Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (3 page)

By September 1522, Cromwell was prosperous enough to move house to larger premises ‘against the gates’ of the Priory of Austin Friars in Broad Street.
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He was quickly elected secretary of the local ward committee that reported to its alderman on the workings of local government in the area.

Precisely how and when Cromwell first met Cardinal Wolsey face to face remains a matter for conjecture. It may be that Lord Henry Percy, a former member of the Cardinal’s household who had borrowed substantial sums from Cromwell, was the conduit in arranging such a meeting.
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Alternatively, the introduction could have come via Thomas Grey, Second Marquis of Dorset, who seems to have used Cromwell’s legal expertise, or his continuing interests in the cloth trade,
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and, moreover, employed Richard Williams, Cromwell’s nephew, as one of his servants.
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A third means may have been an introduction from the Italian merchant Antonio Bonvisi of Lucca, whose circle of affluent customers included Wolsey. Finally, there was Robert Cromwell, vicar of Battersea and overseer of the Cardinal’s building works there,
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who was a cousin to Thomas Cromwell, and it is entirely plausible that family affiliations could have been exploited.

The meeting probably occurred some time in late 1522 and, doubtless through Wolsey’s influence, Cromwell was returned to Parliament the following year for an unidentified constituency, although Bath looks the most probable seat.
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A draft of a speech by Cromwell – it is uncertain that he ever made it – contains an attack on proposals to invade France as logistically too dangerous, although it is hedged around with the prudent caveat that Cromwell was, of course, as committed as anyone to reclaiming the lost lands in France for the King. Loyally, he also harboured terrible fears about Henry’s safety in leading the English host overseas:

Only one thing … puts me in no small agony. I thought I heard my Lord Cardinal’s grace say that our most gracious sovereign, more dear to any of his subjects … intends to go over [to France] in his royal person … Which thing I pray God for my part I never live to see. Most humbly beseeching his abundant and tender benignity of mercy and pardon of this my saying, for the humble and obedient love I owe unto his noble person,
causes me in this case to forget obeisance … I cannot consent to obey … this his pleasure, wherein lies the hazarding of this, his noble realm, and upon the which might follow (which God defend) the greatest calamity and affliction.
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Humble, obsequious Cromwell! To modern eyes, his words look uncomfortably fawning and cringing. But why shouldn’t they have been? He knew his words would be read by Henry and that the King, whose household suffered under his uncertain temper, was always quick to take offence. Hence his flattering fears that his sovereign could fall sick or victim to the ‘thousand dangers which chance in war’. Instead, he suggested, why not invade France’s staunch ally Scotland and unite that kingdom with England, rather than wage war overseas, with inevitably vulnerable supply lines stretching across the English Channel? His sharp merchant’s mind clearly saw less risk and more profit in this enterprise.

Cromwell’s opposition both to the invasion of France and the cost of the war may appear strange for an ambitious man anxious to climb the ladder to fortune. But he may have been a player in a bigger, more devious plan either simply to halt approval of a new tax to pay for the war, or to lance the boil of opposition to the conflict within Parliament. Was he speaking as a surrogate voice, advocating Wolsey’s personal opposition to Henry’s foreign policy without risk to the Cardinal himself?

Parliamentary life did not appeal to Cromwell, which is surprising given his later skill at manipulating both Houses. He wrote a cynical, sneering letter on 27 August 1523 to an old friend, the merchant tailor John Creke, then staying in Bilbao in northern Spain, in which he passed on news of the debates within the Commons. He clearly viewed the fruitless proceedings with utter contempt:

You shall understand that by long time I have endured a parliament which continued … the space of seventeen weeks,
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where we communed [talked] of war, peace, strife, contention, debate, murmur, grudge, riches, poverty, penury, truth, falsehood, justice, equity, deceit, oppression, magnanimity, activity, force, moderation, treason, murder, felony, conciliation.

Also how a commonwealth might be edified and also contained within our realm.

Howbeit, in conclusion, we have done as our predecessors have been wont to do – that is to say, as well we might and left where we began.
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Cromwell added ruefully that Parliament had granted the King ‘a right large subsidy [tax] the like of which was never granted in this realm’. It probably amounted to £800,000 for the royal exchequer, or £319 million at today’s prices, to fund an invasion of France.

In 1524, Cromwell was appointed a subsidy commissioner to the Hundred of Ossulton, in Middlesex, a post that involved assessing the values of land and goods for taxation, and in the same year, his legal acumen was recognised by his election as a member of Gray’s Inn. That February, he acted for the London alderman and mercer John Allen, who sold the manor of Kexby, 5 miles (8 km) east of York, to Wolsey. The lawyer’s skills in conveyancing property were appreciated and he entered formal service with the Cardinal
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some time later that summer. Within a year, he had become indispensable and was addressed as ‘Councillor to my Lord Legate’ and ‘The Right Worshipful Mr Cromwell’. He had finally slipped into the shadows behind the seat of power.

There were similarities between the two men, although more than a decade separated them in age. Both came from modest roots: Wolsey was the son of a reasonably prosperous butcher in Ipswich. Both were ambitious and rapacious. Wolsey, however, had been educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, was made a Bachelor of Arts at the age of fifteen and was nicknamed the ‘Boy Bachelor’. Cromwell, as we have seen, learnt his lessons in the University of Life with no formal schooling. He had received the toughest education of all: experience had taught him the mistakes to be avoided and the lessons to be applied later.

For his part, Henry, always apprehensive of the power of his turbulent and ambitious nobility and bored with the day-to-day business of running his realm, deliberately appointed commoners to the highest administrative posts in the land. Wolsey and Cromwell had no allegiance to any aristocratic power bloc and therefore appeared expendable without
causing disruption to the delicate political balance between England’s noble families. The King’s Tudor low cunning ensured that, ostensibly at least, their loyalty would be to the sovereign who had created them and daily provided them with the enviable trappings of authority. But, inevitably, their influence and enrichment caused festering resentment amongst the nobility, who saw them as coarse, low-born usurpers of the power that, by rights, ought to have belonged to them. That snobbish animosity and hatred was to bring both ministers down.

Cromwell kept on his burgeoning legal practice, much of the business emanating from the English-held town of Calais on the north-west coast of France.
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A number of illustrious England-based clients also came Cromwell’s way, including the head of an increasingly influential clan, Thomas Boleyn, Viscount Rochford. His sister, the wife of Sir Robert Clere, retained Cromwell in 1527 in a dispute with Lady Feneux, the widow of a former Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, over outstanding debts of £400. Cromwell told Boleyn that there was no remedy remaining in common law

unless your lordship will move my lord’s grace [Wolsey] to grant an … injunction to Lady Feneux [to] no further prosecute the [writ] of execution [repayment] and to allow no writ of
liberate
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to go out of Chancery until the whole matter be heard
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… Your lordship thus doing, shall do the thing in my poor opinion which shall stand with reason and good conscience as knows the Holy Trinity, whom I most heartily beseech to preserve your lordship in long life, good health and much honour.

Rochford was, of course, the father of Anne Boleyn, and a few years later, Cromwell’s final words to him were to take on a terribly hollow ring.
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Cromwell also developed his business as a money-lender, apparently specializing in loans to the gentry, merchants or those associated with the court. Thus, on 10 July 1527 a £100 mortgage was granted to Sir John Hussey, with ‘certain parcels of plate’ handed over as collateral.
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That September, John Smith sought Cromwell’s forbearance for ‘a little while’ in paying off his loan. He admitted he had been ‘bolder’ with him ‘than with any friend and will [work] to deserve it’ and sounded as if he was
struggling financially. He thanked ‘God for the fat oxen in the stall’ but admitted he could have made more of his corn had he sold the crop at the beginning of the year.
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Much later, in 1535, Cromwell wrote to his friend Thomas Allen at Rayleigh in Essex requesting the return of the £100 he had lent him:

I looked to have heard from you and trusted not only to have … received from you now at Midsummer last past my £100, which of gentleness I lent you, but also sufficient bonds and surety for your brother the Archbishop of Dublin concerning the payment of 700 marks [£470] which he owes to the king’s highness … For lack and default thereof, you have forfeited to the king’s highness the sum of 1,000 marks [£670], which I think you ought to substantially look upon, for the king is no person to be deluded or mocked withal.

Considering that for your sake, I so gently parted with my money, it seems to me that reason and good honesty requires [that] you should see me paid again.

Praying that I may be advertised [informed] by this bearer what you mean and intend to do in the promises … And so heartily fare you well.

THOMAS CROMWELL
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Friendship could only mean so much: business, after all, was business.

Whilst still active in his own right as a lawyer and money-lender, Cromwell’s work for the Cardinal as a legal adviser and councillor revealed to him a new, undreamt-of world of riches. Wolsey’s opulent lifestyle, wealth and love of pomp must have astonished Cromwell.

The Cardinal’s household numbered nearly 500 members, including ‘the tallest and [most] comely yeomen that he could get in all this realm’. George Cavendish, Wolsey’s gentleman usher, relates that the Cardinal had three dining tables daily in his hall, presided over by three principal officers: a steward (always a dean or a priest) a treasurer (a knight) and a comptroller, who all carried white staves as badges of office. His kitchen staff was legion and included two clerks, a surveyor of the dresser, a clerk of the spicery, a yeoman of the scullery and three yeomen and two grooms of the cellar. There were also forty cup-bearers, carvers, waiters
and sewers – who tasted Wolsey’s food in case of poison. His two master cooks wore damask satin or velvet, with gold chains around their necks. Clearly someone else did the dirty work in the kitchen. Then there were the officers of his privy chamber and the fifty-four staff attached to his personal chapel: the private masses regularly included forty priests dressed in very rich copes, or Eucharistic vestments, accompanied by Wolsey’s own choir of twelve boys and sixteen men. The Cardinal blatantly copied the uniforms of Henry’s royal bodyguard, the Yeomen of the Guard, for those of his personal servants, who wore tunics of crimson velvet with the letters ‘TC’ – for
Thomas Cardinalis
– embroidered in gold, back and front.
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Cavendish describes Wolsey’s daily procession to Westminster Hall from his palace at York Place to hear legal cases in the Chancery Court:

After mass he would return to his privy chamber … and would issue out, apparelled all in red, in the habit of a cardinal, which was either of fine scarlet or else of crimson satin, taffeta or caffa,
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the best he could get for money. Upon his head, a round pillion;
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he also had a tippet [cape] of fine sable around his neck, holding in his hand a very fair orange, [with] the … substance within taken out, wherein was vinegar and other confections against the pestilent airs, the which he most commonly smelt unto, passing among the press [of people] or … when he was pestered with suitors.

His procession formed up, led by a page bearing the Great Seal of England and another his cardinal’s hat, and these were followed by tall priests carrying two large silver crosses, one symbolising his role as Archbishop of York and the other, a double cross like that of Lorraine, his position as papal legate, and two pillars of heavy silver. Then came his personal herald or pursuivant of arms, carrying a ‘great mace of silver gilt’. Wolsey himself was humbly mounted on a mule, but this was richly trapped out in crimson velvet with gilt stirrups, and he was surrounded by his own foot guards, armed with gilded poleaxes.
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His gentlemen ushers continually cried out: ‘On, my lords and masters, on before – make way for my Lord’s grace. Make way for his grace, the Cardinal Legate of York, Lord High Chancellor of this realm.’ Quite a mouthful
for those trying to clear a path through the great unwashed for their master.

He was indeed a prince of the Church – ‘the proudest prelate that ever lived’ – and the richest man in England after the King himself. Wolsey pillaged the goods of every bishopric he took over and even managed to extract financial profit from the treaties he negotiated. As Lord Chancellor, he received a commission for every favour conferred and levied a shilling in the pound on the value of all the wills proved by his administrators.
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His annual income before he fell from power in 1529 is estimated at an incredible £50,000, or £17,500,000 in 2006 monetary values.

Here was a role model and mentor whom Cromwell, in all his grasping venality, could surely look up to.