master so that he could tender his resignation. Anne was no doubt triumphant, but she had underestimated her royal suitor’s regard for his old servant. Henry refused to accept Guildford’s resignation and told him he should ignore ‘women’s talk’. He did, though, allow Guildford a leave of absence at his home in Kent.
By November, Guildford’s anger had dissipated enough for him to return to his royal master’s service. He was soon as high in the king’s favour as ever, and on 1 January 1532 he and Henry exchanged New Year gifts of great value. Guildford also held on to his post as comptroller of the household, but he was not to continue in service for much longer. By the time that he returned to court, his health was beginning to fail, and he died in May 1532 at the age of forty-three. That he knew he was dying is suggested by the fact that he had drawn up a will the same month and ordered his tomb, at Blackfriars church in London. Henry’s reaction to the news is not recorded, but given his long-standing friendship with Guildford, he can only have been greatly saddened.
Meanwhile, a feud between two of the king’s other men had erupted. Although the Duke of Suffolk had done his best to distance himself from political life so that his private disapproval of the annulment would not come to light, his erstwhile ally Norfolk was fully aware of it, and it was a growing source of friction between them. Not long after the two dukes had taken part in the delegation to the ousted queen, a fight broke out between their servants. William Pennington, a member of Suffolk’s entourage, was chased through the streets of London by a mob of Norfolk’s retainers, who pursued him into the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey and there stabbed him to death. When news reached Suffolk, he set out for the abbey at once with some of his men. But the king heard of it in the nick of time and ordered Suffolk’s men to keep the peace. Norfolk’s retainers were eventually pardoned, but although further bloodshed had been avoided, the incident had shed unwelcome light upon Suffolk’s opposition to the annulment.
Anne Boleyn’s pre-eminence was now uncontested. As soon as Catherine had vacated her royal chambers, Anne moved into them. It was heavily symbolic: she was now queen in all but name. Now that he was sure enough that Anne would not fall from favour, Cromwell began to ally himself more closely to her. Although she had no greater liking for Cromwell than he did for her, Anne recognised the benefits of their alliance and could not help but admire the minister’s exceptional ability. Sick of the tortuous negotiations that had dominated her life for the past five years, she placed her faith in Cromwell as a man who could bring them to a swift and successful conclusion. Soon, she was referring to him as ‘her man’. But for Cromwell, service to his royal master would always supersede that to any other patron – even the queen in waiting.
Anne might have been Norfolk’s niece, but there was no love lost between them. The fact that she had just allied herself to one of the duke’s deadliest enemies was therefore a positive advantage in her eyes. According to Chapuys, she saw in Cromwell a means to discredit her uncle with Henry: ‘I hear from a reliable source that day and night is the Lady working to bring about the duke of Norfolk’s disgrace with the King, whether it be owing to his having spoken too freely about her, or because Cromwell wishes to bring down the aristocracy of this kingdom, and is about to begin by him, I can not say.’25 This is the first time that the notion of a class war raging between Cromwell and the other men of Henry’s inner circle had been expressed so openly. But although it reveals the prejudices that were prevalent among its well-born members, there is no evidence that Cromwell was motivated by anything other than advancing his own cause with the king at the expense of his rivals, no matter their social position.
Cromwell soon realised the advantages of his new alliance with Anne. A favourable word from her to the king was worth more than any other voice at court, and Cromwell rapidly rose in Henry’s esteem as a result. It was not long before this was expressed in a series of further promotions. On 14 April 1532, Henry awarded Cromwell his first formal office, that of Master of the Jewels. This gave him access to the royal coffers and enabled him to administer government finance from the funds brought under his control. The seventeenth-century antiquarian John Strype opined that this appointment was a sure sign that Cromwell had ‘grown in great favour with the King’.26 Another prestigious appointment followed on 16 July, when Cromwell was made clerk of the hanaper, an office in the department of the chancery, for which he received fees and other moneys for the sealing of charters, patents, writs and the like.
Thanks to lucrative offices such as these, and the seventeen others that followed during the remainder of Cromwell’s career, he became one of the wealthiest men in England. Under his watchful eye, his private businesses were also continuing to flourish, and together with his court appointments it has been estimated that by 1537 his annual income was around £12,000 – equivalent to more than £3.5 million in today’s money. But Cromwell’s promotions brought him something arguably more valuable than monetary gain: close and regular access to the king. He now had a myriad of excuses to seek an audience with Henry. As had been proven so many times in the past, this was the greatest prize of all. Personal friendships and animosities defined Henry’s relationships with his men, as well as his decisions on matters of policy, so being in his presence as often as possible was vital to succeed – and to survive.
As Master of the Jewels, Cromwell took care to consult his royal master on the crafting of any new items, such as in September 1532, when he wrote to inform Henry of progress in making a new jewel-encrusted collar that the king had designed. He assured his master: ‘I have willed your goldsmith not to proceed to the making of anything in perfection until your gracious pleasure shall be further known, for the which purpose both he and I shall repair unto your highness on Saturday night or Sunday in the morning.’27
It was almost certainly to celebrate his appointment to this office that Cromwell commissioned Hans Holbein to paint his portrait. Holbein had recently returned to England, having found Basel no longer conducive to his advancement. The advent of the Reformation, which had swept away many of the adornments favoured by the Catholic Church, had put an abrupt end to Holbein’s religious commissions and encouraged his swift return to England. Before he left the city, though, he converted to the new Protestant faith. When he heard of this, Erasmus was furious. In a letter written in 1533, he claimed that Holbein had ‘deceived those to whom he was recommended’.28
By contrast, Holbein’s newfound faith made him all the more acceptable to Henry VIII’s chief minister, and the two men would collaborate in different aspects of the king’s service during the years ahead. Cromwell’s patronage brought Holbein ever closer to Henry, but it was the artist’s extraordinary talents that won the king’s esteem.
Cromwell could rely upon an excellent network of associates and attendants both at home and abroad in his pursuit of the king’s business. They included Thomas Wriothesley, who had continued to act as his secretary, and was now also chief clerk of the signet and Cromwell’s representative at the Privy Seal. He had proved extraordinarily diligent and shrewd, with almost as great a capacity for work as his patron. By now, the king himself was fully aware of the young man’s abilities and had employed him as an agent and messenger on various overseas commissions, most of which probably related to his campaign for an annulment. Gratified though Wriothesley was by these signs of royal favour, he was frustrated by the lack of any material rewards, and in December 1532 he wrote to Cromwell from Brussels, complaining that his ‘apparel, and play sometimes, whereat he is unhappy, have cost him above 50 crowns’.29
Meanwhile, thanks to the timely death of Archbishop Warham in August that year, Cromwell’s influence also began to spread rapidly into the ecclesiastical sphere. The aged Warham had long stood as a bastion of religious conservatism, and as such was an obstacle to the break with Rome. Now that he was out of the way for good, Henry replaced him with a theologian who had been rapidly rising through the ranks in recent years.
The son of a Nottinghamshire esquire, Thomas Cranmer was born in 1489. At the age of fourteen, he went to study at Cambridge and would spend the next twenty-six years there. It took eight years to gain his Bachelor of Arts degree, which may have been because, though not lacking in intellect, he struggled to absorb information quickly, or perhaps because of his family’s financial problems (Cranmer’s father had died in 1501). Although he would later become a figurehead for seismic religious reform, Cranmer was a plodding, cautious student who was governed by conventional views. As such, he formed a marked contrast to Cromwell and his predecessor Wolsey, both of whom Henry had selected for their obvious quick-wittedness and ability. But it would soon become clear that Cranmer had other, gentler qualities that appealed to the king.
Having completed his Master of Arts in 1515, Cranmer was well qualified for a career in the Church. But surprisingly, given his accustomed caution, he soon afterwards decided to marry. Little is known about his bride beyond her Christian name, Joan, but it seems that Cranmer had fallen deeply in love with her. That he did not simply make her his mistress reveals his honest and straightforward nature, as well as his strong sense of morality. When she died in childbirth, along with the baby, he was so grief-stricken that he was unable to speak of it even years later. Though he could not have known it at the time, this tragedy would give him a valuable empathy with the king in future years.
Soon after Joan’s death, Cranmer was readmitted to Jesus College Cambridge as a fellow – a position that had been denied him when he was married. It was a significant time to be studying theology because it coincided with the first publications of Martin Luther, the reforming German monk whose attacks on the Roman Catholic Church were gaining widespread support across the Continent. According to Cranmer’s first biographer, he considered ‘what great controversy was in matters of religion’ and ‘applied his whole study three years unto the … scriptures’.30 But for now, he remained a religious conservative and loyal papist.
By 1520, Cranmer had proceeded to holy orders, and some time after 1526 he was made doctor of divinity. At around this time, he came to the attention of Cardinal Wolsey, who invited him, as one of a group of bright young Cambridge scholars, to transfer to his new foundation at Oxford, Cardinal College. Cranmer declined, but in spring 1527 he agreed to take part in a diplomatic mission to Emperor Charles V. He made some important links with Imperial diplomats and courtiers, and so distinguished himself that upon their return Wolsey introduced him to the king. Henry took an immediate shine to the young scholar and showered him with gifts, including rings of gold and silver.
From that moment, Cranmer became a firm advocate for the annulment and was employed by Wolsey on a number of other business matters, some of which had brought him into regular contact with Thomas Cromwell. By now closely aligned in beliefs and outlook, the two men quickly formed an alliance. Cranmer’s theological expertise perfectly complemented Cromwell’s command of the law and politics, so that together they were able to build a compelling case for the annulment.
The decisive moment came two years later, largely by chance. In the summer of 1529, the plague was rife in Cambridge, so Cranmer took refuge at the Essex home of one of his kinsmen, a Mr Cressey, which lay close to the great Augustinian abbey of Waltham Holy Cross. At the same time, the king arrived on progress as a guest of the abbey, and Cranmer’s old university friend Gardiner was given accommodation at the Cresseys’, along with Edward Foxe, Bishop of Hereford. They met for supper, and inevitably their conversation turned to the king’s Great Matter. After listening to Gardiner and Foxe express their frustration about the Pope’s intransigence, Cranmer opined: ‘I do think that you go not the [most convenient] way to work, to bring the matter unto a perfect conclusion and end, especially for the satisfaction of the troubled conscience of the king’s highness. For in observing the common process and frustrating delays of this your courts, the matter will linger long enough, and peradventure will in the end come unto small effect.’31
What Cranmer proposed as an alternative was to shift the focus of the campaign from the legal case at Rome towards a general canvassing of university theologians throughout Europe. This concept was not new, but applying it to the king’s ‘great cause of matrimony’, as he termed it, opened up an appealing alternative to the long and tortuous negotiations with the papacy.32 As Cranmer pointed out, the opinion of these ‘divines’ would ‘be soon known and brought so to pass with little industry and charges, that the king’s conscience thereby may be quieted and pacified’.33 It was a brilliantly simple plan, and one that was soon put into action.
As a result of his efforts, Cranmer soon won favour with the Boleyn family and was lodged in the entourage of Anne’s father at Durham Place on the Strand. Henry, too, was quick to spot his potential, and before long had placed considerable trust in this rising star of the Church. As well as his reformist ideas, Cranmer stood out because of his calm and sanguine manner. ‘He was a man of such temperature of nature, or rather so mortified, that no manner of prosperity or adversity could alter or change his accustomed conditions,’ remarked a later sixteenth-century commentator. His quiet, self-deprecating manner was such that whenever advancement came his way, he always seemed genuinely surprised, as if he had never sought it. This formed a sharp – and perhaps, for Henry, welcome – contrast to the forceful and outspoken men surrounding him, with their endless backbiting and jockeying for position. But Cranmer’s calm exterior belied a deeply devout and passionate nature, as well as an unswerving commitment to the cause of reform. The same commentator noted that ‘privately with his secret friends he would shed forth many bitter tears, lamenting the misery and calamities of the world’.34
One of Cranmer’s closest associates was Cromwell. Recognising the formidable double act that he had in these two men, Henry ensured that all of their efforts were now focused on securing the annulment of his marriage to Catherine. While Cromwell concentrated on drawing up the legal case in London, Cranmer was appointed to a team of researchers who were drafting a theological justification for the annulment and break with Rome. The team produced two major works, the most famous of which was the Collectanea satis copiosa (‘Sufficiently abundant collections’). This was an anthology of historical texts, many of which were drawn from Arthurian legend, which proved that the king, not the Pope, had the right to exercise supreme authority over all aspects of his realm. The other work set out the biblical justification for the annulment, based upon the teachings about it being unlawful for a man to marry his brother’s wife.
Throughout this time, both Cranmer and Cromwell increasingly absorbed the evangelical ideas that were sweeping across Europe. By questioning many of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church, these helped to justify the annulment, but the two men’s espousal of them was due to genuine piety as well as political pragmatism. Cromwell’s closest friends were reformers, and his library contained numerous ‘heretical’ books that would have landed him in trouble if they had been discovered. Some of these had been supplied by his companions in the king’s service, Hans Holbein and Nicholas Kratzer, who used their contacts to secure the latest texts from the Netherlands and German states.
Cranmer’s beliefs, meanwhile, grew even more radical from 1532, when Henry appointed him ambassador to the German states, home of the Reformation. While there, he courted controversy by marrying again. This was a clear indication that Cranmer had decisively rejected the Roman Catholic religion, with its tradition of compulsory celibacy, and openly embraced the evangelical cause. But not long afterwards, he was alarmed to receive news that upon Warham’s death Henry had chosen him as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a staggering promotion, and in bestowing it Henry had bypassed the entire episcopal bench in favour of a low-ranking churchman. The leap from Archdeacon of Taunton to Archbishop of Canterbury was unprecedented. Cranmer decided to keep quiet about his marriage and, though he declared himself ‘a poor wretch and much unworthy’, accepted the summons.35 He also wrote to Cromwell, expressing his anxiety about the reaction that his appointment was bound to have caused among his fellow churchmen. ‘Ye do know what ambition and desire of promotion is in men of the Church, and what indirect means they do use and have used to obtain their purpose,’ he urged, ‘which their unreasonable desires and appetites I do trust that ye will be more ready to oppress and extinguish.’36 Cranmer took some time to embark for England, though, and did not arrive back at court until January 1533.
This new, somewhat reluctant, Archbishop of Canterbury was all too well aware what was expected of him. Henry wanted nothing less than for Cranmer to push through the annulment. Although Cranmer had worked towards this for a number of years, he seemed overawed by the task, as well as by the honour that his royal master had conferred upon him. When Nicholas Hawkins arrived to take over from Cranmer, he was aghast to discover the humble means by which his predecessor had been living. As ambassador, Cranmer was entitled to surround himself with luxury, yet as Hawkins reported, he had been dining off tin or pewter. His successor wrote at once to request some of the king’s plate for his table.
It is to Cranmer’s credit that his natural modesty had never given way to the self-seeking ambition and lust for power that had seduced most other men in Henry’s service. Yet he had received more than enough demonstrations of the king’s esteem during the preceding years to inflate his sense of self-worth. As early as the summer of 1531, a foreign visitor to court had reported that Cranmer was a close companion of the king, and that it had become Henry’s habit to discuss important matters with him in private before going public on them. Even Cranmer’s ally Cromwell, who was hardly lacking in power at the king’s hands, ruefully – and enviously – admitted: ‘You were born in a happy hour … for, do or say what you will, the king will always well take it at your hand.’37
But Cranmer’s success was due to hard work, as well as good fortune. His secretary, Ralph Morice, described the close and trusting relationship that his master developed with Henry. ‘At all times when the king’s majesty would be resolved in any doubt or question he would but send word to my lord [Cranmer] overnight, and by the next day the king should have in writing brief notes of the doctors’ minds, as well divines as lawyers, both ancient, old, and new, with a conclusion of his own mind; which he [Henry] could never get in such readiness of none, no not of all his chaplains and clergy about him, in so short a time … and so, reducing the notes of them altogether, would advertise the king more in one day than all his learned men could do in a month.’38
Cranmer’s modest, humble bearing appealed to a king who was surrounded by ambitious place-seekers. In a typical dispatch, the archbishop assured his royal master: ‘I dare nothing do, unless your grace’s pleasure be to me first known.’39 This was no false humility. Cranmer’s belief in the divine authority of kings in all spheres of life, secular as well as spiritual, was utterly unshakeable. He was also used to dealing with overbearing personalities. Morice records that Cranmer remembered his ‘tyrannical’ schoolmaster as ‘marvellous severe and cruel’.40 At an early age, therefore, he learned how to avoid angering such men, which was invaluable training for his service to Henry. A contemporary noted that he ‘always tried to please the King’.41
But the real secret of Cranmer’s success was his genuine conviction that Henry’s marriage to Catherine was invalid in the eyes of God and the law. The king was no fool: he knew that most of his other men paid lip service to the Great Matter in order to ingratiate themselves with their royal master, and feather their own nests in the process. For Henry, Cranmer therefore stood apart as the only man who understood him, and in whom he could confide anything without fear that it might be twisted to an advantage other than his own.
The same unswerving dedication to the king’s will was shared by Cranmer’s ally, Cromwell. By the time of Cranmer’s appointment, Cromwell was making great strides towards the break with Rome – and in the process was fulfilling his alleged promise to make Henry a rich man. He was responsible for the bill that was drawn up for the ‘Conditional Restraint of Annates’. This was an attempt to put pressure on the Pope by ending the payments (or annates) made to Rome by senior clerics of the first year’s revenue from their benefices. The bill was passed by parliament in spring 1532 and proved a decisive step forward in the break with Rome by bringing the clergy more directly under the king’s authority. It also swelled the coffers of the royal treasury, which won Cromwell even greater approval from Henry.
Within two years the bill had raised an estimated £30,000 (equivalent to around £9.6 million), which prompted Chapuys to observe: ‘These are devices of Cromwell, who boasts that he will make his master more wealthy than all the other princes of Christendom.’42 Reginald Pole later claimed that Cromwell, inspired by Machiavelli’s Il Principe, persuaded Henry to establish himself as an amoral ruler. But both of these commentators were fiercely opposed to the reformist ideas that Cromwell espoused, and their claims were part of a bitter campaign to discredit him with the king. Although Henry had proved susceptible to manipulation, and certainly appreciated the financial gains that could be made from Cromwell’s reforms, he was proud to be ‘Fidei Defensor’ (‘Defender of the Faith’) – the title that Pope Leo X had bestowed upon him in 1521. He also had a genuine and intense piety, and would not sacrifice the Church solely for the riches that it could bring. At the heart of the matter was the invalidity of his marriage to Catherine, which Henry was now utterly convinced was offensive to God.
Nevertheless, in the eyes of those who abhorred the idea of breaking from Rome, Henry had been hoodwinked by his ‘evil advisers’. The whispering campaign against them had grown ever more vicious as a result. The previous year, a scandal had erupted when a number of Bishop Fisher’s servants had fallen violently ill and one had died. Foul play had immediately been suspected by those who supported this leading opponent of the king’s annulment, and for once the rumours had proved right. It had been discovered that poison had been added to a cauldron of porridge in the bishop’s kitchen, and a man named Richard Roose had soon been identified as the murderer. Among the many accusations that had flown about, the most outrageous was that Roose had been in the pay of the king, who was desperate to silence his outspoken opponent. Henry had been so appalled when he got wind of this that he delivered an hour-and-a-half-long speech in the House of Lords about the barbarity of the poisoning. He also instituted a new act that equated poisoning with high treason, punishable by being boiled alive. The unfortunate Roose was the first person to feel its effects.
Despite the mounting tensions, for now Cromwell could do no wrong in the eyes of his master. Spurred on by the Annates bill, Cromwell turned his attention to the Church in England, realising that there was growing resistance to his reforms. He focused his attack on the clerical abuses that he knew to be rife across the kingdom. These were now articulated in the ‘Supplication against the Ordinaries [clerics]’, which was presented to the king in March 1532. Significantly, this described Henry as ‘the only head, sovereign, lord, protector, and defender’ of the Church, and forced the Convocation of Canterbury, an assembly of bishops and clergy, to decide whether it accepted him as such.
This brought Cromwell into direct conflict with another of Henry’s men: Stephen Gardiner. Until now, the bishop had set his loyalty to the king ahead of his conservative religious views, but he was provoked into issuing a robust reply on behalf of Convocation, declaring: ‘We, your most humble servants, may not submit the execution of our charges and duty, certainly prescribed by God, to your highness’ assent.’43 He also attacked Cromwell’s methods, denouncing the ‘sinister information and importunate labours and persuasions of evil disposed persons, pretending themselves to be thereunto moved by the zeal of justice and reformation, [who] may induce right wise, sad, and constant men to suppose such things to be true, as be not so indeed’.44 This prompted Cranmer to confide to Cromwell: ‘To be plain what I think of the bishop of Winchester, I cannot persuade with myself that he so much tendereth the king’s cause as he doth his own.’45 It was a shrewd observation.
This vicious attack on Cromwell and the reformist beliefs that he espoused made Gardiner a hero to the considerable numbers of religious conservatives in England, not least his ally Norfolk. The two men had been content to further the king’s annulment as a means of bringing Anne Boleyn to power, but now that they realised it threatened to unleash a religious revolution, they were appalled. Too late, they had come to appreciate just how much groundwork Cromwell and Cranmer had been carefully laying in order to effect a seismic shift in the religious life of the kingdom. But in railing against it, Gardiner merely antagonised his royal master. Henry was so outraged that he proceeded to bully the clergy into submission. He accused them in parliament of being so submissive to the Pope ‘that they seem to be his subjects, and not ours’.46 This smacked of treason, and the clergy knew it. Four days later, Convocation reluctantly signed what has become known as the Submission of the Clergy. This acknowledged that the law of the Church would in future depend upon the consent of the king, in the same way as secular laws required his approval in parliament. Cromwell had won a significant victory over his rivals, bringing England another step closer to a break with Rome.
All of this was anathema to Sir Thomas More, who was deeply opposed to the idea of royal supremacy, as well as to the annulment. He had spent much of the previous decade hunting down heretics in England, denouncing the teachings of Luther and his followers, and publishing polemics in defence of the Roman Catholic faith. Upon his appointment to the lord chancellorship, he had confided to Erasmus that he intended to use his position to further ‘the interests of Christendom’.47 His conviction had not wavered during the years that followed, and he had written a series of long and tedious polemical tracts against heresy. In another letter to Erasmus, he urged his friend not to tolerate religious extremism: ‘I am keenly aware of the risk involved in an open-door policy towards these newfangled, erroneous sects’, he wrote. ‘Some people like to give an approving eye to novel ideas, out of superficial curiosity, and to dangerous ideas, out of devilry; and in so doing they assent to what they read, not because they believe it is true, but because they want it to be true … All my efforts are directed toward the protection of those men who do not deliberately desert the truth, but are seduced by the enticements of clever fellows.’48
Forasmuch as he desired an annulment, Henry was just as damning of such heretics as was More, and the two men had remained exceptionally close. Only once during the years of More’s ascendancy did a crack appear in their relationship. This had been prompted by the return to England in 1529 of Simon Fish, an outspoken reformer and propagandist who had recently published Supplication for the Beggars, a virulent attack on the clergy. In it, Fish warned Henry that the clergy were attempting to usurp the power of the state, and urged him to put an end to their manifold abuses. To More’s dismay, the king invited Fish to court and ‘embraced him with loving countenance’.49 He then took him out hunting and discussed theological matters with him. Fish told Henry that he feared More would take action against him, but the king gave him a ring as an assurance of his protection and instructed him to tell the Lord Chancellor not to molest him. Fish duly did so, but More refused to let the matter lie. Realising that he could not touch the heretical author directly, he found another means to harass him. Good lawyer that he was, More pointed out that the king’s protection only extended to Fish, not to his wife, who now became the target of his ire. She was only saved by the fact that she was tending her daughter, who had caught the plague, so More, fearing infection, decided to abandon his investigations.
Although he held one of the highest offices in the kingdom, from the very beginning of his term as Lord Chancellor, More was increasingly isolated from political life. He was the first holder of that office not to be de facto leader of the council, and his attendance at meetings was irregular at best. Admittedly, the legal business of Chancery and the Star Chamber provided more than enough to occupy his time, as did his vociferous campaign against heresy. But there can be little doubt that More’s stance on the king’s annulment had prompted his isolation. Henry had discussed the matter privately with him on numerous occasions, so was in no doubt of More’s opposition. But the two men had reached an agreement: More would not openly voice his criticism of the scheme, and the king would not pressure him to show public support for it. Henry assured his Lord Chancellor that if he ‘could not therein with his conscience serve him, he was content to accept his service otherwise’.50 Nevertheless, More’s refusal to help his royal master in this most pressing issue meant that he was ousted from the inner circle of councillors, all of whom were occupied with the annulment proceedings. Instead, he allied himself with churchmen and focused all of his efforts upon helping them to eradicate heresy.
But occupying such a high-profile position in government made it increasingly difficult for More to conceal his opposition to the king’s Great Matter. When in 1531 the king confirmed his intention to separate from papal jurisdiction and make himself Supreme Head of the Church in England, as Lord Chancellor More found himself in the unenviable position of having to deliver to both houses of parliament the arguments in favour of the divorce which Cranmer had begun collecting the year before.
Unable either to openly oppose or work to prevent a policy that flew in the face of all his beliefs and principles, More asked his fellow religious conservative, Norfolk, to facilitate his resignation on the grounds of ill health. Perhaps the duke refused, because More continued in office for the time being. Behind the scenes, he supported the queen’s cause so assiduously that Charles V himself wrote to thank him. Anxious not to offend his sovereign, More refused to receive the letter and also began to avoid the Imperial ambassador on the grounds that ‘He ought to abstain from everything which might provoke suspicion; and if there were no other reason, such a visitation [by the ambassador] might deprive him of the liberty which he had always used in speaking boldly in those matters which concerned … the Queen.’51
More knew that he was on borrowed time as Lord Chancellor, and when the clergy finally made their formal submission to the king, he sought an audience with Henry and offered his resignation on 16 May 1532. The king reluctantly acknowledged that the position of his long-standing favourite had become untenable and therefore let him go. The Duke of Norfolk was dispatched to York Place to receive the Great Seal from More’s hands. A few weeks later, More told Erasmus that he had resigned on health grounds, and that Norfolk and Audley had relayed this to parliament. In fact, parliament was not sitting at the time, and few would have believed his assertion in any case. In typically overblown language, Erasmus claimed that the news had quickly spread all over the world and had prompted ‘the deep sorrow of all wise and good men’.52
Thomas Audley might have hoped to step into More’s shoes, but although he was knighted and made keeper of the Great Seal four days later, the post of Lord Chancellor remained beyond his grasp for now. As for More, he had no intention of retiring into obscurity, and he would prove an even more troublesome opponent to the Great Matter as a private citizen than he had in public office. Free from the shackles of royal service, he proceeded to wage a vociferous campaign against government policy and published a series of bitter attacks on Protestant doctrine. In so doing, he established himself as a powerful figurehead for all of the religious conservatives who opposed the king’s reforms and wanted England to remain faithful to Rome. This dealt a fatal blow to More’s relationship with Henry, who now viewed him as one of the greatest obstacles to his ambitions.
By contrast, Thomas Cromwell was continuing his seemingly inexorable rise in Henry’s service. The day after Sir Thomas More’s resignation, Henry showed his favour towards Cromwell by granting him and his son Gregory the lordship of Romney in Newport, south Wales. By the end of the year, Cromwell had been given so many appointments and privileges that he controlled the entire domestic administration of England. All of Cromwell’s promotions proved lucrative, which meant that his already considerable wealth was increased still further. His household and property grew significantly as a result, and soon he employed almost as many men as the late cardinal had. But service to the king’s chief minister was no sinecure. Cromwell was by far the hardest-working member of Henry’s council and he expected his attendants to follow suit. He regularly worked well beyond midnight and was often up at four o’clock in the morning, drafting ‘remembrances’ (memoranda) and sending out letters.
Another of Wolsey’s former protégés, Sir John Welsbourne, was also enjoying a rise in Henry’s favour. Having been appointed an esquire of the body in 1528, he worked steadily to prove his loyalty, undertaking an embassy to France in 1530. He was rewarded the following year when Henry made him a gentleman of the privy chamber. He would serve in this capacity for the remainder of the reign, and his name always appears in the list of those attending the great occasions of state. Spying an opportunity, Welsbourne also made himself useful to Thomas Cromwell, who enlisted him on various errands during the 1530s, notably at Abingdon Abbey, which was dissolved in 1538. Eager though he was to curry favour with the chief minister, Welsbourne bemoaned his distance from his royal master and wrote to express his hope that he might still trust ‘in the goodness of the King to all those who are daily waiting on him’.53 The years ahead would prove that his loyalty to Henry was a good deal stronger than his allegiance to Cromwell. The king later rewarded him for his service with a knighthood, and there was never any indication that Welsbourne came close to losing his position at court again, as he had during Wolsey’s tenure.
Sir Francis Bryan also continued to enjoy the king’s favour during this turbulent time. The court records show that throughout 1532 he served in the privy chamber for six weeks in every twelve, spending the other six weeks at his country estates. He was still one of Henry’s favourite companions, and helped to take his mind off his troubles by gambling with him for high stakes at dice, cards, bowls, and a game known as ‘Pope Julius’. The accounts show that he successfully used his proximity to the king to forward the suits of his friends and associates, as well as promoting his own interests. However, when the king went to Calais with Anne Boleyn in October 1532, Bryan was replaced in the retinue by Sir Nicholas Carew. This has been taken as a sign of a rift between Henry and Bryan, but if this was the case then the latter was soon back in favour because the following year he was in France again on the king’s business.
Another man who had accompanied the king to Calais in 1532 was Henry FitzRoy. Upon Wolsey’s fall in October 1529, Henry had entrusted the Duke of Norfolk with his bastard son’s care. With the onset of plague the following summer, Henry had ordered his son back to Windsor for his protection, and Norfolk had seized the opportunity to dispatch his own son there to keep him company.
A gifted scholar, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was just three years older than FitzRoy and the two young men soon struck up a close accord. Surrey later recalled with fondness the two years that he spent ‘with a king’s son’ at Windsor ‘in greater feast then Priam’s sons of Troy’. They were the most formative years of FitzRoy’s young life, during which he matured intellectually, emotionally and physically. Surrey later reflected over ‘Our tender limbs, that yet shot up in length’. He also admitted that their regular games of tennis were disrupted whenever they ‘got sight of our dame’ and were enticed ‘by gleams of love’. Theirs was a friendship born of shared experience and ‘secret thoughts imparted with such trust’.54
In 1531, Henry gave his son Margaret Beaufort’s former residence at Collyweston in Northamptonshire as his principal seat, although FitzRoy rarely stayed there. When he accompanied the king to Calais the following year, aged 13, he was widely admired as ‘a goodly young prince full of favour and beauty’ who greatly resembled his father, which was a source of satisfaction to Henry.55 After the latter’s departure, FitzRoy and Surrey stayed behind as pledges for Henry’s treaty with Francis I, and accompanied him to France. FitzRoy was formally accepted into Francis’s privy chamber and was lodged with his son, the dauphin. Surrey’s time in France would prove a pivotal moment in his literary development, for he and FitzRoy spent time at Fontainebleau, encountering a rich array of poets and works of art from the French and Italian Renaissance.
On 25 January 1533, Henry finally married Anne Boleyn. The ceremony, which took place at Whitehall, was attended by only a handful of his courtiers, and the fact that the date and location have remained uncertain until recent years testifies to the great secrecy with which it was conducted. It seems to have been arranged by Cromwell and Cranmer, working closely with the Boleyns and their royal master himself. Although the annulment had still not been secured, Henry was unable to wait any longer. He and Anne had almost certainly started to sleep together during the visit to Calais, and she was now pregnant. Henry knew that he must legitimise their union without delay. The legal niceties to sever him from his first wife would have to follow later.
Among the guests at the wedding was a newcomer: Lord Thomas Howard, half-brother of the Duke of Norfolk and uncle of the bride. This was Howard’s first appearance at court, and little is known of his earlier life. Aged about twenty-one at the time of the wedding, he was almost forty years younger than his half-brother. His presence at such a pivotal event is an indication of how much Anne’s relatives had benefited from her rise. Also present was Thomas Heneage, who had risen steadily through the ranks to become one of the leading gentlemen of the privy chamber. A court record of April 1532 had listed the gentlemen in two groups, each headed by a noble and a commoner. The king’s groom of the stool, Henry Norris, led the latter, while Heneage and George Boleyn headed the other.
William Brereton may also have been present. One of nine sons born to the courtier and military man Sir Randolph Brereton, he had begun his court career in around 1521 and had enjoyed Wolsey’s patronage for a time. By 1524, he was a groom of the privy chamber and worked closely with Henry Norris. Although his date of birth is not recorded, Brereton was at least a year older than the king, possibly more, which set him apart from many of his fellow privy chamber servants. He had enjoyed numerous grants of land and offices from the king during his years of service, and his favour had been confirmed in 1529 when he had married the king’s second cousin, Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester. But this had invoked some jealousy at court, and Brereton’s dominance of local affairs in his native Chester established him as a potential obstacle to Cromwell’s plans. For the time being, though, the chief minister had other rivals to deal with.
The day after the wedding, Henry made Thomas Audley Lord Chancellor. The timing may have been significant. The fact that Anne Boleyn was already pregnant may have prompted her husband to appoint a man whom he could trust to be compliant in this post and speed through the annulment. Believing that his new wife carried his son and heir, Henry had a fresh impetus for a legislative break with Rome and the foundation of a separate Church of England. Now that he was in a position to secure this for his royal master, Audley had a greater platform for influence than he had ever enjoyed. He would soon exercise his newfound powers to the full.
Audley’s new position did not lead to greater intimacy with Henry, however – at least, not initially. Rather, he seems to have managed royal business when his master and Cromwell were absent, and to have acted as a conduit between the king’s council and the courts. He had little direct contact with Henry himself, but addressed any legal advice or requests for grants to Cromwell, who would then pass them on to their royal master. The tone of these dispatches is always very humble and submissive, which, although customary for those addressing the king, reflects the essentially formal nature of their relationship. So anxious did Audley appear to please the king that he has been portrayed as a sycophant. But while he certainly put off decisions until he could be sure of Henry’s mind, this speaks rather of prudence than obsequiousness. In fact, Audley, like Cromwell, was a blunt, matter-of-fact character who had no patience for the flowery language of senior court servants and once complained of being ‘accepted better as a poor, honest man before he became Chancellor’.56
Nevertheless, Audley clearly had a brilliant legal mind and was confident in asserting his professional opinion. Although the French ambassador Marillac later remarked that he ‘has the reputation of being a good seller of justice whenever he can find a buyer’, there is no evidence that the Lord Chancellor ever placed profit ahead of the due process of the law.57 Neither was he afraid to contradict the chief minister, even though he relied upon him as an intermediary with the king. The year before his appointment, he had disagreed with Cromwell and Sir William Paulet, comptroller of the household, over their method of handling one of Henry’s suits, arguing that they could take a fairer approach and still maintain ‘the king’s honour and profit’.58 Meticulous and well prepared, Audley was an excellent choice as Lord Chancellor, and Henry could rely on him to provide the best solution on even the most complex legal issues. He also became adept at reconciling the often contradictory demands of the king’s wishes with true justice. Greatly though Henry came to esteem Audley, however, it was a strictly business relationship and lacked the personal element that marked so many of his other relationships with the men who served him.
Another of the king’s recently appointed officials was being kept similarly busy. In April 1533, Archbishop Cranmer presided over the Convocation that was convened to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Desperate to claw back favour, Stephen Gardiner stood as counsel for the king himself. Chapuys had prepared Catherine’s formal protest at the court, and he also delivered a protest to Henry on behalf of the emperor. Shortly afterwards, he presented Catherine’s case to the council.
Chapuys was not alone in defending the beleaguered queen. Despite his failing health, Bishop Fisher, with whom the ambassador had been in regular communication, also attended the Convocation in April. He dissented from the majority, who had denied the Pope’s authority to dispense for Arthur’s marriage to Catherine. Shortly afterwards, he spoke out in public against the imminent annulment, and was promptly arrested. His custodian was Stephen Gardiner, who privately sympathised with his stance but kept his fellow bishop safely immured until June, by which time events had moved beyond Fisher’s control.
Chapuys and Fisher were lone voices in their defence of the embattled queen. Sir Francis Bryan was among the majority when he provided a crucial testimony of Catherine’s stubborn refusal to submit to royal authority. Thanks to such testimonies, on 23 May Henry’s marriage to Catherine was finally declared null.
A little over a week later, Anne Boleyn was crowned. Gardiner made sure to be prominent at the event, much to the disappointment of Chapuys and others who believed he was on the side of the ousted queen. Cromwell also played an active part. Henry had ordered that all men with an income of forty pounds or more should receive the order of knighthood at the event or else pay a fine. With typical alacrity, Cromwell had stepped in to administer this and ‘so politiquely handled the matter, that he raised … a great sum of money to the king’s use’.59 Hans Holbein, whose fame was spreading, was almost certainly responsible for designing one of the magnificent pageants that marked the new queen’s entrance into the city.
Although he had no great liking for Anne Boleyn, the Duke of Suffolk was also prominent at her coronation. He was obliged to walk before his master’s new wife and bear her crown into Westminster Abbey. At the banquet that followed he ‘rode often times about the hall, cheering the lords, ladies, and the Mayor and his brethren’.60 But his wife Mary, the king’s sister, spurned the occasion. She loathed Anne so much that she could not bear to be in her presence. Though Suffolk privately sympathised with her views, he would not have dared to make such a public protest, and was no doubt embarrassed that his wife had chosen to do so.
A more surprising absentee was the new queen’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. By the time Anne married Henry, the duke had come to despise her for her arrogant and ‘unqueenly’ behaviour. He also resented the fact that his position at court owed so much to his involvement with the Boleyn family. Chapuys reported that Norfolk once stormed out of Anne’s chamber in a rage, bellowing that his niece was a whore because she had treated him worse than he treated his own dogs.61 Although he had furthered his niece’s interests by supporting the king’s campaign for an annulment, he had not been privy to the secret plans that had led to her wedding. Embittered at being so excluded, and troubled by the reforms that the marriage looked set to bring in its wake, Norfolk set sail for an embassy in France shortly before the coronation.
Thomas More had also refused to attend Anne’s coronation. Upon hearing that Henry’s marriage to her had been declared valid, he had remarked: ‘God give grace … that these matters within a while be not confirmed with others.’62 When a delegation of bishops tried to persuade him to show his conformity by attending the coronation, he retorted: ‘It lieth not in my power but that they may devour me; but God being my good lord, I will provide that they shall never deflower me.’63 Henry was deeply offended by More’s failure to present himself, and from that day forward there was a growing sense that the former favourite would not long be allowed his liberty.
Henry’s new marriage placed a number of his other men in a difficult position. Although outwardly they were obliged to conform to – even celebrate – the new state of affairs, privately many lamented Catherine’s demise. This was particularly true of William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who had served as the former queen’s chamberlain since 1512. Like his peers, Mountjoy had been careful to further the king’s interests in public and had been among the signatories of the open letter to Pope Clement VII in 1530, urging Henry’s case. According to Chapuys, Mountjoy had subsequently changed from Catherine’s attendant to her captor. Shortly before the annulment was passed, he reported that Mountjoy had been ordered to stay with the beleaguered queen to prevent her escaping from England.
In July 1533, Mountjoy headed a delegation that went to persuade Catherine to submit to the consequences of the king’s new marriage and acknowledge herself as Dowager Princess. Although she had grown to trust Mountjoy, Catherine would not listen to his pleas, and he was obliged to admit defeat. Shortly afterwards, he begged to be replaced as her chamberlain. Although his loyalty to the king had dictated his actions during the previous few years, his true feelings about the annulment were revealed in a letter that he wrote to Cromwell on 10 October 1533. ‘It is not my part, nor for me this often to vex or unquiet her whom the king’s grace caused to be sworn unto and truly to serve her to my power,’ he pleaded.64
Mountjoy’s request does not seem to have been granted, but after his death the following November, no successor was appointed. During the last few months of his life, Mountjoy had resumed his former loyal service to Henry. He had apparently profited little from his long association with the king, however. In his will dated 14 October 1534, he asked patience of his creditors, considering that he had impoverished himself by providing for his son and being often called abroad in service of the king to whom he had been a ‘slender suitor’.65
For the time being, the king was too preoccupied with his new wife’s lying-in to concern himself too greatly with the opponents of his marriage. Anne Boleyn’s pregnancy had progressed without incident, and in August she made her way to Greenwich for the birth. She had promised her husband a son, and he does not seem to have considered that there might have been any other outcome. It was therefore with grave disappointment that on 7 September he learned the news that Anne had given birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Furious and humiliated, Henry immediately cancelled the celebrations that he had planned to herald the arrival of his new son. He had little choice, though, than to acknowledge the child as his heir. Cromwell duly drafted the Act of Succession, which was passed by parliament early the following year. The infant Elizabeth supplanted the king’s elder daughter Mary, who had been rendered illegitimate by the annulment of his marriage to her mother.
The new princess was christened on 10 September. Archbishop Cranmer presided over the ceremony, and among the godparents was Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter. The younger of Anne Boleyn’s uncles, Lord Thomas Howard, was also in attendance. From that time onwards, he was a regular fixture at court and joined the expanding group of Howard associates.