‘How many servants did he advance in haste (but for what virtue no man could suspect) and with the change of his fancy ruined again, no man knowing for what offence? To how many others of more desert gave he abundant flowers, from whence to gather honey and in the end of harvest burned them in the hive?’1
This damning portrayal of the king was penned by Sir Walter Raleigh, who would be the favourite of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth. Admittedly, Raleigh was writing from the Tower, where he had been incarcerated by James I – another tyrannical king, as he saw it. But his embittered view did not altogether obscure the truth of his claim. Henry’s relationships with the men who served him had long been subject to sudden, often violent change. And now, as the 1530s drew to a close, that was about to become even more apparent.
In January 1539, Henry’s chief rivals, Charles V and Francis I, forged a new alliance. Shortly afterwards, Pope Paul III reissued the bull of excommunication against the English king that had first been served after the annulment in 1533. This left Henry desperately short of allies. He was therefore prepared to look more favourably upon Cromwell’s suggestion for an alliance with Johann, Duke of Cleves, who – like Henry – had expelled papal authority from his domain. Cleves was a state of the Holy Roman Empire, but had fully embraced the religious reforms that were sweeping across other parts of Europe. The duke’s eldest daughter was married to the head of the Schmalkaldic League of Lutheran princes, so if Henry were to marry his younger daughter Anne, it would bring him a suite of powerful new allies. It would also provide a significant boost to the Reformation in England. From Cromwell’s perspective, it was therefore the very definition of a win–win situation.
The idea of a marriage between Henry and Anne of Cleves was not a new one. It had first been proposed just a few weeks after the death of Jane Seymour. The king had shown little interest, perhaps because he had heard that the lady was no great beauty, and nothing had been done to advance the scheme. But now the political climate had changed.
Cromwell reported to the English ambassador in France that his royal master was ‘indifferent’ to the question of his marriage and that he was therefore content to accept ‘any person from any part that with deliberation shall be thought meet for him’.2 But in this Cromwell was mistaken. Had he paid greater heed, he would have found ample signs that even though kings married for politics more than love, his royal master was not prepared to tie himself to just any lady, regardless of her attributes.
Having heard a number of unfavourable reports about Anne’s appearance, Henry instructed his chief minister to determine whether they were true. Cromwell duly instructed his agent Christopher Mont to ‘diligently but secretly enquire of the beauty and qualities of the lady’.3 The report that Mont provided has not survived, but Cromwell subsequently assured his master of Anne’s attractions, ‘as well for the face as for the whole body’, and also praised her virtue.4 It is telling that Henry was not prepared to take Cromwell at his word, but instead dispatched Hans Holbein to take her likeness.
Holbein was now high in Henry’s favour. He had undertaken a number of successful commissions for the king during the preceding years, notably the Whitehall mural of 1537, and a portrait of Jane Seymour shortly after she became queen. In March 1538, he had travelled to Brussels to paint another potential bride: Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan. After a three-hour sitting, he made his way back to London and showed his royal master the resulting sketch. Henry was utterly beguiled by the beautiful widow, who seemed to adopt a seductive pose. But Holbein’s efforts were in vain: when she heard of the proposal, Christina quipped that if she had two heads, she would gladly place one at the King of England’s disposal. Undeterred, not long afterwards Henry sent Holbein first to France and then to Burgundy to paint no fewer than five more ladies with whom he was considering marriage. None of these portraits survives, and the matches themselves came to nothing.
As well as painting the king’s potential wives, Holbein was also commissioned to paint his son and heir, Prince Edward. Henry planned to send the portrait to Cleves in order to show off his kingly vitality. The charming portrait was completed early in 1539 and shows the prince dressed as a king in miniature, with a rattle in place of a sceptre. The image of his father, Edward has the same small dark eyes and red hair. The painting bears a Latin inscription composed by Sir Richard Morison, who had been appointed special envoy to Cleves. It reads: ‘Little one, imitate your father and be the heir of his virtue, the world contains nothing greater … Surpass him … and none will ever surpass you.’5 This neatly encapsulates what Henry expected of his son, and also echoes the self-confident inscription that he had commissioned for Holbein’s Whitehall mural. Edward was tasked with exceeding the achievements of his father, just as Henry had done.
The king had come to trust Holbein more than any other portraitist, and he did not hesitate to dispatch him to Cleves in 1539, with instructions to paint both Anne and her younger sister Amelia. By now, Cromwell was also well acquainted with Holbein, and it is possible that he briefed him in advance of his journey. He also made sure that he would have first sight of the resulting sketches before they were presented to his master.
Holbein executed his commission with customary skill and efficiency, and Cromwell was evidently pleased with the results. However, he had been in Henry’s service long enough to appreciate the importance of choosing the right moment to approach his master about any matters of importance. He therefore waited until Henry was in a ‘very merry’ mood before showing the sketches to him.6 His patience was rewarded: upon seeing Anne’s likeness, the king was instantly captivated and instructed Cromwell to begin the negotiations at once. There was some talk of sending Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, to Cleves to assist in the task, but this does not seem to have come to fruition. Instead, the king’s able Lord Chancellor Thomas Audley, whose legal skills were second only to Cromwell’s, was entrusted with the mission.
But Henry was not so beguiled as to overlook the implications of such a step. He knew that the marriage would be taken as a signal of his dedication to religious reform, so he made it clear that this would be a purely political alliance. He tried to distance himself from it further by stating that responsibility for the proposed alliance would rest entirely upon Cromwell’s shoulders. This sent an ominous message to his chief minister, but the latter knew that if he succeeded, then the prize would be more than worth the risks involved.
As well as Henry’s marriage to Anne, his envoys were to propose that of his eldest daughter Mary to Anne’s brother. This was anathema to Mary, who firmly espoused her mother’s Roman Catholic beliefs. But Henry cared little for that: the primary purpose of a royal daughter was to act as a pawn in the game of international diplomacy. In the event, this part of the scheme was soon abandoned. It was rumoured that Cromwell had deliberately obstructed it so that he could marry Mary himself, but this is highly unlikely.
When negotiations were well advanced, the king became somewhat lukewarm to the idea of marrying Anne of Cleves because he saw the alliance as beneath his dignity. He therefore began making friendly overtures towards France once more. On 28 March, the new French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, arrived at court. This gave Henry cause to hope that Francis I would soon abandon his alliance with the emperor and strike up an accord with England.
If this gave Cromwell misgivings, he did not show it. As well as furthering the negotiations with Cleves, he also started planning ‘a device in the Parliament for the unity in religion’.7 It is telling that despite the demise of Henry Courtenay and the rest, Cromwell was minded to swell the ranks of his allies. At this time, there were only three men who could be described in this way: Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Wyatt and Thomas Wriothesley. Although William Fitzwilliam remained a nominal supporter, he could not be relied upon to stand by Cromwell if he fell from grace.
Thomas Audley, meanwhile, had been one of Cromwell’s closest associates throughout the first half of the 1530s, but a subsequent controversy had made it clear that he could no longer be relied upon. In April 1535, he had been appointed by Cromwell to collect a new tax, which had sparked fierce opposition across the kingdom. Audley had urged Cromwell to abandon the scheme for fear of rebellion, but, according to Chapuys, the chief minister had retorted that ‘the idea was not his but the King’s, whose avarice and cupidity were well known to him [Audley]’.8 This is almost certainly untrue: Cromwell was far too shrewd – and loyal – a servant to levy such an insult against the king. Whether or not Audley had reported the remark or it had been entirely Chapuys’ invention, the matter was enough to convince Cromwell that the former could no longer be trusted. In the battle for influence over Henry, the two men were now ranged on opposite sides.
How tenuous Cromwell’s hold upon his royal master’s favour was would soon be proved. In the run-up to presenting his device to parliament, the minister had secured a seat for his ally Wriothesley, who had just returned from the Netherlands. Wriothesley was fully aware of how embattled his patron was feeling and had written to express his fears for Cromwell’s safety. They proved justified.
Although Cromwell had prepared the ground for his device with the king, and the latter had seemed favourable towards it, when parliament met shortly afterwards, Henry withdrew his support and it was thrown out. The king followed this up by performing the traditional ceremonies during Easter, and celebrating Ascension Day – one of the most important observances of the Roman Catholic faith – in ostentatious style. The message to Cromwell and his fellow reformists was clear: if they continued to promote their reformist ideas, then they would be acting in direct opposition to the king.
This may be another instance of Henry exerting control by switching his stance without warning. But it is at least equally possible that he was expressing his natural inclination towards the traditional faith. He had suppressed this during the years immediately following the break with Rome, anxious not to appear weak-willed or hypocritical as his reforms took hold. He was evidently tired of the pretence, and also troubled by the obvious dissent that the Reformation was generating among his people. The time was ripe to assert his true opinions.
But in typically contradictory fashion, if Henry was no longer prepared to lend his full support to Cromwell’s reforms, he still appreciated the financial benefits that could be gained from some of them. Cromwell had overseen the dissolution of the lesser religious houses which, together with the diversion of the annates, had netted Henry an estimated £2.5 million (equivalent to more than £1 billion today). This greatly strengthened his case in seeking the king’s consent to dissolve the larger monasteries.9 This was where the greatest riches were to be had, and Cromwell made sure that Henry knew just how much he stood to gain. The same parliament that had rejected Cromwell’s device therefore gave its assent to this new phase of the dissolution. It was perhaps no coincidence that at precisely this moment, Eustace Chapuys, who had stood as a bastion against reform for the previous ten years, was recalled by Charles V to the Netherlands.
Cromwell was swift to act, and by the end of 1539 his commissioners had taken possession of all but a handful of monasteries. They included some of the largest and wealthiest religious houses in the kingdom, such as the abbeys of Kirkstall and Hailes. The assets that flooded into the royal treasury were staggering and made Henry one of the richest kings in Christendom. If the lesser monasteries had provided in excess of £1 billion, then the greater houses must have been worth significantly more. Perhaps to justify his title as ‘Defender of the Faith’, Henry promised to use his newly won gains to build many new churches and cathedrals, but there is only evidence of six being erected at his orders. Instead, he used his vast new landed estate to secure the loyalty of his nobles by granting them a portion of it, and generated more funds by selling off other parts. He also used his new riches to fund overseas campaigns, which were as exorbitant as they were self-indulgent.
Many of the monks and nuns whose houses had been dissolved now found themselves destitute. In a letter to a Burgundian acquaintance, Eustace Chapuys bemoaned their fate: ‘It is a lamentable thing to see a legion of monks and nuns, who have been chased from their monasteries, wandering miserably hither and thither, seeking means to live, and several honest men have told me, that what with monks, nuns, and persons dependent on the monasteries suppressed, there were over 20,000 who knew not how to live.’10
At the same time as Henry sanctioned the dissolution of the larger monasteries, he turned his attention to a more personal matter. The safety and well-being of his ‘precious jewel’, Prince Edward, had always been uppermost in his mind, and in March 1539 he issued a series of extraordinarily detailed instructions to a group of newly named officers of the boy’s household. They included Sir William Sidney, who was appointed chamberlain, and Sir John Cornwallis as steward. Lady Margaret Bryan was confirmed in her post as lady mistress, and Sir William Sidney’s sister-in-law, Sybil Penne, as his nurse. Other personnel included a physician, Dr George Owen, who would serve in that capacity for the rest of Edward’s life.
Henry’s instructions to his son’s new household stipulated that the walls, floors and ceilings of Edward’s lodgings should be scrubbed clean several times a day. Everything that might be handled by the prince had also to be washed, and this applied to his attendants and visitors too. If any of Edward’s household displayed symptoms of sickness, or had come into contact with others who did, they were immediately banished from his presence. Because high-ranking subjects tended to be cleaner and therefore less susceptible to disease than the lower orders, Henry ordained that only those of the rank of knight or above could attend his son. For all the seriousness of Henry’s new injunctions, though, he did not overlook his son’s amusement and also provided for the appointment of a company of players.
In the same month that Henry issued these new instructions for the care of his son, he received news that a former favourite had died. Thomas Boleyn had been in the political wilderness since the executions of his son and daughter three years earlier. Although he had been a guest at Prince Edward’s christening in October 1537, he no longer enjoyed any of the offices or titles that he had laid claim to during Anne’s ascendancy. A papal report of 1538 described him as ‘wise’ but ‘of little power’.11 Of all the king’s men who had been his ally during his years of influence, only Cranmer – to his credit – had stood by him, intervening on his behalf in disputes over his estates. These were still unresolved at the time of Boleyn’s death at Hever Castle on 12 March 1539. Perhaps not surprisingly, the king showed no sign of regret at the demise of his former father-in-law. There had, after all, been plenty of men to take his place.
A month after Boleyn’s death, his old rival Cromwell was struck down by a fever and forced to take a leave of absence from court. Tormented by the thought of how his enemies would capitalise upon his absence, he wrote a desperate letter to Henry, assuring him: ‘The pain of the disease grieves me nothing so much as … that I cannot be as I should there present and employ my power to your grace’s affairs and service as my heart desires to do.’12 Cromwell would undoubtedly have dragged himself to court despite his raging fever, but he was fully aware of his master’s paranoia of sickness, so had no choice but to remain at home. Henry wrote to pardon his absence, but it provided small comfort as Cromwell imagined the advantage that his enemies must be enjoying over him.
Cromwell’s sickness dragged on for several weeks, obliging him to miss parliament, which opened on 28 April. On 5 May, Audley delivered a speech in the Lords that reiterated the king’s desire to control ‘diversity of opinions’. In truth, Henry had allowed himself to be influenced by the conservatives during Cromwell’s absence and was now backtracking on many of his reforms. Whereas Cromwell had intended that the parliament would be a vehicle for pushing through further measures, in his absence a committee was established to examine doctrine. This gave his rivals the chance to voice their opposition to the religious policies that Cromwell espoused.
Predictably, chaos ensued, with a cacophony of different voices all arguing against each other. The Duke of Norfolk made sure that he was the one who took charge. He declared that the committee was unable to reach a decision and then presented six ‘questions’ for the house to consider. These constituted an unravelling of Cromwell’s reforms and a return to conservative religious practices. So that he and his allies would have time to drum up support for the policies among the court – and above all with the king – the duke proposed that parliament be prorogued for a week so that its members could consider the arguments.
That Norfolk and his companions had influenced Henry seemed clear from the events that now rapidly unfolded. On 7 June, he declared two days of official mourning for Isabella, wife of Charles V and niece of Catherine of Aragon. The significance of the gesture was not lost on the reformists. The leader of another Lutheran delegation to England left the same day. At around the same time, a controversy was unfolding in the English-held town of Calais. Cromwell had sent some evangelical ministers there from England in the interests of their safety. But having heard that the tide was turning at court, the deputy of Calais, Arthur Plantagenet, a religious conservative, had the ministers rounded up and sent to London for interrogation. Cromwell was incensed when he heard of this and immediately ordered him to recall the men. But Lisle ignored his commands. He would never have dared to do so a few weeks before, but the chief minister had returned to court to find his authority severely depleted.
To set the seal on Cromwell’s misery, the six questions were enacted into law as the Act of Six Articles on 16 June, and a little under two weeks later they received the king’s assent. The Six Articles reinforced existing heresy laws and, more significantly, reasserted traditional Catholic doctrine. Ever conscious of his public image, Henry ensured that the Act was carefully worded so that he could not be accused of irresolution, given that he had promoted religious reform so forcefully during the previous ten years. He was simply acting in response to the ‘great discord and variance’ that had arisen since the introduction of the reforms, and believed that ‘the said articles should make a perfect concord and unity generally amongst all his loving and obedient subjects’.13
Archbishop Cranmer did his best to oppose the Act, and dared to speak out against it while the king was present in the House of Lords. But in characteristic style, once he had made his views known, he was not prepared to contradict his royal master any further. To demonstrate his compliance to the clause relating to clerical celibacy, as well as to protect himself, he sent his wife Margaret and their daughter back to her German relatives. Henry rewarded him for it. When Sir John Gostwick, knight of the shire for Bedfordshire, made accusations in the Commons about some of Cranmer’s sermons and lectures, the king furiously upbraided him as a ‘varlet’ and added the ominous threat that if he did not personally apologise to Cranmer, ‘I will sure both make him a poor Gostwick, and otherwise punish him, to the example of others.’14
Despite the assurance of his master’s favour, this was one of the lowest points of Cranmer’s career. His reverence for the royal will had always prevented him from contesting his master once it was clear that Henry’s mind was made up, but this time Cranmer’s compliance had come at a terrible personal cost. The Scottish theologian Alexander Ales, a close associate of Cranmer, recalled that, while strolling through the gardens of Lambeth Palace early one morning at the end of June, the archbishop begged him to flee England. Handing Ales a ring that the king had given him, Cranmer lamented: ‘I repent of what I have done, and if I had known that my only punishment would have been deposition from the Archbishopric (as I hear that my Lord [Hugh] Latimer is deposed), of a truth I would not have subscribed.’15
It is interesting to speculate whether Henry would have reverted to a conservative stance so decisively if Cromwell had not been absent from court. Although he had been content to allow the introduction of ever more seismic reforms by his chief minister during the previous decade, this had only been when they had aligned with his personal desires: namely, to marry Anne Boleyn, secure his dynasty with a son, swell the treasury and enhance his own authority. Forasmuch as Henry gloried in the title of Supreme Head of the Church, he remained a Catholic at heart and was uncomfortable with the doctrine that Cromwell had promoted so enthusiastically since his arrival at court. The chief minister knew this, but had argued each case with a lawyer’s tongue, employing the persuasions that he knew would sway his master. Norfolk knew it too, and as soon as his rival was out of the way, he had taken full advantage.
Interestingly, even though Henry had taken a significant step back towards the traditional religion, he evidently did not wish to choose sides. According to John Foxe, the day after confirming the Act of the Six Articles, the king held a dinner at Lambeth Palace in an attempt to reconcile Cranmer to his conservative opponents. He invited both Cromwell and Norfolk in the optimistic (and somewhat naïve) hope that the two men would agree to settle their differences in this informal setting. It was not long before a furious row erupted. Norfolk goaded Cromwell by making a disparaging remark about Wolsey. The chief minister, still smarting from his rival’s victory in parliament, was easily provoked and launched a bitter tirade in defence of his former patron. The spat ended with Cromwell accusing Norfolk of disloyalty, and the duke calling him a liar.
A revealing conversation between Cromwell and Cranmer was also overheard during the course of the evening. The archbishop’s secretary, Ralph Morice, recalled that Cromwell had said to his friend: ‘I must needs confess that in some things I have complained of you unto his majesty, but all in vain, for he will never give credit against you, whatsoever is laid to your charge.’16 This neatly summarises the favour that Cranmer enjoyed with Henry. Even when this increasingly paranoid king heard disparaging remarks about his archbishop, he refused to heed them. The reason for his seemingly unshakeable esteem was the fact that he knew Cranmer would always put the royal will ahead of his own opinions. The same could not be said of Cromwell and others in the king’s service, and they would suffer for it.
The Lambeth Palace dinner poses an intriguing question about Henry’s tactics with regard to his men. It has often been suggested that the king encouraged factions in his court so that no single individual would ever be able to dominate – a classic ‘divide and rule’ approach. There is certainly plenty of evidence to support this, with the rapid succession of different favourites, the predominant atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue and backbiting that Henry seemed to encourage, and his frequent, unpredictable changes of mind. Yet how much this was a deliberate ploy rather than Henry’s true nature is difficult to ascertain. Royal courts had long been beset by faction and rivalries, even during the reigns of the most peaceable sovereigns. As the forum in which favour and influence were grappled over by the nation’s most powerful and ambitious men, this was understandable. A naturally fickle man with a notoriously short attention span, Henry certainly did not help to foster greater accord among his courtiers and advisers, but it is perhaps overstating the case to claim that he actively encouraged rivalry between his men.
If further proof was needed of the king’s fickle nature, it soon manifested itself. The Act of Six Articles prompted a rash of allegations of heresy against those evangelicals who had formerly enjoyed Cromwell’s protection. Cranmer was obliged to investigate all of them, albeit reluctantly, and most of the accused were imprisoned. Little wonder that in mid-July the French ambassador Marillac was able to confidently report that the English king had ‘taken up again all the old opinions and constitutions, excepting only papal obedience and destruction of abbeys and churches of which he has taken the revenue’.17
But just as Norfolk and his allies were savouring victory, the king made an apparent volte-face by taking Cromwell back into his confidence and listening favourably to his reformist ideas once more. The chief minister soon felt secure enough to go on the offensive against his rivals. Joining what he thought was a purge of evangelicals, in August Stephen Gardiner accused Robert Barnes of heresy. Barnes had previously assisted the king’s campaign for an annulment, but Gardiner was confident that the tide had turned decisively enough in the conservatives’ favour for him to bring down this prominent reformer. He misjudged the situation, and Cromwell wasted no time in having him expelled from the Privy Council. This deprived Norfolk of one of his most powerful allies at court, and also disrupted the implementation of the Six Articles, which Gardiner had been busily preparing for. Any hope that the two men might have cherished of appealing to the king was dashed when Henry sanctioned the expulsion.
Cromwell was quick to take advantage of his master’s renewed favour and secured Henry’s assent to bring the long-standing negotiations for his marriage to Anne of Cleves to a swift conclusion, knowing that the match would signal a return to reform. In so doing, he brushed aside the warnings voiced by his friend Cranmer. Even though he had been one of the principal negotiators for the marriage and fully appreciated its advantages on ideological grounds, Henry’s archbishop appreciated what his chief minister did not: the king needed to marry for love as much as for politics. Cranmer urged Cromwell that he ‘thought it most expedient the King to marry where that he had his fantasy and love, for that would be most comfort for his Grace’. Perhaps speaking from his own experience of a German wife, he added ‘that it would be very strange to be married with her that he could not talk withal’.18 This was extraordinarily prescient of the archbishop, as events would soon prove, but his ally was too firmly set upon his course to heed the warning.
The marriage treaty was duly signed on 5 October. Even though Henry still had not met his bride, their union was now indissoluble. Cromwell was triumphant. The Spanish Chronicle recorded that his ‘pleasure cannot be described at having arranged this match’, but added with the wisdom of hindsight: ‘It turned out wrong for him.’19
For now, though, Henry was as delighted with his chief minister as he was at the prospect of his new wife, and the alliance prompted him to show even more favour towards the reformers. He therefore commissioned Archbishop Cranmer to compose an official preface to the second edition of the English Bible, and on 14 November he issued a proclamation granting Cromwell responsibility for licensing all Bible translations for the next five years. This was the strongest indication yet that Henry was now once again committed to the cause of reform. Moreover, by giving his people direct access to the word of God, and thereby freeing them from centuries of relying on the intercession of priests, Henry had secured a legacy that was both far-reaching and long-lived. The king himself might still blow hot and cold on the subject of reform, but from henceforth his subjects could make up their own minds.
Cromwell and Cranmer were quick to undertake their commission. They also capitalised upon their master’s favour by securing the release of the Calais evangelicals, who had been languishing in captivity for several months. The majority of them were freed in mid-November, and the two men successfully delayed proceedings against the rest.
Another man who was enjoying Henry’s favour that year was Sir Richard Long, who had served as gentleman usher since 1535. He had been conspicuous at Prince Edward’s christening two years later, and had been knighted in the celebrations following. By 1539, he had been promoted to the role of gentleman of the privy chamber, and Henry’s trust in him was so well known that Long was able to act as his deputy on diplomatic missions. Marillac later referred to him as ‘a person of authority and conduct’.20 He would continue to enjoy the king’s trust and favour during the years to come.
Sir Anthony Browne had also enjoyed his best year yet in the king’s service. During the course of 1539, he had been made a privy councillor, Master of the Horse, knight of the shire and captain of the gentleman pensioners. The king had also paid him the honour of visiting his house at Battle in Sussex. All of this had spelt danger for Cromwell, for Browne was one of the men whom Gardiner could rely upon to help cause trouble for the chief minister.
Nevertheless, as 1539 drew to a close, Cromwell looked forward to the new year with greater confidence than he had enjoyed since Anne Boleyn’s fall. He had triumphed over his conservative rivals and inspired the king to even more sweeping reforms than he had hitherto sanctioned. And the woman who was even now making her ponderous journey to England would set the seal on his victory as Henry’s new queen. Had Cromwell learned the harsh lesson experienced by so many of the king’s other men in the past, he might have been more circumspect.
Cromwell’s son Gregory was among the delegation appointed to welcome Anne of Cleves when she reached Calais on 11 December, as was his ally the Duke of Suffolk. The ensuing celebrations were so magnificent that they filled many letters back to the court in London – Gregory’s included. But of the lady herself Cromwell’s son said little. If this gave his father cause for concern, he did not express it. Rather, he accompanied his royal master as he rode in high spirits to surprise his new wife when she finally arrived at Rochester Castle on 31 December. Henry had sent Browne ahead to greet his bride. Although it has been claimed that Sir Anthony married her as the king’s proxy, this is not substantiated by the evidence.
In true chivalric tradition, Henry, along with five of his privy chamber men, donned a disguise for his meeting with Anne of Cleves, the theory being that only his true love would recognise him. Unfortunately, Anne herself was not conversant with the tradition, and when her betrothed strode into the room and planted a kiss on her lips, she was greatly ‘abashed’ and turned back to look out of the window. Highly affronted that his betrothed had ‘regarded his coming so little’, Henry flounced out and returned shortly afterwards dressed in his regal finery so that this time there could be no doubt as to his identity. Anne duly ‘humbled’ herself before him, and they appeared to talk ‘lovingly together’.21 But the damage had been done. Much has been made of Henry’s revulsion at Anne’s looks, but the real cause of his distaste was her lack of refinement. If she had been a true queen, she would have understood the game of courtly love of which the king was such a devotee. Neither was Anne the epitome of royal fashion that he expected, but she was dressed in the unflattering gowns and headdresses favoured by the Flemish court. The fact that she was said to have ‘evil airs’ about her did not help matters.22
As soon as he was able, Henry excused himself and sought a private audience with Cromwell. ‘I like her not! I like her not!’ he shouted at the beleaguered minister, complaining that Anne was ‘nothing so well as she was spoken of’. He demanded to know ‘what remedy’ Cromwell proposed. But the minister, for once, was at a loss. Able lawyer that he was, he had ensured that, once signed, the marriage contract would be indissoluble. He was therefore forced to admit that he ‘knew none but was very sorry therefore’.23 The king refused to listen to reason and continued to harangue his chief minister. ‘Is there no other remedy but that I must needs against my will put my neck in the yoke?’ he urged.24 Cromwell could only reiterate that there was nothing else for it but to go ahead with the wedding.
One of the first to learn of Henry’s distaste for his prospective bride was Sir John Russell. Although he was an ally of Cromwell, he was too pragmatic to defend him when it was clear that the king did not wish to be appeased. A number of Henry’s other men were quick to capitalise upon Cromwell’s fall from grace. The Spanish Chronicle claims that Henry immediately sent for the Duke of Norfolk and Edward Seymour, telling them: ‘I am determined to get rid of Anne of Cleves, and Cromwell shall not deceive me again.’ There was certainly little love lost between these two men and Cromwell. The latter had once castigated Seymour for acting ‘very craftily’.25 Though they had been content to work together when it suited them, their alliance had always been fragile. As soon as the audience was over, Norfolk told his companion: ‘This is the time for us to get rid of common people from our midst; you see that the King has quarrelled with Cromwell, and asks our counsel. We will advise him to take affairs into his own hands, and not be ruled so much by Cromwell.’26 The Chronicle may not always be a reliable source, but it was accurate in claiming that Norfolk resolved to use the Cleves fiasco as a means of destroying the low-born minister once and for all.
The duke and his ally Gardiner wasted no time in causing trouble for Cromwell in both foreign and domestic affairs. As well as disrupting the Franco–Imperial alliance so that Henry was less reliant upon Cleves, they ordered a new investigation of heretics in Calais and engineered the arrest of three prominent reformers in England: Robert Barnes, Thomas Gerrard and William Jerome. All of this was useful to their cause, but they knew that it was insufficient to bring Cromwell down. What they needed was something closer to Henry’s heart in order to sever his ties with his chief minister for good. Norfolk had already spied the perfect means: his niece Katherine.
Henry may have first met Katherine Howard on the same day as Anne of Cleves because she had been among the ladies appointed to serve the new queen. The date of her birth is not known, but she could have been as young as fifteen at the time. But she had gained sexual experience beyond her years, with rumours of an affair with her music teacher at the age of twelve, and then a well-testified relationship with her kinsman, Francis Dereham. Katherine’s immoral past, however, had been successfully hushed up by her guardian, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, so she arrived at court with a reputation as unblemished as her beauty.
For Henry, it was love – or lust – at first sight. Attractive and vivacious, Katherine possessed all of the qualities that the new queen so painfully lacked. Norfolk was quick to spot his master’s attraction to his alluring young niece, and he and Gardiner soon began to arrange clandestine meetings between the pair. By pushing Katherine in the king’s path, Norfolk had raised the stakes for Cromwell, who was trying desperately to think of a way out of the Cleves disaster. One of the few men who remained loyal to him was Thomas Wriothesley, but the latter knew that if his patron failed to think of a solution, then he would suffer by association. ‘For God’s sake,’ he urged Cromwell, ‘devise for the relief of the King; for if he remain in this grief and trouble, we shall all one day smart for it.’27
But if Cromwell’s friends still hoped that he might prevail, his royal master had lost faith in the man who had served him diligently for the past decade. Henry secretly instructed his agent and diplomat Thomas Vaughan, a close friend of Cromwell, to go to Cleves and find out more about a previous betrothal between Anne and François, heir to the duchy of Lorraine. According to the Spanish Chronicle, Vaughan found evidence to suggest that Anne had actually been married to François, but as soon as negotiations began for a betrothal with Henry, her father had had him taken away. François had apparently ‘died of grief’ a short time later.28 If true, this provided ample grounds for an annulment.
The Spanish Chronicle tells how, armed with this information, Henry summoned Cromwell. ‘If thou didst know that Anne of Cleves was married, why didst thou make me marry her?’ he demanded. Cromwell was greatly ‘grieved’ upon hearing this, but retorted: ‘If your Majesty leaves her, everybody will be saying what a many wives you have.’29 The king flew into a rage at such insolence and ordered Cromwell out of his presence. Although the king’s fury at Cromwell is well substantiated, it is unlikely that the minister would have stoked it further by making such a remark. Cromwell had suffered enough of his master’s temper to know that it would be more quickly diffused if he proved compliant.
In fact, far from contradicting Henry, Cromwell agreed to investigate the rumours that Vaughan had reported. He questioned Anne’s ambassadors closely about the nature of her betrothal to François, but they emphatically denied that a marriage had taken place and promised to have a copy of the original contract sent to England as proof. Meanwhile, Anne agreed to sign a notarial instrument swearing that she was free to marry. In despair, Cromwell returned to his master and admitted that nothing further could be done. He later reflected that the king had been ‘very much displeased’ and complained that he was ‘not well handled’.30 Although Henry insisted that he would not go through with the marriage, he knew that he had no choice.
On 3 January 1540, Henry formally greeted his bride on Blackheath Common amid great ceremony. To the untrained eye, everything was as it should be, but those who could get close enough noticed the look of profound disappointment on the king’s face. Three days later, the wedding took place. The aged Earl of Essex, Henry Bourchier, had been assigned the dubious honour of leading the bride down the aisle, but on the morning of the wedding he was nowhere to be found, so the task was transferred to Cromwell. The chief minister was hardly more enthusiastic about his role than his royal master was about his. Unlike the latter, though, he was relieved of his responsibility at the eleventh hour when Bourchier finally materialised. Archbishop Cranmer was obliged to preside over the ceremony, which proceeded without incident – or any semblance of joy on the part of the groom.
Henry had been prepared to honour the alliance by playing his part in the ceremony, but his dedication to royal duty did not extend to the marriage bed. A detailed account of the wedding night still survives among the records of the reign, and for good reason: the king wanted there to be no doubt that the marriage had not been consummated. According to the account, Henry ran his hands all over his new wife’s body, but upon finding certain ‘tokens’ that suggested she was no virgin, he was unable to stir himself to have sex with her.
Cromwell hastened to see him the next morning, perhaps hoping that, against the odds, the intimacy of the marriage bed would have made his master see Anne in a more favourable light. He soon realised that the opposite was true. Finding the king ‘not so pleasant’ as he expected, he tentatively asked how he liked his new wife. ‘Surely my lord as you know I liked her before not well,’ Henry retorted, ‘but now I like her much worse.’ He went on to confide his suspicions that Anne was ‘no maid’, judging from the shape of her stomach and breasts, and that he had therefore ‘left her as good a maid as I found her’.31
It is likely that Henry was being disingenuous. Having latched on to the idea that Anne had been married before, he was clutching at any evidence – no matter how flimsy – to prove it. In fact, judging from Anne’s own account of her marital relations with Henry, she was entirely innocent in the ways of men. When her ladies discreetly enquired whether her marriage had been consummated, she replied: ‘How can I be a maid … and sleep every night with the King? When he comes to bed he kisses me, and takes me by the hand, and bids me, Good night, sweetheart: and in the morning kisses me, and bids me, Farewell, darling. Is this not enough?’ It took the outspoken Countess of Rutland to point out: ‘Madam, there must be more than this, or it will be long before we have a Duke of York.’32
Even now, Cromwell was determined not to give up on the marriage. He therefore instructed Anne’s lord chamberlain, the Earl of Rutland, to advise her how to make herself more pleasing to the king.33 At the same time, he privately instructed Anthony Denny to praise Anne whenever the opportunity presented itself. Of all the men whom Cromwell had placed in the privy chamber, Denny had proved the most acceptable to Henry and was now one of his closest attendants. Greatly though he was esteemed by the king, however, there was little Denny could do to change Henry’s opinion of his new wife, and he was soon forced to admit defeat. Henry would hear nothing favourable about Anne, and upbraided the hapless Denny: ‘He would utter plainly to him, as to a servant whom he used secretly about him … that he could never … be provoked and stirred to know her carnally.’34 Sir Anthony Browne also noted his master’s abhorrence for Anne, and feared that his half-brother William Fitzwilliam, who had praised her beauty, would pay the price.
Although the men closest to Henry knew that his new marriage was a sham, it gave heart to the Lutheran princes of the Schmalkaldic League, who dispatched Ludwig von Baumbach to London with instructions to conclude a religious and political alliance. Upon arriving, the envoy at once sought out Cromwell, confident that he was the surest means of bringing this alliance to a happy conclusion. But to his dismay, the chief minister told him that there was nothing he could do to help. Cromwell might have been firmly committed to reform, but he was enough of a political realist to know that pushing his master on the issue at this time would bring nothing but grief. He had enough to do in clawing back favour after the disastrous Cleves match. Refusing to take Cromwell at his word, Baumbach sought an audience with the king himself, but Henry told the envoy frankly that the League was useless to England as a political ally.
By April 1540, Henry had made his displeasure with Cromwell so obvious that everyone at court expected news of his fall to be announced any day. ‘Cromwell is tottering,’ reported Marillac with satisfaction. He was not alone in predicting that this would lead to a reversal in the religious revolution that the chief minister and his close ally Cranmer had orchestrated, and surmised: ‘Within a few days there will be seen in this country a great change in many things.’ The French ambassador went on to relate that Henry had been busy planning a change in ministers, ‘recalling those he had rejected and degrading those he had raised’.35
It is an indication of how embattled Cromwell was feeling at this time that he made friendly overtures to one of his deadliest enemies, Stephen Gardiner. ‘Yesterday my lord of Winchester dined at London with my lord Privy Seal,’ Wriothesley reported, ‘and were more than four hours, and opened their hearts, and so concluded that, and there be truth or honesty in them, not only all displeasures be forgotten, but also in their hearts be now perfect entire friends.’36 This may have been wishful thinking on the young man’s part. Cromwell and Gardiner had been fiercely opposed to each other for too long to settle their differences in the space of an evening.
Wriothesley’s loyalty to Cromwell was soon rewarded. Shortly after the dinner with Gardiner, Cromwell secured the young man a place on the council and also resigned the role of principal secretary jointly to him and Ralph Sadler. It seemed that Cromwell, expecting Henry to dismiss him at any moment, had decided to fall on his sword. But this was out of character for a man who always came out fighting when he was under siege from his enemies. Rather, it may have been a deliberate tactic to increase the number of his supporters on the council.
Although in public Henry appeared to be in a state of fury against his chief minister, in private it would soon become apparent that Cromwell had succeeded in talking his way back into favour. Knowing that the Anne of Cleves fiasco had made his royal master lose faith in him, Cromwell had to convince Henry that his loyalty to him superseded all else – even the religious reforms that had become his lifeblood. To demonstrate this, he made an opening speech in the House of Lords in April, reiterating the king’s desire for religious accord among his subjects. He then introduced measures to eradicate heresy, some of which led to a reversal of his earlier reforms. The result was a compromise in religion, such as his master had made it clear he desired.
Henry understood the sacrifice that Cromwell had made and he rewarded him richly for it. On 18 April, he made the chief minister Earl of Essex, one of the most ancient and distinguished titles in the land.37 He also appointed him lord great chamberlain, following the death of John de Vere, fifteenth Earl of Oxford. By making Cromwell an earl, Henry had not only shown to the world that he was forgiven, but had placed him on an equal – if not superior – social standing with his blue-blooded rivals. This was a staggering about-turn, even by Henry’s standards. In his next dispatch, a dumbfounded Marillac was forced to admit that Cromwell ‘was in as much credit with the King as ever he was, from which he was near being shaken by the Bishop of Winchester and others’.38
For Norfolk and Gardiner, it was too much to bear. They had been within a whisker of getting rid of their chief rival for good; now he was back in favour – and in spectacular style. Moreover, the king had strengthened Cromwell’s powerbase by showing favour to his allies: Wriothesley and Sadler were knighted on the same day that Cromwell received his honour. But having almost tasted victory, his enemies were not prepared to relinquish it. They therefore resolved on a plan to oust the new Earl of Essex from the king’s service on a permanent basis.
Cromwell, too, came out fighting. He knew that his enemies were furious about his restoration to Henry’s good graces and were thirsting for vengeance. He therefore resolved to destroy them before they could destroy him. The six or seven weeks that followed his promotion would witness the most vicious battle ever waged between the king’s men. The seasoned courtier, Sir Francis Bryan, observed that there was an ‘overplus’ of ‘malice and displeasures’. Marillac concurred that Henry’s ‘ministers seek only to undo each other to gain credit, and under colour of their master’s good each attends to his own. For all the fine words of which they are full they will act only as necessity and interest compel them.’ Little wonder that nobody believed Cromwell’s assertion that he desired nothing but ‘the establishment of one perfect unity in opinion amongst us all’. It was clear from the outset that it would be a fight to the death. ‘Here is nothing but every man for himself,’ reported Arthur Plantagenet’s agent John Hussee.39
The day before Henry made his chief minister Earl of Essex, Lord Lisle had returned from Calais. He had been recalled on suspicion of treasonable communications with another member of the Plantagenet clan, Cardinal Reginald Pole. It is likely that Cromwell had been instrumental in persuading the king to take action against his uncle. Lisle was one of Norfolk’s greatest allies, and the pair were united by a common loathing for this base-born minister who had overturned the natural order and religion of the kingdom. It was at this moment that William Fitzwilliam and Sir Anthony Browne decided to sever all connections with Cromwell and throw in their lot with Norfolk. The time for vacillating between court factions was over. Henry’s men were now ranged into two camps, ready for war.
Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was dispatched to Calais on 9 May at the head of a commission to inquire into charges of misgovernment. But he was also to investigate rumours of sacramentarianism, an extreme form of evangelicalism, so it may have been his ally Norfolk, rather than Cromwell, who had persuaded the king to enlist his services.
On 19 May, a little over a month after his arrival in London, Lisle was arrested and taken to the Tower. Any doubt that he was there at Cromwell’s behest is erased by the fact that a few days later, Richard Sampson, the conservative Bishop of Chichester, and Dr Nicholas Wilson, a staunch ally of Bishop Gardiner, joined Lisle in the Tower. All three men were the victims of the struggle for power that was raging in Henry’s court.
This power struggle also centred upon Henry’s marriage. Cromwell grasped at any sign that the king might be warming towards his new wife. When Anne attended the traditional Mayday tournaments with her husband and was accorded every honour, the Earl of Surrey riding out as her chief defender, it stoked rumours that she would soon be crowned. The chief minister duly held discussions about the matter with the ambassador of Cleves, and again urged Anne, through the Earl of Rutland, to do her best to please the king. But while Cromwell was appealing to Henry’s political sensibilities, Norfolk was stoking his passion for his young niece, Katherine. He understood, perhaps better than his rival, how powerful desire and vanity were in influencing the choice of their ageing and obese king.
But there was still a risk that Henry might indulge his passion by keeping Katherine as a mistress, while fulfilling his political duty by maintaining Anne as his wife. Knowing that this would safeguard Cromwell’s position and strengthen the cause of reform, Norfolk began a whispering campaign aimed at discrediting his rival. According to the Spanish Chronicle, he started a rumour that Cromwell had received a substantial fee from the Duke of Cleves for brokering the marriage. Together with Edward Seymour, who had now turned decisively against the chief minister, he voiced his suspicions to the king, telling him: ‘All the nobles of the realm are surprised that your Majesty should give so much power to the Secretary, who, doubtless, received a large sum from the Duke of Cleves for bringing about your marriage as he did.’40
Warming to their theme, the two men hinted that Cromwell was planning some kind of insurrection. As evidence, they cited the fact that he retained more servants than any of the king’s other men. ‘In all parts of the kingdom people are wearing his livery and calling themselves his servants, under shelter of which they are committing a thousand offences,’ they told Henry. They went on to claim that Cromwell had arms in his house to equip more than 7,000 men and that he had been quietly bolstering the king’s personal guard with forty men from his own household. Worse still, they said, even in the king’s privy chamber, his most secure and intimate domain, there were five ‘devoted servants’ of the chief minister. ‘We do not like the look of it,’ they concluded. By the time they had finished speaking, neither did Henry.
It took little to ignite the suspicions of a king who was by now as deeply paranoid about threats to his crown as his father had been. The French ambassador claimed that at this time Henry was a king who would ‘fain keep in favour with everybody, but does not trust a single man’.41 Sir John Russell, who was much closer to Henry, concurred that he was ‘a prince of much wisdom and knowledge, yet he was very suspicious and much given to suspection (suspicion)’.42 This situation was at least partly of the king’s making. He had fostered an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust through his own fickle behaviour, which had deprived his men of the luxury of feeling secure in his favour. But partly, too, it had been created by the men themselves, who had both encouraged and capitalised upon their royal master’s growing paranoia to serve their own ends. It was a situation as volatile as it was toxic.
Though it was only a few short weeks since Henry had appointed Cromwell to the highest offices in the land, the conversation with Norfolk and Seymour had been enough to convince the king that his chief minister must be brought down. ‘I promise you I will find a way to take his power away from him,’ he assured them.43 The meeting is not recorded by any other source, and it is possible that the Spanish Chronicle was drawing on rumours that were circulating at court around this time – no doubt sparked by Norfolk and his allies. These rumours rapidly took hold and were embellished along the way. It was even whispered that Cromwell had told Chapuys in a private conversation: ‘I hope to be a king myself one day.’ The old rumours that he planned to marry Henry’s daughter Mary were revived as proof and, although just as groundless as the others, would form one of the most notable charges against him. The Spanish Chronicle claims that when Norfolk and Seymour hastened back to the king with reports of the latest rumours, Henry retorted: ‘I may inform you that I greatly suspect him of a design to raise the kingdom and murder me.’44
It is easy to imagine the paranoid and irascible king turning against a man whom he had so lately raised to greatness. But if Henry really did harbour private suspicions towards Cromwell, he was careful not to show any hint of them in public. In early June, Marillac reported: ‘Things are brought to such a pass that either Cromwell’s party or that of the bishop of Winchester must succumb’, but added: ‘although both are in great authority and favour of the King their master, still the course of things seems to incline to Cromwell’s side’.45 Marillac had good reason for his change of opinion. It was rumoured that Robert Barnes would soon be released. At the same time, a cleric with known ‘Popish leanings’ had recently been arrested.
But Marillac was about to be proved wrong. On 10 June 1540, an apparently routine meeting of the Privy Council was held. As soon as Cromwell, who arrived late, strode into the chamber, he was arrested by a captain of the guard on charges of treason and heresy. Shocked to the core, the chief minister flew into a rage and ‘cast his bonnet on the ground, saying to the Duke of Norfolk and others of the Privy Council assembled there that this was the reward of his services’. In the next breath, though, he ‘appealed to their consciences as to whether he was a traitor; but since he was treated thus he renounced all pardon, as he had never thought to have offended, and only asked the King not to make him languish long’.46
The speed with which Cromwell seemed to submit to his fate suggests that he, like Henry, had known that it was coming. The battle that he had waged with Norfolk and his faction had grown so fierce in recent weeks that, as Marillac observed, it was obvious to all that the king would never make peace between them. There could only be one victor and, for once, Cromwell had been outwitted.
The intensely personal nature of the rivalry between the king’s most powerful men is revealed by the detailed description of what happened next. Norfolk strode up to Cromwell and ripped the order of St George from his neck, as if by doing so he could strip him of all the honours with which this blacksmith’s son had tried to cover up the shame of his birth. Eager to show that he was ‘as great an enemy in adversity as he had been thought a friend in prosperity’, William Fitzwilliam now stepped forward and untied the Garter from Cromwell’s knee.47 The beleaguered minister was then bundled into a waiting boat and taken to the Tower.
The official statement that was released on the day of Cromwell’s arrest described the heinousness of his crimes in general, rather than specific terms. Spurred on by his ‘sensual appetite’, he had ‘clean contrary to … his grace’s most godly intent, secretly and indirectly’ drawn the king away from the ‘true and virtuous way, which his majesty sought and so entirely desired’. Furthermore, he had ‘showed himself so fervently bent to the maintenance of that his outrage, that he hath not spared most privily, most traitorously, to devise how to continue the same and plainly in terms to say, as it hath been justified to his face by good witnesses, that if the king and all his realm would turn and vary from his opinions, he would fight in the field in his own person, with his sword in his hand against him and all other; adding that if he lived a year or two, he trusted to bring things to that frame, that it would not lie in the king’s power to resist or let it, if he would’.48 All of this was mere rumour and conjecture, and hardly enough upon which to build a convincing case of treason. But that mattered little to Henry, or to the men who had brought down his chief minister. Even one of Cromwell’s last remaining allies, Thomas Wriothesley, had deserted him: indeed, the statement had been drafted in his hand.
News of Cromwell’s arrest spread rapidly across the kingdom and abroad. Marillac, who could barely keep up with the pace of events, hurried off a letter to his master. ‘Thomas Cromwell … who, since the Cardinal’s death, had the principal management of the affairs of this kingdom … was, an hour ago, led prisoner to the Tower and all his goods attached,’ he reported, adding: ‘Cromwell’s party seemed the strongest lately … The thing is the more marvellous as it was unexpected by everyone.’49 Edward Hall noted that ‘many lamented, but more rejoiced’ upon hearing the news, and that Cromwell’s enemies ‘banqueted, and triumphed together that night’.50
In characteristic style, the king now set about removing all trace of his former chief minister. Henry’s servants descended upon Cromwell’s houses and seized all of his possessions. It was soon clear that the architect of the dissolution had siphoned off some of the spoils for himself. A total of £7,000 sterling (equivalent to more than £2 million today) was taken away, along with silver plates, chalices, crucifixes and ‘other spoils of the Church’. They were immediately deposited in the king’s treasury, which Marillac rightly interpreted as ‘a sign that they will not be restored’.51 Henry’s officials took away evidence, as well as riches. This included correspondence with the Lutheran princes of Germany, which provided ample proof of Cromwell’s heretical leanings. When these were shown to the king, he was ‘so exasperated against him [Cromwell] that he would no longer hear him spoken of, but rather desired to abolish all memory of him as the greatest wretch ever born in England’.52 This was typical of the man who loved to extremes, but hated to them too – often in quick succession.
Having so recently raised Cromwell to an earldom, Henry stripped him of all his titles and offices, proclaiming ‘that none should call him lord Privy Seal or by any other title of estate, but only Thomas Cromwell, shearman’. In this one sentence, the king had reduced his chief minister to the lowly origins from which he had risen. Referring to Cromwell as a shearman, or shearer of sheep, was a dismissive way of describing his business as a wool merchant. He had been many other things besides, even discounting his court offices, including a property owner, money-lender and – above all – a highly successful lawyer. But Henry wanted to bring Cromwell as low with words as he had done with deeds. Even Cromwell’s servants were ordered to set aside their master’s livery in case they should act as a reminder of his existence. While most rejoiced that Henry had at last ousted his despised chief minister, the Venetian ambassador shrewdly observed that Cromwell was just another victim of the king’s notoriously fickle nature. ‘It is thought that he [Cromwell] likewise will make the same end as all the others most in favour with the King’, he wrote.53
Henry wrote to Marillac shortly afterwards, and it was obvious that the rumours about Cromwell had hit home. He told the ambassador that his minister had been ‘working against the intention of the King and of the Acts of Parliament’, and had boasted that ‘the King with all his power could not prevent it, but rather his own party would be so strong that he would make the King descend to the new doctrines even if he had to take arms against him’. Henry confided that he had heard of Cromwell’s plots from ‘those who heard them and who esteemed their fealty more than the favour of their master’.54 Norfolk, Gardiner and Seymour had known exactly what to say to ignite their royal master’s paranoia. The fact that Cromwell had only recently proved that he would put the king’s wishes ahead of his reforms was quickly forgotten.
But Henry’s relationships with the men closest to him were as complex as they were volatile. Echoing his treatment of Wolsey after his arrest eleven years earlier, while in public he denounced Cromwell as a black-hearted villain, in private he showed some sympathy towards him. One eyewitness noticed that the king had been ‘very kind’ to Cromwell’s servants upon his arrest, and had taken many of them into his own service ‘to save them from want’.55 Henry also sent some money to Cromwell in the Tower, which presumably he could use to bribe his gaolers for better food or other comforts, and urged that he keep him informed of how he was being treated. All of this was done with the utmost discretion. Just as Henry had kept his favour towards Wolsey hidden from Anne Boleyn, so he was careful to conceal his sympathy for Cromwell from the men who had brought him down.
The beleaguered minister wrote at once to thank his master for his ‘abundant’ beneficence, assuring Henry that he was his ‘most humble and most obedient and most bounden subject and most lamentable servant and prisoner, prostrate at the feet of your most excellent majesty’. He went on to assure the king of his abiding fidelity and to remind him of the ‘labours, pains and travails’ he had taken during the decade of his service at court. Cromwell also praised Henry as ‘the most bountiful prince to me that ever was king to his subject, yea and more like a dear father, your Majesty not offended, than a master’.56 His faithfulness to Henry was a recurring theme throughout his imprisonment. When his arch-enemy Norfolk was sent to interrogate him, Cromwell reflected bitterly that he had ‘always been pursued by great enemies about the king; so that his fidelity was tried like gold’.57
While Cromwell was doing what he could to redeem himself from the Tower, back at court the few allies he had left had quickly abandoned him. Sir John Russell had proved a steadfast friend to the chief minister over the years, but he was enough of a political realist – and pragmatist – to realise the futility of trying to defend him now. The fact that Russell had retained Henry’s favour for so long was due largely to his keeping his own political and religious preferences hidden so that he could mould them to those of his royal master. He counted both Catholics and Reformers among his close acquaintances, and his patronage was not bestowed along religious lines. Rather, he seemed to prioritise the king’s wishes above religion.
Thomas Cranmer, who together with Cromwell had spearheaded the English reformation, remained loyal to his ally, but paid the price. Marillac reported that the reformist faction ‘seems quite overthrown by the taking of the said lord Cromwell, who was chief of his band, and there remain only on his side the Archbishop of Canterbury, who dare not open his mouth, and the lord Admiral [William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton], who has long learnt to bend to all winds, and they have for open enemies the duke of Norfolk and the others’.58
Cranmer did eventually try to defend Cromwell to the king, and wrote an impassioned plea urging Henry to remember everything that his chief minister had done for him. He expressed himself ‘sorrowful and amazed that he [Cromwell] should be a traitor against your majesty, he that was so advanced by your majesty … he who loved your majesty (as I ever thought) no less than God; he who studied always to set forwards whatsoever was your majesty’s will and pleasure; he that cared for no man’s displeasure to serve your majesty; he that was such a servant … in wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, and experience, as no prince in this realm ever had’. For Cranmer’s own part, he averred: ‘I loved him as my friend, for so I took him to be; but I chiefly loved him for the love which I thought I saw him bear ever towards your grace, singularly above all other.’ But Cranmer ended with a blatant attempt to feather his own nest, praying that God would ‘send such a counsellor in his place whom your grace may trust, and who for all his qualities can and will serve your grace like him, and that will have so much solicitude and care to preserve your grace from all dangers as I ever thought he had’.59
Cranmer’s letter worked no effect. With blind determination, Henry entrusted his assiduous Lord Chancellor Audley with attainting Cromwell, his former friend and ally, through a parliamentary device that offered the accused no chance to defend himself. Audley no doubt appreciated the irony that the man whose legal skills exceeded his own considerable acumen had been denied a trial. But service to the king always exceeded all other concerns for the Lord Chancellor. In recognition of this, the previous year Henry had approved the Act of Precedence, which gave Audley superiority over all but dukes of royal blood in parliament, the Privy Council, and Star Chamber. His status was further enhanced in May 1540, when he was installed as a Knight of the Garter.
The bill of attainder against Cromwell was introduced to the Lords on 17 June. It described the fallen minister as being of ‘very base and low degree’ and ‘the most detestable traitor that has been seen during the King’s reign’. There were no fewer than eleven indictments, ranging from heresy and corruption to ‘usurping upon your kingly estate power and authority and office, without your grace’s commandment or assent’. The many references to Cromwell’s lowly birth reveal Norfolk’s hand in the drafting. In his eyes, this was Cromwell’s real crime. Despite being ‘a person of as poor and low degree as few be’, so the charges ran, Cromwell had said publicly ‘that he was sure of you [the king], and it is detestable that any subject should speak so of his sovereign’.60 After the bill had been read out, nobody was prepared to speak in Cromwell’s defence, and it was passed twelve days later. Even the fallen minister’s closest ally, Archbishop Cranmer, voted for it. Cromwell was now a dead man walking.
But Henry had not quite finished with his faithful servant yet. Desperate to untangle himself from the Cleves marriage, he called upon Cromwell to give evidence from the Tower in support of an annulment. Along with the king’s physicians and his closest body servants, Sir Anthony Denny and Sir Thomas Heneage, Cromwell was urged to testify that his master ‘never for love to the woman consented to marry; nor yet, if she brought maidenhead with her, took any from her by true carnal copulation’.61 For good measure, Henry dispatched Norfolk, Audley and Fitzwilliam to the Tower so that they might ‘move’ Cromwell’s conscience to provide the evidence that his royal master needed. The former favourite was quick to oblige, rushing off a letter testifying that the marriage had not been consummated, and hinting that the Cleves ambassadors had deliberately concealed Anne’s previous betrothal.
Having fulfilled his duty, and realising that this might be his last chance to write to his master, Cromwell pleaded with Henry to show favour to his son, Gregory, fearing that the young man might suffer by association with a condemned traitor. ‘Sir, upon my knees I most humbly beseech your gracious majesty to be a good and gracious lord to my poor son, [and] the good and virtuous lady his wife and their poor children.’ It was clever of Cromwell to mention his daughter-in-law, thus reminding Henry of Gregory’s kinship to the most beloved of all the king’s wives. Having done his best to protect his son, Cromwell added a desperate postscript for himself: ‘Most gracious prince,’ he wrote in a hurried and untidy script, ‘I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy.’62
According to John Foxe, writing more than twenty years after the event, the king asked for Cromwell’s letter to be read to him three times. It evidently worked some effect, for he subsequently conferred some of Cromwell’s titles and lands upon his son Gregory.63 But this was evidently enough to salve Henry’s conscience, for he did no more.
On 9 July, Cranmer declared the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves null and void. After speaking out for Cromwell, he was quick to disassociate himself from his former ally. This helped to preserve his favour with the king, but he was probably also saved by the fact that Henry’s prospective new bride, Katherine Howard, knew that the archbishop had warned against the Cleves marriage. As if to reward him, the king gave Cranmer formal precedence in the reshaped Privy Council shortly afterwards.
Cromwell’s execution was scheduled for the morning of 28 July. Having been stripped of his titles, he was to be beheaded on Tower Green, the site reserved for common traitors. The day before, a delivery of clothes arrived at Hampton Court Palace. They belonged to the man who now only had hours to live. Nicholas Bristowe, the king’s assiduous keeper of the wardrobe, recorded every item before distributing them among his master’s surviving favourites. They included Sir Thomas Heneage, his groom of the stool, Richard Cecil, a yeoman of the privy chamber, and Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex. Bristowe himself was a recipient. He had no scruple in accepting this macabre gift: Cromwell was one of many deceased or attainted courtiers whose possessions he had redistributed on the king’s behalf. Only Cromwell’s Garter robes were retained by Henry. They remained at Hampton Court ‘by the King’s command’ for the rest of the reign.64
The following morning, Cromwell was escorted to the scaffold by a heavily armed guard, his royal master being fearful of a revolt by the ‘common people’. Although the fallen minister had courted widespread hostility by pushing through the seismic religious reforms, he had been one of the most charitable men at court, never ignoring any plea for assistance and giving daily alms to the poor who gathered outside his residences. He had been greatly beloved among the ordinary citizens of London as a result.
The condemned man behaved with dignity and calm acceptance. Having mounted the scaffold, he addressed the crowds. ‘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.’65 With these carefully chosen words, Cromwell seemed to agree with the most vociferous criticism levelled against him: that a man of his lowly birth should not have so far overreached himself. But his speech was intended as a warning, not an apology. Henry’s other men who were there that day should have taken heed of their fallen rival and reflected upon the fickle favour of their master.