Read Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII Online
Authors: David Loades
Thomas Cromwell
Thomas Cromwell was not a Lutheran. His only explicit statement about his doctrinal position was to say that it agreed with that of the king, which was the right thing to say, and accurate up to a point. However, we can only deduce his views from the actions which he took in support of the Royal Supremacy, and they suggest an independent strategy. For instance it was he, rather than Henry, who tried to recruit William Tyndale as an apologist for the king’s actions, using his long-time servant Stephen Vaughn as
an intermediary, only to be forced to desist when Tyndale adamantly refused to support his second marriage.
1
He agreed with Luther on the need for vernacular scriptures, but remained ambivalent on the central Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. The best general description of his beliefs is that they were Erasmian or Evangelical, or alternatively of the ‘new learning’. This regularly set him at odds with conservative bishops such as Stokesley and Gardiner, who saw the Supremacy in terms of the defence of the Catholic faith as they knew it, and had no time for innovations.
2
Cromwell regularly protected Evangelical preachers such as Hugh Latimer, and pressed Henry, discreetly but persistently, to accept an English translation of the Bible. He also policed the enforcement of the Act of Supremacy, and set up the commissions required to administer the oaths required by the Act of Succession. The king’s confidence in his secretary’s judgement in religious matters was demonstrated in January 1535, when he created him Viceregent in Spirituals for the purpose of conducting a general visitation of the Church.
3
This involved the inhibition of the visitorial powers of the bishops, resulting in the
Valor Ecclesiasticus.
It was completed by the end of the year.
This did not, however, solve the problem of preaching. Cromwell, as Viceregent, consistently licensed Evangelical preachers to spread the word of reform, but these were regularly challenged by conservatives bearing Episcopal licences, with the result that there was confusion and not a little strife. On 7 January 1536, therefore, acting in the king’s name, Cromwell sent a letter to all the bishops, deploring the temerity of those who continued to defend the authority of the Bishop of Rome from the pulpit, but balancing that with an equal denunciation of those who ‘treat and dispute such matters as do rather engender a contrariety’ rather than edifying their audience; in other words who exceeded their brief by introducing radical notions into their sermons.
4
The king expresses his regret at the bishops’ failure to suppress either sedition or extremism, and continues,
It appertains especially to our office and vocation, unto whose order, care and government it hath pleased Almighty God to commit this part of his flock … to foresee and provide with all policy counsel wisdom and authority that the same, being educated, fed and nourished with wholesome and godly doctrine, and not seduced with filthy and corrupt abominations of the bishop of Rome or his disciples or adherents, nor yet by the setting forth of novelties … might have their instruction tempered with such means and be taught with such discretion and judgement as little by little they may perceive the truth.
All bishops are instructed to call in and review their licences with a view to removing ‘unfit persons’. This circular was enclosed with a covering letter of Cromwell’s own, reminding the recipients of the ‘king’s highness’s travails and your duties’, and concluding,
I write frankly, compelled and enforced thereunto both in respect of my private duty and otherwise for my discharge, forasmuch as it pleaseth his majesty to use me in the lieu of a councillor, whose office is as an eye to the prince, to foresee and in time provide remedy for such abuses … as might else, with a little sufferance engender more evil in his public weal than could after be redubbed with much labour…
5
The king’s signature on the main document, and this personally signed covering letter, were intended to give this instrument a unique power of persuasion and pressure. No doubt it had some effect because the problem of ‘popish’ dissidents could be dealt with by law, but the issue of radical innovation would not go away until some strict doctrinal parameters had been laid down. On 11 July 1536 the convocations, with the king’s active assistance, produced a formulary of the faith known as the Ten Articles, ‘devised by the king’s highness to establish Christian quietness and unity among us, and to avoid contentious opinions’.
6
These articles were designed, as was usually the case, to pick up on the errors and omissions noted in the visitation of the previous year. They set out the five things ‘necessary to be believed’, which are
the ‘grounds of the faith’, that is the Bible, the creeds, the four ancient councils, and those patristic traditions not contrary to the scriptures: baptism; penance; the sacrament of the altar; and justification. Then follow the second five, to be retained although not necessary to salvation: the use of images; honouring of the saints; praying to the saints; rites and ceremonies; and purgatory. These articles are reformed only in the sense that they relegate prayers to the saints and belief in purgatory to the category of
adiaphora
or things indifferent, whereas the strictly orthodox would regard the denial of either as heresy. The whole document is something of a compromise, but reflects very accurately the state of the king’s own thinking at that particular moment, and that argues his close oversight.
7
It is notable, for example, that the only sacraments mentioned are the Eucharist, penance and baptism, which were the three recognised by the Lutherans, although there are no signs of direct Lutheran influence. The articles were accompanied by a set of injunctions, issued in the king’s name by Thomas Cromwell. They begin with a fine flourish:
I, Thomas Cromwell Knight, Lord Cromwell, Keeper of the Privy Seal of our said Sovereign Lord the King, and viceregent unto the same, for and concerning all his jurisdiction ecclesiastical within this realm, visiting by the king’s highness’ supreme authority ecclesiastical this deanery of [x] by my trusty commissary [y] lawfully deputed and constituted for this part, have to the glory of Almighty God, to the King’s highness’ honour, the public weal of this his realm, and increase of virtue in the same appointed and assigned these Injunctions ensuing to be kept and observed of the dean, parsons, vicars, curates and stipendiaries having cure of souls … within this deanery…
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The clergy’s behaviour is then corrected by orders to instruct the people in the Christian faith, to see to the education of the young, to make proper provision for the administration of the sacraments, and to avoid scandalous activities like tavern haunting and the playing of dice. They are to study scripture, to distribute alms and to maintain scholars at the universities according to their means, on the scale specified. Naturally they are required to preach the Royal Supremacy, every Sunday for three weeks and thereafter twice a quarter, and to enforce the doctrinal position defined in the accompanying articles. They are to expound these articles regularly, and to observe and explain the recent reduction in the number of holy days and the new rules about ceremonies.
9
There is, however, no mention of the new code of canon law because although that had been drawn up in the previous year, at great cost in time and effort, it had not been implemented and remained among Cromwell’s office papers.
10
He set out to conduct this secondary visitation with all his accustomed energy and efficiency, using a wide variety of sympathetic clergy as commissaries. It represented a moderate and by all accounts necessary programme of reform designed to bring about an improvement in the moral and spiritual state of the people by keeping a watchful eye upon their pastors. This represents Cromwell’s best-known effort towards reform, but it was clearly not his only one. The surviving papers of his viceregential court show him issuing licences to preach, to deprive priors and abbots, to install a bishop, and to authorise irregular marriages.
11
In other words he applied himself with the same conscientiousness to this office as he did to the secretaryship or the lordship of the Privy Seal. Nothing escaped his scrutiny.
Not everyone rejoiced at this evidence of careful supervision. The traditional doctrine of purgatory, for example, constantly resurfaced in spite of all exhortations to the contrary. At Wimborne in Dorset, Edward Thorpe asserted repeatedly that the souls of the departed could be rescued from torment by the expenditure of money on intercessory prayers and ceremonies, a flagrant attack upon the whole reformed programme, which earned him at least a sequestration.
12
At the same time in Worcestershire a certain Dr Smyth luxuriated in a similar programme of prayers
for the archbishop of York, and for the bishop of Lincoln, and for our most holy father the bishop of London, a founder of the faith of Christ, and for my lord [the abbot] of Evesham, and for my lord of Hailes, and for my lord of Winchcome and for my lord of Abingdon, and for … all the souls that are departed out of this world abiding the mercy of God that lie in the pain of purgatory.
All those he named were notorious conservatives, thus compoundinghis offence, but he escaped into the anonymity of Oxford, out of the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Worcester, and there he vanished.
13
Other examples could be quoted, and it is clear that the injunctions did not clean up clerical behaviour in the manner intended. John Divale was accused of continuing to devote himselfto dicing, carding and bowling long after they had been issued and of calling the reading of scripture heresy in defiance of instructions. Lancelot Pocock, a curate in Kent, who can have had no excuse for his actions, declined to read the injunctions in church for eighteen months after they were published, and lodged in an alehouse although he was welcome at the parsonage.
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In addition to following up individual cases such as these, Cromwell took one further general step in pursuit of his objective. In spite of his preoccupation with the Pilgrimage, on 16 November he issued another general circular to the bishops in the king’s name. This started with a résumé of the injunctions and the benefits expected of them. However, it went on, in spite of all this care, the king understood that there was much talk against the articles, and they had featured in the recent rebellion. The bishops were therefore to declare the articles every holy day, and personally to travel up and down their dioceses, preaching from proper texts of scripture and proclaiming the Supremacy. They were (once again) to instruct their clergy in the necessary reading of the articles, and to send up to the Viceregent for punishment any that ‘will not better temper’ their tongues.
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Moreover, and this is an indication that papists were not the only problem, they were also to send up to the council any who had had the temerity to marry, contrary to the injunctions and to the custom of the English Church. On the same day as Cromwell’s circular, the king issued a proclamation, the original of which is corrected in his own hand, prohibiting the unlicensed printing of scripture, exiling Anabaptists, depriving married clergy, and removing Thomas Becket from the calendar. The orthodoxy of the Henrician Church was proving to be distinctly ambiguous.
By the time that this second letter was issued the Viceregent was deeply immersed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which was a leading issue in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Thanks to Foxe, it has been commonly supposed that this was Cromwell’s innovation, and a necessary part of his programme to make Henry ‘the richest prince in Christendom’, but in fact the idea went back well before his rise to power. Henry had never had much time for monks, or friars, or the shrines of the saints, an attitude which may go back to his Erasmian education, or to disappointment with his pilgrimage of 1511. In January of that year he had visited the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham to give thanks for the birth of his son, and to pray for his well-being. The child died with a matter of weeks, and the king was deeply distressed by this failure of divine intervention.
16
Unlike his father, and most of his predecessors, he was never a patron of religious orders, and had established no new foundations in the first twenty years of his reign. He had supported Wolsey’s plan for a limited dissolution between 1525 and 1529, and in the latter year, with his quarrel with the Church beginning to surface, appeared willing to embrace the idea himself. In December of that year he told Chapuys that he had it in mind to reform the clergy, which the ambassador took to be a direct consequence of his frustration with the papacy, and he reported that the Duke of Suffolk was letting it be known that a selective dissolution would solve some of the Crown’s financial problems.
17
In November 1530 he repeated the threat, saying that he would be ‘doing God’s service’ to take away the temporalities of the clergy, knowing that this would be reported back to the Emperor and no doubt hoping that it would help to persuade the Pope to buy him off. The deadlock, however, persisted, and it was only the implementation of the Royal Supremacy in 1533 and 1534 that gave the king the means to carry out his threat. So that although the idea of the Dissolution was an old one, it was the arrival of Cromwell on the scene which made it a practical possibility. The secretary himself appears not to have been convinced at first, and according to Chapuys it was the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk who first pressed the issue, in which Cromwell could see only ‘great inconveniences’, an attitude which irritated the king.
18
According to a later story, he had argued in council for a gradual approach to the Dissolution, taking each house on its merits (or defects), but was overruled, which could only have been done by the king personally. Whenever this decision was made, it could only have been after the visitors’ reports had begun to arrive, that is sometime in the summer of 1535, and it may explain why the Bill for the dissolution of the smaller abbeys, which was introduced early in 1536, was not a very professional piece of work. It was not prepared by Cromwell, who only reluctantly agreed to its provisions.
19
This interpretation is supported by a number of references in his memoranda to the need for reform among the abbeys, both great and small. On one occasion he alludes to the ‘abominations of religious persons throughout the realm, and a reformation to be devised therein’ without making any distinction by size, and indicating the policy which he is known to have pursued, and which has been called ‘infiltration’.