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THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 FROM A PIOTURE IN THE BOUIJEIAN LIBRARY 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 BY 
 
 ROGER BIGELOW MERRIMAN 
 
 A.M. Harv., B.Litt. Oxon. 
 WITH A PORTRAIT AND FACSIMILE 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 LIFE, LETTERS TO 1535 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1902 
 
HENRY FROWDE, M.A. 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is an attempt to present the life of 
 Thomas Cromwell as a statesman, and to estimate 
 his work without religious bias. Though it would 
 certainly be difficult to overrate his importance in the 
 history of the Church of England, -I maintain that 
 the motives that inspired his actions were invariably 
 political, and that the many ecclesiastical changes 
 carried through under his guidance were but incidents 
 of his administration, not ends in themselves. Con- 
 sequently any attempt to judge him from a distinctively 
 religious standpoint, whether Catholic or Protestant, 
 can hardly fail, it seems to me, to mislead the student 
 and obscure the truth. I cannot agree, on the other 
 hand, with those who have represented Cromwell as 
 a purely selfish political adventurer, the subservient 
 instrument of a wicked master, bent only on his own 
 gain. It seems to me as idle to disparage his patriot- 
 ism and statesmanship, as it is to try to make him out 
 a hero of the Reformation. He merits a place far 
 higher than that of most men of his type, a type 
 essentially characteristic of the sixteenth century, a 
 type of which the Earl of Warwick in England and 
 Maurice of Saxony on the Continent are striking 
 examples, a type that profoundly influenced the des- 
 tinies of Protestantism, but to which theological issues 
 were either a mere nothing, or else totally subordinate 
 to political considerations. 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It has been justly said that Cromwell's correspond- 
 ence is our chief source of information for the period 
 immediately following the breach with Rome. To 
 transcribe in extenso the letters he received would be 
 almost the task of a lifetime ; for they form the bulk 
 of the enormous mass of material with which the 
 editors of the Calendars of State Papers for the years 
 1533-40 have had to deal. But the number of extant 
 letters he wrote is, comparatively speaking, extremely 
 small ; it has therefore been possible to make full 
 copies of them in every case, and I trust that the 
 many advantages — linguistic as well as historical — 
 that can only be secured by complete, and as far as 
 possible accurate transcriptions of the originals, will be 
 accepted as sufficient reason for editing this collection 
 of documents, twenty-one of which have neither been 
 printed nor calendared before. The rules that have 
 been observed in transcription will be found in the 
 Prefatory Note (vol. i. p. 311). The Calendar refer- 
 ences to the more important letters received by 
 Cromwell, where they bear directly on those he wrote, 
 are given in the notes at the end of the second 
 volume. 
 
 My warmest thanks are due to Mr. F. York Powell, 
 Regius Professor of Modern History in the Univer- 
 sity of Oxford, who has guided me throughout in 
 matter, form, and style ; and to my friend and master 
 Mr. A. L. Smith, Fellow of Balliol College, whose 
 advice and encouragement have been an inspiration 
 from first to last. It is not easy for me to express 
 how much I have depended on their suggestions and 
 criticism. I am indebted to Mr. Owen Edwards, 
 Fellow of Lincoln College, for indispensable help in 
 the early stages of my work. The main plan of this 
 
PREFACE V 
 
 book is in many respects similar to that of his Lothian 
 Essay for the year 1887, which I regret that he has 
 never published. My grateful acknowledgements are 
 also due to Mr. James Gairdner of the Public Record 
 Office for information about Cromwell's early life ; to 
 Professor Dr. Max Lenz, of the University of Berlin, 
 for helpful suggestions in connexion with the Anglo- 
 German negotiations in the years 1537-40; and to 
 Mr. G. T. Lapsley, of the University of California, for 
 similar services in regard to the Pilgrimage of Grace, 
 and the reorganization of the North after the suppres- 
 sion of the rebellion, 
 
 I beg to express my appreciation of the kindness of 
 the Duke of Rutland, the Marquess of Salisbury, Earl 
 Spencer, Lord Calthorpe, William Berington, Esq., 
 and Alfred Henry Huth, Esq., in giving me access to 
 the manuscripts in their private collections. 
 
 In conclusion, I wish to thank the officials of the 
 Public Record Office, British Museum, Heralds' Col- 
 lege of Arms, and Bodleian Library, for facilitating 
 my work in every way ; more especially Messrs. 
 Hubert Hall, R. H. Brodie, E. Salisbury, and F. B. 
 Bickley, who have repeatedly aided me in my search 
 for uncalendared letters and continental documents, 
 and in deciphering the most difficult manuscripts I 
 have had to consult. 
 
 R. B. M. 
 
 Balliol College, Oxford. 
 February, 1 902. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 Chapter page 
 
 I. The Ancestry and Early Life of Thomas 
 
 Cromwell i 
 
 Appendix. Passages from Chapuys, Pole, 
 
 BaNDELLO, AND FOXE . . . -I? 
 
 II. The Parliament of 1523 .... 27 
 
 III. Wolsey's Servant 47 
 
 Appendix. The Will of Thomas Crom- 
 well 56 
 
 IV. The Fall of the Cardinal ... 64 
 
 V. The Character and Opportunity of 
 
 Thomas Cromwell 77 
 
 VI. In the King's Service 89 
 
 Appendix. The Supplication of the 
 Commons against the Ordinaries . .104 
 
 VII. Internal Policy 112 
 
 VIII. Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Calais . . 147 
 
 IX. The Monasteries 165 
 
 X. The Pilgrimage OF Grace, 1536 . . .180 
 
 XI. Cardinal Pole 202 
 
 XII. The Foreign Policy 213 
 
 XIII. The Catholic Reaction and the Al- 
 liance WITH Cleves 242 
 
 Appendix. Reports of the Lutheran 
 Ambassadors to England in 1539 and 
 1540 372 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 Chapter page 
 
 I. The Ancestry and Early Life of Thomas 
 
 Cromwell i 
 
 Appendix. Passages from Chapuys, Pole, 
 Bandello, and FoxE . . . .17 
 
 II. The Parliament of 1523 .... 37 
 
 III. Wolsey's Servant 47 
 
 Appendix. The Will of Thomas Crom- 
 well ^6 
 
 IV. The Fall of the Cardinal ... 64 
 
 V. The Character and Opportunity of 
 
 Thomas Cromwell 77 
 
 VI. In the King's Service 89 
 
 Appendix. The Supplication of the 
 Commons against the Ordinaries . .104 
 
 VII. Internal Policy 112 
 
 VIII. Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Calais . . 147 
 
 IX. The Monasteries 165 
 
 X. The Pilgrimage OF Grace, 1536 . . .180 
 
 XI. Cardinal Pole 202 
 
 XII. The Foreign Policy 213 
 
 XIII. The Catholic Reaction and the Al- 
 liance with Cleves 242 
 
 Appendix. Reports of the Lutheran 
 Ambassadors to England in 1539 and 
 1540 373 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter page 
 
 XIV. The Fall of Thomas Cromwell . . a8i 
 
 Appendix. Passages from Foxe: Crom- 
 well's Speech and Prayer on the 
 Scaffold 303 
 
 XV. The Work of Thomas Cromwell . . 305 
 
 Prefatory Note to Cromwell's Letters 
 
 Cromwell's Letters ; 
 
 1533-30 
 
 ^533 
 1534 
 ^535 
 
 311 
 
 3^3 
 335 
 343 
 352 
 31^ 
 396 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 Cromwell's Letters : 1536 
 
 ^537 
 1538 
 1539 
 1540 
 
 An Itinerary of Thomas Cromwell, 1523-40 
 
 A List of the Minor Preferments of Thomas 
 
 Cromwell, and a Description of his Arms 
 
 and Crest 
 
 Notes to Letters . . . ■ . 
 
 List of Authorities 
 
 Index 
 
 I 
 
 50 
 III 
 166 
 
 244 
 
 279 
 
 283 
 285 
 
 3^3 
 
 319 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Portrait of Thomas Cromwell . Frontispiece to vol. i 
 Facsimile of a Letter from Thomas Cromwell 
 
 TO Lord Lisle, Aug. 30, 1538 . Frontispiece to vol. ii 
 
LIFE OF THOMAS CROMWELL 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE OF THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 The manor of Wimbledon comprises the parishes of Wim- 
 bledon, Putney, Roehampton, Mortlake, and East Sheen, and 
 parts of Wandsworth and Barnes i. In West Saxon times it 
 was one of the estates of the see of Canterbury, but after 
 the Conquest it was seized by Odo, the high-handed Bishop of 
 Bayeux: in 1071, however, it was recovered by Lanfranc, and 
 with one trifling interruption in the reign of Richard II, it 
 remained in the possession of the archbishopric until 1535. 
 In that year Cranmer surrendered it to Henry VIII in ex- 
 change for the priory of St. Rhadegund in Dover, and a little 
 later the King granted it to Thomas Cromwell^, who was 
 born there some fifty years before, the son of a well-to-do 
 blacksmith, brewer, and fuller. The early history of the 
 manor of Wimbledon is almost unknown, for we do not 
 possess its Court Rolls prior to the year 1461 : they were 
 probably lost or destroyed during the Wars of the Roses. 
 After 1 46 1, however, they are continuous, with the exception 
 of the years 1473 ^"'^ I474- 
 
 An entry in these rolls, written in the year 1475, states that 
 ' Walter Smyth and his father keep thirty sheep on Putney 
 Common, where they have no common ^.' A number of sub- 
 sequent mentions of this same Walter Smyth shows that he 
 
 ^ Antiquarian Magazine, Aug. Manor, 15 Edw. IV. These rolls 
 
 1882, vol. ii. p. 57. are now in the possession of Earl 
 
 ' Manning and Bray, History Spencer, lord of the manor. They 
 
 and Antiquities of the County of were made accessible to me through 
 
 Surrey, vol. iii. p. 268. the courtesy of his steward, Mr, 
 
 ' Court Rolls of Wimbledon Joseph Plaskitt. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I B 
 
2 THOMAS CROMWErL 
 
 was also called Walter Cromwell. The name Walter Crom- 
 well occurs more than ninety times iti the rolls, and the name 
 Walter Smyth at least forty times. That both these names 
 stand for the same person is proved by one entry written, 
 ' Walter Cromwell alias Walter Smyth,' by two written, 
 ' Walter Smyth alias Cromwell,' and by five written, ' Walter 
 Cromwell alias Smyth.' Who then was this Walter Crom- 
 well, whence did he come, and how did he acquire this double 
 name? 
 
 The Cromwell family did not originate in Wimbledon. An 
 entry in the Close Roll of Edward IV states that in the year 
 1461 John Cromwell, son of William Cromwell, late of Nor- 
 well in Nottinghamshire, surrendered his right in Parkersplace, 
 Kendalsland and other property there to Master John Porter, 
 prebendary of Palishall ^. Mr. John Phillips of Putney further 
 informs us that nine years before John Cromwell gave up 
 liis lands in Norwell, he was granted the twenty-one years' lease 
 of a fulling-mill and house in Wimbledon by Archbishop 
 Kempe, lord of the manor, and had moved there with his 
 family ^. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Phillips' 
 authority for this statement is : unfortunately he has given no 
 reference for it. But whatever the precise date and circum- 
 stances of their change of home, there can be little doubt 
 that the Cromwells migrated to Wimbledon from Norwell 
 some time before 146 1. There is plenty of evidence in 
 the Court Rolls to show that Walter Smyth alias Cromwell 
 was the son of John Cromwell, and the entry of 1475 proves 
 that they were both in Wimbledon in that year. The family 
 in Nottinghamshire from which they sprung was well-known 
 
 ^ The original entry reads : campis de N orthwell magw/ro 
 
 ' JohanntB Cromwell filius et heres ]ohanni Porter prebendario pre- 
 
 Wzy,?/?«2' Cromwell nup^rde North- bende de Northwell wocato pre- 
 
 well in comitatu Nottingham re- bende de Palishall in eccl^^ia 
 
 misit totum jus &c. in quodam collegzV heatat Mariae Suthwell et 
 
 yae.ssuag^io vocaXo Parkersplace et saccessoridus suis ' (Dods. MSS. 
 
 in quodam tofto et 'v acris tervae in Bibl. Bodl., vol. xxxvi. p. 97, 
 
 et in uno tofto cum crofto et vii i Edw. IV). 
 
 acris terrae dudum nup^r vocatis ^ Antiquarian Magazine for 
 
 Kendalisland et in viii acris terrae August, 1882, vol. ii. p. 59. 
 et dimid/o jacentz^«j in villa et 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 3 
 
 and well-off; both John Cromwell's father William and 
 his grandfather Ralph were persons of wealth and position 
 there ^. 
 
 Several entries in the Court Rolls indicate that John Crom- 
 well's wife was the sister of a certain William Smyth, who is 
 often mentioned as ' William Smyth armourer,' and sometimes 
 as ' William Armourer.' It seems probable that this William 
 Smyth came with John Cromwell to Wimbledon from Nor- 
 well, and the entries in the manorial records show that he 
 lived there with his brother-in-law. There is also reason to 
 believe that the latter's son Walter was apprenticed to him 
 during his younger days, and so acquired the name Smyth. 
 
 Walter Cromwell grew up as a brewer, smith, and fuller in 
 Putney. He had an elder brother named John, who moved 
 to Lambeth and settled down there to a quiet and prosperous 
 life as a brewer, later, according to Chapuys, becoming cook to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury ^. Walter, however, remained 
 in Wimbledon, and appears to have been a most quarrelsome 
 and riotous character. Most of the entries in the Court Rolls 
 concerning him are records of small fines incurred for petty 
 offences. Forty-eight times between 1475 and 1501 was he 
 forced to pay sixpence for breaking the assize of ale. In 
 order to prevent the sale of bad beer in those days, 
 an ale-taster was appointed to pass, or condemn as unfit, 
 all brewing in the parish. Walter Cromwell did not go 
 to the ale-taster before he drew and sold his beer, and for 
 failing so to do was fined as aforesaid. There is also record 
 that he was not seldom drunk. In 1477 a penalty of twenty 
 pence was inflicted on him for assaulting and drawing blood 
 from William Michell, and he and his father were very often 
 brought before the court on the charge of ' overburthening ' 
 the public land in Putney with their cattle, and cutting more 
 than their share of the furze and thorns there ^. But in spite 
 
 ' Dods. MSS., vol. xi. pp. 193 a, ^ Cf. Appendix I at the end of 
 
 248 a ; vol. xxxvi. p. 103. Thorold this chapter. 
 
 Rogers,inhisHistory of Agriculture ' The following are some of the 
 
 and Prices, vol. iv. p. 3, refers to more common entries concerning 
 
 Ralph Lord Cromwell as 'one of the Walter Cromwell : — 
 
 richest men of the fifteenth century.' ' Preseniant quod Gualterus 
 
 B a 
 
4 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 of all these petty misdemeanours, Walter Cromwell appears 
 to have been a man of property and influence in Wimbledon, 
 and the Court Rolls in 1480 show that he then possessed two 
 virgates of land in Putney parish. To these were added six 
 more virgates in 1500 by grant of Archbishop Morton '. 
 Walter Cromwell was also made Constable of Putney in 
 1495 ^, and his name constantly occurs in the Court Rolls 
 as decenarius and juryman ^. Towards the end of his life, 
 however, his character appears to have become so bad that 
 he foi-feited all his position and property in Wimbledon. In 
 1514 he 'falsely and fraudulently erased the evidences and 
 terrures of the lord,' so that the bedell was commanded ' to 
 seize into the lord's hands all his copyholds held of the lord 
 and to answer the lord of the issue *.' This is the last mention 
 of the name of Walter Cromwell in the Wimbledon Manor Rolls. 
 Walter Cromwell's wife was the aunt of a man named 
 Nicholas Glossop, of Wirksworth in Derbyshire ^. Mr. Phil- 
 lips gives no reference for his statements that she was the 
 daughter of a yeoman named Glossop, and that she was residing 
 
 Cromwell est communis hradator 20 May, 11 Hen. VII : 'Klegerunt 
 
 de here et fregit assz>am ' and in officio constabularzi de Putten- 
 
 ' quod Gualterus Cromwell et . . . hith Gualterum Smyth qui jnraius 
 
 sunt commune.^ tipellarzi s^ruisie est in eodem officio.' 
 
 et fregerant asswam ideo ipsi in ' As by an entry of 20 May, 
 
 misericordia vid.' (Court Rolls, 19 Hen. VII : 'Gualterus Smyth et 
 
 17 Nov., 10 Hen. VII ; 17 Oct., 15 ... ibidem jmaii preseatant omnia. 
 
 Hen. VII ; 28 Oct., 17 Hen. VII). b^ne.' 
 
 ' Item preseniant quod Gualterus ' The entry in full reads : ' Item 
 
 Smyth alias Crumwell nimis exces- pre&entant quod W . . . Crumwell 
 
 szVe supo«unt communam pastu- alias Smyth false et fraudulents^ 
 
 ra.m domini . . . cum avzVs suis ad rasuravit evidence et tenures 
 
 commune nocumentz^w ideo ipse domini in diversis parcellis ad per- 
 
 in misericordia. vi d. turbaczo«em et exheredaczbwem 
 
 ' Item preseniant quod | Gualterus domini et tenenciuw ejus ut plenius 
 
 [Johannes apparet in eisdem. Meo co;zso- 
 
 Smyth de Puttenhith succida?2t lendum est cum domino et medio 
 
 spmas m coinmuna pastura. domini tempore pxefatum est bidell^ seisire 
 
 apud Puttenhith. Ideo ip^i in in manus domini om«ia terras et 
 
 misericordia. iiiid.' (Court Rolls, tenementa sua. tenta de domino per 
 
 28 Oct., 17 Hen. VII). copiam, et de exitu eorum domini 
 
 Court Rolls, 20 Edw. IV and respondere' (Court Rolls 10 Oct 
 '^"^ ''" ' "en. VIII ; al - ' 
 
 Cal. vi. 696. 
 
 '\ ^'"' ^"- . ^ """■ V"^ ; ^1=° Extracts, p. 74) 
 
 Accordmg to the record of = Cal. vi. 6q6 ^^ ''*/ 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 5 
 
 in Putney at the house of an attorney named John Welbeck, 
 at the time of her marriage with Walter Cromwell in 1474^ ; 
 but we have no evidence that these assertions are incorrect. 
 At least two daughters and one son were born to Walter 
 Cromwell. He may have had other children, but as there 
 was no registration of births, marriages, or deaths in England 
 until 1538, we can only be certain of these three, of whom 
 there are mentions in the Court Rolls and in other contem- 
 porary records. The eldest daughter Katherine, who was 
 probably born about the year 1477, grew up and married 
 a young Welshman named Morgan Williams ^, whose family 
 had come to Putney from Llanishen in Glamorganshire. The 
 Williamses were a very important family in Putney, and John, 
 the eldest of them, was a successful lawyer and accountant, 
 and steward to Lord Scales, who was then in possession of 
 a residence and some land in Putney parish. The youngest 
 daughter of Walter Cromwell was named Elizabeth. She 
 married a sheep-farmer named Wellyfed, who later joined 
 his business to that of his father-in-law ^. Christopher, the 
 son of Elizabeth Cromwell and Wellyfed, grew up and was 
 later sent to school with his cousin Gregory, son of his 
 mother's brother Thomas*. We are now in a position to 
 examine the many conflicting statements concerning the son 
 of Walter Cromwell, the subject of this essay. 
 
 The traditional sources of information about Thomas Crom- 
 well's early life are the characteristic but somewhat confusing 
 .stories of the martyrologist Foxe, founded to some extent 
 upon a novel of the Italian author Bandello, the meagre 
 though probably trustworthy accounts contained in Cardinal 
 Pole's ' Apologia ad Carolum Quintum,' a letter of Chapuys to 
 Granvelle written November ai, 1535, and a few scattered 
 
 ^ Antiquarian Magazine, vol. ii. concerning Morgan Williams, they 
 
 p. 178. are without value, and for the most 
 
 " Cal. iv. 5772. Cf. also Noble, part have been superseded by docu- 
 
 Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 4-5, 238-241. mentary evidence, discovered at a 
 
 The statements in Noble about the later date. 
 
 Williamses and Cromwells are most ' Court Rolls, 10 Oct., 5 Hen. 
 
 confusing and contradictory. Ex- VII, and Cal. iv. 5772. 
 
 cept for the information afforded ^ Cal. iv. 5757. 
 
6 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 statements itl the chroniclers of the period. To these were 
 added in 1880 and 1882 the results of the researches of 
 Mr. John Phillips in the Wimbledon Manor Rolls ^ Mr. 
 Phillips has certainly brought to light a large number of 
 interesting facts about the ancestry and family of Thomas 
 Cromwell : it is the more unfortunate that he should have 
 gone so far astray in some of his statements concerning the 
 man himself. He is surely correct in assuming Thomas to 
 be the son of Walter Cromwell ; the evidence afforded by 
 the State Papers leaves no doubt of this. He is also right 
 in stating that the name Thomas Cromwell does not occur 
 in the Court Rolls. But it is more difficult to believe the 
 theory which Mr. Phillips has evolved from these data. As he 
 finds no entry concerning Thomas Cromwell in the manorial 
 records, he seeks for some mention of him under another 
 appellation, and hits upon that of Thomas Smyth as the most 
 likely, owing to the fact that his father was called by both 
 surnames. He finds two entries in the Court Rolls concern- 
 ing Thomas Smyth, and assumes that they refer to Thomas 
 Cromwell. These entries occur in the records of Feb. 2,6, 
 1504, and of May 30 in the same year. The first states that 
 ' Richard Williams came to the court and surrendered into 
 the hands of the lord two whole virgates of land in <Roe)- 
 hampton, one called Purycroft and the other called Williams, 
 to the use of Thomas Smyth, his heirs and assigns ' ; the 
 second, that ' Richard Williams assaulted Thomas [Smyth] 
 and beat the same Thomas against the peace of the lord the 
 King,' and further that ' Thomas Smyth came to the court 
 and surrendered into the hands of the lord two whole virgates 
 of land in Roehampton, one called Purycroft and the other 
 called Williams, to the use of David Doby, his heirs and 
 assigns 2.' Mr. Phillips has made these entries the basis 
 
 ^ Antiquary for October, 1880, manus domzni duas iwtegras vir- 
 
 vol. ii. p. 164. Antiquarian Maga- gatas terrae in Hamptone . . . qua- 
 
 zine for August and October, 1882, rum una vocata Purycroft . . . et 
 
 vol. ii. pp. 56 and 178. alia virgata vocata Williams ad. 
 
 ^ The original entries read as opus Thomae Smyth hsredum et 
 
 follows :— assignaiorum ' (Court Rolls, 26 Feb., 
 
 I. 'Ad banc curiam venit Ricard- 19 Hen. VII). 
 
 us Williams et smsum x^didit in 2. ' Ricarrfus Williams fecit injul- 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 7 
 
 for an attack on the veracity of many of the best-known 
 stories of Bandello and Foxe concerning the early life of our 
 subject, but his whole case hangs on the assumption that 
 Thomas Smyth and Thomas Cromwell were one and the 
 same man, and until he can prove this ingenious but some- 
 what improbable theory his arguments cannot be supported. 
 He discusses at length the two entries in the Court Rolls, 
 adducing them as a proof of the falsity of the accounts 
 which assert Cromwell to have been in Italy previous to 
 1504, but concluding that the record that Thomas Smyth 
 disposed of his lands in Putney in May of that year in- 
 dicates that Thomas Cromwell left England at that time. 
 To corroborate this last theory he refers to the story 
 of Chapuys that Cromwell was ill-behaved when young, 
 and was forced after an imprisonment to leave the coun- 
 try, and also asserts, in order still further to strengthen 
 his case, that ' the Court Rolls contain nothing more 
 respecting Thomas Cromwell than what we have already 
 stated 1.' 
 
 It seems very extraordinary that Mr. Phillips should make 
 this last statement in view of his readiness to jump at the 
 conclusion that Thomas Smyth and Thomas Cromwell are 
 identical. 'Thomas Smyth,' as a very cursory examination 
 of the Court Rolls will show, is mentioned therein every year 
 from 1493 to 1539 (inclusive), except in 1494 and 1516. As 
 there is certain evidence that Thomas Cromwell was in other 
 places during many of the years that Thomas Smyth was in 
 Wimbledon, it is clear that the two names cannot always 
 stand for the same man. The question which now arises 
 is this : were there two Thomas Smyths, one of them Thomas 
 Cromwell and the other some other member of the Smyth 
 family, perhaps a descendant of Wilham Smyth, armourer? 
 
 turn Thomae [Smyth] et eundera virgata vocata Purycroft et alia 
 
 Thomam verberavit contra. pac^?» virgata vocata Williams ad op?<j 
 
 Aomivix Regis ' . . . ' Ad banc Davidii Doby heredaOT et as- 
 
 catiam venit Thomas Smyth et signatorum ' (Court Rolls, 20 May, 
 
 suTsiim redidit in ma.nus domini 19 Hen. VII). 
 
 duas i«tegras virgatas terrae in ^ Antiquarian Magazine for Oc- 
 
 Rokhamptone . . . qnaium una tober, 1882, vol. ii. p. 183. 
 
8 THOMAS CROMWETTT" 
 
 Or is the Thomas Smyth mentioned in the Court Rolls one 
 man, and not Thomas Cromwell at all ? 
 
 The second theory seems on the whole more probable than 
 the first. There are no contradictory statements about 
 Thomas Smyth in the rolls, nor is the name mentioned twice 
 in any of the lists of the Homage or Frank Pledge. More- 
 over had there been two Thomas Smyths, one of whom was 
 entitled to the name Cromwell, he would almost certainly 
 have been called so, in order to avoid confusion. On the 
 other hand, it scarcely seems likely that the son of Walter 
 Cromwell should not be mentioned at all in the Court Rolls. 
 But this may be partially explained by Chapuys' account 
 of his youthful wildness and early imprisonment ; it seems 
 quite probable that he was a mere boy when he left his home. 
 The evidence which we possess certainly seems to strengthen 
 the conclusion that there was but one Thomas Smyth : the 
 man mentioned in the Court Rolls by that name was probably 
 a descendant of William Smyth, armourer '^. Surely none 
 of the entries in the manorial records concerning Thomas 
 Smyth can be said to prove anything conclusive concerning 
 the early life of the subject of this essay. It has been the 
 fashion to decry Bandello and Foxe and to disbelieve all 
 their stories, because of the undoubted confusion of dates 
 
 ' It is possible that the Thomas He was supported in his tirade 
 
 Smyth, whose name occurs so fre- against Graye by ' the ryght re- 
 
 quently in the Court Rolls, was dolent and rotunde rethorician 
 
 identical with a certain 'tryumphant R. Smyth ... in an Artificial! 
 
 troUynge Thomas Smyth,' who, in apologie articulerlye answerynge 
 
 1541, wrote several ballads 'de- to the obstreperous obgannynges 
 
 daring the despyte of a secrete of one W. G. evometyd to the 
 
 sedycyous person,' by name Wil- vituperacyon of the tryumphant 
 
 liam Graye, who had composed troUynge Thomas Smyth . 
 
 certain verses very derogatory to to thende that the imprudent 
 
 the memory of Thomas Cromwell, lector shulde not tytubate or hal- 
 
 This Thomas Smyth describes him- lucinate in the labyrinthes of 
 
 self as ' servaunt to the Kynges this lucubratiuncle.' ' R. Smyth ' 
 
 royall Majestye, and clerke of the was probably another member of 
 
 Quenes Graces Counsell, though the Smyth-Cromwell tribe. The 
 
 most unworthy ' ; he had perhaps name ' Ricar(/us Smyth ' occurs 
 
 obtained his position through the frequently in the Court Rolls (Cal. 
 
 influence of the King's minister, xvi. 423). 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 9 
 
 which vitiates their testimony. But if no reliance can be 
 placed on them, or on Pole, Chapuys, and the chronicles of 
 the period, must we not confess that our knowledge of the 
 early, years of our subject's life must reduce itself to an 
 interrogation point ? Let us guard ourselves against accepting 
 with implicit faith the statements of these authors, but let 
 us not cast them aside as utterly worthless. Let us rather 
 recognize that they still remain our most trustworthy sources 
 of information concerning the early life of Thomas Cromwell, 
 and therefore make a careful attempt to glean from their 
 very confusing statements the more probable facts con- 
 cerning him. 
 
 None of the different accounts sheds any light upon the 
 date of Cromwell's birth, but it is doubtful if it occurred later 
 than 1485, in view of his probable age at the time of his 
 sojourn abroad. That he had a quarrel with his father seems 
 very likely : Bandello's statement that he came to Italy, 
 ' fleeing from his father,' and Chapuys' assertion that he was 
 ill-behaved when young, together with the many entries in 
 the rolls concerning the tempestuous and disorderly conduct 
 of Walter Cromwell, all point to the truth of this story ^. 
 Foxe moreover asserts that Cromwell told Cranmer in later 
 years ' what a ruffian he was in his younger days.' Pole 
 informs us that he soon became a roving soldier in Italy, 
 a statement which is borne out by the tales of Bandello 
 and Foxe that he was at the battle on the Garigliano (Dec. 
 28-39, X503), in the service of the French army 2. The 
 well-known story of the Italian novelist about Cromwell and 
 Frescobaldo the Florentine merchant, may well have some 
 foundation in fact : there are several mentions of Frescobaldo 
 in the State Papers of the years 1530-1540, which prove that 
 Cromwell was intimate with an Italian of that name ^. Some 
 
 ^ See Appendices I and III at maybe a mistake for ' Marignano ' 
 
 the end of this chapter. is scarcely plausible. The great 
 
 ^ See Appendices II and IV at victory of Francis I occurred in 
 
 the end of this chapter. The 1515, when there is every reason 
 
 suggestion of Mr. Galton (The to suppose that Cromwell was in 
 
 Character and Times of Thomas England. 
 Cromwell, p. 22) that 'Garighano' ' Cal. v. 1 1 97; vii. 923. 
 
10 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 scholars have gone so far as to refuse to believe that Cromwell 
 ever went to Italy at all ; but this must be the incredulity 
 of madness in face of the fact that all our contemporary 
 witnesses agree that he went there, and of the evidence afforded 
 by his wide acquaintance with Italians, and by his knowledge 
 of their language and literature. 
 
 From the date of the tale of Bandello up to i5i!2, the 
 most probable story concerning Cromwell's life is that 
 contained in Pole's Apologia. It is there stated that after 
 his brief military career he became a merchant, but did not 
 remain a merchant long ; and that he later attached himself 
 as accountant to a Venetian, whom Pole knew very well. 
 Bandello informs us that Cromwell returned to England after 
 his stay in Florence ; it seems more probable, however, that 
 he first went to Antwerp and engaged in trade there ; for 
 Foxe and Chapuys both agree that he was in Flanders, and 
 the former asserts that he was in the service of English 
 dealers in the Flemish marts. Another singular but character- 
 istic and not improbable story of the martyrologist strengthens 
 the theory that Cromwell was in Antwerp some time after the 
 battle on the Garigliano. One Geoffrey Chambers was sent 
 to Rome as a representative of the Gild of Our Lady in 
 St. Botolph's Church in Boston, to obtain from the Pope 
 certain pardons or indulgences by which the severe rules 
 concerning Lenten observances might be relaxed ; and passing 
 through Antwerp he fell in with Cromwell, whom he persuaded 
 to accompany him. The latter entered into the spirit of the 
 enterprise ; arrived at Rome, he procured some choice sweet- 
 meats and jellies, and armed with these lay in wait for the 
 Pope on his return from hunting. The delicacies were offered, 
 Julius was delighted with them, and granted the desired 
 indulgences without delay. Foxe states that this episode 
 took place about the year 1510^. 
 
 1 The fact that this tale so active as Cromwell's agent, 
 
 concerns itself with Foxe's native and as Surveyor-General of the 
 
 town of Boston increases the pro- King's purchased lands. Cf. Cal. 
 
 bability of its authenticity. It xii. (ii), 490, 783, 835, 852, 857, 
 
 was probably this same Geoffrey and Ellis, 3rd Series, vol. iii. 
 
 Chambers who in later years was p. 168. 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 11 
 
 This story seems to indicate that Cromwell went to Italy 
 a second time. It fits in well with Pole's statement that after 
 his military experience he became first a merchant, and then 
 a clerk to a Venetian trader. The absence of any trustworthy 
 chronology, however, prevents us from regarding any of the 
 accounts of these different writers as really historical ; and 
 when at last we meet with a date on which we can rely, it 
 is most tantalizing to find that the evidence which is afforded 
 us in connexion with it is of such a nature as to leave us 
 almost as much in the dark as before. In a letter written in 
 June, 1536, a certain mercer, by name George Elyot, addresses 
 Cromwell as follows ^ : ' Ryght onourabyll sir my dewty Con- 
 sethered as to youre Masterscheppe apertayneth that hyt maj^ 
 piece your Masterscheppe For the love off god to Exceppe 
 my Rewd Maneres in thes behalf of wrytyng vnto you butt 
 hyt ys onely to schowe yowre Masterscheppe my pore mynd 
 furste for the onour of god & secondly For the god love & 
 trew hartt that (I) have howtt vnto you sensse the syngsson 
 Martt at medelborow in anno 15 12.' This quotation does 
 not prove that Cromwell was at the Syngsson Mart at Middel- 
 burg in 151a, nor does it shed much light on the position he 
 occupied at that time ; still the probabilities strongly favour 
 the conclusion that he was either a merchant or a clerk to 
 a merchant in the Low Countries in 1513 : the accounts of 
 Foxe and Chapuys agree that he was in the Netherlands in 
 his younger days, and the letter of the mercer seems to fix 
 the date. We have also reason to believe that he was in 
 London soon after this practising as a solicitor. There 
 exists in the Record Office a document dated November, 
 1512, and endorsed, in a hand which certainly resembles that 
 of Cromwell's later correspondence^ ' The tytle of the manour 
 Whityngham for Mr. Empson ^.' The endorsement may of 
 course be of a very different date from that of the document 
 itself ; still the evidence which it affords is not utterly value- 
 less, especially as another reason for supposing that Cromwell 
 returned to England in 151a, or soon after, is afforded by the 
 fact that his marriage must have taken place about this time : 
 
 1 Cal. X. 1218. " Cal. i. 3556. 
 
13 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 the age of his son Gregory being such that it could scarcely 
 have occurred much later. The State Papers of 151 2 give 
 us more information concerning the early life of Thomas 
 Cromwell than those of any other year up to 1523. The 
 sum total of the evidence which they afford seems to indicate 
 that he was in England and in the Netherlands, that he was 
 occupied both as a merchant and as a solicitor, and that he 
 was married in that year or soon afterwards. 
 
 Cromwell's wife, to whom Chapuys refers as the daughter 
 of a shearman, was Elizabeth Wykys, descended from one of 
 an ancient family of esquires, who was gentleman-usher to 
 Henry VII ^. A reference in Cromwell's will of July 12, 
 1529, to one ' Mercye Vryotir' as his mother-in-law^ has led 
 some writers to suppose that he married Elizabeth, daughter 
 of Sir John Pryor, and widow of Thomas Williams, a Welsh 
 gentleman ; but a letter to Cromwell from one Harry Wykys 
 of Thorpe, near Chertsey, dated November 2, 1523 ^, disproves 
 this theory, and corroborates the other. The most probable 
 explanation of the entry in the will is that Mercy Pryor 
 married twice, and that she was the mother of Elizabeth 
 Wykys by her first husband *. Cromwell's wife was probably 
 a woman of some property. He was exactly the sort of man 
 who would seek a wife with an eye to the financial advantages 
 of the match, and the theory that Elizabeth Wykys was rich 
 fits in well with the evidence that her mother was married 
 a second time. Moreover Cromwell's property increased so 
 fast during his years of service under Wolsey, that even his 
 notorious accessibility to bribes could not account for it, had 
 it not been augmented from some outside source. 
 
 Chapuys goes on to say that for some time after his 
 marriage Cromwell kept servants in his house, carrying on the 
 business of his father-in-law; a statement corroborated by 
 his correspondence, which shows that he plied his trade as 
 
 ' Appendix I to this chapter; Pryor' both had rooms in Crom- 
 
 Antiquary for Oct. 1880, vol. ii. well's house, at Austin Friars Gate, 
 
 P- J 64. where he lived after the year 
 
 2 Appendix to chapter iii. p. 59. 1524. Before that date he resided 
 
 = Cal. iii. 3502. near Fenchurch (Cal. iii. 2624 ; 
 
 * ' Mr. Pryor ' and ' Mistress iv. 3197). 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 13 
 
 a cloth and wool merchant at least as late as 1524. There 
 can be little doubt, however, that he continued his business 
 as a solicitor at the same time, for it would be impossible to 
 explain his sudden advance in legal prominence in the years 
 1520 to 1525, if he had not had long practice in the law 
 beforehand. The strange combination of employments in 
 which Cromwell was engaged fitted in well with the peculiar 
 versatility of the man, and brought him into close contact 
 with diverse sorts of men, in diverse conditions of life. A 
 more detailed account of his career during the seven or eight 
 years which followed his probable return to England it is 
 impossible to give, for between 1512 and 1520 there occurs an- 
 other extraordinary gap in the life of Thomas Cromwell, during 
 which we do not possess a single trustworthy contemporary 
 record concerning him. In 1520 there is certainly evidence 
 that he was known to Wolsey, but precisely how or when his 
 connexion with the Cardinal began, it is impossible to tell. 
 
 The statement in the Dictionary of National Biography 
 that Wolsey appointed Cromwell collector of his revenues 
 in 1514 is apparently unfounded ^, and no reference is given 
 for the assertion in Singer's Cavendish^ that the Cardinal 
 first met his future servant in France. Another unverified 
 story is that Lord Henry Percy, who had been an intimate 
 of the Cardinal's household in his early years, borrowed 
 money from Cromwell, and conceiving a high opinion of his 
 creditor, introduced him to Wolsey ^ ; while Mr. Phillips 
 informs us that Robert Cromwell (the son of Walter Crom- 
 well's brother John), who was vicar of Battersea under the 
 Cardinal, gave to his cousin Thomas the stewardship of the 
 archiepiscopal estate of York House, after Wolsey had been 
 made archbishop there. Though Mr. Phillips has again 
 failed to cite his authority for this last statement, it is but 
 fair to say that the probabilities are strongly in its favour : 
 the theory that Cromwell owed his appointment as Wolsey 's 
 servant to his cousin Robert seems particularly plausible, as 
 
 ^ Mr. Gairdner kindly informs ' Singer's Cavendish, vol. i. 
 
 me that he was misled by a record p. 193 n. 
 
 concerning Robert Cromwell (Cal. ' Ellis, Thomas Cromwell, p. 
 
 ii. (i) 1369). 12. 
 
14 THOMAS CRXmWETL 
 
 the latter was certainly well known to the Cardinal. It is 
 possible that the origin of the connexion had something to 
 do with the young Marquis of Dorset, who later became 
 Cromwell's patron. Wolsey had long been acquainted with 
 the Marquis ; he had been the friend and tutor of his father 
 when he was principal of Magdalen School, and had been 
 given the living of Limington in Somerset by a still older 
 member of the family in 1500^. The date of the origin of 
 Cromwell's connexion with Wolsey must remain as much 
 a matter of conjecture as its cause. It seems probable that 
 those historians who have placed it as far back as 1513 or 
 1514 have been at fault, for had Cromwell entered the 
 Cardinal's service as early as that there would almost cer- 
 tainly have been more entries in the State Papers to show it. 
 As it is, we possess only one piece of evidence in contem- 
 porary records to show that he was known to Wolsey before 
 October, 1530, and that is of such a nature that little reliance 
 can be placed on it. On the back of a letter, written in 
 August, 1514, by the Abbot of Winchcomb to Wolsey^, are 
 some lines in a hand which bears some resemblance to Crom- 
 well's, apparently intended as an exercise in penmanship ; the 
 similarity of the handwritings, however, is not so striking that 
 it can be regarded as affording any very conclusive proof: 
 moreover as the words on the back have no connexion with 
 the letter itself, it is quite likely that they were written at 
 a much later date. It is safe to say that the lack of infor- 
 mation on the subject in the State Papers makes it probable 
 that if Cromwell's connexion with Wolsey began much before 
 1520, it was certainly of very minor importance. 
 
 In the autumn of that year, however, we possess a record 
 which leaves little doubt that Cromwell had at least become 
 known to the Cardinal. An appeal had been made to the 
 Papal Court at Rome against the sentence of the Prerogative 
 Court of Canterbury, in a suit between the vicar of Cheshunt 
 and the Prioress of the nunnery there. Wolsey, as Papal 
 Legate, soon afterwards received a copy of the citation and 
 
 ' Life of Wolsey, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. Ixii. p. 325. 
 ' Cal. i. S35S. 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 15 
 
 inhibition ' with other information by the letters of Thomas 
 Cromwell,' making clear the rights and wrongs of the case, 
 and the best method of handling it^. No other mention of 
 Cromwell in connexion with the Cardinal occurs until 1523, 
 when he drafted a petition to Wolsey in Chancery for a certain 
 John Palsgrave ^. But these two records are enough to prove 
 that he was known to the Cardinal in the capacity of a soli- 
 citor and clerk from a period at least as early as 1520. The 
 gap between that date and 151a is more difficult to fill. The 
 supposition that Cromwell was in Wolsey's service as early 
 as 1513 is perhaps the easiest method of disposing of these 
 years, but it certainly cannot be regarded as more than 
 a theory, unless some new document is found which corro- 
 borates it. 
 
 Most of the letters addressed to Cromwell during this 
 period from 1520 to 1524 concern themselves with legal 
 business, and request his aid as a practised lawyer in some 
 suit for the collection of debts or the decision of a title to 
 lands ^. In August, 152a, he acted as an ' indifferent person ' 
 in a dispute between Richard Chauffer, alderman of Calais, 
 and Lord Mountjoy. In December, 1523, he served on the 
 inquest of wardmote in the ward of Bread Street. But it is 
 also evident from his correspondence that he had by no 
 means lost interest in his business as a cloth merchant and 
 wool-dyer *. It may have been in this capacity that he first 
 became known to the family of the Marquis of Dorset. The 
 'old lady Marques' writes to him in August, 152a, as her 
 ' Sonne marquys servaunt,' and desires him to send in haste 
 ' the trussynn bed of cloth of tyssewe and the fether bed wyth 
 the fustyons, and amateras longyng to the same wyth the 
 cownterpoynt .... tentes pauylyons & hales ^.' There is also 
 record that Cromwell was a great lender of money at high 
 
 ^ In the original document (Cal. the case had already reached the 
 
 iii. 1026) the name of the Cardinal Papal Court, 
 
 is not expressly mentioned. The ^ Cal. iii. 3681. 
 
 copy of the citation, however, was •'' Cal. iii. 1026, 1940, 1963, 2441, 
 
 sent by his chaplain, Clerk, and 3657. 
 
 can scarcely have been intended * Cal. iii. 2624. 
 
 for any one but Wolsey, since ' Cal. iii. 2437. 
 
16 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 rates of interest. His friendship and reputation with foreign 
 merchants brought him an enormous amount of business, 
 and his property increased to a great extent. The training 
 he received during and after his journey on the Con- 
 tinent was probably the best that he could have had to 
 fit him for the difficult life-work that was given him to 
 perform. The spirit of the Italy of Machiavelli and Caesar 
 Borgia stamped itself deeply upon his youthful character. 
 It gave him his ideas, his theories. The hard school of adver- 
 sity (at first almost a struggle for existence), through which 
 he passed during his early years, afforded him the intimate 
 knowledge of men and things, the wonderful insight into 
 human nature, and the ability to turn every event to the 
 advancement of his own purposes, that enabled him at 
 a later day to mould the destinies of the English nation. 
 
 ' And my experience happily me taught 
 
 Into the secrets of those times to see, 
 From whence to England afterward I brought 
 
 Those slights of state deHu'red vnto mee. 
 In t'which were then but very few that sought. 
 Nor did with th'umour of that age agree. 
 After did great and fearful things effect. 
 Whose secret working few did then suspect.' 
 Michael Drayton. The Legend of Great Cromwell, p. 13. 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I 
 I 
 
 PASSAGE FROM A LETTER OF CHAPUYS TO GRANVELLE, 
 NOV. 2,1, 1535 1 
 
 'Me Cremuel ... est filz dung poure marechal lequel en son 
 vivant se tenoit en vng petit villaige pres did dune lieue et demye 
 et est sepulture au cemetiere de lad. parroiche dud. villaige de plus 
 pouurement que soient la son oncle'^ pere dung syen cousin qui(l)a 
 desia fait fort riche estoit cousinier du feu euesque de Conturberi 
 led. Cremuel en sa jeunesse fust assez mal condicionner, et apres 
 quelque emprisonnement il fut contrainct vuider le pays et senpasser 
 en flandres et dois la en rome ou et ailleurs en italic il demeura 
 quelque temps, estant de retour il se maria a la fille dung ton- 
 deur de draps, et tint quelque temps en sa maison seruiteurs 
 exercent led. art apres il devint soUiciteur de causes et par ce 
 moyen se feit congnoistre au cardinal de york, lequel congnoissant 
 la vigilance et diligence dud. Cremuel et habilite et promptitude 
 tant a mal que a bien, il le tint on nombre de ses serviteurs, et 
 I'employa principalement quant il fut question de ruyner et demoler 
 cinq du ' six bons monasteres. Venant a descherir led. cardinal 
 il ny eust personne que saquittast myeulx enuers led. cardinal que 
 luy. Apres le decez dud. cardinal maistre valloup a present ambas- 
 sadeur en france le poursuyuant de injures et menasses le plus fort 
 du monde, et non voyant autre reffuge ne remede que de recourir 
 au roy, il fait tant par prieres et presens quil eust audience dud. roy 
 auquel il deust promettre de le faire le plus riche que oncques fut en 
 angleterre, et luy parla si bien et beaul qui le retint des lors de son 
 conseil, sans autre adds et ne le decouurit led. roy a personne des 
 siens deans quatre moys apres Maintenant il a empiete de telle sorte 
 quil a bailie le bout a toute la reste <si) ce nest a la dame, et le tient 
 
 ' The original is in the Vienna Thomas, The Pilgrim, p. 107. 
 Archives. This copy was made ^ John Cromwell of Lambeth, 
 
 from the official Record Office ' sic, read ' ou.' 
 
 transcript. Cf. Cal. ix. 862, and 
 
 MERBIMAN. I 
 
18 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 tout le monde auoir plus de credit auprez de son maistre, que neust 
 oncques le cardinal du temps duquel en y auoit questoient en con- 
 currence de credit comme maistre Conton ^ et le due de suffocq et 
 autres, mais maintenant il n'y a personne que face riens que luy, et 
 ne sert le chancellier synon pour mynistre et organe dud. Cremuel, 
 lequel jusques yci na voulu accepter led. office de chancellier, mais 
 Ion pense bien tost il se layra persuader de lempoigner. II est 
 home bien parlant en sa langue et mediocrement en la latyne 
 francoyse et italyenne, home de bonne chiere liberal et de ses 
 biens et de bonnes et gracieuses parolles, home manifique en trayn 
 et batissement . . .' 
 
 II 
 
 PASSAGE FROM CARDINAL POLE'S APOLOGIA AD CAROLUM 
 QUINTUM. Pars I. p. 126, c. xxviii. 
 
 ' Sic ergo, si tale nomen quaeratur, Cromvellum eum appellant, 
 si genus, de nullo quidem ante eum, qui id nomen gereret, audivi. 
 Dicunt tamen, viculum esse prope Londinum, ubi natus erat, & ubi 
 pater ejus pannis verrendis victum quaeritabat, sad de hoc parum 
 refert. Nunc si conditio quaeratur, sic quidem de eo intellexi, 
 aliquem in Italia fuisse gregarium militem, fuisse etiam mercatorem, 
 nee tamen longius progressum in mercatura fuisse, quam ut scriba 
 esset mercatoris, & libros rationum servaret, optime vero novi ilium 
 mercatorem, qui Venetus erat natione, cui operas suas locabat. 
 Tandem hujus conditionis pertaesus, domum reversus, causidicis se 
 immiscuit, his qui jura Regni profitentur. In quo eo magis se 
 proficere sperabat, quod versuti & callidi ingenii sibi conscius esset 
 ad defendendum tarn iniquum, quam aequum, quod ex externorum 
 commercio valde acuerat, cum nostrorum hominum ingeniorum 
 simplicitatera semper contemneret. Nee tamen in hoc genere valde 
 crevit, antequam ad Monasteriorum ruinam perventum est. Quod 
 incoepit vivente adhue Cardinali Eboraeense, dum Monasteria quae- 
 dam pene a suis deserta, & illorum bona ac praedia in subsidium 
 pauperum, qui in Gymnasiis Uteris operam dabant, essent conversa. 
 Hie vero notus esse coepit, idque ostendit ad banc artem solam se 
 natum fuisse, ad ruinam & vastationem, id quod crebra aliarum 
 artium mutatio deelaravit, in quibus nihil crevit, in hac vero statim 
 
 ^ Sir William Compton. See Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xi. 
 P- 453- 
 
BANDELLO'S TALE 19 
 
 Celebris esse coepit, & pluribus notus, ita tamen in illis initiis hujus 
 suae artis notus, ut cum Cardinalis, cujus assecla fuit, & ex cujus 
 authoritate et imperio illam suam artem exercebat, ab administratione 
 Reipublicae remotus esset, et dignitate privatus, ipse omnium voce, 
 qui aliquid de eo intellexerant, ad supplicium posceretur. Hoc 
 enim affirmare possum, qui Londini tum adfui, & voces audivi, adeo 
 etiam ut per civitatem universam rumor circumferretur, eum in 
 carcerem fuisse detrusum^ & propediem productuih iri ad supplicium. 
 Nee vero populus ullum spectaculum libentius expectabat, nee ille 
 rumor ex alia re nascebatur, nisi quod omnes eum sciebant omni 
 supplicio dignum . . .' 
 
 Ill 
 
 NOVELLA XXXIV DELLA SECONDA PARTE DE LE NOVELLE 
 DEL BANDELLO, Tomo quinto, p. 251. 
 
 'Francesco Frescobaldi fa cortesia ad uno straniero, e n' fe ben 
 rimeritato, essendo colui divenuto Contestabile d' Inghilterra.' 
 
 'Ne la. famiglia nobile et antica de i Frescobaldi in Firenze fu, 
 non sono molti anni, un Francesco, mercadante molto leale et 
 onorevole, il quale, secondo la costuma de la patria, essendo assai 
 ricco, trafiScava in diversi luoghi e faceva di gran faccende, e quasi 
 per 1' ordinario dimorava in Ponente, in Inghilterra, e teneva la stanza 
 in Londra, ove viveva splendidissimamente et usava cortesia assai ; 
 non la veggendo si per minuto come molti raercadanti fanno, che la 
 contano fin a un picciolo quattrino, come intendo dire che fa 
 Ansaldo Grimaldo Genovese, che tien cento fin d' un minimo foglio 
 di carta e d' un palmo di cordella da legar i pacchetti de le lettere. 
 Awenne un giorno che essendo Francesco Frescobaldi in Firenze, 
 se gli paro dinanzi un povero giovine, e gli domandb elemosina 
 per r amor di Dio. Veggendolo il Frescobaldo si mal in arnese 
 e che in viso mostrava aver del gentile, si mosse in pietk, e tanto 
 piti, quanto che lo conobbe esser Inglese; onde gli domandb 
 di che contrada di Oltramontani fosse. Egli gli rispose che era 
 Inglese ; e chiedendogli alcune particolaritk, il Frescobaldo, d' Inghil- 
 terra, come colui che assai pratico n'era, il giovine molto accomo- 
 datamente al tutto sodisfece, dicendogli: lo mi chiamo Tomaso 
 
 C 3 
 
20 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Cremonello, figliuolo di un povero cimatore di panni, che fuggendo 
 da mio padre son venuto in Italia col campo de i Frances!, che 
 fe stato rotto al Garigliano, e stavo con un fante a piedi, portandoli 
 dietro la picca. II Frescobaldo la menb in casa molto domestica- 
 mente, e quivi alcun di se lo tenne per amor de la nazione Inglese, 
 de la quale egli aveva ricevuti di molti piaceri; lo trattb umana- 
 mente, lo vesti, e quando volse partirsi per ritornar ne la patria, gli 
 diede sedici ducati d' oro in oro fiorentini et un buon ronzino. , II 
 giovine veggendosi esser stato messo in arnese si bene, rese al 
 Frescobaldo quelle grazie che seppe le maggiori, e se n' ando ne 
 r isola a casa.' 
 
 [The next four pages are devoted to a more or less accurate account 
 of Cromwell's life in London, his connexion with Wolsey, and his 
 entrance into the King's service. The events narrated in the fol- 
 lowing passage may be supposed to have taken place about 1535 
 or 1536.] 
 
 . . . ' Dico adunque che in quel di che il Cremonello era padrone 
 e governatore de 1' isola, che Francesco Frescobaldo si ritrovava in 
 Italia, ove, ( orae spesso a mercadanti interviene, avendo patiti molti 
 disastri e di gran danni ne la perdita de le sue mercadanzie, resto 
 molto povero ; percib che essendo uomo leale e da bene, pagb tutti 
 quelli a cui era debitore, e non puote ricuperar ci6 che da gli altri gli 
 era dovuto. Veggendosi egli ridutto a cosi povero stato, e fatto i suoi 
 conti e benissimo calculati, trov6 che in Inghilterra aveva crediti per 
 piii di quindici migliaia di ducati ; onde si deliberb passar quindi, 
 e veder di ricuperar piii che gli fosse possibile, e mettersi a viver 
 il rimanente de la sua vita quietamente. Cos! con questo pensiero 
 passb d' Italia in Francia, e di Francia in Inghilterra, e si fermb in 
 Londra, non gh sowenendo percib mai del beneficio che egli fatto 
 gik in Firenze aveva al Cremonello ; cosa veramente degna d' un vero 
 liberale, che de le cortesie che altrui fa, memoria mai non tiene, 
 scolpendo in marmo quelle che riceve, per pagarle ogni volta che 
 r occasione se gli offerisce. Attendendo adunque in Londra a 
 negoziar i fatti suoi, e caminando un giorno in una contrada, 
 avvenne che il Contestabile passava anch' egli per la strada mede- 
 sima, venendo a 1' incontro del Frescobaldo. Cos! subito che il 
 Contestabile lo vide e gli ebbe gli occhi fermati nel viso, si ricordb 
 costui certamente esser quello, dal quale cosi gran cortesia aveva in 
 Firenze ricevuta, et essendo a cavallo, dismontb, e con meraviglia 
 
BANDELLO'S TALE 21 
 
 grandissima di quelli che seco erano, chi v'erano piii di cento 
 a cavallo de i primi del regno che gli facevano coda, 1' abbraccib con 
 grande amorevolezza, e quasi lagrimando gli disse: Non sete voi 
 Francesco Frescobaldo Fiorentino? Si sono, signer mio, rispose 
 egli, e vostro umil servidore. Mio servidore, disse il Contestabile, 
 non sete gia voi nfe per tal vi voglio, ma bene per mio grande amico, 
 avvisandovi che di voi ho giusta ragione di molto dolermi, perchfe 
 sapendo voi cib che io sono e dove era, devevate farmi saper la 
 venuta vostra qui ; che certamente io averei pagato qualche parte 
 del debito che confesso aver con voi. Ora lodato Iddio che ancor 
 sono a tempo ; voi siate il benissimo venuto. Io vado ora per affari 
 del mio Re, e non posso far piii lunga dimora vosco, e m' averete per 
 iscusato ; ma fate per ogni modo, che in questa mattina vegnate 
 a desinar meco, e non fate fallo. Cosi rimontb il Contestabile 
 a cavallo e se n'ando in Corte al Re. II Frescobaldo, partito che 
 fu il Contestabile, s' andb ricordando che cotestui era quel giovine 
 Inglese che egli gik in Firenze in casa sua raccolse, e comincib 
 a sperar bene, pensando che il mezzo di cosi grand' uomo molto gli 
 giovarebbe a ricuperar i suoi danari. Essendo poi I'ora di desinare, 
 se n' andb al palazzo del Contestabile, e quivi nel cortile poco attese 
 che egli rivenne. II quale smontato che fu, di nuovo amicabilmente 
 riabbraccib il Frescobaldo, e volto a F armiraglio, et ad altri prencipi 
 e signori che con lui erano venuti a desinare, disse : Signori, non vi 
 meravigliate de le amorevoli dimostrazioni che io faccio a questo 
 gentiluomo Fiorentino, perchfe queste sono parte di pagamento 
 d' infiniti obblighi che io conosco e confesso di avergli, essendo nel 
 grado che sono per mezzo suo, et udite come. A 1' ora, a la presenza 
 di tutti, tenendo sempre per mano il gentiluomo Fiorentino, narrb 
 loro in che modo era capitato a Firenze, e le carezze che da lui 
 aveva ricevute ; e cosi tenendolo sempre per mano, se ne salirono le 
 scale, e giunti in sala si misero a tavola. Voile il Contestabile 
 che il Frescobaldo gli stesse appresso, e sempre 1' accarezzb amore- 
 volissimamente. Desinato che si fu e quel signori partiti, voile il 
 Contestabile saper la cagione, per la quale era il Frescobaldo ritor- 
 nato a Londra. Narrogli a 1' ora tutta la sua disgrazia il Frescobaldo, 
 e che non gli essendo rimaso, de la casa in fuori in Firenze et un 
 podere in contado, quasi niente, se non quei quindeci mila ducati 
 che in Inghilterra deveva avere, e forse duo mila in Ispagna, che per 
 ricuperargli s' era ne 1' Isola trasferito. Or bene sta, disse il Contesta- 
 bile. A le cose passate, che fatte non sieno^ non si pub trovar 
 rimedio ; ben mi posso con voi dolere de gl' infortunii vostri, come 
 
22 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 con il core faccio ; al rimanente si dark tal ordine, che voi ricupera- 
 rete tutti i vostri danari che qui devete avere, e non vi si manchera 
 di quello che io potrb, assicurandovi, che la cortesia che m' usate, non 
 mi conoscendo altramente, mi vi rende di modo ubbligato che 
 sempre sarb vostro, e di me e de le mie faculta potrete disporre 
 come io proprio, e non lo facendo, il danno sara vostro, nh piii farb 
 offerta alcuna, parendomi che sarebbe superflua. Basti che questo 
 vi sia ora per sempre detto. Ma leviamoci et andiamo in camera, 
 ove il Contestabile serrato 1' uscio, aperse un gran coffano pieno di 
 ducati, e pigliandone sedeci gli diede al Frescobaldi, e gli disse : 
 Eccovi, amico mio, i sedeci ducati che mi donaste al partir di 
 Firenze, eccovi gli altri dieci che vi costb il ronzino che per me 
 comperaste, et eccovene altri dieci che spendeste in vestirmi. Ma 
 perchb essendo voi mercadante, non mi par onesto che i vostri 
 danari debbiano esser stati tanto tempo morti, ma s'abbiano gua- 
 dagnato, come h il costume vostro, eccovi quattro sacchetti di ducati, 
 in ciascuno de i quali sono quattro mila ducati. Voi in ricompensa 
 de i vostri ve gli pigliarete, godendogli per amor mio. II Fresco- 
 baldo, ancor che da grandissime ricchezze fosse caduto in gran 
 povertS,, nondimeno non aveva perduto la sua generositk d' animo, 
 e non gli voleva accettare, ringraziandolo tutta via di tanta sua cor- 
 tesia ; ma a la fine astretto per viva forza dal Contestabile, che gli 
 desse tutti i nomi in nota de i suoi debitori ; il che Frescobaldo fece 
 molto volentieri, mettendo il nome dei debitori e la somma che gli 
 devevano. Avuta questa cedula, chiamb il Cremonello un suo uomo 
 di casa, e gli disse : Guarda chi sono costoro, che su questa lista 
 sono scritti, e fa che gli ritrovi tutti, siano dove si vogliano in questa 
 isola, e farai loro intendere che se fra quindici giomi non hanno 
 pagato tutto il lor debito, che io ci porrb la mano con lor dispia- 
 cere e danno, e che facciano pensiero, che io sia il creditore. Fece 
 r uomo il comandamento del suo padrone molto diligentemente, di 
 maniera che al termine statuito furono ricuperati circa quindici mila 
 ducati. E se il Frescobaldo avesse voluto gl' interessi, che in cosl 
 lungo tempo erano corsi, tutti gli averebbe avuti, fin ad un minimo 
 denaio ; ma egli si contentb del capitale, nh volse interesse alcuno, 
 che di piti in piii gli acquistb credito e riputazione appresso tutti, 
 massimamente sapendosi gik da ciascuno de 1' isola il favore che egli 
 aveva appresso la persona del Contestabile. In questo mezzo, fu di 
 continovo esso Frescobaldo commensale del Cremonello, il quale di 
 giorno in giorno si sforzava d' onorarlo quanto piii poteva. E deside- 
 rando che di continovo egli rimanesse in Londra, piacendogli molto 
 
±<UAK'b HISTORY 23 
 
 la pratica sua, gli offerse di prestargli per quattro anni sessanta mila 
 ducati, a cib che mettesse casa e banco in Londra e gli trafficasse, 
 senza volerne profitto d' un soldo, promettendogli oltra questo ogni 
 favore ne le cose de la mercadanzia. Ma il Frescobaldo che desiderava 
 di ritirarsi a casa, e viver il resto de la sua vita in quiete et 
 attender solamente a se stesso, infinitamente lo ringrazib di tanta 
 suprema cortesia, e con buona grazia del Contestabile, rimessi tutti 
 i suoi danari in Firenze, a la desiderata patria se ne ritornb, dove 
 essendo ritornato assai ricco, si mise a viver una vita quietissima. 
 Ma poco tempo visse in quiete, perchfe quell' anno istesso che da 
 Londra era partito, in Firenze se ne mori.' 
 
 IV 
 
 PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF LORD CROMWELL AS CON- 
 TAINED IN FOXE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, vol. ii. 
 pp. 419-434- 
 
 'Thomas Cromwell although born of a simple Parentage and 
 House obscure, through the singular excellency of Wisdom and 
 dexterity of Wit wrought in him by God, coupled with like industry 
 of mind, and deserts of life, rose to high preferment and authority ; ' 
 
 'First as touching his Birth, he was born at Putney or there- 
 about, being a Smiths Son, whose Mother married after to a 
 sheerman.' 
 
 ' As touching the order and manner of his coming up, it would 
 be superfluous to discourse what may be said at large : only by 
 way of story it may suffice to give a touch of certain particulars 
 and so to proceed.' . . . ' Nothing was so hard which with wit and 
 industery he could not compass. Neither was his capacity so good 
 but his memory was as great in retaining whatsoever he had 
 attained. Which well appeareth in canning the text of the 
 whole new Testament of Erasmus Translation without Book, in 
 his journey going and coming from Rome, whereof you shall hear 
 anon.' 
 
 ' Thus in his growing years, as he shot up in age and ripeness, 
 a great delight came in his mind to stray into forreign Countries to 
 see the World abroad, and to learn experience, whereby he learned 
 
24 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 such Tongues and Languages as might better serve for his use 
 hereafter.' 
 
 'And thus passing over his youth being at Antwerp, he was 
 there retained of the EngHsh Merchants to be their Clerk or 
 Secretary, or in some such Hke condition placed pertaining to 
 their affairs.' 
 
 'It happened the same time that the Town of Boston thought 
 good to send up to Rome for renewing of their two pardons, one 
 called the great pardon and the other the lesser pardon. Which 
 thing although it should stand them in great expences of money 
 (for the Popes Merchandise is always dear ware) yet notwithstanding 
 such sweetness they had felt thereof, and such gain to come to their 
 town by that Romish Merchandise (as all Superstition is commonly 
 gainful) that they like good Catholick Merchants and the Popes good 
 customers, thought to spare for no cost, to have their leases again 
 of their pardons renewed, whatsoever they paid for the fine. And 
 yet was all this good Religion then, such was the lamentable blindness 
 of that time.' 
 
 ' This then being so determined and decreed among my Country- 
 men of Boston to have their pardons needs repaired and renewed from 
 Rome, one Geffery Chambers, with another Champion was sent for the 
 messengers, with writings and money, no small quantity, well furnished, 
 and with all other things appointed necessary for so chargeable and 
 costly exploit. Who coming in his journey to Antwerp, and mis- 
 doubting to be too weak for the compassing of such a weighty piece 
 of work, conferred and perswaded with T. Cromwel to associat him 
 in that legacy, and to assist him in the contriving thereof. Cromwel 
 although perceiving the enterprise to be of no small difficulty to 
 traverse the Popes Court, for the unreasonable expences amongst 
 those greedy Cormorants, yet having some skill of the Italian 
 Tongue, and as yet not grounded in the judgement of Religion 
 in those his youthful days, was at length obtained and content to 
 give the adventure, and so took his journey towards Rome. 
 Cromwel loth to spend much time, and more loth to spend his 
 money; and again perceiving that the Popes greedy humour 
 must needs be served with some present or other (for without 
 rewards there is no doing at Rome) began to cast with himself 
 what thing best to devise wherein he might best serve the Popes 
 devotion.' 
 
 'At length having knowledge how that the Popes holy tooth 
 greatly delighted to new fangled strange delicates and dainty dishes, 
 
FOXE'S HISTORY 25 
 
 it came in his mind to prepare certain fine dishes of gelly, after the 
 best fashion, made after our Countrey manner here in England, which 
 to them of Rome was not known nor seen before.' 
 
 ' This done, Cromwell observing his time accordingly, as the Pope 
 was newly come from hunting into his pavillion, he with his com- 
 panions approached with his English presents brought in with 
 a three mans song (as we call it) in the English tongue and after 
 the English fashion. The Pope suddenly marvelling at the strange- 
 ness of the song, and understanding that they were English men, and 
 that they came not empty handed, willed them to be called in. 
 Cromwel there shewing his obedience, and offering his jolly junkets, 
 such as Kings and Princes only, said he, in the Realm of England 
 use to feed upon, desired the same to be accepted in benevolent part, 
 which he and his companions, as poor suters unto his Holiness had 
 there brought and presented, as novelties meet for his recreation etc' 
 
 ' Pope Julius, seeing the strangeness of the dishes, commanded by 
 and by his Cardinal to take the assay. Who in tasting thereof liked 
 it so well, and so likewise the Pope after him, that knowing of them 
 what their sutes were, and riquiring them to make known the making 
 of that meat, he incontinent, without any more adoe, stamped both 
 their pardons as well the greater as the lesser: ... it seemeth 
 that Cromwell obtained this Pardon aforesaid about the year of 
 our Lord, 1510.' . . . 
 
 [The rest of the story deals for the most part with Cromwell's 
 career in the service of the Cardinal and of the King. Historically 
 it is almost worthless — nearly every paragraph contains statements 
 which the more trustworthy sources prove to be impossible. A 
 curious legend of Cromwell's saving the life of the Earl of Bedford 
 at Bologna is followed by a more plausible account of the latter 
 afterward commending his preserver to the King. Foxe also states 
 that Sir Christopher Hales, a violent papist, but a friend of 
 Cromwell's, took an opportunity to say a good word for him to 
 Henry after Wolsey's fall, that the King at last had an interview 
 with his future minister in Westminster Gardens, and was advised by 
 him to shake off the yoke of Rome. The latter part of this story 
 follows closely the account of Cardinal Pole (see chapter vi. p. 92). 
 Foxe goes on to an exhaustive defence of Cromwell's actions during 
 his ministry, especially the suppression of the monasteries and 
 the measures adopted for the promotion of the new religion. The 
 story of the loss of Cranmer's Book Against the Six Articles at the 
 bear-baiting on the Thames (see chapter xiii. p. 255) and the account 
 
26 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 of Frescobaldo's kindness to Cromwell in Florence are related at 
 length. Many other minor incidents of Cromwell's life are also 
 recorded : we are told how he stopped a skirmish in Paternoster 
 Row, how he prevented a friar from wearing his cowl in the 
 streets, how he imprisoned a ruffian with long hair, and how 
 he aided a poor man whose father had once befriended him in 
 distress. The story closes with an account of Cromwell's fall, 
 sentence and execution, and gives the speech and prayer he is 
 supposed to have made on the scaffold. (See Appendix at the 
 end of chapter xiv.)] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT OF 1533 
 
 The heavy veil that shrouds in mystery the early life of 
 Thomas Cromwell is not completely lifted until after he 
 becomes counsellor to the King, but even before and during 
 his service with Wolsey, we catch several interesting glimpses 
 of him. Especially important is the information we possess 
 concerning the part he played in the Parliament of 1533. We 
 have no means of knowing how he obtained a seat there, but 
 there are fortunately preserved two documents of undoubted 
 authenticity that shed much light on the attitude he assumed 
 towards the problems which came up for discussion. The first 
 is a speech which exists to-day at the Public Record Office in 
 the hand of one of Cromwell's clerks, and contains a distinct 
 and careful enunciation of the policy which the future minister 
 actually pursued in after years. The second is a letter from 
 Cromwell to a friend, John Creke, in Biscay, in which he 
 tells how he ' amongyst other indured a parlyament ^.' This 
 epistle is in itself an excellent index to the character and 
 political ideals of its author. Cromwell's ill-concealed con- 
 tempt for the vague discussions and fruitless arguments of the 
 Commons, who finally in disgust left off where they began, 
 his evident disappointment that the ' right large subsydye ' 
 had been granted in spite of his disapproval, and his sneering 
 statement that this Parliament had failed as signally as its 
 predecessors had, to do anything of real practical value to 
 King or I'ealm, but had wasted its time in foolish theorizing 
 and useless debate — all are perfectly consistent with the 
 characteristics revealed by his later policy and actions. 
 
 In order to understand the speech which Cromwell wrote 
 to dehver in this Parliament, a preliminary survey of some of 
 
 ' Letters, I. 
 
28 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 the business that lay before the House may be helpful. The 
 period immediately previous to the session of 1523 had been 
 occupied by Henry and Wolsey in sending messages to the 
 powerful and traitorous Duke of Bourbon, to obtain from him 
 a recognition of the King's title to the throne of France. 
 The breach between England and Francis was becoming 
 wider every day. Charles V had of course seized the favour- 
 able opportunity to ally himself with Bourbon and Henry, and 
 had as usual succeeded in making the latter do the lion's 
 share of the work, and pay practically all the bills. Loans 
 to the Emperor and to the Duke, and the expense of keeping 
 up the defences in the north, where Scotland daily threatened 
 to break out into open war, had drained the country's resources 
 to their lowest ebb. 
 
 Under these circumstances Henry thought it fit to summon 
 a Parliament, the first since December, 15 15. The policy of 
 Wolsey, in regard to the great legislative body of the king- 
 dom, had up to this time been very closely followed. He 
 had not reached the point which Cromwell at a later day 
 was destined to attain ; that is, he had not so completely 
 obtained the upper hand of the Commons that he could \ise 
 them as a tool to accomplish his will. He rather regarded 
 Parliament as a dangerous power to be suppressed at all costs, 
 than as a means to attain his own ends. Consequently it 
 had not met for nearly eight years. But the present crisis 
 was one which called for more than the ordinary resources of 
 the nation ; nothing could be accomplished against France 
 unless an enormous subsidy was granted ; that subsidy could 
 only be granted by Parliament, and Wolsey, rather unwillingly, 
 was forced to consent to the King's summoning it, relying 
 on Henry's great personal popularity, and the peculiarly 
 bitter national hatred of France, to make it accomplish for 
 him what he could not do for himself^. 
 
 Sir Thomas More was chosen Speaker, probably because 
 of his high favour with Henry, who did not scruple to 
 give Parliament broad hints of his pleasure in all matters 
 in which he was interested, and though, as Roper says, 
 
 ^ On this paragraph cf. Creighton's Wolsey, pp. 128-130. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1533 29 
 
 More was 'very loath to take this room upon hitn^,' yet 
 the King would not consent to his resignation. And the 
 story goes on to tell how Wolsey 'found himself much 
 grieved with the burgesses of this Parliament, for that nothing 
 was so soon done or spoken therein but that it was immediately 
 blown abroad in every ale-house ^' and how, fearing that the 
 subsidy bill might not pass, he determined to be present at 
 the debate himself, and was received, at Sir Thomas More's 
 suggestion, ' with all his pomp, with his maces, his pillars, his 
 poleaxes, his crosses, his hat, and his great seal too.' But 
 Wolsey need not have been so anxious about the passage of 
 his bill. Though at first the House would not deign to con- 
 sider the subsidy in his presence, alleging that ' there was 
 not so much money out of the King's hands in the whole 
 realm,' it had been out of practice too long to realize its own 
 power, and after a great deal of haggling and fruitless 
 endeavours by the members to beg off for less than the 
 ;£'8oo,ooo at first demanded, Wolsey carried his point ^, and 
 by the end of June was able to announce to Henry that there 
 was no further hindrance to the proposed invasion of France. 
 While the debate was in progress, however, Cromwell was 
 
 1 Roper, Life of More, pp. 34-35. on personal property of /50 and 
 ' Ibid. pp. 35-38. upwards. These rates were doubled 
 ' On the 29th of April Wolsey in cases of aliens. The Act was not 
 entered the House and proposed a to extend to Ireland, Wales, Calais, 
 subsidy ' which he thought should to the counties of Northumberland, 
 not fall short of /8oo,ooo, to be Cumberland, or Westmoreland, to 
 raised by a tax of four shillings in Chester, to the bishopric of Dur- 
 the pound on all men's goods and ham, or to Brighton in Sussex.' 
 lands.' The principal provisions of (Cf. Introduction to vol. iii of the 
 the Act to which the Commons were Calendar, pp. 243, 2 5 3, 270.) Brewer 
 finally induced to give their consent informs us that ' it had been corn- 
 were as follows : for two years ' a puted that the subsidy granted 
 rate of 5 per cent, was imposed on by the Commons would produce 
 all lands and goods of the value ;^8oo,ooo,' though he confesses that 
 of ^20 and upwards ; 2 J per cent. we are ignorant of the data on which 
 on goods between ;^2o and £2 ; this estimate was based. Lingard 
 if per cent, on goods of 40^-., or on does not discuss the amount of the 
 yearly wages averaging 20s. In the subsidy, but lays stress on the fact 
 third year 5 per cent, on all lands that the Commons asserted their 
 of ;£5o and upwards; and in the righttodebate on the measure alone, 
 fourth and last year, J per cent. (Hist.of England, vol. vi. pp. 91-92.) 
 
30 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 one of the strongest opponents of the Cardinal's scheme. The 
 following speech, which he wrote to deliver on this occasion ^ 
 clearly reveals his attitude on the questions before the House. 
 ' To recou^r agayne by the sworde the Realme of Fraunce, 
 belongyng to our most Redowbtid Souerayne by good and 
 iuste tytle, and to chaunge the Sums of monay whiche we haue 
 in sundrey yeres Receyued from thens into the hole and iust 
 Reuenues that myght there from yere to yere be Leuyed yf 
 we did peasibly enioye the same, who ys here present that 
 wold not gladly dispend not oonly all his goodys but also his 
 lyffe yf euery of vs had ten thowsand lyues to help to obtayne 
 vnto our most benygne souerayne and his most noble Succession 
 besydys the high honour and wyde spredyng of his most 
 glorious fame, whiche while this world endured shuld euer be 
 had in memory, suche yerely reuenues and wellyng spryngg^i' 
 as '^ treasure as shuld by thyse means contynually be browght 
 into this Realme, Whereoff there were no dowte but that ryght 
 haboundantstremys shuld from his mostliberall magnyfysence 
 be dereuyed into eu^ry parte of this his Realme to the grete 
 Inryching and enprosperyng of vs and all suche as hereafter 
 showld lyue vnder hys obeysaunce and subieccion. And that 
 this high and Magnanyme ent^rpryse ys at this present by 
 our saide Souerayne not only in secret wyse in his high 
 cowrage conceyued, but also vttred to his most prudent coun- 
 sayll, and at sundrey tymes by his grace and them rypely 
 dygested debated ye and fynally concluded as the thyng by 
 his most high wysdome and thens thowg/z/ not only possible 
 but also very apparaunt and lykely, all reasonable dowt^j 
 auoyded, we All haue clerely persayued as well by the mowth 
 and reporte of my lorde legatt^j good grace as by the Re- 
 capitulacion of the Right worshipfull best Assuryd and discrete 
 Speker, in so moche that we haue ben^ adu^rtised of the 
 
 ^ Cal. iii. 2958. There can be p. 52), says, ' Die Rede selbst kann 
 
 no reasonable doubt concerning schlechterdings keinen anderen 
 
 the authorship of this speech. Urheber haben, und ist spaterhin 
 
 Neither Brewer nor Gairdner ques- bei der Confiscation der Papiere 
 
 tion it, and Pauli, in an article on Cromwell's in das Staatsarchiv 
 
 Wolsey and the Parliament of 1523 gekommen.' 
 (Historische Zeitschrift for 1889, ^ jzV, for ' of.' 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1533 31 
 
 Indentures all reddy passed bytwene our said most noble 
 Souerayne and the Emparow^s Magesty, conteynyng not 
 oonly the nombre of horsemew and Fotemen, estemed 
 sufficient for the saide enterpryse, but also the day pr^fixid 
 for the Arryuall beyond the see of the saide Army. Whyche 
 thyng sythyns our most Redowbted Souerayne hathe so 
 depely myndyd, that for the more effectuall puttyng in 
 execucion of the same, his high enterpryze, he hathe promysed 
 in the saide endentures, to goo ouer in his owne noble p^rsone 
 Whoo ys here present in this ryght worshipfull assemble, or 
 any other his sublet Whatsoeuer he be whiche to the vtterest 
 of his power wold not payne and endeu^^ hymself, that this so 
 glorious, so profyttable and so wysshefull an enterpryse myght 
 properously be atcheuyd and our souerayne \fi\.k assuryd 
 honour to Reto?<rne agayne after this grete acte well and 
 victoryously p^rfynysshed. But for somoche As yt hathe 
 pleased our most Redowbtid Souuerayne of his most high 
 and haboundant goodnes, to declare vnto vs by the mowthe 
 of my saide Lorde Cardinallis grace, not only this his purpose, 
 but also the manyfold prc^uocacions and hainous iniures done 
 aswell to his noble highnes, as to his most dere si&ter the 
 quene Douriere of Fraunce, in wrongus^ withholding of her 
 Dowre, and also the grete vexacion of his subiect<?i- by 
 robbyng and spoylyng of them, to theire vtter vndoyng, by 
 Francoys now raynyng there, and on the other side the 
 manyfold policies and gracious meanes studied by our saide 
 most noble Souuerayne, and hys Counsayll, to establysshe 
 a generall peace amongyst all Crysten Prync^j and to stay 
 the saide Frauncoys yf yt had bene possible by ma«nys 
 industry from his synyster wayes and disturbyng of all 
 Regions abowte hym. Me semyth that his highnes hathe 
 heryn Declared vnto vs the grettest loue that euer did noble 
 prynce vnto his humble and obeysaunt subiect^j, seyng that 
 his high wysdome doth not disdayne to communicate and 
 declare vnto vs his waighty entrepases and affayres, in this 
 autentyk imner assemblyd by the mowthe of so notable 
 a p^^sonage, beseching god of his haboundant goodnes and 
 1 sic, for ' wrongous ' or ' wrong.' 
 
32 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 ynfynyte mercye whiche wit/idra.wyth not his lyght from the 
 poore and low estate but vnto humble hartt^j departyth of his 
 grace, that this notable benygnete of our saide Souerayne be 
 not amongyst vs all frustrate, but that sum of vs here present 
 may say in this weyghty matier the thyng vaylable and 
 worthye in his most highe Juggement to be regarded whiche 
 by the Mowthe and report of the ryght wyse dyscrete and 
 excellently lettred speker may be benyng Interpretacion And 
 as we meane cum vnto his most grflcious Erys. Whiche my 
 perfyte trust ys that his noble grace wyll not so vtterly regecte, 
 but that yt may oons entre into his noble harte byfore the 
 tyme come that he shall put hys high entrepryse in execuciow 
 seyng yt ys yet oon hole yere therunto and all thowgh 
 I reckyn myselff of all other the most vnworthy to haue in 
 the awdience of so many sauge and notable persons, any 
 manner saiyngg^j, especially in this weighty mattier whiche 
 makyth me to tremble, for fere, whan I thyncke upon hyt and 
 represent vnto my fantasy How the thre gouernours of 
 Crystendom, accompanyed w«t^ so grete nombr^ of prync^j 
 noble men and other their Subgiett(?j shuld after so manyfold 
 p^<7Uocacions of dedely hattred encounter togyder witA theire 
 Swordys in theire hand^j, to trye where the pleasure of god 
 shalbe to stryke, and shew his indignacion, Of whiche slawghter, 
 most nedis ensue, the moste Lamentable cryes, and sorowfull 
 wryngyng of handys, that hath happened in Cristendome 
 many yeres. Neu^rthelesse after my symple and yngnorant 
 man^r, I shall humbly beseche yow all of your benygne 
 Supportacion that I may here witk your {a.uours vtter my 
 poore mynde whose intent ys none other but to geue vnto 
 yow, whiche be of far more assuryd Wysdom, Lernyng and 
 experience then I, occasion to vtter your wyse counsaylkj, for 
 yn myself I know well ys nought elles but the intent of good 
 wyll, and entier desyre, of the Contenuaunce yn prosperite of my 
 most redowtyd souerayne, with the most frutefull cons^ruacion 
 of the polytyk weall of this his noble Realme, and the good 
 fertheryng of all the enterprysys and affayres in any wyse 
 , belongyng to the same. 
 V 'To speke of peace certeynly as now hit ys no tyme, Albe 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1523 33 
 
 hit that I doo in my hart therfore ryght sore lament, but want 
 of trowth ys so depely in the Frenche Nacion enrotid, and theire 
 insaciable apetite to extent theire bond« and to accroche from 
 other their Domynyons and possessions to the grete molestyng 
 and trowbelyng of all the nacions abowte theym, ys so manyfest 
 and notorys to all the word ^, W2t/20ute any regarde hauyng 
 ether to godde or Justyce, that thowgh we Hadde for our 
 owne particuler causes no manner quarelkj vnto them, yet 
 cowld we not but haue in detestacion their false and fleyghty 
 Dealyng Wherwzt^ other Cristened prync^j be by them so 
 sore molestyd. But now ys hyt soo that our most Drad 
 Souerayne ys soo notably prouoked by the manyfold Iniuryes 
 done aswell to hymself as to his most derest Syster, and 
 sundrey his Subiect^j that me thynckyth, there be none, his 
 true and faythefull Subiett^j, that can refrayne to bere toward^j 
 them a worthy haatred and fast inpryntyd groutche, as vnto 
 the nacion, whiche euifr ys onrestful, And of suche malicious 
 nature that there ys no remedy, but other they most be 
 skowrgyd or ellys they wyll suerly be a skowrge to other, and 
 other their possessions must be ruffilled and dymynysshed or 
 ellys they wyll not cesse to Dymynysshe and take away from 
 other their possessions, of whiche Arogant Nacion thowgh we 
 haue of our seSHes by goddys Ayde and suffera^nce ben the 
 Chastners and terryble stronge yet at this present tyme All- 
 myghty god ys so benygne vnto vs that we haue now a muche 
 grete aduauntage to compell them not oonly to syt in rest but 
 also gladly to com^ to Reason seyng that by theyre sayde 
 mysprowde arregancy the ^ Haue in so sundry Wayes prouoked 
 the saide Emparo?<rs magestye vnto iust hatered and dys- 
 pleasure agaynst them vti'di whome our most Redowbted 
 Souerayne ys most assurydly confederate and alied, Whose 
 high and myghty power ys so great that Joyned vnto owers 
 they be enverouned on eu^ry syde wyth the nacions, whiche 
 by goddes grace shall afflycte them and abate their pryde. 
 Whiche thyng the emparo2<rs maiesty hath full well for his 
 partie shewyd in Recoueryng agayne of Nauerne Where they 
 had no smale ou^rthrow and also by Wynnyng from theym 
 
 ^ sic, for ' world.' "^ sic, for ' they.' 
 
 MERRIMAN. I D 
 
34 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 the Cytte of Tourney and the hole Countrey Tornasyes 
 adiacent therunto, and farthermore to the more soirar encresyng 
 of their Awguysshefull abasshement and shame haue dryuen 
 them quyte owte of Ittaly and dispossessed them of the noble 
 Dowchye of Millayne, the gettyng and defendyng wherof 
 hath ben^ so maruaylous chargeable vnto theym and also to 
 the Cyttyes of Genes witk the Terretoryes therunto belongyng. 
 And we for our partye haue spoyled and brent Morkesse, 
 Destroyed also a grete Contrey witA sundry villag^j and 
 Townes therin, and to the grete and high honour of our 
 soueraigne and his valiaunt nacion, and the grete Lawde and 
 Prayse of the well fortunate and sawge Capetayn, the yerle of 
 Surrey, whiche taryed in the Domynyons of the saide 
 Francoyse w«t/z a smale Nombr^ of men in comparyson by the 
 space or vj or vij wekys where all the power of Fraunce durst 
 not geue hym battayll whiche sayde valiant Capeteyne, I trust 
 by goddes help, shall ou^rthrow and subdue also the Skott^j, 
 whome the Frehche men haue so custuously intertayned, 
 and of so long tyme mayntayned agaynst vs, whiche thingg^j, 
 yf almyghty god of his goodnes, wyll suffre to contynue this 
 a while, there ys no dowte but that their hawlte and mys- 
 prowde Cowrage shall or owght long abate, and that we shall 
 constrayne theym to be glad to entret for pease as men dryuen 
 in to grete and extreme Dyspayre, seing their pec^j whiche 
 they haue bene so long in gettyng bene so valiauntly and 
 wrt^owt any hardynesse in theym to make Resystance 
 pullid away from theym, and they dare not trye hyt by the 
 sworde, nother vfitk vs, nor -witk the saide Emparowrs Subiect^J 
 for whan soeuer they so doo, they wyn nowght ellys but 
 a shameful! overthrow, as we all know, by good experyence. 
 But now myght yt be in questyon whyther hyt showld be for 
 the more aduaunsyng of our most Rodowtyd Souerayns 
 Honour and the Empero2^rs Mageste also, and more vayllable 
 for the spedy acheuyng of bothe their desiryd purposys other 
 to contynew styll thys kynde of warre whyche hytherto god 
 be thancked hathe so prosperously succedyd or ellys to chaunge 
 our warre in to another kynde, more sharper, more violent and 
 also more terable, that is to say, where he hathe not bene so 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 15^3 35 
 
 hardy as to mete A meane Armyee, other of owers or of the 
 Emperours, to conuey now in to hys Realme on eyther of 
 our sydys, so grete and myghty a puyssaunce as shalbe able 
 by goddys ayde, clerely to vanquysshe hym vtterly and to 
 subdue hyiti. 
 
 ' To this question I beseche god that sum sauge and well 
 experte man here amongyst vs present may say the thyng 
 that may be honorable to our most Redowted souerayne and 
 profifyttable this to his noble Realme, As for myne owne partye 
 knowyng my most redowtyd Souerayns high pleasure Whereof 
 we haue all by my saide lorde Cardinally grace ben^ so clerely 
 enfozirmed, I am at a poynt suche as dothe become an humble 
 and obeysant subiect to be, beyng adu^rtisid of his Souerayns 
 most redowtyd pleasure, especially by the mowthe of hys 
 most nere and cheffest Counsaylo?^r, declaryd, oonly oon i 
 thyng there ys whiche puttyth me in no small agonye, me ' 
 thowght I harde my lorde Cardynalkj grace say that our 
 most gracious Souuerayne, more derer vnto any of hys Subiect^j 
 that hathe any manifr zele to our cowmen welthe then hys 
 owne propre lyfe, indendyth to go ou^r in his Royall p^rsone, 
 Whyche thyng I pray god for my partie I neuer lyue to see. 
 Most humbly beseching hys haboundant and tendre benygnyte 
 of m^rcy and pardoae of this my saiyng, for the humble and 
 obeysant loue I ow vnto his noble person, causyth me in this ~ 
 case to forget obeysance, and I cannot consent to obey vnto 
 this hys pleasure wheryn lyith the hazardyng of this his 
 noble Realme, and apon the whiche myght follow (whiche 
 god defend) the grettyst Calamyte and afflation^ that eu^r 
 happynned ther vnto by cause I am desyrous to be owte of 
 all dowtt^j that I may all my lyfe dayes hereafter be his 
 humble and obeisant sublet, and see witk the prosperite and 
 suretye of his noble parson, his Realme and power subiect^J 
 to lyue assuryd in tranquylyte and to be reconforttid W2t^ his 
 noble presence, whose welthe and prosperyte ys so vrgently 
 necessary vnto vs all that I am sure their ys no good Englysshe 
 man whiche can be mery the day whan he happenyth to thynk 
 that his grace myght perchaunce be dystemp^rid of his helthe 
 
 ^ sic, for ' affliction.' 
 D a 
 
36 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 / so that albe hyt I say for my partie, I stomak as a sory 
 Subiect may doo, the high Iniures done by the saide Francoys, 
 vnto his most dere souerayne, yet rather then the thyng shuld 
 goo so ferre forth I cowld for my partie be contented to forget 
 altogyther soo that I may know the parson of my souerayne 
 to be yn helthe, and suretye owte of the thowsand Daungiers 
 whiche chaunce in warre, and lyue at his high Pleasure and 
 assuryd myrth for yf the Frenche men haue establysshed an 
 ordena^nce amongyst theym that their kyng in hys owne 
 p^rsone shall neuer come in Raungyd Battayll agaywst our 
 nacion bycawse of the sundry hazardys that their saide pryncifj 
 haue suffred in their owne parsons, notwzt^standyng their 
 maruelous poUecy deuysed amongest them for the certayn and 
 the establysshid succession of their Crowne, how neidfull ys 
 hyt for us consideryng in what case we be to make the 
 humblest sewyt that euer did pore Subiect^j to theyre Souue- 
 rayne, that he wyll for our sakes and specially for the tendre 
 and Fathyrly loue he beryth to his most dere and oonly 
 dowghter upon whose wele and sircumspecte bestowyng next 
 his noble parson dependyth all our welthis som^thyng to 
 Reffrayne his high magnanyme Courage and for our assuryd 
 welthe and quyet and specially of her noble person desyst 
 from that Dawngerows entrepryse, And whereas his highnes 
 hath the Reno«m to be the most faythefull and substauncyall 
 prynce, Crystayned yn the trew periourmyng of all his pro- 
 myses that hyt may lyke his grace to lay the wyte on vs his 
 poore Subiect^j thowgh that he breke in that poynt the tenour 
 of his Indenture, For yf his highnes wold so farre presse vs by 
 our allegence that he wold nedys cary ou^r whA hym the 
 Armay in the same Endentures expressed, I am suer there 
 showld not be oon amongest them all that had any reason in 
 his hed but he shuld be more metar to wayle and wryng hys 
 hand^j than assuryd to fyght, whan he consydered that yf 
 otherwyse then well showld fortune to that prescious Juell 
 whiche he had for hys partye, in custody, yt were more 
 metar for hym to departe in to Turkey than to Reto«rne 
 agayne in to his natiltall Contray to hys wyffe and chyldren. 
 And now as yt fortunyth naturally where as a man ys fully 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1523 37 
 
 p^rswadyd in any matter as I am trewly that our most ' 
 Redowtid soueraygne showld in no wyse passe the Sees in his 
 owne noble p^^son consideryng the thyng^j aforsaide to fayne 
 Reasons to make for His purpose, soo doo I now Fantasye 
 syns I am so extremely desyrows that the noble parson yf ^ 
 my saide Prynce showlde tarry withyn Hys Realme that hit 
 were better to trayne owre warre and by lyttyll and lyttyll to 
 attempte wary the saide Francoys then at 00ns to send o\xer j 
 agaynst hym the power Royall of this noble Royalme. '~^ 
 
 ' In the reasonyng of whiche matter I shall but vtter myne 
 ygnoraunce afore Hanyball as our ryght wyse spekar rehersid 
 now of late, but syns I am wadyd thus far vnder your benygne 
 supportacion I shall here vtter my pore mynde yf thys grete 
 and puysaunt armaye of xxx Thowsand foteme« and ten 
 Thowsand horsemen showld be co«ueyed in to the partyes of 
 beyond see I ymagyn -witk myself whiche wayes they myght 
 take to noy our enemyes most Consideracion fyrst had vnto 
 their owne saufegarde. How they myght suerly be victualled 
 and thus I reason yf they shuld so invade Fraunce that they 
 myght eu^r wiik suretye haue victayles owte of the Arche- 
 dukedome, than put I no dowhtes but they showld saufely 
 Reto^rne agayne, for any daungyer that showld com^ vnto 
 theym by their enemyes, for synse they durst not this yere 
 last past set vpon the Hardy and valiaunt Capetayn the 
 Yerle of Surrey notwet^standyng any prouocacions that he 
 Cowld by hys exp^rte wysedome in the Featt^j of warre 
 Imagyn to brj'ng them thervnto how moche more wold they 
 beware to mete -with so howge an Armye whose bruit 
 I suppose god beyng indyfferent the poore of Fraunce were 
 not hable to susteyne, but by this meanes lyke as otir saide 
 Armye shuld be in saftye soo showld the harme whiche they ^r 
 showld doo to the Realme of Fraunce be nothyng so moche 
 as the harmys whiche we ourse\iies showld susteyn in 
 sowldyng of so great an army which were hable or iii - 
 Somers were expyred to exhawste and vtterly consume all , 
 the Cogne and bolyon wzt/zyn this Realme whiche I con- 
 jecture can not passe moche aboue a Million For yf all the ,, 
 
 > wV, for'of ? 
 
38 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 <f valew of the hole Realme excede not iiii Millions as my lorde 
 
 Cardinalkj grace Declaryth playnly vnto vs all of whiche 
 
 the possessions were estemyd to amount to oone Hole 
 
 [^ Million, me thynkyth that there ys no dowbte but that the 
 
 Comes, Cattalkj our owne Cow«modeties vtensilkj Apparayll 
 
 for man and women whiche was neuer soo sumptuo«<s and 
 
 also the wares not oonly made of our owne co;;2modetyes 
 
 but also conveyed from the partyes of beyond the see Hyther 
 
 wherof was neuer so grete Haboundaunce Dothe amount at 
 
 the lest vnto other ij Millions This yf we showld take thys 
 
 way or euer we showld doo to our enemy any hurt that were 
 
 worthy to be regardid we showld be brought in to that case 
 
 that we showld neu^r be hable neu^r to hurt hym ne none 
 
 other, nor to help our Prynce, nor this his noble Realme 
 
 What adu^rsyte soeuer shuld fortune to Hap ye and what 
 
 showld we then Doo, but sit in peace witk the highest 
 
 ignomine and Desperat confusion that eu^r did nacion and 
 
 be constraynyd for the maynten(2;«<nce of co»«mutacion and 
 
 (I biyng and sellyng amongyst ourselffes to koyne lether agayne, 
 
 lyke as we oons haue done, whiche as for me I could well 
 
 ynowgh be content with but yf yt showld fortune our most 
 
 Redowtyd Souerayne, yf he wold nyedys go ou^r yn hys 
 
 owne p^rsone to happyn by any adu^rse fortune, whiche 
 
 almyghty god defend to cum into the hand« of our enemyes, 
 
 how shuld we then be hable to Redeme hym agayne yf they 
 
 wyll nought for their wynes but golde they wold thynck 
 
 grete skorne, to take lether for our prynce, ye and how moche 
 
 the Inhabitaunt^j of the saide Archedukedome be desirows to 
 
 haue moche of our monaye for Lytyll of their victuaylis 
 
 whiche showld the sonner bryng this inconuenyence to passe, 
 
 we haue hadde ryght good experyence aswell whan our 
 
 moste Redowbtid Souerayne last went ouer in His owne 
 
 Royall parson as in the last yere, whan my lorde of Surrey 
 
 was sent by our saide Souerayne in to those parties whose 
 
 Soldyers at their Rettourne made of the raryte and high 
 
 prysed victuales no lytyll complaynt. But yf we nedys wold 
 
 conuaye our armye by their possessions and to make our 
 
 way as short as myght be, to goo the most nere and dyrect 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1523 39 
 
 way to Parrys where vndowbtyd were no small spoylle to 
 be gotten and in manner the place self not hable in strength 
 to kepe vs owte Assone as euer we were Dtpartyd owte of 
 the Marchys of the saide Archedukedome, we showld then 
 clerely p^rsayue whatt manner warre the Frenche men wold 
 vse ayenst vs whiche neu^r wyll offer to medyll wztk our 
 Armye, but lye yn wayte yf any of our saide Armye 
 happened to straye or stragle abrode or to destroye the 
 Conducto«<rs of our victuayle. And as for victuaylys in our 
 waye we shuld be sure none to fynde that other hadde legges 
 to convey hyt sylf from vs or elles by the diligence of the 
 paysans myght convaide ^ to the next strong holdys and then 
 myght we perchaunce (whiche god defend) p^rsayue what 
 high daunger to leue any strong holdys behynde vs, 
 whiche the most Saugge and Poletyke Prynce Kyng Henry 
 the vij* of gracious memory thowght not best to doo. 
 For when he passed the Sees to wyn the ryght in Fraunce 
 he began fyrst to lay Seige to Bolayn, or euer he wold enter 
 anye farther in to the land. And our most Redowtyd 
 souerayne now raynyng beyng in purpose as I harde reportid 
 goo as farre as Parres after the occupacion of his sawge 
 Counsayle began Fyrst at Tyrouenne and the Emperoz^rs 
 mageste Imployed A whosoeu^r be in To«rnay bycawse yt 
 was thowght to his high wysedome and hys noble councellers 
 euydently dawngerous yf he wold at any tyme hereafter 
 passe any farder by that way in to Fraunce, to leue suche 
 strong hold in the possession of his enemyes behynde hym 
 at hys bakke, and soo yf we showld for any dyspleasure 
 done vnto vs ammuse our Coscions armye abowte the 
 wynnyng of any those holdys, what maruelous Inconueny- 
 ences Let of purpose and Importable Charg^i- we showld 
 sustayn therbye our most drad souerayne lorde hathe theryn 
 to good experyence in the wynnyng of Tyrouen which cost 
 his highnes more then xx" suche vngracious Dogholes 
 cowld be worthe vnto hym But yf we wold vtterlye leue 
 this waye, and Determyn to Invade Normandie Bretayn or 
 sum other Contraye in the possession of his enemye vpon 
 
 ' sic, for ' be conveyed.' 
 
^/ 
 
 40 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 the Ryvage of the see and make our preparacions here 
 wit/tyn this noble Realme suche as showld be thowght 
 conuenable for suche an armye Royall Thys thyng passith 
 the streche of my pore wyt to speke for oon^ thing 
 I suppose, besid^'i- the Inestymable molestacion and charge 
 whiche I ymagyn this noble Realme showld sustayne for 
 theyr pr^paracion for ware I can se nothyng but manyfest 
 dawngier on eu^ry syde to be toward^j the saide Armaye 
 not onely at their Arryvall amongest their enemyes at all 
 tymes and so long as they shall there tarry Whiche to shew 
 theym their saide enemyes showld have no smale aduauntage, 
 and that in sundry wyse, but also how they should surely 
 be victayled for thowgh we made here neuer so good 
 dylygence to prepare victailes for them in due tyme yet 
 stode bothe we and they in daungier of the wynde in whose 
 oncerteynte god defend that the Flower, nay in manner the 
 hole Chyualry of this noble Realme showld so be hazardid 
 for thereby myght Chaunce the most lamentable losse ye 
 and wA^out Recou^'y that eu^r heretofore to me happenyd 
 For thowgh we be indowtyd ryght sore dymynysshed of 
 our Treasure, We haue yet a farr gretar want of defensable 
 men whiche to any good Englysshe man that ys not 
 affeccionat to his owne pryuat lucre but wttA good harte and 
 true zele louyth the Commen wele ys to moche manyfest at 
 the yee, and hyt pleasid god of the contrary Wherby Supposid 
 that Almyghty god sent our souerayne his desiryd purpose 
 how showld we be Able to possede the large Cuntreye of 
 Fraunce whiche haue our owne Realme so meruelous rarely 
 storyd of inhabytaunt^j and hable men, but there paraad- 
 venture yt myght be saide vnto me Why puttyst thow so 
 many dowtt^j ayenst this my most redowtyd souerayns 
 enterpryse, he beyng so high in courage of maruelous 
 wysdome and well tryed experyence in all ma^ciall Condutt^^ 
 seyng other his progenitoz^rs of farre lesse graces wkk an 
 handfull of men in comparyson to his armye haue geuyn 
 them soo notable ou^rthrowes To thys question breuely to 
 show my pore mynde Trewly the manyfold victoryes that we 
 haue had ayenst theym bryngyth theym in playne dyspayre 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1543 41 
 
 to trye hyt anye more with vs In raunged battayll and to the 
 experyence that they haue of our Condicions bothe in warre 
 and pease hathe geuyn the saide Francoys hardynes thus 
 haynowsly to prouoke our Souerayne as he doyth for lyke 
 as he knowyth that in Armys otir nacion ys ynvincible so 
 knowyth he our Impacience to Contynew in warre many 
 yeres and in especiall in wynter for we desier nowght elles 
 but to trye hyt -with our handi?j at ones and that the 
 Maruelous charge far aboue any other nacion that we most 
 nedys continually be at for victuayles and other necessaryes 
 ys so grete that at the length we most nedys wery otirszli 
 as oftyn as we be assemblyd to fyght yf We soo togyther 
 assemblyd long contynew thowgh none other nacion fyght 
 with vs I cowld here also towche what polecye we haue to 
 kepe thing^j when we haue gottyn theym, but I let that 
 passe and wyll now shew the notable aduaz^ntag^j that our 
 sou^rayns progenito«rs had ou^r that we haue now, the 
 mean warre ayenst Fraunce yn. tymes past we had eu^r 
 plac^j surlye to Lond in other of otir owne, or of our assured 
 confederatt^j and alies as Gascoyne Gwyen Bretayn and 
 sumtyme Normandie and at the lest we had Sum assuryd 
 freynd^j there whiche wern grete men of power and further- 
 more their Townes and holdes were nothyng of the mg'ruelous 
 strength that they be of at this present but now all thyse 
 thynges be chaunged places. We haue none to lond in any 
 of the saide Countrays but suche as we may be sure to haue 
 allemanner dyspleasure shewyd vnto vs that they dare or 
 may doo and as for any frend^j We haue that I dare not ( 
 presume to speke in, but as ferre as my pore coniecture 
 ledyth me there was neuer nacion more maruaylusly Lynkyd i| 
 togyder then they be amongyst theymselfifj nor more sundry |j 
 prouysyons found how suche A^ nature hath made of high ' 
 courage beyng borne amongyst them myght be prouyded 
 of welthful lyuynges vnder their obeysaunce to consent to 
 any Dysturbyng of their Cowmen Welth thowgh he showld 
 for that intent be offeryd a great and notable Treasoure 
 But how by^ Coruptable all the worlde wit/i the m^ruelows 
 
 ^ sic, for ' as.' " sic, for ' be,' possibly meaning ' very.' 
 
42 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 sleyght^j in excessyff gyftes the Emperowrs maiestye hathe 
 for his partie had of late ryght euydent experyence, For whyle 
 he was here in thise parties occupied abowte the wynnyng 
 of Towrney and other his affayres they had corrupted iij or 
 iiij of the grettest nobles of Spayne, apon whiche parsonages 
 for their euydent ' ontrewth the Empero^/rs Magestye was 
 constraynyd to do Justyce at his Reto^rnyng thyther, 
 whiche was no small losse onto hym yf they had lyke trew 
 subgiett^j accordyngly regarded their allegiaunce and that 
 is to be m^ruayled at my lorde of Sheuerys^ the most 
 bounden creature of the sayde Emparo^rs Maieste that euer 
 was subiect to his Souuerayne, me thowght I harde my lorde 
 Cardinalki- grace reporte, that he was also by their m^^'uelous 
 subtyle pollice and gyft^j corrupt, and also yt ys euydewt 
 that synse the saide Kmperours Maiestie Reto«rnyd in. to 
 Spayne agayne the gouernours of his Archedukedome haue 
 grauntyd dyu^rs of safecondut vnto merchauntes of the 
 Frenche nacion ye and for their Sakys vnto Skott^j also, 
 whiche ys a maruelous hyndraunce after my pore Jugemewt 
 to our souueraynes and the saide Empero?^rs warres. For 
 yf our co»2modeties had aswell ben^ kepte from theim as 
 their co;«modeties be from vs many a thowsand artyfycer 
 lyuyng vnder the saide Francoys Domynyon whiche hathe 
 none other lyuyng but by workyng of our wollys haue 
 ben^ constrayned to haue made to their kyng lamentable 
 sute for peace, as people browght to extreme distresse and 
 not wottyng how to lyue. 
 
 ' Thus haue I here vttred my pore and symple mynde ryght 
 hartylly thanckyng yow all of your benygne Supportacion 
 and how that yow haue Wytsaufe to here so pacientlie my 
 ignorance most humbly beseching the tender benygnyte of 
 my most dere and most redowtyd souuerayn whiche w«tA- 
 drawyth hys m^rcifull yee from Wylfull offenders yf they 
 humbly make sute vnto his grage for pardon, that he wyll of 
 his haboundaunt goodnes wytsaufe to take me as I meane 
 whiche am as desyrous that all his most noble entrepases 
 should prosperously go forward as any symple creature that 
 
 ' William de Croy, Lord Chievres. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1523 43 
 
 &Mer was borne vnder his obeisaunce thinckyng after my | 
 Ignorant Jugement that yf yt wold please his' magnanime j 
 Courage to conuert Fyrst and chief his hole intent and ( 
 purpose not only to the ouer rownyng and subduyng of 
 Skotland but also to Joyne the same Realme vnto his, 
 Soo that both they and we myght lyue vnder oone ; 
 Bessaunce Law and Pollecy for &xer. He shold therby ! 
 wyn the highest honour that eu^r dyd any noble pro- 
 genito?<rs synse thys Hand was fyrst Inhabyt to Joyne 
 vnto his noble Realme so populus a Cuntray wherby his 
 strength shold be of no small parte e«cresid and of this acte 
 should follow the highest abasshement to the saide Francoys 
 that &\xer happened to hym or any his pr(7geneto«rs afore 
 hym not oonly for that he Left the saide Skott^j his aunciewt 
 allies and which haue for hys and their Sak^j pr^uokyd our 
 nacion so notably heretofore at thys tyme vn defended by 
 reason of our souerayns naiuye whiche he dare not encounter 
 W2t^ nor neuer dare send theim socour so long as he shall 
 know the narrow sees substansially to be kept, but also for 
 somoche as he shall vnderstand that we haue chaunged our 
 manner of warre, whiche were wont nought else to doo but 
 to skore the nacions abowt, but whan he shall p^rsayue that 
 by the hygh and poUytyk wysdome our saide most redowtid 
 Souerayne they be Joyned vnto vs in oone politik boddye 
 what fere shall we then stand in to Lose his possessions 
 Without any hope of Recou^re agayne, and thowgh hit be 
 /a cowmen sayng that yn Skotland ys nought to wyn but I 
 strokes, for that I alledge another co»2men sayng, who that \ 
 entendyth Fraunce to wyn wztk Skotland let hym begyn, 1' 
 Whiche enterpret thus truely hyt ys But a Symplenesse for 
 vs to thyncke to kepe possessions in Fraunce, (which) ys 
 seuowryd from vs by the ocean see, and suffre Skotland 
 Joyne<d) vnto vs by nature all in oon Hand, vnto which 
 we may haue Kecourse at all tymes whan we woU, whiche 
 also to subdue, god beyng indifferent lyeth eu^r in our hand 
 to lyue vnder a nother pollecy and to Recognyse another 
 Prynce send god that our most Redowty Souuerayne (may i 
 conquer Scotland) whiche whan we haue ones Joyned vnto J 
 
44 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 our polecy as a membra by nature dyscendyng apon the 
 hole, than shall we therby have the experyence how to 
 wyn and kepe other possessions of our most redowtyd 
 souerayne of due ryght and enherytaunce belonging to his 
 noble Crowne whiche we (have) in the parties of beyond the 
 see in whyche entrepryses I beseche god send our most dere 
 and most redowtyd souuerayn prosperous Succession and 
 fortunat atcheuyng of all this his noble entrepryse.' 
 
 There is no record that this speech was ever delivered ; 
 even if it was, it certainly had no effect in this unwieldy and 
 unpractical session of Parliament. But the accuracy and 
 force of the speaker's reasoning were destined to be proved by 
 the subsequent course of events. For the student of the 
 present day, who is enabled to glance at the whole picture 
 from a distance, so that the various facts assume more or less 
 their proper proportion and perspective, Cromwell's words on 
 this occasion will always remain as one of the strongest proofs 
 of his political wisdom and foresight. 
 
 After touching on the subject of the war, and assuring the 
 House of his conviction that any one present would give 
 goods and life ten thousand times over to recover France for 
 the King (a shrewd beginning, for if Henry was not present 
 in person, no one knew better than Cromwell how accurately 
 every word spoken in the Parliament would be reported to 
 him, and how important it was for one who would gain the 
 royal favour to put his loyalty to the Crown first of all), he 
 goes on, after a few commonplace remarks about the war's 
 being waged with energy, to crave the pardon of the House 
 for addressing so noble an assembly. This preface is eminently 
 characteristic of the speaker. When not perfectly certain 
 of his ground, and in the presence of those whom he wished 
 to conciliate, none could be a more adroit flatterer than 
 he ; it was only when he was completely master of the 
 situation (and he had a peculiar gift of discovering just what 
 his position was in relation to other people) that he became 
 contemptuous, overbearing, and cruel. 
 
 But not even yet had he said enough to prove his loyalty 
 to the King. He agrees that war is inevitable, and that the 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1533 45 
 
 question now is how it may be most effectually carried on, 
 but when he foresees that the King will go in person, he is 
 greatly distressed. He talks loudly about the danger of 
 the King being killed, hints that Henry possessed a courage 
 and a self-sacrifice to the interests of England which would 
 render him impervious to any argument about personal risk, 
 and then launches himself into the heart of his discourse. 
 The King is an absolute necessity to the welfare and progress 
 of the State. If the King were removed, the country would 
 probably be brought face to face with the horrors of a civil 
 ■war. Cromwell thus brings his hearers to the first great 
 principle of the policy that he was destined later to pursue, 
 namely, concentration of power in the hands of the Crown, as 
 a sine qua non of unity at home and safety abroad. This 
 principle he enforces with many other arguments. The 
 danger from the hostility of Scotland was enormous ; let the 
 King ' Reffrayne his high magnanyme Courage ' and remain- 
 ing at home, so direct the movements of his forces, that 
 England and Scotland may together move as a unit. France 
 has bought off many who may seem to be England's allies 
 on the Continent. The consequence of an invasion of France 
 would be the scattering of the army ; it might be cut off in 
 an attempt to capture Paris, and England would be left to 
 the mercy of its first invader. The country must make sure 
 of its own safety, before entering upon a war of aggression. 
 
 He brings up other points to prove his case, and here 
 speaks against the proposed subsidy. He saw, as a merchant, ^ 
 that the amount proposed was excessive ; his fear was that 
 all the coin and bullion in the realm would be exhausted by 
 three summers of fruitless warring, so that the nation would 
 be forced 'to koyne lether agayne,' as it had done once 
 before. His appreciation of the importance of sound finance, , 
 and the evils of a depreciated currency show a knowledge of 
 economic principles far in advance of his time. ' Yf yt showld 
 fortune our most Redowtyd Souerayne, yf he wold nyedys^ 
 go o\xer yn hys owne p^rsone to happyn by any adu,?rse 
 fortune, whiche almyghty god defend to cum into the hand^j- 
 of our enemyes,' says Cromwell, ' how shuld we then be 
 
 3 '-; 
 
46 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 hable to Redeme hym agayne yf they wyll nought for their 
 wynes but golde they wold thynck grete skorne,to take lether 
 for our prynce.' Cromwell had early learned the lesson that 
 money and brains were rapidly becoming far more important 
 factors in winning battles, than mere superiority in brute 
 strength or numbers. In his ingenious argument against the 
 subsidy, he had pleaded the cause of the poor people, on 
 whom the taxes fell most heavily, and had at the same time 
 avoided arousing the opposition of the other party, by his 
 adroit flattery at the outset. 
 
 His appreciation of the increased difficulty of waging war 
 abroad compared with that in previous ages, because of lack 
 of bases of supplies and friendly towns on the Continent, 
 which before had been numerous, betokens great foresight 
 and knowledge of details. Though he expressly declares, at 
 the beginning of his speech, his intention to leave to 'sage 
 persons ' the task of deciding how the war should be carried 
 on, he hints that it would be better to play a waiting game 
 and weary the French, while things were consolidated at 
 home, than to try to conquer France by invasion. His 
 attitude about Scotland is repeated with great vigour at the 
 close of his speech. For the King to unify England and 
 Scotland would secure him greater honour than his pre- 
 decessors had ever attained, and would in the end prove 
 a much more telling blow against France, than a direct 
 invasion. The question of gaining possessions across the sea 
 is of secondary importance : the first thing is to obtain control 
 of a country which belongs to the same island. 
 
 Thus Cromwell succeeded in clearly enunciating the main 
 principles of the policy by which he was so soon to guide the 
 affairs of England, while he so flattered King, nobles, and 
 people, that he made many friends, and avoided the enmity 
 of those opposed to him. The man who could make such 
 a speech as this, would not be likely to escape the notice of 
 such an astute man as Henry VHL It was probably within 
 the walls of this Parliament, that Cromwell laid the first stone 
 of his future greatness as servant and counsellor of the King. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 wolsey's servant 
 
 After the year 1524, there is no further mention of 
 Thomas Cromwell as the cloth-merchant and wool-dyer. 
 He probably realized that his business as a lawyer brought 
 him into much more prominence as a public man, but his 
 term in Parliament doubtless aroused in him a desire for even 
 greater things than the life of a successful solicitor. His 
 advance in legal prominence, however, is marked by his 
 admittance in 1524 as a member of Gray's Inn, and by his 
 appointment in the same year as one of the Subsidy Com- 
 missioners for the Hundred of Ossulton in Middlesex ^ ; but 
 such petty distinctions fade into the background in the face 
 of a matter of far more absorbing interest, that is, his rapidly 
 growing favour and intimacy with Cardinal Wolsey. 
 
 During the years 1524-5 he was actively engaged in the 
 Cardinal's service, and received many letters on legal business 
 which he transacted for his master ^. Seekers for Wolsey's 
 mercy or patronage invariably came to him, as a likely means 
 of getting their wishes granted. In several cases requests 
 to the Cardinal are addressed directly to the ' right worshipful 
 Mr. Cromwell.' It is evident from the tone of the letters 
 which he received, that to obtain his favour was the first and 
 most important step towards gaining that of his master. He 
 was usually .spoken of as ' Councillor to my Lord Legate,' and 
 was pre-eminent above all the rest of Wolsey's advisers. It 
 has been thought by some that the Cardinal employed him 
 in connexion with his political schemes, but this is an error. 
 Cromwell began modestly, as befitted his lowly birth and 
 humble origin, and at this time, at any rate, was employed 
 
 ' Cal. iv. 969 ; Doyle's Baronage, ^ Cal. iv. 294, 388, 979, 1385-6, 
 
 vol. i. p, 689. 1620, 2347-8, 2379. 
 
48 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 merely as an agent, chosen for his wonderful knowledge of 
 human nature and his great capacity for business. 
 
 In the beginning of 1525, however, Wolsey felt that he had 
 in Cromwell a servant sufficiently capable to be trusted with 
 the performance of a work which was nearest the Cardinal's 
 heart, namely the destruction of some of the smaller 
 monasteries to furnish funds for the building of his college 
 at Oxford. So on the 4th of January of that year, he com- 
 missioned Sir William Gascoigne, William Burbank, and 
 Thomas Cromwell, to survey the monasteries of Tykford, 
 Raveneston, Poghley, Medmenham, Wallingford, and Fynch- 
 ingbroke and their possessions, and on the same day he 
 appointed Thomas Cromwell and John Smyth as attorneys 
 for the site and circuit of Thoby, Blakamore, Staitesgate, and 
 Tiptree, which had been granted to John Higden, Dean of 
 Cardinal's College^. 
 
 It may seem strange that Wolsey's suppression of the 
 smaller religious houses brought him so much unpopularity. 
 It was certainly true that the monasteries had long since 
 ceased to observe the strict traditions of religious asceticism, 
 which had been the watchword of their foundation. Some of 
 them had become resorts of the idle and worthless, who were 
 permitted by supine or indulgent superiors to exchange a life 
 of monastic discipline for one of luxury and indolence, if not of 
 downright vice. But there were a few, seemingly unimportant 
 facts, which outweighed all these charges. In the first place 
 the monks were the easiest of landlords. In their practically 
 defenceless state, it was surely for their advantage to 
 conciliate their fellow men in every way, and to avoid disputes 
 at any cost. They consequently suffered themselves to be 
 imposed upon by their neighbours and tenants, in preference 
 to risking their popularity by asserting themselves. So 
 Wolsey's measures, which brought in stricter landlords, in- 
 creased rents, and did away with the good old slipshod 
 management of so many years' standing, met with ill-concealed 
 dislike. The monks, moreover, were the most hospitable of 
 people ; the poor were never turned away unfed, the traveller 
 
 ^ Cal. iv. 989, 990. 
 
WOLSEY'S SERVANT 49 
 
 could always find shelter beneath their roof, and this fact, 
 coupled with the rooted opposition of the less educated class 
 to any sweeping measure of reform adopted apparently 
 without reason, while the old system appeared to all intents 
 and purposes to work well, explained the rest. Wolsey's 
 measures to suppress the smaller monasteries, and confiscate 
 their possessions to the use of his own colleges, may justly be 
 described as universally unpopular ^. 
 
 The first requisites for the accomplishment of such a design 
 as the suppression of the monasteries were an intimate know- 
 ledge of law, especially as related to lands and property, and 
 a far-seeing, harsh, and rather unscrupulous nature. These 
 qualities Cromwell possessed in the very highest degree, and 
 as he had been eminently successful in carrying on all 
 Wolsey's legal business up to this time, and as the Cardinal 
 was too busy with his foreign policy to give his own attention 
 to this favourite scheme, it is no wonder that he chose 
 Cromwell to supeivise it for him. The work consisted in 
 surveying and estimating the value of the property of the 
 condemned monasteries, making careful inventories thereof, 
 and finally in stripping them of all their transportable riches, 
 which usually meant altars, furnishings, bells, and tapestry, 
 while their lands and permanent possessions were sold or 
 leased on the spot. The transfer of property, settlements 
 with tenants, and adjustment of claims were a task of far 
 greater intricacy than Wolsey had expected, and Cromwell's 
 success in carrying it out was little short of marvellous. He 
 was usually present in person at the surrenders and dissolu- 
 tions ; when this was impossible one of his many and faithful 
 agents sent him an exact account of the proceedings in his 
 absence. The number of monks and nuns that were suddenly 
 turned out upon the world with small and irregularly paid 
 pensions was not the least evil feature of the ruthless 
 way in which the suppressions were carried on; but it was 
 nothing to what was to follow a decade later ^. 
 
 In addition to surveying and confiscating monastic property, 
 
 ' Cf. Preface to volume iv of the Calendar, pp. 368-9. 
 ^ Cal. iv. 1833-4, 236s, SI17, SMS- 
 
 MERRIMAN. I £ 
 
50 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Cromwell was employed directly in connexion with the 
 new buildings at Oxford and Ipswich. He drew up all the 
 necessary deeds for both foundations, and was appointed 
 receiver-general of Cardinal's College by Wolsey in 1527. 
 He kept account of all the incomes from the suppressed 
 houses and all the expenses incident to the building of both 
 colleges. He was continually superintending the workmen' 
 at Oxford and Ipswich, and reported their progress to his 
 master. The Dean of the college at Ipswich wrote to the 
 Cardinal, Sept. 2,6, 15:28, how Cromwell came thither with 
 copes, vestments, and plate, and took great pains to see 
 all the stuff carried in safely, and to prepare hangings and 
 benches for the Hall. Long lists of the manors and 
 monasteries, the incomes of which were devoted to the build- 
 ing and establishment of the two colleges, are to be seen 
 to-day at the Record Office, and attest the gigantic amount 
 of labour that he performed ^. 
 
 Cromwell's efficiency in carrying on this work was only 
 equalled by his notorious accessibility to bribes and presents 
 in the disposal of monastic leases. Adding to this the fact 
 that the measure was radically unpopular in itself, and that 
 when no bribes were offered, Cromwell and most of Wolsey's 
 other agents were harsh and overbearing in the extreme, the 
 reader ceases to wonder at the outburst of popular indignation. 
 The minute Wolsey's back was turned Cromwell and his 
 companion Dr. Alen, a hard and grasping man equally well 
 trained in business, proceeded to use the power given into 
 their hands to enrich themselves by every possible means, 
 some of which were utterly unjustifiable. The monastery 
 which could pay a large bribe was often left untouched; 
 of those that were suppressed, probably a certain proportion of 
 the spoils was never employed at Oxford or Ipswich, but 
 went straight into the pockets of the suppressors -. Petitions 
 to save farms for poor people, or to get benefices for those 
 whose property was gone, were answered by Cromwell favour- 
 ably, if granting them meant a substantial reward for him ; 
 
 1 Cal. iv. 3461, 4778, 5330; Letters, 6, 8. 
 ^ Cal. iv. 3360. 
 
WOLSEY'S SERVANT 51 
 
 unfavourably, if the reverse. He became so generally hated 
 that in August, 1527, it was said that a 'sanctuary man' lay 
 in wait to slay him, and Cardinal Pole, who was then in 
 London and knew him well, informs us that it was commonly 
 reported that he had been sent to prison, and would be 
 punished for his crimes as Wolsey's agent ^. 
 
 But in spite of all this, instead of being removed from his 
 important post, Cromwell kept on rising to higher favour and 
 more importance. In April, 1527, Henry Lacy writes to 
 congratulate him on his promotion through Wolsey's favour. 
 In May of the same year he is mentioned as a granter of 
 annuities. His position brought him a great amount of 
 patronage. In 1528 Richard Bellyssis promises him a good 
 gelding, if he will prefer a friend to the position of mint- 
 master in Durham. A merchant requests him to get his 
 son a promotion from the Cardinal. He received many 
 petitions from poor men, who feared they would lose 
 house and home through the dissolution of the monastery 
 from which they were held. But the noble and great, as 
 well as the lowly and humble, were his correspondents 
 and suitors. The Abbot of York writes his heartfelt thanks 
 for his kindness in speaking well of him and his monastery 
 to Wolsey, and Lord Berners begs for his aid in his dealings 
 with the Cardinal^. 
 
 By far the greater portion of Cromwell's correspondence 
 during the years 1525-1529 is connected with the suppres- 
 sion of the monasteries or the foundation of Wolsey's colleges. 
 Reports and receipts of money from his agents who visited 
 the religious houses in various parts of the country at his 
 orders, or who superintended the works at Ipswich and 
 Oxford, crowd in upon him with great frequency. Deeds of 
 the sale of castles and manors, valuations and inventories 
 of the property of various monasteries, are received by him 
 in large numbers ^ In these letters we frequently meet with 
 the names of William Brabazon and Ralph Sadler, who were 
 
 ^ Cal. iv. 3334, and Appendix II at the end of chapter i, p. 19. 
 •'■ Cal. iv. 3079, 3119,4201, 5169, 536s, 5456. 
 » Cal. iv. 3198, 3475, 353S, 3676, 4117, 4275, 457°. 4573, 5399, 54ii- 
 
 E a 
 
53 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 destined in the near future to become so well known as his 
 agents and commissioners when he entered the King's service. 
 Before this period he had made the acquaintance of Stephen 
 Vaughan, his friend and correspondent in later years, who 
 figured in connexion with Tyndale in the Low Countries. 
 Vaughan was certainly known to Cromwell at least as early 
 as 1523'; and in 1526 was employed by the Cardinal's servant 
 in connexion with the college at Oxford. In April, 1537, we 
 find Cromwell helping his friend in the recovery of certain 
 goods lost on the sea, and in the following year Vaughan 
 addresses a cordial letter to his benefactor, reporting various 
 things of interest in London, and announcing that he has 
 found so strong a chain for the wicket of Cromwell's house 
 at Austin Friars Gate, that it will be impossible for any one 
 to enter by force ". A year later he was employed as Crom- 
 well's agent in the Netherlands. 
 
 Though mainly occupied with Wolsey's affairs, Cromwell's 
 correspondence during the years 1524-1529 shows that he 
 still kept up his business as a lawyer independently. William 
 Bareth writes in November, 1525, that he trusts he will 
 solicit his matter to Mr. Rowe, and sends his wife six plovers 
 ' for to drynke a quart of wyn wit/iaW * ' ; in August, 1526, 
 George Monoux, alderman, promises Cromwell that if his 
 ' grete matier ' is brought to a safe conclusion, he shall have 
 twenty marks *. A ' lovyng k//^re ' from the Aldermen of our 
 Lady's Gild in Boston, in Dec. 1528, shows that Cromwell 
 still retained the friendship which he probably made years 
 before by obtaining for them the indulgences from the Pope 
 by the offer of choice sweetmeats. It was doubtless through 
 him that the Gild gained the privilege of supplying rare and 
 delicate fowls for the Cardinal's sumptuous table ^. Cromwell 
 also found time to correspond with Miles Coverdale, who was 
 then at Cambridge, and who writes with enthusiasm of the 
 pleasures of a visit to his friend in London ^. 
 
 It is probable that the terrible sweating sickness which 
 
 * Letters, I. * Cal. iv. 2387. 
 
 ^ Cal. iv. 2538, 3053, 4107. » Cal. iv. 5080, 5141. 
 
 = Cal. iv. 1768. « Cal. iv. 3388. 
 
WOLSEY'S SERVANT 53 
 
 ravaged England from 1527 to 1538 carried off Cromwell's 
 wife Elizabeth, as there is no further mention of her in his 
 later papers and correspondence, except in his will of July, 
 1529, where she is referred to as his ' late Wyff ^' She left him 
 one son, Gregory, who appears to have been a dull and 
 plodding lad, and who, after his mother's death, was sent with 
 his very precocious cousin, Christopher Welly fed, and several 
 other boys, to be put under the care of a tutor at Cambridge, 
 John Chekyng by name, whose correspondence with Cromwell 
 about the progress of 'his scolers' is very interesting and 
 entertaining^. Chekyng seems at the very outset to have 
 been unfavourably impressed with Gregory's talents, declares 
 that he has been so badly taught that he could hardly 
 conjugate three verbs when committed to his care, and reports 
 that he is now studying 'the things most conducive to the 
 reading of authors,' and spends the rest of the day in forming 
 letters ; while Christopher does not require ' much stirring up.' 
 A little later he sends word that Gregory is getting on well 
 in learning under his care, and desires his father to send 
 five yards of ' marble frieze,' for his winter ' galberdyne ' ; and 
 again, in 1530, he declares that he has been so successful in 
 his teaching, that Gregory will be ' loadyd with Latyne ' 
 before he comes home again ; but it is evident throughout 
 that Chekyng considers every step in advance to have been 
 due to the excellence of his own tuition, rather than to the 
 aptitude of his pupil. If the tone of Gregory's letters to his 
 father be taken as a criterion of the boy's character, he must 
 indeed have been stupid and slow beyond belief^. But 
 Cromwell was too much occupied with his own affairs, to pay 
 much" attention to the remarks of honest John Chekyng. 
 Indeed there is reason to think that his grasping disposition 
 showed itself in small ways to such an extent that he did not 
 always pay the very moderate bills that the tutor sent in for 
 Gregory's board, lodging, and tuition ; but instead taunted 
 Chekyng with not having done well with his 'folks.' To 
 these insults Chekyng replied that he had brought up six 
 
 > Cf. Appendix at the end of this ' Cal. iv. 4560, 4837, 4916. 
 
 chapter, p. 58. " Cal. iv. 4561. 
 
54 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 M. A.'s and fellows of colleges, and that the least Cromwell 
 could do was to pay for the furniture which his scholars had 
 ruined ; he then goes on to tell how Christopher ' dyd hynge 
 a candel in a playt to loyk apone hys boyk and so fell 
 ascleype and the candell fell into the bed strawe' and there 
 were burnt the bed, bolster, ' three overleydes and a sparver ^' 
 In spite of his niggardly treatment of John Chekyng, it is 
 certain that Cromwell was in very comfortable circumstances 
 during his years of service under Wolsey. An inventory of 
 his goods at his house at Austin Friars, dated June a6, 1537^ 
 which exists to-day at the Public Record Office, proves that 
 his dwelling was furnished handsomely if not luxuriously, 
 while a draft of his will, written July 13, 1539 ^ indicates that 
 his property at that time was by no means inconsiderable. 
 It is to this document that we owe the greater part of oui^ 
 present information concerning Cromwell's family. It is 
 written in the hand of Cromwell's chief clerk, and was altered 
 at a later date by Cromwell himself*. The document is for 
 the most part self-explanatory, but there are a few interesting 
 facts to be especially noted in connexion with it. The 
 bequests to Cromwell's daughters ' Anne and Grace ' and to 
 his 'litill Doughter Grace' are our only proof that he had 
 other children than Gregory; and the fact that both these 
 items were crossed out after the year 1539 possibly indicates 
 that the daughters died when young. We also learn that 
 Cromwell's nephew Richard, the son of Katherine Cromwell 
 and Morgan Williams, had followed in his uncle's footsteps, 
 and was ' seruaunt v/M my lorde Marques Dorssett ' at the 
 time that the will was first composed; but he certainly 
 received other employment soon afterwards, for the name 
 
 ^ Cal. iv. 4433, 5757, 6219. p. 56. The will was originally mis- 
 
 Cal. iv. 3197. dated, owing to an obviously care- 
 
 ' Appendix at the end of this less error by the clerk, which was 
 
 chapter. The will is also printed corrected by him at the time. The 
 
 in Froude, Appendix to chapter vi. other corrections, by Cromwell, are 
 
 The statement in a footnote that written in a different-coloured ink ; 
 
 the names Williams and Williamson and the handwriting according to 
 
 are used interchangeably is scarcely the Calendar (cf. footnote to vol. iv. 
 
 "^f]^^^- no. 5772) indicates that they were 
 
 Cf. footnote i in the Appendix, made at a later date. 
 
WOLSEY'S SERVANT 55 
 
 of his master was scored through in the will by Cromwell 
 at a later date, and we also know from other sources that 
 Richard Williams entered his uncle's service and was active 
 in suppressing the monasteries and in subduing the Pilgrimage 
 of Grace, during the year 1536 and afterwards^. Before this 
 date he had changed his name to Cromwell, and later became 
 great-grandfather to the Protector^. His mother died before 
 1529, for Cromwell in his will refers to Elizabeth Wellyfed 
 as his 'onlye Suster.' Cromwell's wife, as we have already 
 seen, had also died before the will was made ; her sister 
 Joan married a certain John Williamson, an old friend of 
 Cromwell's, who later figured prominently in the latter's 
 service. We also meet with many of the other names 
 mentioned in this will, in Cromwell's later correspondence. 
 Nearly all the friends of his earlier days were employed by 
 him in one capacity or another as spies, agents, or even minor 
 ambassadors to foreign Courts, after he had entered the King's 
 service. 
 
 1 Cal. xi. ioi6 ; xii. (ii) 646. 
 
 " Cf. the genealogy in the Antiquary, vol. ii. pp. 164 fF. 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 
 
 THE WILL OF THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 5772 (l) 
 
 In the name of god Amen The xij'li Daye of lulie in the yere of 
 our lorde god Mcccccxxixf and in the xxjW yere of the Reigne 
 of our Souereigne Lorde king Henry the viij'li I Thomas Crumwell 
 of london gentilman being hole in bodie and in good and parfyte 
 memorye Lauded be the hoHe Trynytee make ordeyn and Declare 
 this my present testament conteyning my last will in ma.ner and 
 (fourme) Folowing. Furste I bequethe my Sowle to the grete 
 god of heuen my maker CreaXour and Redemer beseching the most 
 gloryous virgyn our blessed ladie Saynct Mary the vyrgyn and 
 Mother witk all the holie companye of heuen to be Medyatours 
 and Intercessours for me to the holie trynytee So that I may be 
 able when it shall please Almightie god to call me out of this 
 miserable worlde and transitorie lif to inherite the kingdome of 
 heuen amongst the nomber of good christen people. And whan 
 so euer I shall departe this present lif, I bequethe my bodie to 
 be buryed where it shall please god to ordeyn me to die and to be 
 ordered after the discression of myn executours vndernamed And 
 for my good« which our lorde hathe lent me in this Worlde I will 
 shalbe ordered and disposed in maner and fourme as hereafter shall 
 insue. Furst I gyue and bequethe vnto my Soon Gregory Crumwell 
 Syx hundreth threscore Syx pounds thirten shelynges foure pens' 
 of lawfull money of Englonde 'V^ith the Whiche Syx hundreth three- 
 score Syx powndes xiij^ foure pens ^ I will myn executours vnder- 
 named ymediatlye or assone as they conuenyently may after my 
 Decesse shall purchase londw tenements and hereditaments to the 
 clere yerelye value of xxxiij'i w'f viij<l * by the yere aboue all charges 
 
 ' Altered at the time from : — Calendar, vol. iv. pt. iii. p. 2573. 
 ' MCCCCC XX viij*" by the clerk. All ''Altered from :—' Foure hun- 
 
 the other changes are in Cromwell's dreth pownd^j.' 
 hand, and were probably made at ' Altered from : — ' cccc''.' 
 
 a later date. Cf. footnote in the * Altered from ;—'xx'i.' 
 
HIS WILL. 1529 57 
 
 and reprysys to thuse of ray saide Soon Gregorye for terme of his 
 lif And after the Decesse of the saide Gregorye to the heyres Males 
 of his bodie lawfully to be begotten And for lacke of heires Males 
 of the bodie of the saide Gregory lawfully to be begotten to the 
 heires generall of his bodie lawfully begotten. And for lacke of 
 suche heires to the right heires of me the saide Thomas Crumwell 
 in Fee. I will also that ymedyatly and assone as the saide lond« 
 X&nementes and hereditaments shalbe so purchased after my deth 
 as is aforsaide by myn executours that the yerelie proffytw thereof 
 shalbe hoUie spent and imployed in and about« the educacyon and 
 fynding honestly of my saide Soon Gregory in vertue good lerning 
 and Maners vntill such tyme as he shall aim to the full age of xxij 
 yeres. During Which tyme I hertely desir and require my saide 
 executours to be good vnto my saide Son Gregory and to see he 
 do lose no tyme but to se him v^rteously ordered & brought vp 
 according to my trust Item I gyue and bequethe to my saide Soon 
 Gregorie When he shall aim to his full age of xxiiij yeres Twoo ' 
 Hundreth pounds of lawfuU ynglissh money to order then as our 
 lorde shall gyue hym grace and discression Which cc'i I will shalbe 
 put in suertie to thintent the same may aim to his hands at his 
 saide age of xxiiij*' yeres. Item I gyue and bequethe to my saide 
 Soon Gregory of such houseold stuf as god hathe lent me Three ^ 
 of my best Fetherbedds yiitk thayr bolsters ij" the best ' payre of 
 blanketts of Fustyan my best Couerlet of Tapistrye and my Quylte 
 of yelow Turquye Saten, x payre of my best Shets foure * pillowes 
 of downe viith iiij payre of the best pillowe beres foure ^ of my best 
 table clothes, foure of my best towells Twoo dosen ^ of my Fynest 
 Naptkynnes and ij" dozen of my other Naptkynnes, ij"' garnyssh 
 of my best vessel!, iij of my best brasse potts, iij of my best brasse 
 pannes, ij" of my best kettills, ij" of my best Spitts, My best ioyned 
 bed of Flaunders v/ourke ytiik the best Syler and tester and other 
 thapp2<rtena«ncs therto belonging My best presse caruen of Flaunders 
 woz<!/-ke and my best Cupbourde caruen of Flaunders wowrk mth 
 also vj Joyned Stoles of Flaunders woz^rke and vj of my best 
 Cusshyns Item I gyue and bequethe to my saide Soon Gregorye 
 A Bason ^ith a Lewer pa^-cell gilte my best Salt gilt my best Cup 
 
 ^ Altered from: — 'one.' * Altered from :—' two.' 
 
 ^ Altered from :— ' twoo.' ' Altered from :— ' ij".' 
 
 ^ These last six words are altered ' Altered from :— ' One Dozen.' 
 
 from ;— 'a Bolster the best.' ' Altered from :— 'A.' 
 
58 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 gilt, Three ' of my best goblettes gilt three other of my best goblettes 
 paz-cell gylt, Twelile of^ my best Syluer spones, Three of* my best 
 Drynking ale pot« gilt. All the which parceWes of plate and house- 
 old stuf I will shalbe savelye kept to thuse of my saide Soonne 
 Gregorye till he shall cum to his saide full age of xxij'i yeres and all 
 the which plate household stuf Naperye and other the premisses 
 I will myn executo«rs do put in saufe keping vntill my saide Soon 
 shall cum to the saide yeres or age of xxijt>. And if he die before the 
 age of xxijti * Then I will all the saide plate vessell and houseold 
 stuf shalbe sold by myn executours And the money thereof cum- 
 myng to be gyuen and equallie Deuyded amongst my poure kynnes- 
 fdikes. That is to say amongst the children as well of myn owne 
 Susters Elizabeth and Katheryn as of my late WyHes Suster Johane 
 Wif to John Willyamson, And if it happen that all the children of 
 my saide Susters and Suster in law Do dye before the particyon and 
 deuysion be made and none of them to be lyuyng Then I will that 
 all the saide plate vessell and houseold stuf shalbe solde and yeuen 
 to other my poure kynnesfolk^j- then being on lyue and other poure 
 and indigent people in Deades of charytee for my Sowle my Father 
 and Mother their Sowles, and all Christen Sowles * It«m I gyue and 
 bequethe vnto my Suster Elizabeth Wellyfed Wif to Wyllyam Welly- 
 
 ^ Altered from: — ' iijV maryage. And if it happen my saide 
 
 ' Altered from : — ' vj of.' Doughter to Dye before she cu»z to 
 
 ' These last two words are altered her saide lawfull age or be maryed 
 
 from :— ' and.' Then I will that the said c Mark^j 
 
 * Altered from :—'xxiiij*V and so moche of the said xl" as 
 
 ° Crossed out:— 'It£m I gyue and then shalbe vnspent and vnim- 
 
 bequethe to my Doughter Anne one ployed at the Day of the deth of 
 
 hundreth Mark^j of lawfull money my said Doughter Anne, I will it 
 
 of Englond when she shall cam to shall remayne to Gregory my Soon 
 
 her lawfull age or happen to be if he then be on lyue. And if he be 
 
 maryed And xU'toward^j herFynd- Dede the same c Mark« and also 
 
 ing vntill the tyme that she shalbe so moche of the saide xU' as then 
 
 of lawfull age or be maryed. Which shalbe vnspent to be departed 
 
 xl" I will shalbe Delyuered to my amongst my Sustres children in 
 
 Frend John Croke on of the Six maner and fourme forsaid And if it 
 
 clerk^j of the king his Chauncerie happen my saide Sustres children 
 
 to thintent he may order the same then to be all Dede, Then I will 
 
 and cause the same to be iraployed the saide c Mark^j- and so moche 
 
 in the best wise he can deuyse about of the saide xl" as then shalbe 
 
 the vertewous educacyon and bring- vnspent shalbe deuyded amongst 
 
 ing vp of my saide Doughter till my kynsfolk,?.? such as then shalbe 
 
 she shall cnm to her lawfull age or on lyue.' 
 
HIS WILL. 1529 59 
 
 fed xl'i' iij Goblettw w///%out a Couer'' a Macer, And A Nutt Item 
 I gyue and bequethe to my nephew Rycharde Wyllyams ^ Ixvj'' xiij» 
 iiijii* sterlings my best" gowne Doblett and Jaquet Itfm I gyue and 
 bequethe to my nepue Ckn'stofer Wellyfed my nephe xU' ' my v'li 
 gowne doblett and Jaquett Item I gyue and bequethe to my nephew 
 Wyllyam Wellyfed the Yonger xxli ' It«m I gyue and bequethe to my 
 nece AUce Wellyfed to her Maryage xxli And if it happen her to 
 Dye before maryage then I will the saide xx'i shall remayne to her 
 brother Christoiax And if it happen him to Dye the same xxli to 
 remayne to Willyam Wellyfed the yonger his brother. And if it 
 happen them all to Dye before their lawfull age or maryage, then 
 I will that their partw shall remayne to Gregory my Soon. And 
 if it happen him to Dye before them then I will all the said partes 
 shall remayn to Rychard Wyll/ams and Water Wilbams my nephews * 
 And if it happen them to Dye then I will that all the said part^j- 
 shalbe Distributed in Deadw of charytee for my Sowle my Father 
 and Mothers Sowles and all christen Sowles. Item I gyue and 
 bequethe to my Mother in law Mercye 'Piyour xl^ of lawfull yng- 
 lissh money and her chaumber wiiA certen houseold stuf, That is 
 to saye A Fetherbed, a Bolster ij pillowes vfifA their beres vj payre 
 of Shete^ A payre of blankettes, A garnyssh of vessell, ij° pottM, 
 ij" pannes, ij" Spytt« ■wM such other of my houseold stuf as shalbe 
 thought mete for her by the Discression of myn executours And 
 suche as she will reasonablye Desire not being bequethed to other 
 vses in this my present testament and last will. Item I gyue and 
 bequethe to my said mother in law a lytill Salt of Syluer a Maser, 
 vj Siluer Spones and a drinking pot of Syluer And also I charge 
 myn executours to be good vnto her duryng her lyffe. Item I gyue 
 and bequethe to my brother in law Willyawz Wellyfed xx'* my thurde 
 gown Jaquet and Doblet. Item I gyue and bequethe to John 
 Wyllyamson my brother in law c markes^ a gown a Doblet and 
 a Jaquet, A Fetherbed, A bolster vj payre of Shet« ijo table clothes, 
 ijo Dozen Naptkynnes, ij° towelle.? ij° brasse potter, ij" brasse pannes, 
 
 ^ Altered from :— ' xx" I Saye " Altered from :— ' Fourth.' 
 
 Twentye poundej steHing': and ° Altered from : — 'xx".' 
 
 this is altered from: — 'xxx'' which ' Altered from: — 'xi'.' 
 
 she oweth me.' * Altered from :— ' shall remayne 
 
 ' Crossed out : — ' and.' to Anne and Grace my dough- 
 
 ' Crossed out: — 'seruaunt mtA ters.' 
 
 my lorde Marques Dorssett.' ° Altered from : — ' xl" ' : and this 
 
 * Altered from :— ' xlU' is altered from : — ' xx'V 
 
60 
 
 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 a Syluer pott A Nutte pan;ell gilt, and to lohani? his wyf x^ '. It^ra 
 I gyue and bequethe to Johane Wyllyamson their Doughter to her 
 maryage xx'i and to euery other of their children vj'' xiij' iiij<l^ 
 Item I bequethe to Walter Wyllyams my nephue ' xx^ Item I gyue 
 and bequethe to Rafe Sadleyer my seruaunte cc * Markw of lawful! 
 ynglissh money my Seconde ^ gowne Jaquet and Doblet and all my 
 hokes Item I gyue and bequethe to Hugh Whalley my Serufl«nt 
 vj'» xiijs iiijd. Item I gyue and bequethe to Stephen Vaughan sum- 
 tyme my seruaunte c markes^ a gowne Jaquet and Doblet. Item 
 I gyue and bequethe to Page my Seruaunte otherwise called John 
 du Fount vjl' xiijs iiijd' and also to Thomas Auerey my seruauntt 
 vjli xiijs iiiji '. Item I gyue and bequethe to John Horwood vjl' xiij» 
 iiijii ' Item that the rest of myn apparell before not gyuen ne be- 
 quethed in this my testament and last will shalbe yeuen and equally 
 Departed amongst my Serua?^nte.f after the order and discression 
 of myn executours Item I will also that myn executours shall take 
 the yerely profyttei' aboue the charges of my Ferme of Canberye 
 
 ' Altered from :— ' vji' xnf iiijd. ' 
 '' Altered from :— ' iiji' vj" viij*.' 
 ' Altered from : — ' Cosyn.' 
 * Altered from :— ' c' 
 ^ Altered from : — ' Best.' 
 « Altered from :—'x»'.' 
 ' Crossed out : — ' Item I gyue 
 and bequethe to Elizabeth Gregory 
 sumtyme my Seruaant xx*' vj payre 
 of Shetej A Fetherbed A payre of 
 blankettej A Couerlet ij° table 
 clothes, One Dozen Naptkynnes ijo 
 brasse potter, ij° pannes, ij" Spyttej.' 
 " Crossed out : — ' Item I gyue 
 and bequethe to John Croke one 
 of the vj clerkej of the Ch^zuncerye 
 x" my Second gowne Doblet and 
 Jaquet. Item I gyue and bequethe 
 to Roger More Seruaunt of the king 
 his bakehouse vj" xiij» iiijd iij yardej' 
 Saten and to Maudelyn his wyf iij" 
 vjs viij**.' 
 
 " Crossed out : — ' Item I gyue 
 and bequethe to my litill Doughter 
 Grace c Marker of lawful! ynglissh 
 money when she shall cum to her 
 lawful! age or maryage and also 
 
 xl'' towardej her exhibucyon and 
 Fynding vntil! suche tyme {as) she 
 shalbe of lawful! age or be maryed 
 Which xl'' I will shalbe delyuered to 
 my brother in law John WiUyamson 
 to thintent he may order and cause 
 the same to be imployed in and 
 aboutejthe vertewous educacyon and 
 brynging vp of my saide Doughter 
 tiU she shall cum to her lawful! age 
 or Maryage. And if it happen my 
 saide Doughter to Dye before she 
 cum to her lawfull age or maryage 
 then I will that the saide c markes 
 and so moche of the saide xl'* as 
 then shalbe vnspent and vnimployed 
 aboutej the fynding of my saide 
 Doughter at the Day of the Deth 
 of my saide Doughter shall remayne 
 and be Delyuered to Gregory my 
 Soon if he then shall happen to be 
 on lyue. And if he be Dede then 
 the saide c Marke.y and the saide 
 residue of the saide x!" to be euenlye 
 Departed amongst my pourekynnes- 
 folkej, that is to say my Susters 
 children forsaide.' 
 
HIS WILL. 1529 61 
 
 and all other thing« Conteynyd mthm my sayd lease of Canberye 
 in the Cowntye of Middelsex' And mtk the proffytw thereof shall 
 yerelie paye vnto my brother in law Will/am Wellffe<d> and Elysa- 
 bathe his wyffe myn onlye Suster Twentye powndes duryng thayr lyves 
 and the longer of them and after the discease of the sayd Wilham 
 and Elysabeth the proffett«j of the sayd Ferme oner and aboue the 
 yerlye Rentt to be kept to the vse of my Son gregorye tyll he C\im 
 to the age of xxijW and at the yeres of xxijtli the sayd lease and 
 Ferme of Canberye I do gyue and bequethe to my sayd Son gregorye 
 to haue the same to hym his executors and assignes ' and if it 
 Fortune the saide Gregorye my Soon to dye before he shall cuw 
 to the age of xxij * yeres My sayd bruthurew in lawe and syster being 
 dede Then I will my Cosyn Rychard Wilh'ams shall {haue) the 
 Ferme •vtitk the appurtenawnc^^ to hym and his executors and as- 
 signes and yf it happen my sayd Brother in law my Suster^ my 
 Son gregorye and my sayd Cosyn Rycharde to dye before the 
 accoumplyshement of this my wyll touching^ the sayd Ferme then 
 I wyll myn executors shall Sell the sayd ferme and the moneye 
 therof Cummyng to Imploye in dedei- of charyte to praye ° for my 
 Sowle and all Christen Sowles. Item I will that myn executours 
 shall conducte and hyre a pryest being an honest person of contynent 
 and good lyuyng to Syng for my Sowle by the space of vij ' yeres 
 next after my deth and to gyue him for the same Fortye Syx pownde^^ 
 thertene shelinge^ Foure pens that ys to saye vj'i xiij' m]^ yerlye for 
 his stypend *. Item I gyue and bequethe towardej the making of high 
 wayes in this Realme where it shalbe thought most necessary' xx" 
 
 ^ The last seventeen words are the yeres conteyned viithm my 
 
 altered from : — ' Sutton at Hone leases.' 
 
 and Temple Dartford in the Countie * Altered from : — ' xxv.' 
 
 of Kent And shall take the p7-<;ffyte ° Crossed out :— ' and.' 
 
 of my Ferme of the parsonage of * Crossed out : — ' my saide ex- 
 
 Sutton.' ecutours shall sell my said Fermes 
 
 ^ Crossed out: — 'cu»zmyng.' to the most proffyte and aduaz^ntage 
 
 ' Crossed out : — ' in Deader of And the money thereof growing 
 
 charyteeouerand aboue the charges to bestowe in Deadej of charytee 
 
 and reparacibns gyue and Distry- vppon my poure kynnesfolk^j- and 
 
 bute for my Soule quarterly xl» other charytable Dead,?j to pray.' 
 
 amongst poure people vntill my ' Altered from : — ' iij.' 
 
 Soon Gregorye shall cuot to the ' The last eighteen words are 
 
 age of xxv yeres if he so long do altered from :— ' iij yeres xx''.' 
 
 Lyue And then my saide Soon ' Added and crossed out:— 'by 
 
 to haue my said Fermes During the discression of myn executors.' 
 
62 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 to be Disposed by the Discression of myn executours. Item I gyue 
 and bequethe to euery of the v orders of Freers -fiithm the Cytee 
 of London to pray for my Soule xx^ '. Item I gyue and bequethe 
 to Ix poure Maydens Maryages xP-^ That is to saye xiijs iiij<i' to 
 euerye of the saide poure Maydens to be gyuen and Distributed 
 by the Discression of myn executours. Item I will that there shalbe 
 Delt and yeuen after my decesse amongst poure people howseholders 
 to pray for my Sowle xx'' *. Item I gyue and bequeth to the poure 
 parochians Suche as by myn executors shalbe thowght most needffull 
 of the paroche Where god shall ordeyn me to haue my dwelling 
 place at the tyme of my Deth x^' ^ to be trewlye Distributed amongst 
 them by the Discression of myn executours ^ Item I gyue and 
 bequethe to the poure prysoners of Newgate Ludgate Kynges benche 
 and Marshall See to be equallye Distributed amongst them x'' Wylling 
 charging and desiring myn executours vnderwrytten that they shall 
 See this my Will pe^fourmed in euery poynte according to ray trew 
 meaning and intente as they will answer to god and discharge their 
 consciences. 
 
 ' Item I gyue and bequeth to Will/am brabason my seraaurA xx" 
 sterling A gowne A dublett A Jaquet and my second gelding. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequeth to John averey yoman of the bottell mth 
 the kynges highnes vj" xiij' iiijd, and doublet of Saten. 
 
 Item I bequeth to thurston my Coke vjl' xiij^ iiij"!. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequethe to Wilh'am bodye my semauntt vj'" 
 xiij' iiijd. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequeth to Peter mewtes my semauntt vj^ 
 xiijs iiijd. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequeth to Rychard Swyft my semawntt vj" 
 xiijs iiijii. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequeth to george Wylkynson my sema«ntt 
 vjli xiijs iiijd. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequeth to my Frend Thomas alvard x^ and my 
 best gelding. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequeth to my frend Thomas Russhe x^. 
 
 Item I gyue and bequeth to my serVLauntt. John Hynde my horse- 
 keper iijli vj^ viij'^. 
 
 ' Altered from :— ' xiij' iiij"*. ^ Crossed out :— ' Item I gyue and 
 
 * Altered from :— ' xx".' bequethe to my paniche churche 
 ' Altered from : — ' vj' Vn]^.' for my tithes forgotten xx'.' 
 
 * Altered from :—' x".' ^ The last eleven bequests are 
 ' Altered from:— 'v".' added in Cromwell's hand. 
 
HIS WILL. 1529 63 
 
 Item I wyll that myn executors shall Saluelye kepe the patentt 
 of the Manour of Rompney to the vse of my Son gregorye and the 
 money growing therof tyll he shall Cum to his lawful! Age to be 
 yerely Retayned to the vse of my sayd Son and the hole revenew 
 therof Cumyng to be trewlye payd vnto hym at suche tyme as he 
 shall Cum to the age of xxj yeres. 
 
 The residue of all my good«j catalk^ and debttsj not bequethed 
 my FunerallM and buryall perfourmed which I will shalbe Don 
 wzVy^out any erthelye pompe and my Dettw payed, I will shalbe sold 
 And the money thereof cuwmyng to be Distributed in vrourkes of 
 charytee and pytee after the good Discression of myn executours 
 vndernamed whom I make and Ordeyn Stephyn Vaughan ' Rafe 
 Sadleyer my seruaunttes and John ^ Wyllyamson my brother in law. 
 Prayeng and Desiring the same myn executours to be good vnto 
 my Soon Gregorye' and to all other my Frend« poore kynsfolkw 
 and Seruaunttes before named in this my testament And of this my 
 present testament and last Will I make Roger More myn Ouerseer 
 Vnto whom and also to euery of the other myn executours I gyue 
 and bequethe vj'i xiij« iiijii* for their paynes to be taken in the 
 execucyon of this my last will and testament ou«r and aboue suche 
 legacies as herebefore I haue bequethed them in this same my 
 testament and last will. In Wytnes Wherof to this my present 
 testament and last will I haue sett my hand in euery lefe conteyned 
 in this Boke the day and yere before lymyted 
 
 per me Thomam Crumwell ° 
 
 Endorsed. Thomas Crumwell a Copy of my Master his Will And 
 bookes of debtej owinge to him. 
 
 ^Altered from:— 'John Croke ' Crossed out : — ' and to my litill 
 
 one of the vj clerkes of the king Doughters Anne and Grace.' 
 
 his ChiJuncerye.' * Added and crossed out : — ' ou^r 
 
 ' The last four words are altered and aboue thayrlegacyesbeforsayd.' 
 
 from :— ' my Seruaunt John Smyth = Every page, except the last two, 
 
 and John.' is also signed by Cromwell. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FALL OF THE CARDINAL 
 
 In October, 1529, Cardinal Wolsey lost the King's favour, 
 and fell into disgrace. He was forced to give up the Great 
 Seal, sign an indenture acknowledging that he had incurred 
 the guilt of Praemunire, forfeit most of his lands, possessions, 
 and offices, and retire to his seat at Esher^. His faithful 
 biographer. Cavendish, gives a very touching account of the 
 Cardinal's surrender of his goods, his removal from the scene 
 of his labours, and his enforced living in ' estraunge estate ^.' 
 Few fallen ministers have ever been in a more pitiful position. 
 To have incurred the ill-will of his master, as he had done, 
 meant certain ruin in those days ; and besides this he had 
 turned the people against him by the part he had taken in 
 the divorce. Anne Boleyn, whose influence at the Court was 
 at its height, detested him for his failure to bring it about ; 
 the clergy and common people hated him for attempting it. 
 The few friends who retained their fidelity to him in his 
 trouble were prevented from showing it by their conscious- 
 ness of the royal and popular displeasure. 
 
 As Wolsey's servant, counsellor, and friend, Cromwell 
 naturally felt the keenest anxiety lest he should be involved 
 in his master's ruin. It has been already shown that his 
 action in suppressing the monasteries had made him very 
 generally hated ; and now that the prop that had supported 
 him in his difficult and unpopular task was gone, he had great 
 need to look to himself, if he did not wish to fall with the 
 Cardinal. That he was perfectly well informed of the posi- 
 tion in which he was placed is proved by a letter which he 
 received from his friend Stephen Vaughan, written at Antwerp, 
 October 30, 1539, which tells him that he is more hated for 
 
 ' Cal. iv. 6017. 2 Cavendish, pp. 160-6, 
 
THE FALL OF THE CARDINAL 65 
 
 his master's sake than for anything which he has wrongfully 
 done to any man^. Another letter from his companion in 
 Wolsey's service, Sir Thomas Rush, who was employed with 
 him at Ipswich, gave him further warning of the evil reports 
 that were circulated about him^ It is no wonder that he 
 was seriously alarmed. 
 
 Modern investigation has made it certain that there is but 
 little historical foundation for the touching pictures drawn by 
 Cavendish, Shakespeare, and, at a later day, Froude, which 
 represent Cromwell as the faithful servant of his fallen 
 master, unselfish, and exclusively devoted to his interests^. 
 There is no reason to think that Cavendish, whose testi- 
 mony is most valuable as that of an eye-witness of the 
 scenes he describes, wilfully distorted the facts, but it is 
 certain that his directness and simplicity often prevented 
 him from drawing just conclusions from them, when he had 
 to do with such astute men as Wolsey and Cromwell. By 
 comparing his story with the events which followed, we shall 
 see that while Cromwell kept up the appearance of spending 
 all his time in helping Wolsey in his disgrace, he really was 
 occupied in serving his own ends, and in regaining the favour 
 he had lost as the Cardinal's agent. Though he carefully 
 abstained from doing or saying anj^hing prejudicial to 
 Wolsey's cause, for fear of alienating people by laying 
 himself open to the accusation of faithlessness to his master, 
 he really did nothing to the Cardinal's advantage that did 
 not redound, in an infinitely greater degree, to his own profit 
 and advancement. Let us follow the letters of Cromwell, 
 the narrative of Cavendish, and the records of the Parliament 
 of 1529, for our facts, but let us draw our own conclusions 
 from them. 
 
 ' It chanced me upon AU-hallowne day,' says Cavendish, 
 ' to come into the Great Chamber at Assher in the morning, 
 to give mine attendance, where I found Mr. Cromwell leaning 
 in the great windowe with a Primer in his hand, saying our 
 
 1 Cal. iv. 6036. " Cal. iv. 61 10. 
 
 ' Cavendish, pp. 17s fif.; Shakespeare, Henry VIII, iii. 2 ; Froude, vol. ii. 
 pp. 112 ff. 
 
 MEREIMAN. I F 
 
66 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Lady mattens : which had bine a strange sight in him afore. 
 — Well, what will you have more ? He prayed no more ear- 
 nestly, than he distilled teares as fast from his eyes. Whom 
 I saluted and bad good-morrowe. And with that I perceived 
 his moist chekes, the which he wiped with his napkine. To 
 whom I saide, " Why, Mr. Cromwell, what meaneth this dole ? 
 Is my lord in any danger that ye doe lament for him ? or is 
 it for any other losse, that ye have sustained by misfortune?" 
 " Nay," quoth he, " it is for my unhappy adventure. For I am 
 like to lose all that I have laboured for, all the dales of my 
 life, for doing of my master true and diligent service." " Why 
 Sir," quoth I, " I trust that you be too wise to do anything 
 by my lord's commaundement otherwise than ye might doe, 
 whereof you ought to be in doubt or daunger for losse of 
 your goods." " Well, well," quoth he, " I cannot tell ; but this 
 I see before mine eyes, that everything is as it is taken ; and 
 this I knowe well, that I am disdained withal for my master's 
 sake ; and yet I am sure there is no cause, why they should 
 do soe. An evill name once gotten will not lightly be put 
 away. I never had promotion by my lord to the encrease 
 of my living. But this much I will saye to you, that I will 
 this afternoone, when my lord hath dined, ride to London, 
 and to the courte, when I will either make or marre, or ever 
 I come againe. I will put myself in prease, to see what they 
 will be able to lay to my charge." " Mary," quoth I, " then in 
 so doing you shall doe wisely, beseeching God to send you 
 good lucke, as I would myselfe ^." ' 
 
 Cromwell performed his promise well. He dined with 
 Wolsey on that All-hallowne Day, and later helped him to 
 discharge his servants, causing his chaplains to pay part of 
 the yeomen's wages, in return for the benefices and livings 
 which they had received from the Cardinal ; setting an 
 example himself, with unusual liberality, by a contribution 
 of five pounds to this end. He then desired of Wolsey leave 
 to go to London, which was granted, and he departed im- 
 mediately with Ralph Sadler, his clerk. 
 
 No one knew better than Cromwell that the best place for 
 
 * Cavendish, pp. 169, 170. 
 
THE FALL OF THE CARDINAL 67 
 
 him to 'make or marre' the Cardinal's fortunes and his 
 own, was in the Parliament which was to meet November 3 
 (two days later), and, ' being in London, he devised with 
 himself to be one of the burgesses ^' He sat as a member 
 from Taunton, as the records of Parliament attest ^ but there 
 are very contradictory reports about the way in which he 
 obtained his seat. According to Cavendish ' he chaunced to 
 meete with one Sir Thomas Rush, knighte, a speciall friend 
 of his, whose son was appointed to be a burgess, of whome 
 he obtained his rome, and so put his fete into the parliament 
 house.' This may possibly be true, but it is not the whole 
 truth, for a letter of November i, from Sadler to Cromwell, 
 the genuineness of which it is impossible to doubt, hints at 
 a good deal more than is to be found in Cavendish's account, 
 which must have been made from Cromwell's own story about 
 his proceedings ^. This letter reads as follows : — 
 
 ' Wowrshipfull Sir it may please you to be adu^rtised that 
 a litle before the receipte of yozir \etiere I cam from the courte 
 where I spake with Mr. Gage and according to your com- 
 maundement moved him to speke vnto my lorde of Norffolk 
 for the burgeses Rowme of the parlyament on your behalf 
 And he accordingly so dyd w/t^out delay lyke a faythfuU 
 Frende, wherevppon my saide lorde of Norffolk answered 
 the saide Mr. Gage that he had spoken vritk the king his 
 highnes and that his highnes was veray well contented ye 
 should be a Burges So that ye wolde order yourself in the 
 saide Rowme according to suche instructions as the saide 
 Duke of Norffi?//^ shall gyue you from the king Adu^rtesing 
 you ferther that the saide Duke in any wise willeth that ye 
 do speke -with his grace to morow for th[at] purpose. • In 
 token whereof his grace sent you by mr. Ga[ge] your Ryng 
 with the turques, Whiche I do now sende you by this berer. 
 As touching mr. Russhe I spake -with him also at [the] courte 
 if I then had knowen your pleasure I could now haue sent 
 you answere of the same. Howbeit I will speke -with him 
 this night god willing and know whether ye shalbe Burges 
 
 ' Cavendish, p. 179. ^ Parliamentary Papers, vol. Ixii. pt. i. p. 370. 
 
 ' Cal. iv. App. 238. 
 
 F 3 
 
68 THOMAS CROMWEEL 
 
 of Oxforde or not And if ye be not elect there I will then 
 according to your ferther co»2maundement repayre vnto 
 Mr. paulet and requiere him to name you to be one of the 
 Burgeses of one of my lordes townes of his busshopriche of 
 Wynchester accordingly. Sir me thinketh it were good, So 
 it may stonde -with your pleasure, that ye did repayre hither 
 to morowe assone as ye conuenyently may for to speke with 
 the Duke of Norfifo//^ by whom ye shall knowe the king his 
 pleasure how ye shall order yourseli in the parliament house 
 Assuring you that your Frend^j wolde haue you to tary witk 
 my lorde there as litle as might be for many consideracions 
 as Mr. Gage will Shew you who moche desireth to speke w^'t^ 
 you. the king his grace wilbe to morow at night at yorke 
 place. Other newes at the courte I here none but dyuers 
 of my lorde his seruauntes as Mr. Aluarde Mr. Sayntclere 
 Mr. Forest, Humfrey lisle Mr. Mores & other ben elect and 
 sworne the king his serusLuntes. Mr. Gifforde & I cam from 
 the courte togither but when we cam into london he departed 
 from me I knowe not whither. Newes I inquiered of him 
 but he sayed he knew none other then as I haue wrytten 
 you here, which Mr. Gage also shewed him. Humblie be- 
 seching you, if it be your pleasure, to make spede hither. 
 And thus I most hertely beseche our lorde god to sende you 
 your hertes Desire and to induce and bring all your good 
 purposes and affairees to good eiifecte. From london in 
 haste this present all Saynct^j Day at iiij of the clocke after 
 none by 
 
 Your most humble Seruaunte 
 
 Rafe Sadlever.' 
 
 From this letter then it seems probable that Cromwell ob- 
 tained his seat in the Parliament of 1539 through the influence 
 of the Duke of Norfolk. He was keen-sighted enough to see 
 that at Wolsey's fall all the royal favour had been transferred 
 to this man and to Gardiner. Both of these were Wolsey's 
 enemies, and Cromwell, whose name was coupled everywhere 
 with that of the Cardinal, saw that to gain influence at 
 Court, it was necessary at all costs to do away with their 
 hostility, which he must have incurred as Wolsey's agent. 
 
THE FALL OF THE CARDINAL 69 
 
 Thus Cromwell's first move at the time of his master's dis- 
 grace was to take steps to get himself into favour with 
 Norfolk. Cavendish's account is explained by the fact that 
 Cromwell would not have been very likely to tell Wolsey 
 how he had gone straight over to his bitterest enemy, but 
 far more probably sent back to Esher the incomplete tale 
 about Rush and his son, which the honest and simple-minded 
 biographer probably never suspected for an instant. One 
 can hardly doubt that Cromwell would not have been elected 
 to this Parliament had he not secured the consent of the 
 Cardinal's worst foe. He had thus killed two birds with one 
 stone ; he had gained his position in the House of Commons 
 where his influence would be felt, and he had successfully 
 escaped the odium of the chief person at the Court, which 
 would have naturally fallen upon him as Wolsey's servant, 
 and turned it into at least a temporary friendship. 
 
 From the contents of the letter above quoted, we may 
 also suppose that Cromwell's doings in the Parliament of 
 1529 were 'ordered' by the King. The bill of attainder or 
 ' boke of artikels ' against the Cardinal was the first business 
 that ky before the House. It had passed the Lords and was 
 sent down to the Commons, but it was so violent and so false, 
 that even Henry and Norfolk relented. It had probably been 
 very clearly hinted to the Parliament that the King did not 
 wish it to pass, and royal ' hints ' at this period of English 
 history were generally respected and obeyed. Cavendish 
 tells us that when Cromwell had obtained his seat in 
 Parliament, and the attainder was brought forward, he con- 
 sulted with Wolsey ' to know what answer he might make in 
 his behalf; insomuch that there was nothing alleadged against 
 my. lord but that he was ready to make answer thereto,' and 
 he inveighed against the bill 'so discreetly and with such 
 witty persuasions and depe resons that the same could take 
 none effect,' so that ' at length his honest estimation and earnest 
 behaviour in his master's cause grewe so in every man's 
 opinion, that he was reputed the most faithful servant to his 
 master of all other, wherein he was greatly of all men com- 
 mended ^.' 
 
 ^ Cavendish, pp. 179 ff- 
 
70 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 This is all doubtless true, but whether or not he was alone 
 in the stand he made against the bill is quite another question. 
 Henry was perfectly satisfied with humbling the Cardinal to 
 the extent that he had already done, and did not wish him to 
 suffer any more ; in fact the opposition, consisting of most of 
 the nobles led by Norfolk and Anne Boleyn, were in constant 
 fear up to the day of Wolsey's death, lest he should regain 
 the King's favour. If Cromwell had gone openly over to the 
 other side at this juncture, he would have gained nothing, 
 and incurred the odium due to a deserter. He took the only 
 generous and right side, but in serving his master he served 
 himself far more ^. Wolsey, as we have seen, had made a 
 written confession of all his misdeeds as soon as the first 
 blow had been struck against him^. This confession was 
 produced by Cromwell, and it gave the proposers of the bill 
 of attainder an excuse for dropping it. Cromwell supplied 
 the pretext for abandoning a measure displeasing to the 
 King, and consequently impossible to carry through this very 
 subservient Parliament ; by so doing he gained the praise of 
 a saviour of his master in his extremity. 
 
 This was the first step : the second was to win the favour 
 of other nobles, while still preserving the appearance of loyally 
 serving his fallen master. It was scarcely less important 
 than the first, and was carried through by Cromwell with 
 the greatest rapidity and success. His method of accomplish- 
 ing it, however simple, was eminently characteristic, and 
 merits description. 
 
 It has already been shown how thoroughly Cromweil 
 realized the importance of money as a political force. 
 Though the traditional reproach of parsimony and stinginess 
 so often cast at Henry VII ^ is in great measure unmerited, it 
 is undeniable that his careful financial management and 
 accurate audits had served to surround his government 
 with an atmosphere of ostensible frugality. Henry VIII, 
 on the contrary, delighted in outward splendour and magni- 
 
 ^ Cal. iv. 6098, 6203, 6249. Cf. of National Biography, vol. xiii. 
 
 also Dixon, vol. i. pp. 48-9 n. p. 197. 
 
 Stubbs' Lectures, p. 315, and the ^ Cal. iv. 6017. 
 
 Life of Cromwell in the Dictionary ^ Busch, pp. 288, 289. 
 
THE FALL OF THE CARDINAL 71 
 
 ficence ; his Court was by far the most brilliant that England 
 had ever beheld, and nobody could play his part there who 
 was not prepared to lavish vast sums upon his outfit. 
 But the greater part of the nobles were quite unable to do 
 this. It had been an important part of the plan of Heniy VII 
 for establishing a strong kingship to keep all possible rivals 
 of the Crown in a state of iinancial dependence. Many 
 items in the State Papers of his son's reign bear witness 
 to the complete success of these schemes of impoverishing 
 the nobility ^. Only by pawning and selling lands, estates, 
 goods and chattels could the nobility obtain sufficient 
 sums to make a good appearance at the brilliant Court of 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 Such a state of affairs was a golden opportunity to a man 
 in Cromwell's position and of Cromwell's talents. To Wolsey, 
 whose mind had been intent on the larger schemes of his 
 foreign policy, the notion of staving off the hatred of the 
 influential people about the King by gifts of money, would 
 never have occurred. Cromwell hit upon the scheme in a 
 moment, as the only sure road to favour at the Court ^. Now 
 that Wolsey had surrendered himself almost wholly to the 
 counsels of his painstaking, watchful, close and wholly un- 
 scrupulous adviser, Cromwell immediately persuaded him to 
 grant annuities to the Court favourites. The casual reader 
 must not deceive himself into thinking that this was done 
 at Wolsey 's own suggestion ; the measure was too evidently 
 Cromwellian to leave any room to doubt its originator, and 
 if any further proof be needed, it is furnished by evidence in 
 the Cardinal's papers. In a letter to Cromwell written in 
 December, 1529, Wolsey says, ' Yf the desspleasure of my lady 
 Anne be [somejwhat asswagyd, as I praye God the same 
 maye be, then yt shuld [be devised t]hat by sume convenyent 
 meane she be further laboryd [for th]ys ys the only helpe 
 and remedy. All possyble meanes [must be used for] at- 
 
 teynyng of hyr favor I comyt me to yower wyse. 
 
 handling 3.' In the same month Cromwell made out the 
 
 ^ Cal. iii. 3694, and iv. 6216, 6792. 
 
 ^ Cf. Introduction to vol. iv of the Calendar, pp. 549, 550. 
 
 ' State Papers, vol. i. p. 351 
 
73 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 draft of a grant by Wolsey to George Boleyn, Knight, 
 Viscount Rochford, son and heir apparent of Thomas Earl 
 of Wiltshire and Ormond, bestowing on him an annuity of 
 ;^3oo out of the lands of the bishopric of Winchester, and 
 a similar gift of ;£'30o out of the abbey lands of St. Albans ^. 
 Another letter from Wolsey to Cromwell in January, 1530, 
 says that, according to his servant's advice, he has had 
 Mr. Norris's fee increased from ;£^ioo to ;^200, and would 
 like to have Sir John Russell's annuity of £io made 40 or 
 50, if Cromwell thinks it expedient ^. 
 
 It is thus clear that these and other similar gifts were 
 bestowed at Cromwell's advice and suggestion, and that the 
 inevitable consequence was that the advantage resulting from 
 them accrued to a far greater extent to the Cardinal's agent 
 than to the Cardinal himself. Wolsey, in his confinement at 
 Esher, was forced to trust himself implicitly to the shrewd 
 and selfish counsellor, who moved about among those whom 
 it was most important for him to propitiate, and soon found 
 means to make it appear that Wolsey 's favours in reality 
 emanated from him. Cromwell's selection of those to whom 
 the presents were made seems also to hint that he was 
 working in his own interest more than in his master's. He 
 must have known that the members of the Boleyn party, to 
 whom the greater part of the grants were made, hated 
 Wolsey himself too thoroughly to permit them to forget 
 their grudge for the sake of a few hundred pounds, but the 
 sums bestowed were sufficiently large to make the recipients 
 of them very friendly to the Cardinal's agent, who to all 
 intents and purposes appeared to be the real giver. Hints of 
 all this must indeed have reached Wolsey 's ears. Though 
 throughout all the period of the attainder his gratitude, as 
 expressed in his many letters, was, in view of the real facts, 
 most unnecessarily effusive s, he later writes to Cromwell 
 that he hears 'he has not done him as good offices as he 
 might, in connexion with his colleges and his archbishopric' 
 But Cromwell had by this time got everything into his own 
 
 ' Cal.iv.6iis. 2 cal. iv. 6181. 
 
 Cal. IV. 6098, 61 8 1, 6204, 6249. 
 
THE FALL OF THE CARDINAL 73 
 
 hands, so that Wolsey was forced to do exactly as he was 
 bidden. Whenever the Cardinal undertook anything on his 
 own responsibility, without asking his servant's advice, it was 
 greatly resented. If Wolsey dared to hint that Cromwell 
 was not wholly devoted to his interests, the latter sent back 
 a complaining and half-threatening reply'. The Cardinal 
 was even forced to write a humble apology to his agent 
 for sending Edmund Bonner on some mission without his 
 advice ^. The less able Wolsey became to help himself, the 
 more harsh and imperious was his all-powerful counsellor. 
 With the whole control of his master's interests at the Court 
 in his own hands, it was exceedingly simple for a man of 
 Cromwell's peculiar talents to dispose the funds committed to 
 his care in such ways as tallied best with his own interests, 
 while casual onlookers simply regarded him as an honest 
 servant of his fallen master ; and Wolsey, unable to learn the 
 true state of affairs at Court, was kept practically ignorant of 
 his real designs. Cromwell had thus succeeded in attaining 
 a most enviable position, which was aptly described in a letter 
 which he received from Stephen Vaughan, who took the 
 opportunity to congratulate him, and also to warn him against 
 over-confidence in the following words : — ' A mery semblance 
 of wether often thrustithe men into the Daungerous sees, not 
 thinking to be sodaynly opprest wythe tempest when vnwar,?.$- 
 they be preuented and brought in great ieopardie. The 
 Wynd^j arn mutable vnsure and will not be caryed in mennys 
 hand^.f to blow at a becke. Parell euerywhere followithe 
 men, from the birthe to the Dethe, And more tliretenethe 
 them whiche entreprise Difficult and vrgent matters, then 
 those whiche only sekethe easy and light matters ye thoughe 
 they have great apparance of vertue, such is thinstabilitie of 
 the worlde, wher we find undiqw^ miseriam ^.' 
 
 A final opportunity was given to Cromwell to ingratiate 
 himself with King and nobles when Henry took into his 
 hands the revenues of St. Albans and Winchester, and of 
 the colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. In this, even honest 
 Cavendish could see that ' Cromewell perceyved an occasion 
 
 ^ Letters, 13. " Cal. iv. 6203. ' Cal. iv. 6196. 
 
74 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 given him by time to helpe himselfe.' The intricacies of the 
 law of the period were such that annuities and fees out of 
 the revenues of these colleges, granted by the King, after 
 he had seized them, could only be good while Wolsey was 
 living, because the King, having obtained his right to them 
 by Wolsey's attainder in the praemunire, could not retain 
 that right after the Cardinal's death i. Thus, to have the 
 grants secure during the lifetimes of the recipients, 'there 
 was none other shifte but to obtaine my lord's confirmation 
 of their patents. Then began every man both noble and 
 gentleman who had any patents out of Winchester and St. 
 Albans to make suite to Mr. Cromwell to solicit their cause 
 to my lorde to get therin his confirmation, and for his paines 
 therin bothe worthily to reward him and every man to shewe 
 him such pleasures as should be at all times in their small 
 powers, whereof they assured him. . . . Now began matters 
 to worke to bringe Master Cromwell into estimation in suche 
 sorte as was muche hereafter to his increase of dignity; . . . 
 and having the ordering and disposition of the landes of these 
 colleges he had a great occasion of suitors, besides the con- 
 tinual access to the King, by meanes whereof and through 
 his witty demeanour he grewe continually into the King's 
 favour ^.' 
 
 It is hard to realize how deeply Wolsey felt the seizure of 
 his two colleges. They had been the pride and joy of his 
 declining years. Instead of working earnestly to avert their 
 surrender into the King's hands, as a true servant would 
 have done, Cromwell permitted and almost welcomed it, as 
 a means to give him a chance to further his own ends, and 
 wrote empty, and, it would seem, almost contemptuous letters 
 of consolation to the Cardinal, of which that of August i8 is 
 an excellent example \ Instead of going to his master in his 
 sorrow and disgrace, as Wolsey repeatedly requested him to 
 do, he held himself aloof, and under the pretext of looking 
 after the Cardinal's interests at Court, contrived for his own 
 rise and advancement. It is true that he stood by Wolsey in 
 
 ' Introduction to vol. iv of the Calendar, pp. 584, 585. 
 
 2 Cavendish, p. 198. 3 Letters, 18. 
 
THE FALL OF THE CARDINAL 75 
 
 the parliamentary crisis in 1539, and that it was largely 
 through his efforts that Wolsey obtained his temporary 
 pardon in February, 1530 ; but when, at the last, the Cardinal's 
 enemies turned against him a second time and secured his 
 complete downfall, there is no record of Cromwell's saying a 
 word or doing a thing in his behalf On November 39, 1530, 
 Wolsey died, shattered and disgraced. 
 
 It is very unfortunate that there still exist so few of 
 Cromwell's letters during the last two years of Wolsey 's life. 
 There are preserved at present only twelve letters from him 
 during this period ^, seven of which are addressed to Wolsey. 
 In none of them does he give evidence of a sincere desire to 
 serve his master at all costs ; the dominant note of the greater 
 part of them is one of selfish and rather supercilious advice ; 
 of a morality easy and cheap, because the preacher of it 
 evidently felt himself beyond the possibility of its ever being 
 applicable in his own case. There is also very little trust- 
 worthy information about the means he employed to introduce 
 himself to the King, except what has already been mentioned 
 in connexion with Wolsey's fall. Foxe asserts that Sir 
 Christopher Hales, Master of the Rolls, commended him to 
 Henry, and further affirms that Sir John Russell said a 
 good word for him, in return for Cromwell's saving his life at 
 Bologna, so that the latter was enabled to have a private 
 conversation with the King in Westminster Gardens ^. Part 
 of this story is obviously false ; Cromwell could not have been 
 at Bologna when Sir John Russell was (between 1524 and 
 1538), because he was occupied in England at that time, as 
 his correspondence shows. To judge from this, little reliance 
 can be placed on the rest of Foxe's tale ; and there are no con- 
 temporary documents that bear out his statements. Another 
 story, which is perhaps more probable, is that of Chapuys^, 
 who states that at Wolsey's death Sir John Wallop attacked 
 Cromwell with insults and threats, so that the latter for pro- 
 tection procured an audience with Henry, whom he promised 
 to make the richest king that ever was in England. Henry, 
 
 ' Letters, 9-20. ' See Appendix I at the end of 
 
 ' Foxe, vol. ii. pp. 419 ff. chapter i. p. 17. 
 
76 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 it appears, was so struck with this offer, that he immediately 
 made Cromwell a member of his Council, but told nobody 
 about it for four months. This tale is in many respects 
 similar to the account contained in Pole's Apologia : but the 
 story of the Cardinal does not mention the quarrel with 
 Wallop, and the report of Chapuys does not say a word about 
 the plan for the solution of Henry's ' grete matier ' by which 
 Cromwell, according to Pole, completely fascinated the King. 
 All the accounts, however, seem to agree that by some means 
 he managed to secure an interview with Henry soon after 
 Wolsey's death, at which he clinched everything that he had 
 already gained, and obtained the favour of the King by one 
 master-stroke. Pole's story of this interview contains informa- 
 tion which leads us into the thick of Cromwell's political 
 career. Before we proceed to examine it in detail a brief 
 chapter must be devoted to a description of the actors and 
 past events of the great political drama in which Cromwell 
 was to play a part, and to a further analysis of his own 
 character and ideals. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND OPPORTUNITY OF THOMAS 
 CROMWELL 
 
 The condition of England at the time of Wolsey's death 
 was in many ways an extraordinary one. At home and 
 abroad she had already begun to reap glorious fruits from the 
 untiring efforts and masterful policy of the first Tudor. 
 United under a powerful monarchy, which had strengthened 
 itself at the expense of every other institution in the realm, 
 she rested secure in the enjoyment of internal peace and of 
 a high degree of estimation and respect in foreign lands. 
 That she had lost nearly all those continental possessions 
 which had been the proudest boast of Edward III and Henry V 
 now proved an inestimable advantage. The wise Cardinal 
 had made use of England's insular position to such good 
 advantage, that she had been able, at least up to the time 
 when the political situation had been complicated by the 
 question of the divorce, to keep the Emperor and the King of 
 France in a state of constant anxiety concerning her real 
 attitude, and often to force the two rivals to bid against each 
 other for her alliance. In 1531 Henry had dedicated to 
 Leo X a treatise which he had written against the heresies of 
 Luther, and had been rewarded with the proud title of 
 ' Defensor Fidei.' Success abroad meant popularity at home, 
 at least for the King, whose enthusiasm and winning manners 
 endeared him to his subjects, and who usually contrived to 
 shift the blame for the unwelcome measures of his government 
 on to the shoulders of the Cardinal. As long as the national 
 honour was upheld on the Continent without draining too 
 deeply the resources of the people at home, the country 
 seemed quite willing to trust the King to the full and to allow 
 him to rule as well as govern. 
 
78 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Such was the bright side of the picture, the side which first 
 claims the attention of the casual observer. A more critical 
 examination of the state of the country, however, reveals an 
 undercurrent of discontent, which was almost lost in the crown- 
 ing years of Wolsey's greatness^ but which did not fail to 
 make itself felt at a later day, when the allegiance of so large 
 a part of the people had been alienated by the affair of the 
 divorce. The surest proof that Henry and Wolsey were aware 
 of this latent hostility is afforded by the infrequent assem- 
 blings of Parliament. Seldom did the King dare to face the 
 representatives of the nation with the demand for a subsidy ; 
 he preferred to veil his oppressive financial exactions under 
 the name of an Amicable Loan. The poverty of the nobles 
 was notorious ; and the distress of the poor people daily 
 increased owing to a succession of bad seasons, thin harvests, 
 and a few outbreaks of a devastating plague. Economic and 
 agrarian changes contributed to swell the universal discon- 
 tent ^. The break-up of the old manorial system, the increase 
 of enclosures for pasturage, and the substitution of conver- 
 tible husbandry for the old three-field system all served to 
 displace labour, and so temporarily to diminish the demand 
 for it. Great distress among the agricultural poor was 
 necessarily the first result of these changes : unfortunately 
 economic science was not sufficiently advanced to enable men 
 to discern that it was but a passing phase, and that as soon 
 as labour had adjusted itself to the new conditions permanent 
 advantages to it were bound to ensue. The country-folk con- 
 trasted their own wretched condition with the many reports 
 which reached them of Henry's sumptuous and luxurious 
 Court : small wonder if the government was wrongly blamed 
 for a large share of the misery which was inevitably the 
 first consequence of sudden and great economic development. 
 Finally all malcontents were united in opposition to the 
 King's attempts to gain a divorce from his first wife, during 
 the closing years of Wolsey's ministry ; so that the main- 
 tenance and further strengthening of the powerful monarchy 
 established at the accession of the House of Tudor promised 
 ' Cf. Ashley, Economic History, vol. ii. pp. 259-304. 
 
HIS CHARACTER AND OPPORTUNITY 79 
 
 in the near future to afford a problem of even greater 
 difficulty than before. 
 
 To turn for a moment to the situation on the Continent. 
 The House of Hapsburg, under Charles V, seemed to have 
 attained the acme of its greatness, but its power was not 
 by any means as real as it appeared. The Emperor's in- 
 satiable desire for foreign conquest had caused him to neglect 
 affairs in Spain and in the Empire, and to overtax his powers 
 and drain his resources by continual struggles with his great 
 rival the King of France. The bone of contention was 
 ostensibly Italy ; perhaps a truer cause of the struggles of 
 the two sovereigns is to be found in the geographical position 
 of the countries over which they ruled. The newly-con- 
 solidated realm of France divided the dominions of the 
 Emperor into two parts : the dream of Charles was to connect 
 them ; the object of Francis was to forestall him. Northern 
 Italy belonged to neither, but it was a rich prize and a fighting- 
 ground easily accessible to both the combatants, and so it 
 very naturally became the field of war. Soon after the 
 Imperial election of 1519 the tide began to set slowly but 
 surely against Francis ; he was a true soldier, and was not 
 a man to submit to any encroachment without a struggle ; 
 still he fought at a terrible disadvantage, betrayed as he was 
 by the Duke of Bourbon, and in 1535 he was forced to 
 acknowledge a thorough defeat, at the fatal battle of Pavia ^. 
 
 Although the first idea that occurred to Henry and Wolsey 
 after the news of Charles' great victory had reached them was 
 a plan for the conquest and subdivision of the kingdom of 
 Francis, they soon came to the conclusion that such a scheme 
 would render the Emperor far too powerful. Charles him- 
 self, moreover, had received with little favour the extrava- 
 gant proposals for an invasion of France which England 
 had sent him as soon as the result of Pavia was known, 
 and had consistently refused to allow Henry any share in 
 his triumph. The Pope also, who had watched with terror 
 the victorious march of the Imperial army, ventured for 
 
 ^ On this and the succeeding vi. pp. 296-362, and Mignet, vol. ii. 
 pages, cf. Creighton's Papacy, vol. pp. 340-358. 
 
80 THOMAS CROHWECT. 
 
 the last time to present himself as the centre of the oppo- 
 sition to Charles V, and strove in every way to reconcile 
 England and France. The obstinate resistance that the 
 Commissioners for the collection of the Amicable Loan had 
 encountered in the spring of 1535 was certainly no encourage- 
 ment for undertaking a war of aggression, and Henry and 
 Wolsey soon determined to abandon all plans of invasion, and 
 to pursue the wiser policy of maintaining neutrality between 
 the two great continental powers. With this thought in 
 mind a treaty of peace was made with Francis in August, 
 and after the escape of the French King from captivity in 
 January, 1526, the two continental rivals were once more 
 placed on an even footing. With this restoration of equality 
 Henry was perfectly satisfied, and he took good care to avoid 
 committing himself permanently to Francis, by refusing 
 openly to join the League of Cognac in the following spring. 
 At this juncture the matter of the divorce began to occupy 
 his exclusive attention, and the foreign affairs of the next 
 three years were left almost entirely in Wolsey's hands. 
 
 Circumstances now drove the Cardinal temporarily to lose 
 sight of the policy which he had pursued for the most part 
 up to this time — that of strict neutrality — and to attempt to 
 convert the peace with France into a permanent alliance. 
 And certainly the events of 1527 seemed to give him every 
 justification for this new departure. The sack of Rome 
 appeared to put Italy at the mercy of the Imperialists, and 
 now the difficulties connected with Henry's matrimonial affairs 
 pointed to the need of securing a firm ally who would aid him 
 in persuading the captive Pontiff to consent to the divorce in 
 opposition to the wishes of his jailor the Emperor. With all 
 his experience the Cardinal had hardly learned how rapidly the 
 diplomatic combinations of Europe could change. The last 
 great venture of his foreign policy resulted in disaster: the 
 French alliance utterly failed to accomplish what was expected 
 of it. At first indeed it seemed that the matrimonial projects 
 which formed the basis of it would succeed, but the crafty 
 policy of Francis ruined all. His war with the Emperor broke 
 out again, as was to be expected, immediately after his release 
 
HIS CHARACTER AND OPPORTUNITY 81 
 
 from captivity, but secret negotiations for peace were soon 
 set on foot, and finally, in 1529, took shape in the treaty of 
 Cambi-ay — the news of which came as a stunning blow to 
 Wolsey's dearest hopes. The lesson which the Cardinal 
 learned at the expense of his office was by no means lost on 
 his master. Absorbed in the attempt to obtain a divorce 
 from Katherine, Henry possibly had not been able to foresee 
 the course of events abroad any better than his minister ; 
 but when, in 1539, the news of the treaty of Cambray aroused 
 him to a true appreciation of the state of affairs, he at once 
 realized how dangerous any permanent alliance with either 
 Francis or Charles would be, as long as the situation on the 
 Continent remained so uncertain. He resolved that, as soon 
 as he could rectify the Cardinal's false step, nothing should 
 tempt him again to abandon the only safe policy — that of 
 strict neutrality between the two great European powers — 
 as long as the two rivals remained nearly equal. This point 
 has been purposely dwelt upon here as a foreshadowing of 
 what was to happen to Cromwell a few years later. Departure 
 from the policy of neutrality between France and Spain helped 
 to ruin Wolsey : a similar blunder in foreign affairs was 
 destined to lead his successor to destruction. 
 
 The entire attention of England was now turned to the 
 absorbing question of the divorce. The history of Wolsey's 
 failure to bring about the separation of Henry and Katherine 
 of Aragon, does not belong to the ground covered by this 
 essay. Suffice it to say that the Cardinal's ineffectual 
 attempts to satisfy Henry's chief desire, coupled with the 
 obvious error in his foreign policy, sealed his doom and 
 gave Cromwell his opportunity. There is little need to dwell 
 upon the way in which the attempt to divorce the Queen was 
 regarded abroad. Henry was looked upon as the disturber 
 of Christian unity, not only by the Emperor, but also by all 
 continental Europe ^. Charles, of course, was the obvious 
 person to avenge the wrongs of his aunt, but he was far 
 too busy just then with his schemes for suppressing the Pro- 
 testants in Germany and of checking the advance of the 
 
 ' Cal. iv. 6521, 6691. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I G 
 
83 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Turk into the borders of Christendom, seriously to contem^ 
 plate an invasion of Henry's dominions. It was not the only 
 time that England's fortunes were saved by the turn of affairs 
 in distant lands. 
 
 It now remains only to say a few words about the chief 
 persons at the Court of Henry VIII, preliminary to a descrip- 
 tion of Cromwell himself Foremost among these was of 
 course Anne Boleyn. Born probably in 1507 of a good 
 English family, a niece of the Earl of Surrey, she had spent 
 a good part of her early life in France, as ' one of the French 
 queen's women,' and returned to England in the latter part of 
 the year 1531 ^. At Henry's exceedingly corrupt Court she 
 did not want for admirers and suitors, foremost among whom 
 was the King himself, who had formerly been in intimate 
 relations with her sister Mary. Henry's passion for her 
 is sufficiently attested by a succession of royal grants and 
 favours to her father, beginning only two months after her 
 arrival in England, and continuing for over three years 2. How 
 far Anne was responsible for causing Henry to take steps to 
 divorce Katherine, and how far he was moved thereto by 
 a conscience that became over-sensitive at suspiciously short 
 notice, or by more legitimate political considerations, it 
 is not our business now to inquire ; our best sources of 
 information are the grants to her father, above mentioned, 
 and a most remarkable series of love-letters ^. Though she 
 temporarily had the King at her feet, no woman of Henry's 
 Court was really to be less envied. Katherine and Mary, and, 
 in consequence, the majority of the people, were her bitter foes ; 
 to protect herself against the popular odium, she gathered 
 round her a following, known at Court as the Boleyn faction, 
 the chief person of which was her uncle, now Duke of Norfolk. 
 
 Norfolk was fifty-seven years old when Cromwell came 
 into power. He was a Catholic and against the New Faith. 
 He had received in his younger days a thorough military 
 
 ^ For the date of the birth of Anne English Historical Review, vol. viii. 
 
 Boleyn see Friedmann, chap, i, p. 58, and vol. x. p. 104. 
 
 and Note A in the Appendix; " Cal. iv. 1431 (8), 6083, 6163. 
 
 Round, The Early Life of Anne = Cal. iv. 4477, 4383, 4410, 3325, 
 
 Boleyn; and Gairdner in the 3326,3218-21. 
 
HIS CHARACTER AND OPPORTUNITY 83 
 
 and diplomatic training, and in 1531 was characterized 
 by the Venetian ambassador, Falieri, as 'prudent, liberal, 
 affable, and astute ; associating with everybody . . . and 
 desirous of greater elevation.' This is a very flattering 
 description of this crafty and ambitious statesman. The 
 chief traits that characterized him were a cringing sub- 
 servience to the will of the King, and a bitter hatred 
 of any rival to his influence with Henry ; a hatred which 
 first directed itself against Wolsey, for whose downfall he 
 laboured incessantly, and later against Cromwell, whose 
 opponent he was during the decade of the former's greatness. 
 He was the equal of neither of these two as a statesman ; 
 but his utter lack of honour and consistency, and his willing- 
 ness to break promises in order to please the King, rendered 
 him an invaluable servant of the Crown at a period when one 
 startling change followed on the heels of another. He threw 
 himself heart and soul into the interests of his niece when 
 Henry's love for her was increasing ; and yet when the royal 
 passion waned, and Anne was accused in 1536, he was not 
 ashamed to preside at her trial and sentence her to death ^. 
 
 The other important person at the Court was Stephen 
 Gardiner, who in 1531 became Bishop of Winchester. Ten 
 years Norfolk's junior, he was introduced into political and 
 diplomatic life by the Duke, and spent a large part of his early 
 life as Wolsey's servant and ambassador. He did not cherish 
 any lasting friendship for the Cardinal, however, and he seems 
 to have been an adherent of the Boleyn faction at Wolsey's 
 fall ; we find Anne writing to him when the struggle between 
 the two parties was at its hottest, to thank him for his ' wylling 
 and faythefuU mynde ^.' Still he took more or less a middle 
 course on the divorce question, and pleaded warmly, though 
 vainly, for the restitution of Wolsey's colleges. But when 
 the Cardinal's fate was settled he certainly expected that his 
 old master's favour with the King would be transferred to 
 himself, and when he was disappointed in this by Cromwell's 
 stepping in, he developed a hatred for him which he never 
 
 ^ Cf. the Life of Norfolk in the Dictionary of National Biography, 
 vol. xxviii. p. 65. ^ Cal. iv. 5422. 
 
 G a 
 
84 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 abandoned. He was less active than Norfolk in his opposi- 
 tion to Rome, and though he lacked the Duke's subserviency, 
 he was fully as able a diplomat. Neither of the two men 
 could have played the role of Cromwell : the scope of their 
 talents was more limited ; they were merely exceedingly 
 able politicians, but as such they were by no means to be 
 despised. When, however, they united to procure their rival's 
 ruin it was difficult to resist them ^. 
 
 Thus when at Wolsey's fall Cromwell entered the King's 
 service, the situation of England both at home and abroad 
 was critical in the extreme. The relations of the government 
 with Rome were strained, owing to Henry's proceedings 
 in the divorce; his 'grete matier' was unpopular with the 
 country at large ; France and Spain were both of them very 
 doubtful quantities, and might become friends or foes at 
 any moment. At the Court, various factions with different 
 aims were disputing for the precedence, and the best course 
 to be steered by one who was about to enter the King's service, 
 after leaving that of a fallen minister, was not an easy thing 
 to decide. Before inquiring into Cromwell's action at this 
 crisis, a brief description of the person and of the character of 
 the man himself at this time will not be out of place. 
 
 Cromwell was a short, strongly-built man, with a large dull 
 face. He was smooth-shaven, with close-cropped hair, and 
 had a heavy double chin. His mouth was small and cruel, 
 and was surmounted by an extraordinarily long upper lip, 
 while a pair of grey eyes, set closely together, moved rest- 
 lessly under his light eyebrows. He had an awkward, uncouth 
 gait which lent itself well to the other peculiarities of his 
 personal appearance, and gave one the idea that he was a 
 patient, plodding, and, if anything, a rather stupid sort of man. 
 But this was all merely external. According to Chapuys, 
 who knew him well, he possessed the most extraordinary 
 mobility of countenance, so that when engaged in an interest- 
 ing conversation, his face would suddenly light up, and the 
 dull, drudging, commonplace expression give way to a subtle, 
 
 ' Cf. the Life of Gardiner in the Dictionary of National Biography, 
 vol. XX. p. 419. 
 
HIS CHARACTER AND OPPORTUNITY 85 
 
 cunning, and intelligent aspect, quite at variance with his 
 ordinary appearance. His conversation at such moments was 
 witty and entertaining to the last degree, and the Spanish 
 ambassador notes that he had the habit of giving a roguish 
 oblique glance whenever he made a striking remark. This 
 extraordinary power of facial control, according to the cir- 
 cumstances in which he was placed, merely reflects one of 
 the dominant characteristics of the man. He obviously had 
 remarkable power of quickly adapting himself to his sur- 
 roundings. He rarely failed to realize immediately his relation 
 to those with whom he came in contact, and his manner, 
 behaviour, and expression varied accordingly. No one knew 
 better how or when to flatter than Thomas Cromwell ; on 
 the other hand no one could be more harsh and cruel than 
 he, when he was in a position to dictate. He had thoroughly 
 learned the lesson 
 
 'To beguile the time 
 Look like the time.' 
 There are many evidences of his good taste and love of 
 beautiful things ^. A long and complicated correspondence 
 with his friend Stephen Vaughan about an iron chest of very 
 curious workmanship, which he wanted for his house at Austin 
 Friars, of such expense that Vaughan was almost afraid to 
 buy it, is not without interest. There is record of his pur- 
 chasing a globe, with a set of explanatory notes, and the only 
 two ' Cronica Cronicarum cum figuris ' that could be found in 
 all Antwerp ^. Especially great was his love of Italian things. 
 His stay in Italy was of sufficient duration to steep him in the )|' 
 spirit of the Renaissance ; he read and studied his Machiavelli, 
 so that it was a guide to his future political career ; we can 
 well imagine him repeating to himself the sentence in chapter 
 xviii of The Prince which begins ' Ma e necessario questa 
 natura saperla bene colorire, ed essere gran simulatore e 
 dissimulatore V or the passage in chapter xvii of the same, 
 ' Deve pertanto un principe non si curare dell' infamia di cru- 
 dele per tenere i sudditi suoi uniti ed in fede *.' He doubtless 
 
 ' Cf. Pauli, Thomas Cromwell, p. 301. 
 2 Cal. iv. 4613, 4884, 5034, 6429, 6744. 
 ' II Principe, chap, xviii, p. 304. * Ibid., chap, xvii, p. 291. 
 
86 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 possessed many of the important Italian books in print at 
 that time. In April, 1530, Edmund Bonner writes to him 
 to remind him of his promise to lend him the Triumphs 
 of Petrarch and the Cortigiano, and to make him a good 
 Italian ^ 
 
 Of his social gifts and of his charm as a host there is no 
 room to doubt. There are many proofs that he was a most 
 magnificent entertainer, and that his personal attraction, when 
 he wished to make himself agreeable, was such that no one 
 could resist it. The letters of Chapuys inform us that even 
 the most careful and experienced politicians were often com- 
 pletely put off their guard by Cromwell's pleasing presence 
 and address ; and more than once were induced to say things 
 which should not have escaped them. 
 
 But all these manners and externals were simply disguises 
 to hide the real inward character of the man. The whole 
 essence of Cromwell's personality consists of different mani- 
 festations of one fundamental, underlying trait, which may 
 perhaps be best expressed by the common phrase 'a strict 
 attention to business.' Cromwell worshipped and sought 
 after the practical and the useful only, and utterly disregarded 
 everything else. The first evidence of this quality has been 
 already noticed, as coming in the shape of a contempt for 
 the vague generalizations of the Parliament of 1533, which 
 beat about the bush for an entire session without ever coming 
 to the point-^. Here it assumes a somewhat negative form. 
 Another striking instance of it occurs in the conversation 
 which Pole relates as having taken place between himself 
 and Cromwell, at Wolsey's house, concerning the proper 
 duty of a true servant of a Prince ^. Pole as usual began 
 theorizing about the best way to bring honour to one's 
 master, when he was rudely interrupted by Cromwell, who 
 advised him in few words to forsake the remote learning of 
 the schools, and devote himself to reading a new book which 
 took a practical view of the case, and which Pole later found 
 was the adviser's favourite Prince of Machiavelli. Cromwell 
 
 '■ Cal. iv. 6346. 2 Letters, i. 
 
 ' Pole, Apologia ad Carolum Quintum, chap, xxix. 
 
HIS CHARACTER AND OPPORTUNITY 87 
 
 at the same time took occasion to tell Pole that the great 
 art of the politician was to penetrate through the disguise 
 which sovereigns are accustomed to throw over their real 
 inclinations, and to devise the most specious expedients by 
 which they may gratify their appetites without appearing 
 to outrage morality or religion ^ It is not astonishing that 
 Pole realized that it was dangerous for him to remain in 
 England, when Cromwell came into power. 
 
 Another more positive and striking way in which this 
 characteristic stood forth, was in his utter lack of emotion. 
 It was this quality which enabled Cromwell to tick off in 
 his memoranda the lives of human beings, as if they were 
 items in an account ; or to send people to trials, of which 
 the verdicts had been determined beforehand, as ' the Abbott 
 of Redyng to be Sent Down to be tryed & excecutyd at 
 Reding^.' He totally disregarded the justness or morality 
 of any action ; its utility was for him its morality, and created 
 its justification. He never struck at his victims in a moment 
 of passion, uselessly or capriciously; no personal feeling of 
 hatred mingled with his crime. On the other hand, had the 
 sacrifice of one of his nearest or dearest friends been necessary 
 to the accomplishment of his purposes, he would hardly have 
 hesitated a moment. Any means that could bring about 
 the ends he sought were ipso facto for him justifiable. 
 Whether his desires were attained by fair means or foul, 
 mattered little to him : he kept his eyes steadily fixed upon 
 the goal ; the smoothness or roughness of the road to it was 
 of no consequence in his eyes ^. 
 
 ^ This account was drawn up periences in Italy, that Cromwell 
 
 by Pole in 1538. Canon Dixon possessed a manuscript copy. Pole, 
 
 (History of the Church of England, moreover, expressly states that 
 
 vol. i. p. 41) questions the truth of Cromwell offered to lend him the 
 
 the story on the ground that The work, provided he would promise 
 
 Prince was not published until to read it. 
 1532, several years after the re- ^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 399. 
 
 ported conversation took place. The ^ The chronicler, John Stow, in 
 
 book, however, was written in his Survey of London, p. 180, gives 
 
 1513, as Canon Dixon admits, the following anecdote, whichproves 
 
 and there is every probability, es- that Cromwell was no less arbitrary 
 
 pecially in view of his early ex- as a man than as a minister : — 
 
88 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Finally, and perhaps most important of all, Cromwell 
 never lost anything that might be turned to good account. 
 It has been shown how he not only succeeded in freeing 
 himself from any ill-name at Wolsey's fall, but also actually 
 used his master's overthrow to further his own ends, and 
 make himself known and popular at Court. But this is only 
 a slender hint of what was to follow. It was precisely from 
 this same practical utilitarian standpoint, that he regarded 
 and made use of to his own ends the King's amours, the 
 suppression of the monasteries, the Reformation. Catholicism 
 and Protestantism passed over his head ; he was not touched 
 by either of them. He simply used them as pieces in the 
 great game which he was playing. 
 
 Such was the man who, for the next ten years, was to have 
 almost the sole guidance of the course of English history. 
 As was his purpose when he rode on the afternoon of All 
 Hallows Day to London to look after his own interests and 
 those of his master, so was his mission as minister and coun- 
 sellor of the King, ' to make or to marre.' 
 
 ' On the south side and at the and an house standing close to his 
 
 west end of this church (the Austin south pale, this house they lowsed 
 
 Friars) many fayre houses are from the ground & bare vpon 
 
 builded, namely in Throgmorton Rowlers into my Father's Garden 
 
 streete, one very large and spacious, 22 foot, ere my Father heard thereof: 
 
 builded intheplace of olde and small no warning was given him, nor any 
 
 Tenementes by Thomas Cromwell other answere when hee spake to 
 
 . . . This house being finished, and the surueyers of that worke but 
 
 hauing some reasonable plot of that their Mayster Sir Thomas 
 
 ground left for a Garden, he caused commaunded them so to doe, no 
 
 the pales of the Gardens adioyning man durst go to argue the matter, 
 
 to the north parte thereof on a but each man lost his land, and my 
 
 sodaine to be taken downe, 22 foot Father payde his whole rent, which 
 
 to bee measured forth right into the was vi=. viii*. the yeare, for that 
 
 north of euery man's ground, a line halfe which was left. Thus much 
 
 there to bee drawen, a trench to of mine owne knowledge haue I 
 
 bee cast, a foundation laid, and a thought good to note, that the sud- 
 
 highe bricke wall to bee builded. daine rising of some men, causeth 
 
 My father had a Garden there, them to forget themselves.' 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN THE king's service 
 
 The decade which followed Cromwell's appointment as 
 counsellor to Henry VIII, witnessed some of the most striking 
 changes that have ever taken place in England. The question 
 which must obviously occur to every student of the period, is 
 whether the King himself, or his new minister, was the real 
 cause of the secular and religious revolution of the years 1530 
 to 1540- The difficulty of the problem is increased by the 
 fact that Henry and Cromwell made every effort to conceal 
 their traces ; scarcely any information can be gleaned from 
 their correspondence. We are therefore forced to draw our 
 conclusions for the most part from external evidence and the 
 reports of contemporary writers. 
 
 It may be justly said that in general the probabilities point 
 to Cromwell as the true originator of the startling changes 
 which occurred soon after his accession to power. The fact 
 that the ultimate object of all these changes was the con- 
 centration of power in the hands of the Crown is not in itself 
 of great value in determining the identity of their originator ; 
 for the strengthening of the monarchy was an end which both 
 King and minister always kept in view : in the methods by 
 which this object was attained, however, we have a most 
 valuable clue to aid us in the solution of our problem. These 
 methods were all intensely Cromwellian : their directness and 
 efficiency are essentially and distinctively characteristic of the 
 King's new minister. In the contrast between the dawdling 
 ineifectiveness of Wolsey's device for solving the problem of 
 the King's divorce, and the summary, revolutionary process 
 by which it was finally secured after the Cardinal's fall, lies our 
 strongest ground for supposing that it was at Cromwell's 
 instance that the decisive step was taken. It seems almost 
 
90 THOMAS CROMWKLL 
 
 impossible that Henry, after having suffered himself to be 
 guided so long by Wolsey, in the management of his ' grete 
 matier ' should have adopted at the Cardinal's death a plan to 
 secure his wishes, so thoroughly repugnant to the principles 
 of his old adviser, unless the idea had been put into his head 
 by another. When the King had once determined to break 
 with Rome, it followed as a matter of course that the advice of 
 the minister who had suggested the first step, should be adopted 
 in devising measures to secure the King in the new position 
 which he had assumed. The means employed to attain this 
 end — the intimidation of the clergy and the suppression of the 
 monasteries, the attacks on the independence of Parliament, 
 the ruthless execution of those who opposed the late innova- 
 tions — all bear the stamp of the sinister genius of Cromwell 
 as unmistakably as the great revolution that rendered them 
 necessary. Documentary evidence too comes in to help us 
 here ; scarcely an important Act was passed in Parliament 
 between the years 1533 and 1540, of which there is not some 
 previous mention in Cromwell's papers and memoranda. 
 Against these reasons it may be urged that none of the foreign 
 ambassadors at the English Court mentions Cromwell as an 
 important factor in the government until three years after he 
 entered the King's service, and that the country in general 
 certainly regarded the events of the years 1530 to 1533 as the 
 work of Henry alone ; and that these facts are strong testi- 
 mony that the King's new minister did not attain any high 
 degree of prominence until the crucial period of the struggle 
 with Rome had passed. But this paucity of contemporary 
 information concerning Cromwell's earlier years in the King's 
 service may be better explained in another way. If Henry's 
 new minister was the true author of all the revolutionary 
 measures of this period, it was certainly most unlikely that he 
 should be paraded before the eyes of the people as such ; it 
 was, on the contrary, to his own interest, and also to the 
 King's, that he should be kept in the background. By per- 
 mitting the people to think that Henry was the real originator 
 of all the new schemes for establishing the Royal Supremacy 
 in Church and State, the suddenness of the transition between 
 
IN THE KING'S SERVICE 91 
 
 Wolsey's ministry and that of his successor was disguised. 
 Moreover, had the people known that Cromwell was at the 
 bottom of these changes, which were universally unpopular, 
 nothing would have saved him from their revenge. As long 
 as the new measures were attributed to the King, respect for 
 the royal name was enough to prevent a revolt. Cromwell, on 
 the contrary, who was not even of noble birth, could not have 
 struck a blow in his own defence, had the people fastened 
 upon him as the cause of the hated innovations. It was 
 necessary to keep him concealed until his position was so 
 secure that the popular odium could not shake him from it. 
 When, in 1533, the mask was finally thrown off, Chapuys and 
 the other foreign ambassadors realized all at once that Crom- 
 well's sudden burst into prominence would have been quite 
 impossible, had not the ground been thoroughly prepared for 
 it by important services rendered during the first years of his 
 ministry. 
 
 Such, then, are the general reasons for thinking that 
 Cromwell was the man who planned out and carried through 
 the various measures which have rendered famous the period 
 of his ministry. In examining separately the different events 
 which took place, we shall meet with other evidence which 
 points to the same conclusion. Most important is the account 
 contained in Pole's Apologia ad Carolum Quintum, which 
 describes at length Cromwell's first measure, his plan to secure 
 Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon ; a scheme by 
 which he won the confidence of the King and irrevocably 
 committed himself and his master to the policy which he 
 followed to the end of his days. Henry, it seems from Pole's 
 story, had become utterly discouraged at the time of Wolsey's 
 death concerning the prospect of ever obtaining a separation 
 from his first wife. He had vainly attempted to get an 
 encouraging reply from the English clergy, and his failure in 
 this added to his despondency ; his council, which lacked all 
 initiative, could only rejoice that he intended to abandon his 
 efforts. At this juncture the Satanae Nuncius, as Pole names 
 Cromwell, solicited and obtained an audience with the King, 
 and proposed a plan by which Henry could free himself from 
 
92 THOMAS CROMWliLL 
 
 Papal restrictions, marry Anne, divorce Katharine, and yet 
 ostensibly remain true to the Catholic Faith. 
 
 Cromwell introduced himself with his usual tact and skill. 
 In a few modest and carefully selected sentences he excused 
 himself for daring to offer an opinion on a subject of which he 
 felt himself, to be so very ignorant — but, he continued, his 
 loyalty to the King would not permit him to be silent when 
 there was the smallest chance of his being able to serve his 
 sovereign at this momentous crisis. He was certain, he said, 
 that the King's troubles were solely due to the weakness of 
 his advisers, who listened to the opinions of the common herd, 
 and did not dare to act upon their own responsibility. All 
 the wise and learned were in favour of the divorce ; the only 
 thing lacking was the Papal sanction ; was the King to hesitate 
 because this could not be obtained ? It would be better to 
 follow the example of the Lutherans, who had renounced the 
 authority of Rome. Let the King, with the consent of Parlia- 
 ment, declare himself Head of the Church in England, and 
 all his difficulties would vanish. England was at present 
 a monster with two heads. If the King should take to himself 
 the supreme power, religious as well as secular, every in- 
 congruity would cease ; the clergy would immediately realize 
 that they were responsible to the King and not to the Pope, 
 and would forthwith become subservient to the royal will. 
 Henry may have been surprised by the audacity of Cromwell's 
 scheme, but he was also much pleased, as it promised to 
 satisfy all his dearest wishes. The Satanae Nuncius received 
 his hearty thanks, and was further rewarded by a seat in the 
 Privy Council '. 
 
 Cromwell must have realized from the first, that the adop- 
 
 ' Pole, Apologia ad CarolumQuin- quod non vel ab eodem nuncio 
 
 turn, chap, xxix, and Lingard, vol. vi. (Cromwell himself) eo narrante in- 
 
 p. 233. There is every reason tellexi, vel ab illis qui ejus consilii 
 
 to believe in the veracity of this fuerunt participes.' This interview 
 
 report. Pole was in London at was doubtless the one which Cha- 
 
 the time, and knew Cromwell inti- puys describes as due to the quarrel 
 
 mately. He reiterates the truth of with Sir John Wallop. According 
 
 his tale in the following words:— to both accounts it ended by Crom- 
 
 ' Hoc possum afiirmare nihil in ilia well's becoming a Privy Councillor, 
 oratione positum alicujus momenti 
 
IN THE KING'S SERVICE 93 
 
 tion of his scheme to throw off the Papal authority in England 
 would encounter the greatest opposition from the clergy, but 
 he had already devised a plan by which every objection 
 could be silenced and the refractory ecclesiastics overawed. 
 His whole policy in this crisis was based on the knowledge 
 that the position of the clergy since Wolsey's fall was com- 
 pletely altered. They were no longer in any sense popular. 
 The State Papers of the period contain many lists of the 
 grievances of the Commons against them ^. They had re- 
 ceived a severe lesson from the Parliament of 1529 ; they 
 were now isolated, timid and demoralized. Cromwell was the 
 first to perceive and make use of their changed condition. 
 At the same time he realized how completely the House of 
 Austria had possessed itself of the Papacy ; the failure of 
 Wiltshire's embassy to the Emperor in Bologna, in 1530 ^, 
 assured him, if he needed any assurance, tftat the day of 
 compromise with the Pope was passed, and that no divorce 
 would ever come from the Vatican ; he saw that if a separation 
 of Henry and Katherine was to be secured at all, the battle- 
 ground on which it was to be won was not the Papal Curia at 
 Rome, but the Houses of Convocation and Parliament. 
 
 So it was conveniently discovered that Wolsey's guilt was 
 shared by Convocation,, the Privy Council and the Lords and 
 Commons, and indirectly by the nation itself; as all these 
 had recognized the Cardinal in his capacity of legate, and so 
 had become, by language of the statute, his ' fautors and 
 abettors.' Again conveniently, but also most unreasonably, 
 while the laity, who had eagerly availed themselves of the 
 Cardinal's jurisdiction, were tacitly passed over, the clergy 
 who had been the only ones to make a stand in opposition to 
 the legatine authority, were included in the Praemunire. So 
 in December, 1530, as Holinshed quaintly puts it, ' the kings 
 learned councell said plainlie ' that the ' whole cleargie of 
 
 England were all in the premunire ^/ and the 
 
 Attorney-General was instructed to file a brief against the 
 entire body in the Court of King's Bench. The clergy then 
 
 1 As Cal. iv. 6183. ' Cal. iv. 61 1 1, 6154-5. 
 
 ' Holinshed's Chronicle, p. 766. 
 
94 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 assembled in Convocation, ' and offered the King ioo,oco 
 pounds to be their good lord, and also to give them a pardon 
 of all offences touching the Praemunire, by act of Parliament' 
 To their surprise and dismay, however, Henry refused the 
 bribe, unless, in the preamble to the grant, a clause were 
 introduced making him ' to be the Protector and only Supreme 
 Head of the Church and clergy of England ^.' The whole 
 plot on the part of the King and the Privy Council was con- 
 ducted with the greatest possible secrecy, and their real 
 motives were probably not guessed at by the world outside. 
 Even the astute Chapuys was completely deceived respecting 
 the King's actual intention. In his letters of the 23rd and 
 31st of January, 1 531, he informs the Emperor that 'when the 
 King has bled the clergy, he will restore to them their liberties, 
 and take them back into his favour,' and later declares that 
 ' the whole thing was done to bring about a union between 
 the clergy and the nobles ^.' It was not until the 14th of 
 February, when the entire affair had been carried through, 
 that the Spanish ambassador really understood what was 
 happening, and discovered that it was all something more 
 than a striking exhibition of Tudor avarice •'. 
 
 In the meantime a number of Latin manifestoes appeared 
 favouring the King's divorce, and inveighing against the 
 Papal Supremacy*. But in spite of all these intimidations, 
 the clergy though weak did not intend to surrender without 
 a struggle. We are told that ' iile de suprematu regis conce- 
 ptus baud bene placuit praelatis et clero, inde eum modificari 
 voluerunt. Per tres itaque sessiones cum consiliariis regiis 
 (among whom Cromwell doubtless was most prominent) ratio 
 inita fuit quomodo regis animum flectere possent ad molliori- 
 bus verbis exprimendum articulum ilium V At first Henry 
 announced to the clergy through Rochford that the only 
 alteration he would accept would be the insertion of the 
 
 1 There were to be in all five solus est.' Wilkins, vol. iii. p. 725. 
 concessions, the first of which was ^ Cal. v. 62, 70. 
 
 the really important and crucial ' Cal. v. 105. 
 
 one— ' Ecclesiae et cleri Anglicani, * Cal. v. 7, 9; vi. 416. 
 
 cujus protector et supremum caput js » Wilkins, vol. iii. p. 725. 
 
IN THE KING'S SERVICE 95 
 
 words ' post Deum.' In the end, however, he yielded in this 
 point, and consented to an amendment moved by Archbishop 
 Warham, so that in its final form the clause read ' Ecclesiae 
 et cleri Anglicani, cujus singularem protectorem, unicum et 
 supremum dominicum, et quantum per Christi legem licet 
 etiam supremum caput ipsius majestatem recognoscimus.' 
 Both the Canterbury and York Convocations hastened to 
 accept this compromise, and the latter voted an additional 
 grant of;^i8,ooo. The only bishop who raised the slightest 
 objection to the royal demand was Cuthbert Tunstall, of 
 Durham. It is obvious that if the famous 'quantum per Christi 
 legem licet ' was really enforced, the victory which the King's 
 party had gained was but an empty one : the amendment has 
 been characterized as 'a clause by which all practical value 
 was taken out of the act i.' But Henry certainly had no idea 
 of permitting a restriction as vague as this seriously to 
 interfere with his schemes ; if the qualification became really 
 troublesome he was quite prepared to have it expunged. 
 For the moment he had been willing tacitly to acknowledge 
 that there was some force in the clause in order to overcome 
 the obstinacy of his opponents, but Chapuys was certainly 
 not far wrong in saying that it was ' all the same as far as the 
 King is concerned as if they had made no reservation, for no 
 one will now be so bold as to contest with his lord the 
 importance of this reservation^.' The long-deferred pardon 
 was at last granted : though when it was first sent down from 
 the Lords, the Commons discovered that the laity were not 
 mentioned and so were still in the Praemunire : a deputation 
 from the Lower House, however, waited upon the King and 
 expressed their doubts, and though at first Henry treated 
 them harshly, he finally succumbed, and the laity were included 
 in the pardon ^. 
 
 But the struggle was not yet over. The following year 
 witnessed a continuation of the attacks on the independence 
 of the clergy. This time, however, Henry and Cromwell had 
 determined that the brunt of the battle should be borne by 
 
 ^ Friedmann, vol. i. p. 142. ^ Cal. v. 105. 
 
 ' Cal. V. 171. 
 
95 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Parliament, which responded to the mandates of the King 
 and his minister with gratifying celerity. Shortly after the 
 opening of the session, in January, 1533, there appeared in 
 the Lower House that famous document, which is usually 
 known as the 'Supplication of the Commons against the 
 Ordinaries ^' The designation is certainly misleading : so 
 preponderant was the part played by one of the Commons 
 in the preparation of this memorable petition, that it cannot 
 be fairly regarded as the work of them all. The nature of 
 the charges of which the ' Supplication ' was composed, its 
 phraseology and the handwritings in the various drafts of 
 it which are preserved to us to-day ^ leave little doubt that it 
 was originally devised by the genius of Cromwell. It was in 
 fact the first of a number of measures ostensibly emanating 
 from Parliament, but in reality prepared by the King's minister 
 and forced by him upon the very tractable Lords and 
 Commons. The purport of the supplication was, in brief, 
 to accuse the clergy of making laws and ordinances without 
 the assent of the King or his lay subjects, of demanding 
 excessive fees, of dealing corruptly and unfairly, especially 
 with cases of heresy, and to request the King to take 
 measures for the remedy of these abuses. The Ordinaries, 
 to whom the petition was delivered from the King on 
 April 13, at once composed a temperate and dignified reply, 
 in which the injustice and unreasonableness of the charges 
 preferred against them were courteously but plainly pointed 
 out ^. Parliament in the meantime had been prorogued for 
 three months, but as soon as it had reassembled it was forced 
 to take up the cudgels again*. The clergy had stated their 
 case so well that Henry, in dread lest the faint-hearted 
 Commons should abandon too soon a quarrel into which his 
 minister had led them, thought it advisable to intervene 
 himself in the dispute. A short interview between the King 
 and the Speaker was enough to reanimate the drooping 
 spirits of the House : Henry was even spared the trouble 
 
 ^ Hall, p. 784. ' Wilkins, vol. iii. pp. 748, 750. 
 
 " See Appendix at the end of this * Hall, p. 788 ; Cal. v. 989. 
 
 chapter, p. 104. 
 
IN THE KING'S SERVICE 97 
 
 of a frank avowal of his attitude in words — a gracious promise 
 to be ' indifferent ' between the disputants was quite sufficient 
 to ensure the continuance of the struggle. The Ordinaries 
 were not slow to discover that their first reply had been 
 totally ineffectual, and hastened to compose a second which, 
 though maintaining in general the position which had 
 originally been assumed, contained a concession that no new 
 laws should be published without the royal consent ^. A good 
 deal more haggling, however, was necessary before the final 
 compromise was reached ^. In fact matters moved so slowly 
 that the King was obliged to make (or let Cromwell make 
 for him) another of his suspiciously timely discoveries to the 
 effect that his sovereign rights as Supreme Head were not 
 clear, because every bishop at his consecration had made an 
 oath of allegiance to the Pope. The Commons were asked 
 to rectify this, and were about to pass severe censure on the 
 bishops, when they were prorogued once more on account of 
 the ragings of the plague. Before he let them go, however, the 
 King had probably ascertained that the clergy intended to sub- 
 mit. Threatened on all sides, Convocation on the i6th of May 
 finally agreed not to pass any more new regulations without 
 the King's licence, and to examine and revise, according 
 to the royal wishes, the canons already made^. The most 
 important result of the controversy for us to notice is that- 
 the King, acting (as he evidently did) on the advice of 
 Cromwell, had succeeded in reducing Convocation to complete 
 subjugation, and in making Parliament pliant to his will, as it 
 had never been before. The scheme of controlling the clergy 
 is doubly significant, first, as the cause of a great change in 
 itself; second, as the first step of the dominant policy of 
 the next ten years, for establishing the Royal Supremacy 
 in Church and State. It must not be forgotten however 
 that Cromwell's action, in defiance of Papal authority at this 
 juncture, arose from no hate of the Romish dogmas nor from 
 any love of the new religion. He carried out all his schemes 
 solely from political motives ; the religious, the emotional side 
 
 ^ Cal. V. 1018. ^ Cf. Dixon, vol. i. pp. 74-iii- 
 
 ' Cal. V. 1023. 
 
 MERHIMAN. I H 
 
98 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 left him absolutely untouched ; the practical, the politically 
 serviceable aspect of the case, alone appealed to him. 
 
 Popular as Henry doubtless was, Cromwell must have 
 realized, when he thus threw himself heart and soul on the 
 King's side in the divorce case, that he had staked everything 
 on the continuance of the royal favour. The best of the 
 clergy were strongly against the cause of Anne Boleyn, and 
 there were but few who disagreed with them. The general 
 sympathy of the nation for Katherinc was greater than 
 ever. Chapuys tells us that Henry was urged by the crowd 
 in the streets to take back the Queen, and that Anne 
 Boleyn was not infrequently publicly insulted ^. The mob, 
 and still more the friars, spoke of her openly as a common 
 prostitute, who 'ruled the King and beggared spiritualty 
 and temporalty also.' A letter of the imperial ambassador 
 tells us that the provincial of the Friars Observants at 
 Greenwich (better known as Friar Peto) preached before 
 the King, and told him that 'the unbounded affection of 
 princes and their false counsellors deprived them of their 
 knowledge of the truth, and that Henry was endangering his 
 crown by his marriage, for great and little were murmuring 
 at it.' The King concealed his vexation as best he could, 
 but later ordered one of his chaplains to preach there in his 
 presence, and contradict all that Peto had said. At the end 
 of this sermon the warden arose, and answering for his 
 minister in his absence, dared to say in Henry's presence 
 that the royal chaplain had lied. The King was very angry 
 and had the warden and preacher both arrested ^. Most of 
 the Greenwich friars were eager to stand by their brethren, 
 but some proved less incorruptible, and gave secret information 
 against the steadfast ones. 
 
 The result of all these murmurings among commons and 
 friars was that Cromwell was kept very busy in finding out 
 and extirpating ' sedycyous opynyons ' as they were termed. 
 In order to clinch the advantages that were to accrue to 
 Henry as a result of his newly-assumed ecclesiastical position, 
 it was as necessary to discover and either destroy or convert 
 
 ' Cal. V. 1202. 2 Qaj V. 941. 
 
IN THE KING'S SERVICE 99 
 
 the laymen opposed to it, as it was to keep in submission the 
 clergy from whose hands it had been snatched. Henry 
 could have probably found no abler man in the realm to 
 accomplish this purpose than his new minister. Early in 
 153a Cromwell began to create a system of espionage, the 
 most effective that England had ever seen, that in a short 
 time was to render unsafe the most guarded expression of 
 dissent in politics or religion. The success which this 
 organized method of reporting treason later obtained, is one 
 of the most striking proofs of the relentless energy of its 
 originator. But Cromwell's efforts to extirpate sedition, and 
 to encourage the new ecclesiastical system, were not confined 
 to England alone during these first years of his ministry. 
 The years 1531 and 153a must not be passed over with- 
 out some slight reference to his connexion with William 
 Tyndale. There was no counsellor about the King, upon 
 whom Cromwell could rely as an intelligent and consistent 
 ally, to help him carry out his schemes of 'political Pro- 
 testantism.' In this dilemma he turned to William Tyndale, 
 who was at that time in the Low Countries. The theory 
 of ' one King, one law in the realm ; no class of men exempt 
 from the temporal sword, no law except the law of the land ' 
 advocated in ' The Obedience of a Christian Man,' doubtless 
 struck Cromwell, if he read the book. It was perhaps the 
 nearest approach he had yet found in writing to the policy he 
 was steadily pursuing; he immediately desired to induce the 
 reformer to return to England and to enlist him in the defence 
 of his great cause. The fact that Cromwell was able to 
 persuade the King to permit him to attempt this is a good 
 proof of his influence with Henry. In May, 1530, Tyndale 
 had been denounced as a perverter of God's word ^ ; but so 
 great was the change which the new minister's accession to 
 power had wrought in the royal policy, that Henry now 
 allowed Cromwell to write to his old friend Stephen Vaughan 
 in the Netherlands ^ and commission him to try and discover 
 where Tyndale was, and induce him to return to England. 
 To this request Vaughan sent a double reply to Henry and 
 
 > Demaus, p. 257. ^ Demaus, p. 274. 
 
 Ha 
 
100 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Cromwell, informing them that he had written to the 
 reformer (three separate letters to different places, not know- 
 ing where he was) and had received his answer, in which 
 Tyndale said that the news of what had lately happened in 
 England made him afraid to go there ^. In a confidential 
 postscript to the letter to Cromwell, Vaughan writes in most 
 glowing terms about the reformer, saying that he was of far 
 greater knowledge than the King's Highness took him for, 
 as plainly appeared by his works. ' Would God he were in 
 England.' As usual Vaughan's enthusiasm had run away 
 with his discretion. He was the exact opposite of Cromwell 
 in this respect ; he was ever full of emotion and feeling, 
 while his master was to the last degree practical and 
 calculating. 
 
 In spite of his first rebuff, Vaughan persevered in his attempts, 
 and on the a5th of March sent Cromwell another letter, in 
 which he expressed a little more hope of getting Tyndale to 
 go to England ^. Three weeks later his efforts received some 
 more substantial reward, for on the 1 8th of April he wrote to 
 Henry 3, that he had at last obtained an interview with the 
 reformer, and that though the latter still refused to comply 
 with his request, his words had been such as to arouse the 
 enthusiasm of Cromwell's agent more than ever. With this 
 letter Vaughan sent to Henry the manuscript of Tyndale's 
 new book against Sir Thomas More, called the Answer, 
 which the reformer did not wish to put in print till Henry 
 had seen it, because the latter had been displeased at the 
 hasty and unlicensed printing of his former work. The Practise 
 of Prelates. The letter and the book were not destined, 
 however, to have the desired effect on the King. The 
 Answer was sufficiently plain to indicate that Tyndale's 
 religious beliefs were not of the sort that would ever be 
 serviceable to Henry; the reformer was altogether too full 
 of Protestantism for its own sake, to suit either the King or 
 
 * Cal.v. 65. Doubtless Vaughan Tyndale's brother John had been 
 
 referred to the steps taken by arrested in London for selling New 
 
 Bishop Stokesley and others to Testaments received from abroad, 
 
 punish those who favoured the new " Cal. v. 153. 
 
 religion. It was at this time that ^ Cal. v. zoi. 
 
IN THE KING'S SERVICE 101 
 
 his counsellor. For once Cromwell had mistaken his man. 
 To say that the King was thoroughly vexed and annoyed, 
 when he had perused Vaughan's letter, and the enclosed 
 work, is a mild statement of the facts. The original letter 
 which Vaughan wrote is not extant, but there is a copy of it 
 in the British Museum which ends most abruptly with the 
 words ' To declare to your Magyste what In my pore Judge- 
 ment I thynke of the man, I ass^rteyne your grace I haue 
 not cowemunyd -with A man ^ ' ; a fact which suggests the 
 possibility that the irritable King vented his anger on the un- 
 offending sheet of paper, and tore it in two. The letter with 
 which Cromwell, at the King's direction, replied to Vaughan, 
 is a still surer index to the impression which the latter's report 
 had produced on the King. What with the precipitation of 
 his emotional, enthusiastic, and unpractical friend, Cromwell 
 must have been placed in a very awkward position. The 
 many corrections and interlineations in the draft of the letter 
 he wrote in reply to Vaughan, sufficiently reveal his great 
 perplexity and bewilderment^. The subject-matter of the 
 letter will speak for itself. The rage of the King is vividly 
 described, and Vaughan is repeatedly warned to abandon the 
 reformer : but in spite of everything he continued to attempt 
 to persuade Tyndale to return. He had two more fruitless 
 interviews with the latter, described in his letters to Henry of 
 the 30th of May, and to Cromwell on the 19th of June^, and 
 after that came back to England for the summer. In 
 November he returned to the Netherlands, and wrote again 
 to Cromwell warmly on Tyndale's behalf, but not a word did 
 he receive in reply*. In the meantime Henry and Cromwell 
 had dispatched Sir Thomas Elyot to arrest the reformer and 
 bring him home ^ Vaughan finally saw the danger he ran in 
 advocating the cause of the author of the 'venemous and 
 pestiferous work^j,' and dared say no more. The rest of his 
 letters during these two years do not even once mention him. 
 The whole Tyndale episode is noteworthy as the nearest 
 
 ' British Museum, Titus B, vol. i. ^ Cal. v. 246, 303. 
 
 p. 67. * Cal. V. 533, 574, 618. 
 
 2 Letters, 21. ° Demaus, p. 307. 
 
102 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 approach to a mistake in Cromwell's internal policy. Henry's 
 anger probably gave him a clear warning that many more 
 such would bring him to certain ruin. He was saved from 
 serious consequences in this case, only because he had amply 
 atoned for it by his brilliant success in obtaining the submission 
 of the clergy. 
 
 Cromwell was also occupied^ during these two years, in 
 re-establishing Wplsey's foundation at Oxford, under the 
 new name of King Henry the Eighth's College. He was 
 appointed receiver-general and supervisor of all the lands 
 belonging to it ; and the adjustment of claims, transfer of 
 property, new foundation and charter kept him very busy, 
 and gave him an excellent opportunity to display his legal 
 talent. He also superintended the building of a new palace 
 at Westminster, regulated the wages of the men working on 
 the fortifications at Calais, and was also busy with minor 
 duties in the King's own household — the care of the royal 
 plate and jewels, and even the drawing of patterns for Henry's 
 robes of stated From the close of the year 1539 until his 
 fall, the best index to the various occupations in which he 
 was engaged is afforded by his famous ' remembrances.' These 
 consist largely of short and usually incomplete sentences, 
 sometimes even single words, jotted down at odd moments 
 by Cromwell or his chief clerk, on loose sheets of paper — 
 often on the backs of letters and drafts of important docu- 
 ments. They are for the most part absolutely disjointed 
 and unconnected in matter, form, and handwriting. Sand- 
 wiched in between apparently careless phrases which later 
 expand into the most drastic of parliamentary enactmentSj 
 we find minute details concerning the wages of labourers, 
 the cost of New Year's presents at the Court, or even matters 
 of a private nature : next to a memorandum for the signing of 
 a letter for some Spaniards occur the significant words, 'To 
 Remembre the Auncyent Cronycle of magna Carta and how 
 libera sit Cam into the Statute ^.' The less important items 
 are of course by far the more numerous, especially in the first 
 
 ' Cal. V. 701, 1548, 1600, 1728; ^ British Museum, Titus B, vol. i. 
 Letters, 36, 39. p. 433. 
 
IN THE KING'S SERVICE 103 
 
 six years when the King loaded his new minister with details 
 of the greatest variety and complexity. Towards the last 
 the 'remembrances' are fewer in number, and deal less 
 extensively with minor matters ; but even up to the veiy end 
 we find ample evidence that the King's minister carried in 
 his head an amount of detail of a comparatively unimportant 
 nature, which would have been quite impossible for a man 
 like his predecessor. The Cardinal, absorbed in studying the 
 great diplomatic combinations of continental Europe, had 
 shamefully neglected minor affairs at home. Cromwell, in 
 his ten years of power, not only atoned for the errors of 
 Wolsey, but also familiarized himself with every detail of 
 domestic administration to an extent that no King or minister 
 had ever done in England before. It would have been 
 almost impossible to carry through the tremendous changes 
 which had followed the divorce, without the aid of a counsellor 
 of the peculiar talents of Thomas Cromwell. 
 
 The thread of our narrative now becomes so complicated, 
 when the new minister is at last fully installed in the King's 
 service, that it will be necessary to depart from the chrono- 
 logical order of events hitherto followed, and to treat separately 
 each phase of Cromwell's policy, up to the reaction of 1539. 
 The Internal and Foreign Administration, Suppression of the 
 Monasteries, of the Pilgrimage of Grace, &c., all move on hand 
 in hand, and in order to understand their bearing on one 
 another, it is only needful to remember that they were all 
 the work of one man, and were proceeding in general at the 
 same time. 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SUPPLICATION OF THE COMMONS AGAINST THE 
 ORDINARIES 
 
 Four drafts of this petition exist to-day in the Public Record 
 Office. One of them is written in a hand which may be recognized in 
 the greater part of Cromwell's correspondence of the time, and which 
 is probably that of his chief clerk ; it is corrected and revised by 
 Cromwell himself. Of the other three, one, which is uncorrected 
 and probably a final draft, is also written by the clerk — and the other 
 two, chiefly in a strange handwriting, are filled with interUneations 
 by Cromwell. The following copy was made from the first of these 
 drafts (Cal. v, 1016 (4)). The words in brackets are crossed out in 
 the original manuscript : the words in italics are inserted between the 
 lines. All the corrections are in Cromwell's hand. 
 
 ' To the King our Sovereigne Lorde 
 
 In most humble Wise Shewen vnto your excellent highnes and 
 most prudent wisedom your faithfuU louyng and most humble and 
 obedient SubiectM The Co»zmons in this your prfsente parliament 
 assembled That where of late aswell thorough new fantasticall and 
 erronyous opynyons growen by occasion of Frantike sedycious and 
 ou«/-thwartly Framed bokes compiled imprynted publisshed and made 
 in the enghshe tong contrarie and ayenst the veray trew catholique 
 and Cristen Faith as also by the {vnreasonable and} extreme {rygour 
 vndiscrete} and vncharytabh behaueour and dealing of dyuers ordy- 
 naries Ther Commyssaryes and Substytutf&s which haue heretofore 
 had and yet have thexamynacion in and vppon the saide errours and 
 hereticall opynyons moche discorde varyaunce and debate hathe 
 rysen and more and more daylie is like to encrease and insue 
 emonges the vniuersall sorte of your saide Subiect« aswell spzWtuall 
 as temporall either ayenst other in most vncharitable maner to the 
 grete inquietacion vexacion and breche of your peax wit/im this your 
 most catholik realme. The speciall perticuler greues whereof which 
 most principally concerne your saide Co?wmons and lay Subiectw and 
 whiche ar (as they vndoubtedlie suppose) the veray chief Founteyns 
 occasions and causes that daylie bredeth Fostereth Norissheth and 
 
BOKE AYENST THE CLERGY 105 
 
 maynteneth the saide sedycions factyons dedelie hatered and most 
 vncharitable parte takings either parte and sorte of your saide 
 Subiectej spirituall and temporall ayenst thother hereafter Folowing- 
 lye Do ensue. 
 
 Furst where the prelat«5 and spmtuall Ordynaries of this your 
 most excellent Realme of Englonde and the clergie of the same 
 haue in their conuocac/ons heretofore made and caused to be made 
 and also daylie do make dyuers and manye Facyons o/'lawes consty- 
 tucibns and ordenawuncw wzt^out your knowlege or most royall 
 assente and wztAout the assent and consent of any your lay Sub- 
 iectM vnto the whiche lawes your saide lay SubiectM haue not onelie 
 heretofore and daylie be {boundene} constraynyd to obbeye aswell in 
 their bodies goodes and possessions But also ben compelled daylie 
 to incurre into the censures of the same and ben contynuallie put 
 to importable charges and expense ayenst all equytee right and good 
 conscience. And yet your saide humble subiectw ne their predeces- 
 sours coulde eu^r be pryuey to the saide lawes Ne any of the saide 
 lawes haue ben declared vnto them in thinglisshe tong or otherwise 
 puMysshed By knowlege whereof they might haue extued the daun- 
 giers censures and penaltees of the same Which lawes so made yo«r 
 saide most humble and obedyent subiectw vnder the supportacion 
 of your Maiestee Suppose to be not onelie to the dymynucyon and 
 derogacion of your imperyall iurisdiction and prerogatif royall But 
 also to the grete preiudice inquietacion and damage of all your 
 saide Subiectw And also where now of late there hathe ben deuysed 
 by the most Reuerende father in god Wyllyam Archebusshop of 
 Caunterburie that in the Court^j whiche he callith his Courtes of the 
 Arches, and Audience shalbe but onelie Ten proctours at his deputa- 
 cion which be sworn to prisferre and promote the onelie iurisdiction 
 {and preferrement} of the saide CourtM. By reason whereof if any 
 of your lay Subiecte.f shoulde haue any lawfull cause ayenst the Judge 
 of the saide Courted or ayenst any doctoar or proctour of the same 
 or any of their Frendw or adherents they can ne may in any wise 
 haue indifferent counsaill. And also all the causes depending in 
 any of the saide courts may by the confederacie of the saide Few 
 proctours be in suche wise tracted and delayed as your Subiect«.f 
 suing in the same shalbe put to importable charges costes and 
 expencw. And in case that any matiers there being p^ferred 
 shoulde touche Your Crowne Regallie Jurisdiction and p/-«rogatif 
 royall yet the same shall not be disclosed by any of the saide proc- 
 Xours for fere of losse of their offices. Wherefore your saide most 
 
106 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 obedient SubiectM vnder the protexion of your maiestee Suppose 
 that your highnes should haue the nomynacion of som conuenyent 
 nombre of proctours to be alwayes attendaunt in the saide courtM 
 of tharches and audience there to be sworne aswell to the preferre- 
 ment of your iurisdiction and prerogatif royall as to thexpedyczbn 
 of all the causes of your Lay Subiectes repayring and suing to the 
 same. 
 
 And Where also many of your saide most humble and obedient 
 subiectw and specyallie those that be of the pourest sorte w/t^in 
 this your Realme ben daylie conuented and called before the saide 
 spzWtuall Ordynaries their Commissaries and Substytut« ex officio 
 somtyme at the pleasures of the saide Ordynaries and Substytut« 
 for malice wzt.^out any cause and sumtyme at the onelie pr^mocyon 
 and accusement of their {false} Somoners and apparitours being 
 veray light and vndiscrete persons wzWout any lawfull cause of 
 accusacion or credible fame proued ayenst them and viiikoui any 
 presentement in the vysitacion ben inquieted distourhtd vexed 
 troubeled and put to excessiue and importable charges for them to 
 bere and many tymes be suspended and excowmunycate for small 
 and light causes vppon thonelie certificat of the proctours of the 
 adu^^aries made vnder a fayned Seale which enery ^xoctour hathe 
 in his keping where as the partie suspended and excow^munycate 
 many tymes ntner had any warning and yet when he shalbe absolued 
 if it be out of the courte he shalbe compelled to pay to his owne 
 proctoz.!;- xxd and to the proctoz^r which is ayenst him other xxd 
 and xxd to the Scribe besidw a pryuey rewarde that the Judge 
 shall haue to the grete impouerysshing of your saide poure Lay 
 SubiectM. 
 
 Also Your saide most humble and obedient subiect« Fynde them 
 greued viith the grete and excessyue Fees taken in the said spz^'tuall 
 courtM and in especiall in the saide CourtM of tharches and audience 
 where they take for euery Cytacyon ji' vi"^ for tnery Inhibycyon 
 vjs viijd, for euerie proxie -xw]^ for euery certificat ii.v]\ for euery Libell 
 iij'. iiijd., for euery answer to any Lybell iij^ iiijd, for euery acte if it 
 be but two woordej to the Register iiijd, for euery personal! Cytacion 
 or decree iij^ iiijd. for euery sentence or iudgement to the Judge 
 xxvis. viijii, for euery testi»2onyall vppon any suche sentence or iudge- 
 ment xxvj'. viii'i for eue^y significauit xij^. for euery co»2myssion to 
 examyn wytnes xijs Which is thought to be importable to be borne 
 by your saide Subiectes and veray necessarie to be refo^rmed. 
 
 And Furthermore AMiere the saide spyrytuall Ordynaries {many 
 
BOKE AYENST THE CLERGY 107 
 
 tymes purposedlie to revenge their inwarde greves and displeasures 
 and to put their saide lawes in execucion} theyr Coxsxmyssaryes &" 
 Substyiuttes sumtyme/»r thayr own pleasures Suratyme by the Synister 
 procurement of other spmtuall persons vse to make out proces 
 ayenst dyu«rs of your saide Subiectw and thereby compell them to 
 appere before themselflfej- to answer at a certen day and place to 
 suche articles as by them shalbe of office afore themselff« then 
 purposed and that Secretlye and not in oppen places and fourthw/t/i 
 vppon their apparaunce wz't/^out cause or any declaracion then 
 made or shewed coi^mytt and sende them to warde Where they 
 remayne w/t/zout bayle or mayneprise sumtyme half a yere and 
 somtyme a hole yere and more or they may in any wise knowe 
 either the cause of their imprysonement or any name of their accuser 
 and fynallie their grete cost« charges and expencw therin when all 
 is examyned and nothing can be proued ayenst them but they 
 clerelie Innocente for any Faute or cryme that can be layed vnto 
 them in that parte ben set ayen at large wzt,^out any recompence or 
 amende^ in that behalf to be towards them adiudged. 
 
 And also if percase vppon the saide proces and apparaunce any 
 partie be vppon the saide matier cause or examynacion brought 
 Fourth and named either as partie or wytnes and then vppon the 
 proffe and tryall thereof not able to prove and verefie his saide 
 accusacion or testymonye ayenst the pKz^tie so accused to be trew 
 then the person so causeles accused is jclerely) for the more paxte 
 viithoTit any remedie for his charges and wrongful vexacyon to be 
 { in that parte} towards him adiuged and recouered. 
 
 Also vppon thexamynacion of the saide accusacion if heresie be 
 ordynarylie layed- vnto the charge of the partie so accused then the 
 saide ordynaries or their ministres vse to put to them suche subtile 
 interrogatories concerning the high misteries of our feith as ar able 
 quyckelye to trappe a simple vnlerned or yet a well wytted lay man 
 •Kithont lerning and bryng them by suche sinyster introduction sone 
 to his owne confusion And Yomihmth if there chaunce any heresie 
 to be by suche subtill polycie by him confessed in ifiourdes and yet 
 n&ier cowimytted nor thought in dede, then put they w2t/zout ferther 
 fauour the saide person either to make his purgacion and so thereby 
 to lose his honestie and credence for tuer orellw as som simple sely 
 Sowle precyselie stonding to the clere testymonye of his owne well 
 knowen conscience rather then to confesse his innocent trouth to 
 abyde {thextreme examynacion of deth by the Fyer} thextremyte in 
 that behalf a.n6. so is vtterly distroyed. 
 
108 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 And if it fortune the saide partie so accused to denye the saide 
 accusacion and so put his aduersarie to proue the {false} same 
 vntrewlie forged and ymagened ayenst him then for the more parte 
 suche wytnesses as ben brought fourth for the same be they but 
 ij in nombre neuer so sore diffamed of litle trouth or credence 
 aduersaries or enemies to the partie yet they shalbe allowed and 
 enabeled onfye by Discrecyon of the sayd ordenaryes ther Commyssaryes 
 &■' Substytiittes and therevppon sufficient cause to procede to iudge- 
 ment to delyu^r the par\At. so accused either to the seculer hand« 
 {and so to be burned} after abiuracion w/t^out reroedie and afore 
 if he Submytte himself to compell him when best happeneth to make 
 his purgacion and bere a Fagotte to his extreme shame and vtter 
 vndoing. 
 
 In Consideracyon whereof most gracious Souereigne Lorde And 
 Forasmoche as there is at this present tyme and by a Few yeres past 
 bathe ben outrageous vyolens on thone parte and moche defaulte 
 and lacke of pacyent sufferaunce charitee and good will on thother 
 porte, A meruelous Disorder of the godlie quyet peax and tran- 
 quillyte that this your realme heretofore euer hitherto hathe ben 
 in thorough your poletique wisedom in most honoz/i^able fame and 
 catholik feith invyolablye pr«serued. It may therefore most benigne 
 Souereigne lorde lyke your excellent goodnes for the tender and 
 vnyuersallye indyfferent zele benigne loue and fauour that your 
 highnes berith towarde both the saide parties, the saide articles if 
 they shalbe by your most clere and perfite iudgement thought any 
 instruments^ or causes of the saide variaunce and disorder or those 
 and all other occasions whatsoeuer accompted by your highnes to 
 make towards the saide factions depelie and weightylie after your 
 accustomed weyes and ma.ner serched weyed and considered gra- 
 ciouslie to prouyde all vyolence on both sides vtterlye and clerelie 
 set a parte some suche necessarie and behofuU remedies as may 
 effectuallie reconsile and bryng in perpetuall vnytee your saide 
 SubiectM sp/ntuall and temporall. And for thestablisshing thereof 
 to make and ordeyn on both sides suche straite lawes ayenst the 
 brekers transgressours and offendours as shalbe to hevye daungerous 
 and weightie for them or any of them to bere suffer and susteyne. 
 Whereunto Your saide Comons most humblie hertelie and entierlie 
 beseche your grace as the onely hed Souereigne lorde protectour and 
 Defendour of bothe the saide parties in whom and by whom the 
 onelie and sole redresse reformacion and remedie herein absolutely 
 restith and remayneth. By occasion whereof all your saide Comons 
 
BOKE AYENST THE CLERGY 109 
 
 in their conscience surelye accompt that beside the meruelous 
 Feruent loue that yo«;f highnes shall thereby (gain) and engendre in 
 their hartes toward«j Your grace Ye shall do the most pryncelie Feate 
 and shew the most honourable and charitable president and Mirrour 
 that ever did Souereigne lorde vppon his subiectw and therew/t/^all 
 merite and deserue of our mercyfull lorde eternall blisse Whose 
 goodnes graunt your grace in most godlie pryncelie and honourable 
 astate long to reigne prosper and contynew as the Souereigne lorde 
 ouer all your saide most humble and most obedyent Subiect^^. 
 
 [^Two blank pages herej\ ' 
 
 And Where also the said prelatis and ordinaries daily do p^nnytte 
 and suffer the parsons vicars Curates panshe prestw and other 
 spzWtuall parsons hauing Cure of soule wzt/^in this your Realme 
 Ministring {vntoyoz^;^ said loving subgiettw} to exact and take ofyoux 
 humble &= obedyent Subiectts dyuers Stmxmys of money for the Sacra- 
 mentM & sacramentallw of holy churche { as the holy sacrament of 
 the Aulter Baptyme, Matrimonye Confession, buriall weddyng 
 churchingw and suche other} Sumtyme denying the same without 
 they Fyrst be payd tlie sayd Summys of money {dr» to take for the 
 ministracion of the same of -your said Subiecte^ diuers and certen 
 soiwmes of money allegging the same to be their dueties. \ Whiche 
 sacrament^j and sacramentallw ■your saide most humble & obedient 
 subiectes vnder the protection of your highnes doo suppose & think 
 ought to be in most Reuerent charitable & goodlie wise freely 
 mynystred vnto them at all tymes requisite w/t/^oute denyall or {any 
 maner sowme or} exaccyon of any maner sowmes of money {or other 
 duetie or contribucion to be asked demaunded or required for the 
 same } to be demaundyd or askyd for the same And also where in the 
 spmtuall courts of the said Prelatis & ordinaries ben lymyted and 
 appoynted for many Judges Scribes Apparitoz^rs Som(?«ers praysours 
 and other ministres for the approbacion of testaments Whiche 
 coveting somoche theire owne priuate Lucres and satisfaccion of the 
 appetites of the said prelate and Ordinaries that when any of your 
 said loving subiects do Repaire to any of the said Courtis for the 
 probate of any testamentes -they do in suche wise {extorte and} 
 make long delays or excessively take of theym so large fees and 
 Rewards for the same as is Importible for theym to beare directly 
 against all Justice lawe equite and goode conscience 
 
 {And also where most gracious soueraigne the Judges Constituted 
 and appoynted by the said spmtuall Ordinaries in their said Courts 
 
110 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 to here and determyne causes there, do in likewise daily take many 
 grate and excessive fees and rewardes of your said pore subiectw 
 having any cause or matier depending before theym as is aforsaid 
 And ouer that when any Judgement or sentence by the said Judge 
 shalbe yeven before them wille also have grete so»«mes of money 
 for the same. So that no thing is or can be obteyned in any of the 
 said Courts vritAoute money. } 
 
 Wherfor Your said most humble and obedient subiectw do 
 therfore vnder yoz^r gracious correction and supportacion suppose 
 it were veray necessary that the said ordinaries in the deputacion of 
 suche Judges shulde be bounde to appoynte and assigne suche 
 discrete gravous and honest persons having sufficient Lernyng witte 
 discrecion & vnderstonding and also being indewed wM such 
 sp/ntuall promocions stipend and salarye as they being Judges in 
 their said CourtM myght and may mynystre to eu«;^ parson repairing 
 to the same Justice w/t/^oute taking any ma.ner fee or Rewarde for 
 any maner sentence or Judgement to be yoven before theym. 
 And also where as diu«rse spzWtuall p^«ons being presented aswell 
 by your highnes and by other patrons ■wt'tkin this your Realme to 
 {any} dyuers benefices or other spzWtuall promocion. The said 
 ordinaries and there mynystres do not onely take of theym for theyr 
 'LeUeres of Institucion and Induction many grete and -{excessive} 
 large sowmes of money & Rewards But also do pact and coue- 
 naunte with the same, taking sure bondw for their indempnite to 
 aunswer to the said ordinaries the first frutes of the said benefices 
 after their Institucion so as they being ones presented or promoted 
 as is aforesaid ben by the said ordinaries veray { extremely} vncharyt- 
 ablye handled to their no litle hynderaunce & impouerisshement 
 whiche your said subgiettM suppose not onely to be against all lawes 
 right & good consciens but also to be Symony and contrary to the 
 Lawes of god. 
 
 And also where as the said spmtuall Ordinaries do daily conferre 
 and geve sundry benefices vnto certen yong folkes calling them their 
 Nephews or Kynsfolkes being in their mynorite and withm age not 
 apt ne able to S^rue the Cure of any suche benefice Wherby the said 
 ordinaries do kepe and deteyii the frutes & pwfittes of the same 
 benefices in their owne handes and therby accumulate to themselff« 
 right grete and large so/«mes of money & yerely pwfittM to the most 
 pernicious exsample of all your said lay subiectM and so the Cures 
 & other promocions youen vnto suche Infantw ben onely {youen 
 but} ImployedX.0 {enriche} thenryching of iht said ordinaries & the 
 
BOKE AYENST THE CLERGY 111 
 
 pore sely soules of your people and subiectM whiche shulde be 
 taught in the paroches yoven as aforsaid for lak of good curates do 
 perisshe w/t/4oute doctrine or any good teaching. 
 
 And also where a grete nombre of holy daies whiche nowe at 
 this present tyme yiith veray smalle Devocion be solempnised and 
 kept thorough oute this your Realme vppon the whiche many grete 
 abhomynable and execrable vices idle and wanton sportes ben vsed 
 and exercised whiche holy daies if it may stond viitk your gracious 
 pleasure and specyall suche as Fall in the heruest myght by your 
 maiestie by thadvice of your most honourable counseill prelates and 
 ordinaries be made fewer in nombre and those that shall herafter 
 be ordeyned to stond & contynue myght and may be the more 
 Devoutely religiously & reu«rently obse^ued to the Laude of 
 almyghty god and to thencrease of your high honoK^ & fame.' 
 
 Endd. ' A boke ayenst the clergy for takyng excessyve Fees ' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 INTERNAL POLICY 
 
 From the close of the year 153a until his fall, the entire 
 domestic administration of England was in Cromwell's hands. 
 From the moment that he entered the King's service he had 
 definitely committed himself to the policy which he was to 
 follow till the end of his days. His own theoi'ies of internal 
 government, the traditions of the Tudor monarchy, and the 
 situation of the realm at the time of his accession to power, 
 combined to convince him that the maintenance of an all- 
 powerful kingship was indispensable to England's safety ; the 
 nature of the proposal by which he first won Henry's con- 
 fidence was tantamount to an irrevocable declaration of that 
 principle, and a promise that it should be the guiding thought 
 of his entire administration. The revolt from Rome was an 
 incident rather than an aim of his policy. He had suggested 
 it at first as offering the only possible solution of the immediate 
 difficulties of the Crown, and as affording golden opportuni- 
 ties for the increase of the power of the monarchy ; but as 
 soon as the decisive step had been taken, he saw that the 
 security of his own position had become conditional upon 
 the permanence of the new ecclesiastical system, which in 
 turn could only be ensured if the King, for whose sake it 
 had been created, was rendered supreme in Church and 
 State. Cromwell's very existence had thus become dependent 
 on the success of his endeavours to maintain and carry 
 further the policy initiated by Henry VH, and to elevate 
 the Crown to sovereign power above every other institution 
 in the realm. Perhaps no minister has ever had more varied 
 problems to confront him, than those which Cromwell had to 
 deal with during these eight years ; and yet his action in 
 every case is a logical, intelligent application of the theory 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 113 
 
 of internal government, which he believed was the only sure 
 road to national greatness. With this great principle firmly- 
 borne in mind, the history of Cromwell's domestic adminis- 
 tration becomes comparatively simple. 
 
 A further assertion of the Supremacy of the Crown in 
 ecclesiastical affairs was necessary, before Cromwell could 
 attempt to strengthen its already predominant position in 
 the State. The chief object of the more important measures 
 of the years 1533 ^^^ ^534 was to utilize the consequences 
 of the breach with Rome for the benefit of the monarchy, 
 and to provide that none of the power of which the Pope 
 had been deprived should be permitted to escape the King. 
 During the year 1533 Henry had deluded himself with hopes 
 that his first attack on the liberties of the English clergy 
 might frighten Clement into acquiescence in the divorce, but 
 at last his patience came to an end, and he surrendered 
 himself entirely to the guidance of Cromwell, who had been 
 persuaded from the first that nothing further was to be 
 obtained from the Pope. In January, 1533, the King was 
 secretly married to Anne Boleyn ; on the 10th of May 
 Cranmer, who had lately been raised to the see of Canterbury, 
 opened his archiepiscopal court at Dunstable ^. With a 
 promptitude which must have been highly satisfactory to 
 Henry after the delays of the previous proceedings at Rome, 
 the sentence of divorce was pronounced. There can be little 
 doubt that Cromwell gave efficient aid in hastening the 
 verdict ^ ; but what is far more important, he took effective 
 measures, even before it was rendered, to prevent its revo- 
 cation. Parliament had been in session during the three 
 months previous to the assembling of the court at Dunstable : 
 in- anticipation of the coming sentence, it had been induced 
 to pass an Act ^ to deprive Katherine of the only hope that 
 remained to her by forbidding appeals to Rome, and by 
 ordaining that the decision of an archiepiscopal court should 
 be final, except in cases where the King was concerned, when 
 appeal might be made to the Upper House of Convocation. 
 
 » Cal. vi. 180, 461. '^ Cal. vi.461, 469, 496, 525, 526, 527. 
 
 ' ' 24 Hen. VI 1 1, c. 12. 
 
 MERIUMAN. 
 
114 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 A notable effort was made to conceal the obvious and imme- 
 diate purpose of this statute under a shroud of pious and 
 patriotic verbiage. The life of the Act, however, was but 
 short. Though it had dealt the death blow to the juris- 
 diction of the Pope in England, it had not made adequate 
 provision for the maintenance of the Supremacy of the Crown ; 
 so in 1534 the statute of the previous year was superseded by 
 a new one ^, which enacted that an appeal might always be 
 made from an archbishop's court to the King's Court of 
 Chancery, the decision of which was to be final. The abo- 
 lition of the Annates (which will be considered in another 
 place) occurred at the same time. The effect of these two 
 measures was to complete the work begun in 15.30, and to 
 sever the last links of the chain which bound the Church of 
 England to Rome. 
 
 In the meantime the famous Act of Succession ^ bastardiz- 
 ing the Princess Mary and establishing the offspring of Anne 
 Boleyn as lawful heirs to the throne of England, had also been 
 passed in Parliament, and before the year had closed a new 
 statute^ had formally recognized the King's ecclesiastical 
 supremacy for the third time ; for Henry was not satisfied 
 with the acknowledgements he had wrung from the clergy in 
 1531 and 1532, nor with the express assertion that the King 
 was on earth Supreme Head of the Church of England, 
 contained in the oath to the new succession, which Cromwell's 
 commissioners began to administer throughout the realm in 
 the summer of 1534. The last vestige of the independence 
 of the English bishops was also removed, in the course of this 
 memorable year, by certain provisions of the final Act for the 
 restraint of Annates *. It had not been necessary, however, to 
 
 ■^ 25 Hen. VIII, c. 19. received in her place, and that he 
 
 ^ 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22. Mendez was sure that they aU loved His 
 
 Silva, pp. 14 and 15, asserts that Majesty so much that they would 
 
 Cromwell was responsible for the not refuse to do his will. Clergy, 
 
 passage of this statute. The King's Lords, and Commons, ' al peligro 
 
 minister appeared in Convocation de la conciencia . . . se reduxeron 
 
 and Parliament, and made a speech facilmente.' 
 
 in which he said that his master " 26 Hen. VIII, c. i. 
 
 desired that Mary be excluded * 25 Hen. VIII, c. 20. 
 from the succession and Elizabeth 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 115 
 
 introduce any very radical innovation here. The bishops 
 were already virtually in the King's hands, for the elections by 
 chapters had long been a mere farce, and the royal nominee 
 had been almost invariably chosen. So the Act had aimed at 
 a legalization of the status quo — merely adding a few new 
 provisions to strengthen the King's hold on the Church. All 
 relations with the Pope were of course to cease ; the bishops 
 were to be consecrated by virtue of a royal commission ; and 
 if the chapter failed to elect within twelve days, the King 
 was empowered to fill the vacancy by letters patent. But 
 even this does not seem to have been enough to satisfy 
 Cromwell. A letter of Chapuys in the early part of 1535 
 informs us that the King's Secretary called some of the 
 bishops before the Council to ask them if the King could 
 not make and unmake them at pleasure : ' they were obliged 
 to say yes, else they should have been deprived of their 
 dignities : as the said Cromwell told a person, who reported 
 it to me, and said that the Council had been summoned only 
 to entrap the bishops ^.' Cromwell followed this up, later in 
 the year, by causing a Prohibitory Letter to be sent out in 
 the King's name, forbidding the bishops to visit any monastery 
 or to exercise any right of jurisdiction during the visitation of 
 the religious houses then in progress ^. It appears that even 
 Cromwell, with all his audacity, was at a loss to devise a 
 means to silence the objections which were raised against this 
 high-handed measure. He was not ashamed to take a hint 
 from the fertile brains of his two blood-hounds, Legh and 
 Ap-Rice, who suggested an ingenious argument to crush all 
 opposition, the gist of which is contained in the following 
 quotation from a letter which they wrote to Cromwell, 
 
 Sept. 24, 1535 ' :— 
 
 'Yf they (the bishops) had any Jurisdiction, they muste 
 ned^j haue receued (it) either by the lawe of god or by the 
 busshop of Romes Authoritie or els by the King^j grace 
 permission. Which is no sufficient discharge ageinst the 
 statute. 
 
 ' Cal. viii. 121. 254; and Strype, Ecclesiastical 
 
 ^ Cal. ix. 517. Memorials, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 2 16. 
 
 ' British Museum, Cleop. E. vi. 
 
 I 3 
 
116 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 ' Yf they saye by the Lawe of god, Lett theym bring foorth 
 scr«ptur but I thinke theym not so impudent as to saye so. 
 
 ' Yf they saye by the busshop of Romes Authoritie. Lett 
 theym exercise it still, yf they thinke it mete. 
 
 ' Yf they saye by the Kinges permission why be they more 
 discontent that the king shuld call agein nowe to his hand^'j 
 that which came from hym to theym, than they wolde haue 
 ben^ yf he had never graunted it theym. And surely they 
 are not able to iustifie thexercise of their iurisdiction hetherto.' 
 Fortified by such reasoning as this did the Royal Supremacy 
 pass into effect. 
 
 Having thus obtained the complete submission of the 
 greater lights of the Church, Cromwell consistently pursued 
 his relentless policy with the humbler orders of friars and 
 monks. His method of dealing with the latter did not differ 
 materially from his policy with the former, except that it was 
 perhaps more sanguinary. Priors Lawrence and Webster, 
 two Carthusians who denied the validity of the King's new 
 title, were examined by Cromwell, and when they stubbornly 
 refused to retract their assertions, they were promptly sen- 
 tenced and executed \ Three others, Houghton, Hale, and 
 Reynolds, suffered death a little later, and the latter dared to 
 tell Cromwell that in spite of the terror he had caused by his 
 late proceedings, all good men in the kingdom really held the 
 same opinion, that the Headship of the Church was not the 
 King's^. But notwithstanding the wide popular dissatisfac- 
 tion at the new measures, most malcontents, both lay and 
 spiritual, kept their thoughts to themselves. Men were be- 
 ginning to discover how dangerous it was to criticize the 
 doings of the King and his minister. The elaborate system of 
 espionage and the commissions to seek out and punish treason, 
 which Cromwell had so laboriously established all over the 
 country in 1532, had now begun to bear fruit. It was impos- 
 sible to tell who the government spies were : impossible to 
 know when or against whom the next accusation would be 
 made. The words which men spoke in the bosom of their 
 families or to their most intimate friends and neighbours were 
 
 ' Cal. viii. 565, 895. ^ Cal. viii. 609, 661. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 117 
 
 as likely to be laid to their charge as their utterances in 
 public: harmless, obscure and ignorant country folk were 
 brought before the magistrates as often as those of higher 
 degree. Edmond Brocke, husbandman, eighty years of age, 
 of Crowle in Worcestershire, was walking home in the rain 
 froni Worcester market on the Saturday before St. Thomas' 
 Day, in company with Margaret Higons. ' Yt ys long of the 
 Kyng that this wedre is so troblous or vnstable,' he said, ' and 
 I wene we shall nevir haue better wedre whillis the Kinge 
 Reigneth, and therefore it makith no matter if he were 
 knocked or patted on the heed ^.' These facts were declared 
 on August 12, 1535, before John Russell Esq., Justice of the 
 Peace, by Richard Fulke, husbandman, and Joan Danyell of 
 Crowle. Brocke confessed that he had said ' that 'it was 
 a hevy and grevous wether and that there was neuyr good 
 wedring^j sithins the King began this busines,' but what he 
 me'ant by ' busines ' he could not tell : as to the rest of his 
 words, he said, he was mad or drunk if he spoke them — more 
 than this he would not answer. William Ferrall, of East- 
 bourne in Sussex, deposed before Sir John Gage on August 14, 
 1536, that Sir William Hoo, vicar of Eastbourne, and suffragan 
 of the diocese of Chichester, walking with him in the church- 
 yard, said that 'they that rule about the King make him 
 great bankett^j and geve him swete wynes and make him 
 d'ronke,' and that then ' they bring him byllis and he puttyth 
 his sign to them whereby they doo what they will and no 
 man may Correcte them ^.' Margaret Chanseler, of Senklers' 
 Bradfeld in Suffolk, spinster, was forced to confess before 
 Sir Robert Drury in February, 1535, that, when drunk and 
 under the influence of an evil spirit, she had said, in pre- 
 sence of Edmond Tyllet and Anthony Harward, 'that the 
 queues grace had on^ child by our sou^reigne lorde the 
 Kynge, which the seid (child) was ded borne, & she played 
 god that she myght neuer haue other ; also that the quen^s 
 grace was a noughtty hoore & that the Kynges grace ought 
 not to mary within his realme.' Tyllet and Harward, when 
 summoned, made the matter somewhat worse; They declared 
 
 1 Cal. ix. 74. , ^ Cal. xi. 300 (z). 
 
118 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 that the spinster had called the Queen ' a goggyll yed hoore,' 
 and that she had added 'God save queen Katteryn for 
 she was ryghtuous queen, & that she trusted to see her 
 queen Ageyn & that she should warrant the same^.' All 
 the magistrates before whom these depositions were laid, 
 received ample instructions from Cromwell how to deal with 
 every case ; if the accusation was very heavy, the offender was 
 usually sent up to the minister himself, to answer for his 
 misdeeds at head quarters. The punishments in these cases 
 were very severe : there are almost no records of the penalties 
 inflicted on those against whom the depositions were brought, 
 but there is reason to believe that comparatively slight mis- 
 demeanours were not seldom rewarded with death. 
 
 But of all the devices ' For the putting the Kyng^j subiect^J 
 and other in more terroure,' as Cromwell once expressed it ^, 
 the most ruthless remains to be mentioned. The execution 
 of the Carthusians had had its effect, but Cromwell was jJer- 
 suaded that more blood would have to be spilled before his 
 victory could be considered complete. As was usual with 
 him, he laid the axe at the root of the tree, and chose as his 
 victims the noblest and foremost in the land. The opinions 
 of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were well known to 
 be opposed to the Royal Supremacy, and as such they carried 
 enormous weight. Cromwell must have seen that it would 
 be impossible to establish the King in his new position with 
 any security, until these two men were either converted or 
 destroyed. So, never once swerving from his purpose, nor 
 letting the rank and position of these distinguished men 
 change or deter him, he set about the business of ' making 
 or marring,' with his usual directness and method. If he 
 knew More and Fisher at all well, he must have been reason- 
 ably certain that he could never alter their convictions, so it 
 became necessary for him to look for some adequate pretext 
 for getting rid of them. Such a pretext soon presented 
 itself 
 
 In July, 1533, occurs the first mention of serious disturbance 
 due to the visions and prophecies of Elizabeth Barton, better 
 
 ' Cal. viii. 196. 2 Letters, 107. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 119 
 
 known as the Nun of Kent^ Her reputation for holiness 
 and for divine inspiration was so high throughout the land, 
 that her mad follies were everywhere regarded with almost 
 superstitious reverence. Cromwell, at the King's command, 
 caused her to be examined by Cranmer, but apparently did 
 not succeed in eliciting the information he desired, for the in- 
 vestigation was continued by other interrogators who were 
 less leniently disposed than the Archbishop ^. The Nun was 
 finally obliged to confess that ' she nev^r Hadd Vision in all 
 her Lyff, but all that ever she said was fayned of her 
 owne ymagynacz'on, only to satisfie the Myndeis of theym 
 Whiche Resorted vnto her, and to obtayn worldly prayse ^.' 
 She and her accomplices were forced to read their public 
 confessions on a scaffold erected at Paul's Cross, while 
 a sermon was preached in denunciation of the fraud. In the 
 following spring she was condemned to death in Parliament, 
 and in April she was executed with some of her accomplices 
 at Tyburn *. 
 
 But the destruction of the Nun was only of secondary 
 importance for Cromwell's plans ; he was mainly looking for 
 some mesh in which he could entrap others of whom he was 
 in much more fear than Elizabeth Barton. Every effort 
 appears to have been made to elicit from her a confession of 
 communication with the divorced Queen, but without success. 
 More and Fisher, however, were not destined to escape so 
 easily. Because the Bishop of Rochester, after several inter- 
 views with the unhappy woman, had not reported to Henry 
 her disloyal prophecies (which the Nun had already made in 
 presence of the King himself), it was taken as a sign of 
 treason and neglect of duty to the sovereign. The long letter 
 which Cromwell wrote to Fisher in February, 1534, gives 
 a detailed account of the numerous and unfounded charges 
 against him ^. This letter, impresses the reader as having 
 been written pro forma only. Cromwell must have realized 
 that he could never hope to overcome two men who were so 
 
 ' Cal. vi. 835. ^ Letters, 52 ; Cal. vi. 967, 1445. 
 
 ' British Museum, Had. MSS. 6, 148 f, 40 a. 
 
 * Cal. vii. 54 (31), 522. ^ Letters, 68. 
 
120 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 much his intellectual superiors as More and Fisher, in an 
 argument. He therefore carefully avoided having any con- 
 versation with them, and wrote to them only in order to have 
 some slight outward justification for his arbitrary action. 
 Fisher sent pathetic letters to the King and the Lords, when 
 Cromwell refused to accept his excuses or listen to his argu- 
 ments, but in vain. His name was included in the Act of 
 attainder of EHzabet^h Barton and her accomplices which was 
 passed in March, 1534, but his life was spared until the King 
 could find a more valid pretext for actually destroying him^. 
 
 The accusations in the case of Sir Thomas More were even 
 more groundless than in Fisher's. The only charges that 
 could be proved against him were an unimportant interview 
 with the Nun herself, a letter- which he confessed to have 
 written to her, warning her to leave political subjects entirely 
 alone, and an insignificant conversation about her with a 
 certain father Resbye, Friar Observant of Canterbury ^. So 
 much was made of these slight accusations, however, that 
 More was forced to write a long letter of excuse to Cromwell. 
 His explanations about the Nun and about his attitude on 
 the Papal Supremacy appear to have been satisfactory ; 
 when he was examined by Cromwell and Audeley, all the in- 
 ventiveness of his accusers seemed to be used to no purpose. 
 ' As the King did not find,' says Chapuys, ' as it seems 
 he hoped, an occasion for doing him more harm, he has 
 taken away his salary ^.' But this unfortunately was not 
 destined to be the end of the affair ; if the King was not 
 determined on the ex-Chancellor's destruction, his Privy 
 Councillor was ; but Cromwell was forced to bide his time 
 and wait for a better opportunity, so that further proceedings 
 were stayed until the following April. 
 
 In the meantime the new Act of Succession had been 
 passed in Parliament, and the oath of allegiance which it 
 required was promptly tendered to More and Fisher, who 
 finally consented to swear to the statute itself but not the 
 preamble *. They were unwilling to give their reasons for 
 
 ' Cf. Lewis, chap, xxxii. ' Cal. vii. 296. 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 287. * Cal. vii. 499, and Letters, 71. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 121 
 
 rejecting the latter, but Cranmer cannot have been far wrong 
 when he wrote to Cromwell that the cause of their refusal 
 to accept it lay in its attacks on the authority of the Pope and 
 the validity of the King's first marriage \ The Archbishop, 
 ever on the side of humanity, urged the King's minister to 
 accept the compromise which More and Fisher offered, but in 
 vain. The ex-Chancellor and the aged bishop were com- 
 mitted to the Tower, which they never quitted again. For 
 more than a year they remained there subjected to every 
 sort of indignity, until on May 5, 1535, they were sum- 
 moned by the King, and told that unless they swore to the 
 Act of Succession and the Royal Supremacy, they would be 
 treated no better than the Carthusian monks who had lately 
 .been executed ^. They were allowed six weeks for reflection, 
 but they replied that they would not change their opinion in 
 six hundred years, if they lived so long. So strong was the 
 popular feeling however, that it is doubtful if Henry would 
 have dared to execute Fisher, simply because he said that 
 ' the King, our sovereign Lord, is not Supreme Head of the 
 Church of England ' ; but when it was announced that the 
 Pope, at a consistory held May 2C, had created him a Cardinal, 
 the King was so enraged that he threw all caution to the 
 winds. He declared in his fury that 'he would give Fisher 
 another hat, and send his head to Rome for the Cardinal's hat 
 afterwards,' and ordered both his prisoners to swear to his 
 ecclesiastical headship before St. John's Day, or suffer punish- 
 ment as traitors^. Cromwell "had endeavoured from the 
 beginning to keep up the appearance of being reluctant to 
 punish the aged bishop and his noble companion, and there is 
 record that when he heard of the latter's first refusal to 
 abandon his beliefs, ' he sware a great oath *.' But in spite of 
 this there is every reason to think that he was the true cause 
 of the ex-Chancellor's death. It is not likely that Henry 
 would have consented to the execution of a man whom he 
 
 1 Strype, Cranmer, vol. i. p. 39 ; Lewis, chaps, xxxiv, xxxv, and 
 vol. ii. p. 693. xxxvi. 
 
 " Cal. viii. 666. * Cal. vii. 575- 
 
 ' Cal. viii. 742, 876. Cf. also 
 
123 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 had formerly loved and respected as much as More, unless his 
 counsellor had poisoned his heart against him. Moreover, 
 the mentions of More and Fisher in Cromwell's 'remem- 
 brances ' are so frequent and of such a character, as to leave 
 little doubt that he had determined to ruin them from the 
 first. They both suffered death by beheading in the summer 
 of 1535 ^. It was a terrible evidence of the ruthlessness of 
 the forward policy to which Henry had now committed 
 himself by the advice of his new minister. The most brilliant 
 and cultivated Englishman of the time had been brought to 
 the block to bear testimony to the King's relentless anger ; the 
 gentleness and humility of the oldest prelate in the realm had 
 not shielded him from Henry's wrath and the swift, passion- 
 less blow of his all-powerful agent. Terror had mastered the 
 country, and men wondered what the end would be ^. 
 
 But though Cromwell's truculent measures had gained the 
 day in England, they excited the anger and horror of 
 continental Europe. Sentence of excommunication had been 
 passed on Henry in the summer of 1534 ; public opinion 
 would not have permitted the Pope longer to postpone the 
 final blow, even if he had wished to do so. It now became 
 more than ever necessaiy to defend the position of the King 
 and Cromwell was busily occupied in filling the pulpit at 
 Paul's Cross with preachers who were willing and able to 
 expound the word of God to Henry's profit and advantage ^. 
 In this he was greatly helped by Bishop Rowland Lee of 
 Coventry and Lichfield, who later played such an important 
 part in connexion with the subjugation of Wales. In seeking 
 means to defend the Royal Supremacy Cromwell's knowledge 
 of the law stood him in good stead. In a letter written in 
 the year 1538, Sir Thomas Denys tells how Cromwell three 
 years earlier had advised him to ' rede in a boke called 
 Bratton * nott vnwrittyn this cccc yer^j where he doth call the 
 
 ^ Lewis, chap, xxxvii ; Roper, su Corona, sujecion, y terror en 
 
 55. los vassallos.' Mendez Silva, p. 
 
 ^ ' Obraua Cromuel, estas, y otras 13. 
 
 atrocidades libremente, dando d ^ Letters, 197. 
 
 entender ser conueniencia del * Henry de Bracton's De Legi- 
 
 Principe, para la estabilidad de bus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 123 
 
 Klnges Grace Vicarius Christi, .... wherfor,' he continues, 
 ' I do rekyn a papiste and a traito^r to be one thing i.' But 
 the most drastic of the measures which Cromwell adopted to 
 strengthen the power of the Crown was the famous Act 
 about Proclamations, which he was able to force the Lords 
 and Commons to pass in 1539. By this statute, all Proclama- 
 tions made by the King and Council were given the force 
 of Acts passed in Parliament, save when they touched the 
 subject's lives, lands, goods, or liberties, or infringed the estab- 
 lished laws ; and these exceptions were expressly declared 
 inapplicable to those who should disobey proclamations con- 
 cerning heresy. Cromwell had planned for the passage of this 
 statute from a period at least as early as 1535. A letter^ 
 which he wrote to Norfolk in July of that year affords us 
 interesting information concerning the origin of the measure. 
 In a controversy about the best means of preventing the 
 export of coin from the realm, the Chief Justice had delivered 
 the opinion that ' For the avoyding of any suche daungers . .. . 
 proclamacyons and polyces so deuysyd by the King & his 
 cownsayll for any such purpose sholde be of as good effect as 
 Any law made by parlyament or otherwyse ^.' The Chief 
 
 ^ Cal. xiii. (i) 120. liberty. Wheat being under a price: 
 ''■ Letters, 107. wherupon at the last followed the 
 ' The following passage from a Act of Proclamations, in the passing 
 letter which Gardiner wrote to the whereof were many large words.' 
 Protector Somerset in the reign of It will be noticed that this ac- 
 Edward VI gives a slightly dif- count of the origin of the Act is 
 ferent account of the origin of the in many ways similar to that con- 
 Act about Proclamations : — tained in Cromwell's letter : the 
 ' Whether the King may com- chief difference being that accord- 
 mand against the Common Law ing to the latter the measure was 
 or an Act of Parliament there is adopted to prevent the export of 
 never a Judge, or other man in the coin, while Gardiner informs us that 
 realm, ought to know more by ex- the statute was devised to prevent 
 perience of that the Lawyers have the export of corn. It is possible 
 said, than I . . . being of the Coun- that the Bishop of Winchester, 
 cil, when many Proclamations were writing so many years later, had 
 devised against the Carriers out of forgotten the exact circumstances, 
 Com ; when it came to punishing and was really referring to the 
 the Offenders the Judges would same incident as that described 
 answer, it might not be by the Laws, by Cromwell. Burnet has printed 
 because the Act of Parliament gave Gardiner's letter in full (Collection 
 
124 
 
 THOMAS CRUmWETL 
 
 Justice probably came to this decision at a hint from Cromwell ; 
 in any case the latter saw that the good work which had been 
 already begun could not be considered complete until the 
 opinion expressed had been given legal form. From this time 
 onward there occur in his ' remembrances ' frequent mentions 
 of an Act to be passed in Parliament to this effect, but the 
 measure proposed was so radical, that with all his energy and 
 unscrupulousness, it was four years before he was able to carry 
 it through ^. 
 
 of Records and Original Papers, 
 &c., part ii, book i, no. 14), but 
 he does not seem to have made 
 use of the information it contains ; 
 for in another part of his work 
 (part i, book iir, p. 423) he asserts 
 that the Act about Proclamations 
 was the result of the great excep- 
 tions made to the legality of the 
 King's proceedings in the articles 
 about religion and other injunctions 
 published by his authority, which 
 were complained' of as contrary to 
 law. Hallam (vol. i. p. 35 n.) ap- 
 parently agrees with Burnet in this 
 last statement, and ignores the 
 evidence supplied by the letter of 
 the Bishop of Winchester. It is 
 probable that both writers have 
 gone astray in this matter. The 
 opposition aroused by the King's 
 ecclesiastical proclamations may 
 have hastened the passage of the 
 Act, but they can scarcely be re- 
 garded as its origin in the face of 
 the testimony of Cromwell and 
 Gardiner. Burnet and Hallam were 
 perhaps led to ascribe the source 
 of the statute to religious matters, 
 by the fact that the Act was passed 
 almost simultaneously with the Six 
 Articles, and by the special pro- 
 vision which it contained concern- 
 ing heretics. 
 
 ' Canon Dixon (History of the 
 
 Church of England, vol. ii. p. 129) 
 sees in the Act about Proclamations 
 ' a timid attempt to draw the pre- 
 rogative within the limits of regular 
 legislation,' and seeks to show that 
 its true intent was to curtail, while 
 legalizing, a power which the Crown 
 had exercised hitherto illegally and 
 without any restraint. It is doubt- 
 less true that the King had issued 
 proclamations before, and had en- 
 forced obedience to them, without 
 the sanction of law ; and it is 
 equally certain that the intent of 
 this Act (like that of so many 
 others which Cromwell devised) 
 was to legalize a privilege of which 
 the Crown had already made use. 
 But it is more difficult to agree 
 with the reasoning by which Canon 
 Dixon attempts to show that the true 
 purpose of this process of legaliza- 
 tion was to restrict and not to con- 
 firm the power of the King. It is 
 pretty certain that the practical value 
 of these limitations was in reality 
 far less than at first appeared ; for, 
 as Hallam and Burnet justly re- 
 mark, the immediate effect of them 
 was to confer great power on the 
 judges, upon whom the duty of 
 interpreting the statute devolved; 
 and the judges— mere puppets in 
 the hands of Henry and Cromwell 
 — were sure to render every verdict 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 125 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to state that a legislative body 
 which could be forced to consent to such a statute as this 
 retained in practice but few traces of that independence of 
 the Crown which it theoretically possessed. The passage 
 of the Act about Proclamations marks the culmination of a 
 process begun long before Cromwell came into power, but 
 only perfected at the close of his ministry, by which the 
 subserviency of Parliament to the royal will was secured. 
 But though the system did not reach its highest development 
 until 1539, the earlier years of Cromwell's administration 
 show such an advance over that of his predecessor in this 
 particular, that we are justified in regarding the entire period 
 of his ministry as the golden age of Tudor despotism. From 
 the time that the Commons permitted the King and his 
 counsellor to force on them the petition against the clergy 
 in 153a, it is scarcely too much to say that the sole function 
 of Parliament was to register the decrees which emanated 
 from the royal council chamber. 
 
 Of course in order to render Parliament as 'tractable' as 
 it was, it became necessary for Cromwell to regulate the 
 choice of members for the King's profit, and the success of 
 his endeavours in this direction is little short of marvellous. 
 Royal interference in elections was certainly not unknown 
 
 in favour of the Crown. The ex- the true significance of the Act are 
 ceptions in the Act about Procla- certainly correct : ' The prerogative 
 mations may well be compared to could not soar to the heights it 
 the Quanhim per Christi legem aimed at, till thus imped by the per- 
 licet, which had been tacked on fidious hand of Parliament.' The 
 to the recognition of the King's fact that the statute was repealed in 
 Supremacy. Both were concessions the first year of Edward VI simply 
 granted merely as a sop to the proves that it was so unpopular 
 popular feeling : both were so that it was impossible to renew it, 
 guarded that they could easily whenthestronghandof HenryVIII 
 be rendered nugatory. Finally, had been removed. Cf. Hume, vol. 
 the fact that Cromwell himself iii. pp. 255, 256 ; Hallam, vol. i. 
 was so active in assisting the p. 35 ; and Blackstone, vol. i. p. 269. 
 passage of this statute should be There is a curious passage in Beo- 
 a conclusive proof that its real aim wulf (11. 67-73), i" which the King 
 was not to legalize and limit, but rules as he wills, saving his sub- 
 to legalize and confirm the power jects' lives and heritages, that is 
 of the Crown. The straightforward in striking congruence with this 
 verdicts of Hume and Hallam on Act. 
 
126 THOMAS 
 
 before his time, but it had not attained the proportions which 
 it was destined to assume under Cromwell, and it was often 
 strongly resented by the people. It was only with 'much 
 difficulty,' that Henry VH, in the year 1506, succeeded in 
 forcing the citizens of London to abandon the right to elect 
 their own sheriff, which had been granted them by the charter 
 of Henry I ^ and to accept the royal nominee to that office^. 
 But thirty years later, the Crown had carried its encroach- 
 ment on the popular liberties so far that it seemed to be 
 usually regarded as a matter of course that a royal nomina- 
 tion should take the place of a fair election. If any protest 
 was raised against Henry's palpable infringement of ancient 
 rights — and this was very rarely the case — the King and 
 his minister affected to regard the complaint with a sort 
 of indignant amazement. Let us examine the details of an 
 election in Canterbury, which took place when Cromwell was 
 at the height of his power. Writs had been issued for the 
 choice of two members to Parliament from that city in early 
 May, 1536. Between eight and nine in the morning of the 
 eleventh of that month, the sheriff, John Hobbys, caused the 
 commonalty of Canterbury to assemble in the accustomed 
 place, where John Starky and Christopher Levyns were duly 
 elected burgesses. After the voters had dispersed, about 
 noon-time, John Alcok, the mayor of Canterbury, came to 
 Sheriff Hobbys in great perplexity, with a letter from 
 Cromwell and Audeley, which desired, on the King's behalf, 
 that Robert Derknall and John Bryges ' shulde fulfill the seid 
 
 ■* Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. Maior that he should cause an elec- 
 
 p. 439. tion to bee made for a new Sheriffe, 
 
 ^ ' William Copingar, Thomas at which day, came into the Guild 
 Johnson, Sherifes. These Sherifes Hall Mayster Edmond Dudley the 
 being on the morrow after Michael- Kings President, and there shewed 
 mas day by the Maior and Alder- the King's letters, that his corn- 
 men presented before the. Barons mons shoulde name for the Kings 
 of the Exchequer, only William pleasure, William Fitz William, to 
 Copingar was admitted and sworne, bee Sheriffe for the peace ensuing, 
 but Thomas Johnson they woulde which with much difficulty at length 
 not admitte till they knew far- was granted, which William Fitz 
 ther of the Kings pleasure. The William kept his feast the Six- 
 X of October a commandment was teenth day of October.' Slew's 
 brought from the King to the Lord Chronicle, p. 879. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 127 
 
 rom^j.' On the following morning the sheriff directed a humble 
 letter to Cromwell ^, stating the facts, and begging that the 
 election of Starky and Levyns might be allowed to stand, as 
 the King's wishes were not known until too late ; ' if your seid 
 leitere had come to me byfore the seid eleccion,' he pleaded, 
 ' I wolde haue done the best that had been in my powr to 
 (have) Accomplished our Souereigne lord the Kinges pleasure 
 and yours in the pr^mysses.' But the King's minister gave 
 no heed to the representations of John Hobbys : the fact that 
 an election had already been held did not trouble him in the 
 least : the King's will was to be accomplished at all costs. 
 On May i8 he addressed a significant letter to the Mayor 
 and Burgesses of Canterbury, which was quite sufficient 
 to induce the recipients to nullify their former proceedings. 
 The phraseology of the letter is noteworthy : the King's 
 minister did not discuss the fact .that his first message had 
 arrived too late. He simply reminded the burgesses that the 
 King's pleasure had been signified to them, and that they 
 ' the same litle or nothynge regardynge but rather cowtemn- 
 yng' had elected their own candidates, according to their 
 ' owne wylles and myndes co«trarie to the king^j plesure and 
 comandemewt in that behalfe.' This of course was a thing 
 whereat the King did ' not a lytell marvell,' and the burgesses 
 were admonished ' notwythstondynge the seyd eleccz'on ' to 
 ' precede to a new and electe thosse other, accordyng to the 
 tenure of the former k^^'^res ' : they were also desired to notify 
 Cromwell at once 'if any p^rsone wyll obstynatly gaynsay 
 the same,' so that the King's hiinister might deal with the 
 refractory burgess according to his master's pleasure. Two 
 days later Mayor Alcok replied with the following dutiful 
 letter. ' In humble Wise certefie you that the xx*'' Day 
 of" this present monyth of Maye at vi of the Clok in the 
 mornyng I John Alcok mayre of Cauntebury receyved your 
 letters Dyrected to me the seid mayre Sheryf and Comynaltie 
 of the seid Citie sygnyfying to vs therby the kyng^j- plesure 
 and coMmaundement is that Robert Darknall and John 
 Bryges shoulde be burgesses of the P^rlyament for thesame 
 
 1 Cal. X. 853. 
 
128 THOMAS 'Sft^f^rEeL 
 
 Citie of Cauntebury by Vertue wherof accordyng to our bounde 
 Dutye immedyatly vppon the syght of your seid \ettere and 
 contenfej thereof p^rceyved caused the Cortiynaltye of the 
 seid Citie to Assemble in the Court Hall ther wher appered 
 the nombre of Power score and xvii p^rsones Citizens and 
 Inhabit«Z(!nt^j of theseid Citie And accordyng to the Kyng^j 
 plesure and Co»zmaundement frely with one voyce and vfith- 
 out any contradiccon haue elected and chosen the fore-seid 
 Robert Darkenall and John Bryges. to be burgesses of the 
 parlyament for thesame Citie which shalbe duly certefied by 
 Indenture vnder the scales of the seid Citizens and Inhaby- 
 taunt^j by the grace of the blyssyd Trynyte Who preserue 
 you . . . ^.' Such was the calm way in which parliamentary 
 suffrage rights were made of no effect and the King's pleasure 
 enforced. It is important to notice in this connexion how 
 careful Henry and Cromwell were to cloak their most un- 
 warrantable proceedings by the preservation of ostensible 
 constitutionalism. Never was the now farcical form of a fair 
 election abandoned ; never did the King fail outwardly to 
 observe those legal restrictions by which the Crown was 
 supposedly fettered, and the liberties of the nation theoreti- 
 cally preserved. The autocracy which Cromwell had done 
 so much to establish was carried on 'within and upon the 
 already existing constitution,' and the public protest was thus 
 in great measure disarmed. 
 
 It is no wonder that the invaluable services which Cromwell 
 rendered to the Crown were rewarded by an almost exclusive 
 
 ^ The letter of Cromwell to the fresh light on the history of one of 
 Mayor and Burgesses of Canter- the naost famous cases of arbitrary 
 bury (Letters, 148) is now in the interference in the choice of mem- 
 British Museum ; it was put into bers to Parliament that has copie 
 my hands by the kindness of down to us from Tudor times. 
 Mr. Brodie of the Public Record The reply of the Mayor (Cal. x. 
 Office. It was overlooked at the 929) is comparatively well known, 
 time of the compilation of the tenth Froude has printed it in full (vol. iii. 
 volume ofthe Calendar, and escaped p. 347), but has misread the name 
 the search of Froude and Fried- of one of the burgesses, which is 
 mann, both of whom discuss the ' Darkenall ' or ' Derknall,' not 
 details of this election at some ' Sacknell.' 
 length. Its discovery throws much 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 129 
 
 enjoyment of the royal confidence, which enabled him soon 
 to do almost what he pleased with his two great rivals, 
 Norfolk and Gardiner. At first he had cautiously held him- 
 self aloof from these men, but now that he had outstripped 
 them in the King's favour, his bearing towards them altered 
 accordingly. It is a very significant fact that in his ten years 
 of service, he never left the King for any considerable length 
 of time, but often contrived to get Norfolk and Gardiner sent 
 away — the one to cope with internal troubles, the other to act 
 as ambassador to France. Cromwell succeeded in harassing 
 them both while they were at Court, and in making them 
 abandon every pretence to consistency. Chapuys, in a letter 
 of December 9, 1533, tells us that Norfolk, hitherto the most 
 pronounced of Catholics, uttered ' a thousand blasphemies ' 
 against the Pope, even more shocking than those of the King, 
 calling him ' an unhappy whoreson, a liar, and a wicked man ; 
 
 and that it should cost him (Norfolk) wife and children 
 
 and all that he possessed, or that he would be revenged on him. 
 He has a good deal changed his tune, for it was he ... . who 
 favoured most the authority of the Pope ; but he must act in 
 this way not to lose his remaining influence, which apparently 
 does not extend much further than Cromwell wishes ; for which 
 reason, I understand, he is wonderfully sick of the Court 1.' 
 In the spring of J 535 the Duke was forced to surrender 
 entirely, and retire to his estate at Kenninghall. Gardiner 
 had to abandon the Secretaryship in 1534 in Cromwell's 
 favour. The new minister tantalized him in much the same 
 way as he did Norfolk, and doubtless increased the enmity 
 of the Bishop of Winchester, which he had first incurred 
 at the time of Wolsey's fall, and which five years later 
 was to be such an important factor in effecting his own 
 destruction. 
 
 Cromwell was perhaps the only man at the Court who, in 
 the early days of his ministry, had the least suspicion that 
 Anne Boleyn might sometime lose the royal favour. He 
 was able to comprehend the King's love for her better than 
 anyone else, and to discern that when the royal passion had 
 
 ^ Cal. vi. 1510. 
 
 MERRIMAN, 1 K 
 
130 THOMAS CkWVlWM'C'L 
 
 been satisfied, Henry's affection for his second wife would 
 be a thing of the past. The King's chagrin that Anne had 
 not brought him a male child, and the rage awakened by her 
 subsequent miscarriage could not have escaped him. From 
 thenceforth he must have become convinced that her ruin was 
 ultimately certain, and he began to throw out hints that he 
 no longer wished to be reckoned among her adherents. In 
 April, 1536, it was notorious that there was a marked cool- 
 ness between them, and a month later a very unexpected 
 turn in foreign affairs brought matters to a head and forced 
 him to take active measures against her, in order to save his 
 own reputation with the King ^. There is reason to think 
 that he was the prime mover in the plot which led to her 
 arrest. He certainly worked against her at her trial, and was 
 present at her execution ; in fact he took every possible step 
 to forestall all chances of being included in her fall. His 
 sudden abandonment of one whom a few years before he had 
 done so much to support, should be enough to confute those 
 who have seen in his previous devotion to the cause of 
 Anne Boleyn an evidence that he favoured the Reformed 
 faith. Anne was certainly a professed Protestant ; she 
 possessed the English Bible and read it ; but it was only 
 because her Protestantism was temporarily useful to Cromwell's 
 designs, which were to obtain for his master a divorce from 
 Katherine, that he identified himself with her party during 
 the first years of his ministry. When the divorce had been 
 secured, and Henry had been declared Supreme Head of the 
 Church of England ; when the love which Anne had once 
 enjoyed had been transferred to Jane Seymour, and 
 Cromwell saw that to favour the cause of the unhappy 
 Queen in opposition to the King might mean ruin and 
 disgrace, he deserted her at once. 
 
 Nor can the fact that Cromwell's name figures prominently 
 in connexion with the publication of the Ten Articles of 
 1536 be justly urged as a reason for ascribing to him any 
 real devotion to the cause of Protestantism. Now that the 
 
 ^ Cal. X. 351, 601, 1069, and Froude, The Divorce of Catherine 
 footnote to page 232. Cf. also of Aragon, pp. 413-5. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 131 
 
 severance from Rome was complete, the King and his minister 
 saw that a definition of the faith of the Church of England 
 had become necessary, in order that the unity of the new 
 ecclesiastical system might be preserved. The Ten Articles 
 of 1536 were adopted to make good this deficiency. Circum- 
 stances had rendered them inevitable, and the fact that 
 Cromwell presented them to Convocation, and signed them 
 first of all the members proves nothing, except perhaps the 
 importance of his ecclesiastical office. The Ten Articles 
 declared the Bible and the three Creeds to be the only Rule 
 of Faith : Penance, Baptism, and the Eucharist were kept as 
 sacraments : the veneration of saints, soliciting of their inter- 
 cession, use of images, and the usual ceremonies in the service, 
 though still held to be highly profitable, and as such worthy 
 to be retained, were pronounced in themselves powerless to 
 justify the soul ^. But though the main aim of these Articles 
 was doubtless to preserve the integrity of the Church of 
 England at home, the time and circumstances under which 
 they were published seem to indicate that they were also 
 intended to serve a purpose abroad. We shall hear of them 
 in this connexion in another chapter. 
 
 Cromwell's zeal for the publication of the Bible in English, 
 and also his injunctions to the clergy ^, must in the same way 
 be attributed to political rather than to religious motives. 
 He saw what a powerful weapon the Bible had become in 
 the hands of the German Reformers, and soon succeeded 
 in forcing Convocation, on December 19, 1534, to present 
 a petition to the King for the suppression of treasonable 
 books in the vulgar tongue, and for a translation of the 
 Scriptures into English^. Less than two years later 
 Cromwell's efforts were rewarded by the appearance of an 
 edition of the Scriptures patched together 'out of Douche* 
 and Latyn' by his friend Miles Coverdale. There seems 
 to have been a very general impression current that all 
 passages which might have been interpreted in favour of 
 Katherine, had purposely been rendered in the opposite 
 
 • Wilkins, vol. iii. p. 817. ' Cal. vii. 1555. 
 
 ' Letters, 159, 266, 273. * ' High Dutch' not 'Low Dutch.' 
 
 K 3 
 
132 THOMAS C KDMWhLL 
 
 sense ^. But this version was soon destined to be superseded. 
 The following year witnessed the appearance of the edition 
 which is usually known as Matthew's Bible, and which con- 
 sisted of a combination of the translations of Tyndale and 
 Coverdale. It received the official sanction of Cromwell and 
 Cranraer, but its life was almost as short as that of its 
 predecessor. In the autumn of 1537 Grafton and Whit- 
 church, two London printers whose names had been con- 
 nected with the previous editions, received a licence from 
 the King to publish a new version of the Bible at Paris, 
 where the facilities for carrying on their trade were better 
 than in England ^. At first the work seems to have pro- 
 gressed with great success, and in September, 1538, the King's 
 minister, in anticipation of its speedy completion, issued 
 ifijunctions that a copy of it should be placed in every church 
 at the cost of the parson and the parishioners, and that no 
 one was to be discouraged from reading it: he advised, 
 however, that 'the explication of obscure plac^i'' be referred 
 'to men of higher iugement in scripture ^' But Cromwell 
 was a little premature with his injunctions. An unforeseen 
 event occurred, which made the immediate publication of 
 the new edition impossible. The Royal Inquisition had 
 apparently got wind of the doings of Grafton and Whitchurch 
 at Paris, and just as the task was approaching completion, 
 they and all their subordinates, and the French printer at 
 whose house the work was being carried on, were suddenly 
 cited to appear before the Inquisitor-General for the realm 
 of France *. The Englishmen made haste to escape, without 
 even waiting to collect the implements of their trade or the 
 Bibles that had already been printed. Cromwell, on hearing 
 of the disaster, went with a piteous tale to the French 
 ambassador, telling him that he himself had contributed 600 
 marks towards the publication of the Bible in Paris, and 
 begging him to ask his master to permit the work to be 
 continued there, or at least to allow the copies already 
 
 1 Cal. X. 352, 698 ; xiv. (i) i86(v). 
 
 " Cal. xii (ii), Appendix 35, and xii. (ii) 593. 
 
 ' Letters, 273. * Cal. xiii. (ii) 1085. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 133 
 
 finished to be sent to England safely, and not to suffer the 
 Inquisition to confiscate them. But Francis replied that 
 good things might be printed in England as well as in 
 France, but that bad things should never be permitted to 
 be printed in Paris, and he further refused to deliver up the 
 copies already completed. He was unable, however, to 
 prevent the final accomplishment of the work in London 
 in 1539 1. The new version, commonly known as the Great 
 Bible, was the last authorized translation completed in the 
 reign of Henry VIII, but apparently great efforts had to be 
 made to prevent the publication of unlicensed editions. It 
 was not long before a royal commission was issued to 
 Cromwell, commanding him, in order to avoid diversity of 
 translations, to see that no man printed any English Bible 
 during the next five years except persons deputed by 
 himself^. 
 
 Perhaps the strongest point of Cromwell's domestic ad- 
 ministration was his financial policy. He never forgot the 
 promise he had made on entering the King's service to make 
 Henry ' the richest king that ever was in England,' for he 
 was shrewd enough to see that a full treasury was the first 
 essential to the attainment of the larger aim of his policy, 
 the establishment of a royal despotism. He skilfully con- 
 trived that many of the measures of the earlier years of his 
 ministry, primarily intended to cut the bonds which held 
 England to Rome, should also serve to increase the wealth 
 of the Crown. The most noteworthy and successful of these 
 measures was the abolition of the Annates. There can be 
 little doubt that it was through Cromwell's agency that 
 a supplication was addressed to the King early in the year 
 1533 * urging him to arrest the payment of First Fruits to the 
 Papacy : ' bokes of annates ' and remembrances concerning 
 
 ^ Cal. xiii. (ii) 1163; xiv. (i) 37, cation or of Parliament. But the 
 
 371. Dixon, vol. ii. p. ^^, and question is of minor importance : 
 
 Eadie, vol. i. p. 360. it is safe to say that neither body 
 
 ^ Rymer, vol. xiv. p. 659. originated the Supplication, but that 
 
 ' Wilkins, vol. iii. p. 760. It is it was forced upon the Commons 
 
 not clear whether this petition was or the clergy by the King or his 
 
 put forth in the name of Convo- minister. 
 
134 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 them are to be found in large numbers among the minister's 
 letters and papers *, and the petition by which the measure to 
 abolish the First Fruits was initiated was a method especially- 
 characteristic of him, reminding us in many respects of the 
 way in which the independence of the clergy had been 
 attacked but a short time before. But the King was very 
 cautious in granting the request, which had thus been laid 
 before him. He had not yet given up all hope of a peaceful 
 solution of his difficulty with the Pope, and was not yet 
 prepared, as Cromwell was, openly to defy the Holy See. 
 So at first he determined to try the effect of a threat. The 
 immediate result of Cromwell's efforts was the passage in 
 Parliament of an Act ^ which abolished Annates, but preserved 
 to the Holy See certain payments on bulls obtained for 
 the election of bishops : the ratification of this statute by the 
 Crown, however, was expressly withheld, and the Act conse- 
 quently remained inoperative, while a post was sent to Rome 
 ' to frighten the Pope about the Annates *.' But this plan 
 failed : Clement refused to be terrorized into submission ; 
 the King became convinced that a complete break was 
 inevitable, and, in July, 1533, the Act was ratified and declared 
 in force by letters patent *. The following year saw the 
 passage of another statute, which abolished all the payments 
 preserved by the exceptions to the Act of 153a ^, and a little 
 later Parliament completed the work which Cromwell had 
 forced it to undertake by annexing the Annates to the 
 Crown ^. Supplementary to these statutes was the Act 
 concerning Peter's Pence and Dispensations', by which the 
 Pope was deprived of all contributions that had not already 
 been arrested by the Acts about Annates. The use to which 
 the rescued funds were put is aptly described by a significant 
 ' remembrance ' of Cromwell's to the effect that ' thenhabit- 
 aunt^j and peple of this realme shall pay yerely vnto the 
 
 1 Cal. vi. 299 (ix. x), 1381. In ^ 23 Hen. VIII, c. 20. 
 
 one place occurs the significant ' Cal. v. 879. 
 
 item ' To Remembre to make a * Cal. vi. 793. 
 
 byll for the parlyament touching " 25 Hen. VIII, c. 20. 
 
 the augmentacyon of the Annatt«.' " 26 Hen. VIII, c. 3. 
 
 British Museum, Titus B. i. 421. ' 25 Hen. VIII, c. 21. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 135 
 
 kyng for ever, in lieu or stede of smoke pence, whiche they 
 were wont to pay to the busshop of rome, for eu^^y hed or 
 house a certayne small thyng for and towards the defense 
 of thys Realme, whiche may be ymployed in makyng of 
 forteresses throughout the Realme '.' Another significant 
 paragraph, from a letter of Chapuys to Charles V, of Dec. 
 19, 1534, reads as follows: 'The King, besides the 30,000 
 pounds which he newly obtained from the clergy, and an 
 ordinary fifteenth from the laity, which was granted him 
 last year, and which may amount to 28,000 pounds, has just 
 imposed a tax by authority of Parliament, of the twentieth 
 penny of all the goods of his subjects, and that foreigners 
 shall pay double, which will amount to a great sum. These 
 are devices of Cromwell, who boasts that he will make his 
 master more wealthy than all the other princes of Christen- 
 dom: and he does not consider that by this means he 
 alienates the hearts of the subjects, who are enraged and in 
 despair, but they are so oppressed and cast down, that 
 without foreign assistance it is no use their complaining, 
 and it will not be Cromwell's fault, if they are not oppressed 
 further I' 
 
 The King's minister also appears to have been much 
 occupied with the coinage. He was constantly present at 
 ' assayes ' of gold and silver, and further took active steps to 
 stamp out the counterfeiters, of whom there appear to have 
 been a great number*. He caused a proclamation to be 
 issued ' for the false and clipped Coyne going in this Realme 
 with a greate punyshment to euery person that is founde with 
 any false or counterfeit moneye.' The systematic debase- 
 ment of the currency that disgraced the reign of Henry VIII 
 had begun under Wolsey, but appears to have ceased 
 entirely during Cromwell's ministry: it began again after 
 Cromwell's death, assuming far greater proportions than 
 before, and continued till the end *. That the King did not 
 need to resort to such costly methods of replenishing his 
 
 ' Cal. ix. 725 (l). ^ Cal. vii. 1554. 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1304; ix. 144, 183; x. 1170; xii. (ii), 1151. 
 * Schanz, vol, i. pp. 535-7. 
 
136 THOMAS CRCffiTWETX 
 
 treasury while Cromwell was in power, bears eloquent testi- 
 mony to the wisdom and success of his minister's finance. 
 The latter's efforts to prevent the 'conveying of coyne out 
 of the realme ' shows that he saw the importance of securing 
 plenty of good coin for English trade, and that he did not want 
 to create an artificial cheapness. The statutes of Henry VH 
 forbidding the export of precious metals had been renewed 
 by his son in an Act passed in 151 1, but this law had 
 run out in 1523, and from that time onward there was no 
 legal hindrance to the practice, though the statutes enacted 
 previous to Tudor times were still considered in force ^ 
 The result was that the earlier laws began to be transgressed, 
 and Cromwell, in devising methods to prevent further in- 
 fringements of them, hit upon the expedient of a royal 
 proclamation, as we have already had occasion to notice. 
 
 Another most important measure passed during Cromwell's 
 ministry, was the so-called Statute of Uses^. It was at the 
 same time a legal and a financial reform. In order to evade 
 the common law, which prohibited testamentary disposition 
 of landed property and rendered it strictly subject to primo- 
 geniture, the custom had long been prevalent that the owner 
 should name before or at his death certain persons to whose 
 ' use' his lands should be held. These persons became to all 
 intents and purposes the true devisees ; for though the trustee, 
 or ' feoffee to uses,' alone was recognized by the common law, 
 the beneficiary or ' cestui que use ' soon began to receive 
 strong support through the equitable jurisdiction of the 
 Chancellor, and so was often able actually to enforce claims 
 which originally had rested merely on moral obligation. This 
 was the usual method of circumventing the laws of the realm, 
 in order to make provision by will for younger children. In 
 this particular it was perhaps legitimate, but at the same 
 time it opened the way to a great number of abuses, which 
 are stated at length in the preamble to the statute just 
 mentioned. The chief of these were the extraordinary com- 
 
 ^ Schanz, vol. i. p. 5 18. Digby, pp. 267-80, and Reeves, 
 
 ^ 27 Hen. VIII, c. 10. Cf. also vol. iii. pp. 275-89. 
 on this and the following pages 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 137 
 
 plication of titles to land, which resulted from the secret 
 methods of devising it, and the loss to the King and the 
 great lords of the feudal dues on successions, wardships, and 
 marriages. Two ineffectual attempts had been made to re- 
 medy these evils in the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII ^, 
 and at Cromwell's accession to power the subject was 
 brought up again. There is reason to think that the Statute 
 of Uses was under consideration as early as 1531, and the 
 main principle of it bears a close resemblance to the measure 
 devised in the reign of Richard III. A mention of it occurs 
 in Cromwell's ' remembrances ' of the year 1535", but it was 
 not finally passed until 1536, probably on account of the 
 popular opposition, which, according to Chapuys, was very 
 pronounced. The upshot of the statute was, that all right 
 to the estate was taken from the grantee to uses and vested 
 in the beneficiary, and the distinction between legal and 
 beneficial ownership was thus entirely destroyed. The 
 ostensible tenant was made in every case the legal tenant ; 
 those entitled to the use of land became the actual 
 holders of it. The Act further was intended to abolish the 
 right to create further uses in the future : the power of 
 disposing of interests in land by will was thus removed, and 
 the King was restored to the enjoyment of his ancient 
 feudal dues. 
 
 Beyond the casual mention in his 'remembrances*' there 
 is no precise record of Cromwell's connexion with this im- 
 portant measure. It is worthy of note, however, that the 
 attainments needed to plan and draft such a statute were 
 precisely those which Cromwell possessed in the very highest 
 degree— intimate knowledge of the law, and great shrewd- 
 ness in finance. The bold and effective way in which the 
 measure struck at the root of the evil, and caused the 
 extra-legal practice which had grown up to become its own 
 ruin, is very characteristic of him. Furthermore, Cromwell 
 was certainly believed to be the originator of the measure 
 by the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace, which was partially 
 
 1 I Rich. Ill, c. I ; 4 Hen. VII, ' Cal. viii. 892. 
 
 c. 17. ° Cal. viii. 892 ; ix. 725. 
 
138 THOMAS CRiyiVfW'K'CL 
 
 caused by it, and as such his death was demanded. It 
 therefore seems highly probable that it was he who devised 
 this scheme in order to deal the death blow to a very annoying 
 practice of evading the law, and to enrich the royal treasury. 
 The statute, however, was not entirely successful in attaining 
 the ends at which it aimed, for by a strained interpretation 
 of the letter of the Act, the courts managed to evade the spirit 
 of it, so that it failed to do away with the old distinction 
 between beneficial and legal ownership, which it had been 
 intended to destroy. In addition to this, the popular outburst 
 of indignation aroused by the Statute of Uses was so strong 
 that a few months before Cromwell's death he saw the actual 
 right of at least partial testamentary disposition of landed 
 property obtained by the people. The Act concerning the 
 willing of land by testament ^, passed in the spring of 1540, 
 gave to every tenant in fee simple the right to bequeath 
 at his pleasure all lands which he held by socage tenure, and 
 two-thirds of the lands which he held by knight-service. The 
 force of usage was such that when the King and Cromwell 
 attempted to abolish a practice, which had rendered the 
 willing of land possible under another name, the actual right 
 to bequeath landed property without circumventing the law 
 was wrested from them. 
 
 The King was glad to entrust his capable adviser with the 
 preservation of that advantageous commercial position which 
 had been won for England through the masterful policy 
 of Henry VH. Cromwell's varied experience in foreign 
 markets and his intimate knowledge of all the details of the 
 wool-trade, which was by far the most important element 
 of English commerce, had taught him in his earlier years 
 many lessons of which the whole nation was to reap the 
 benefit. In general his administration witnessed but few 
 departures from the highly successful commercial policy 
 inaugurated by the first Tudor. His aim was rather to 
 strengthen the advantages already gained, and to increase 
 the security of English commerce and industry against the 
 competition of continental rivals, than to attempt any radical 
 
 1 32 Hen. VIII, c. i. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 139 
 
 innovations. The monopoly of the trade in the Mediterranean 
 which Venice had enjoyed in Lancastrian times, had been 
 a serious menace to the interests of the English merchants ; 
 but the Italian wars had now almost totally deprived the 
 Republic of that prominent political position which she had 
 occupied at the beginning of the century, and with the loss 
 of her national greatness her commercial supremacy fell. 
 The ancient privileges which had been granted to Venetian 
 merchants and galleys previous to Tudor times, had been 
 exchanged for a set of stringent enactments, which dealt 
 a heavy blow to her trade and shipping during the reign 
 of Henry VII. Cromwell followed the same policy, and 
 further seized the favourable opportunity afforded by Venice's 
 decline to foster the interests of English merchants in other 
 parts of the Mediterranean i. With the towns of the 
 Hanseatic League the case was slightly different. The 
 extensive privileges the merchants of the North German 
 cities had enjoyed in earlier times, had raised them to such 
 a commanding position that the growth of English com- 
 merce in the north was rendered well-nigh impossible. 
 Henry VII's aim had been to overthrow the supremacy of the 
 Hanseatic League, by a gradual withdrawal of the concessions 
 which it had wrung from his predecessors. The early part 
 of his son's reign had witnessed a continuation of this wise 
 policy, but during Cromwell's ministry an alliance which the 
 threatening situation on the Continent had led England to 
 conclude with Lubeck, necessitated a temporary cessation 
 of the process of curtailing the privileges of the Hanse 
 merchants ^. But the loud outcries of the people against the 
 destructive competition of the Germans were sufficient to 
 prevent Cromwell from making any permanent stand in their 
 favour. Political necessity alone had induced him to postpone 
 the complete withdrawal of their privileges : he knew that 
 the tendency of the times was irresistibly against the 
 Hanseatic towns, and he was perhaps the more willing 
 to grant them a few temporary concessions in that he realized 
 that nothing could ever raise them again to the position of 
 
 ' Schanz, vol. i. pp. 159, 160. ^ Cf. Schanz, vol. i. pp. 224-7. 
 
140 THOMAS CRUWWETL 
 
 dangerous rivals to English trade. His foresight was justified 
 by the event ; the process which Henry VH had begun was 
 completed by the fall of the Steelyard in the reign of 
 Elizabeth. A more difficult problem was presented by the 
 Netherlands. England and the Low Countries were com- 
 mercially indispensable to each other ; the English wool- 
 market in Flanders was the centre of the mercantile interests 
 of both nations. The merchants of the Netherlands, however, 
 had contrived to get the better of their English neighbours 
 until the accession of the house of Tudor ; but the concessions 
 which resulted from the temporary removals of the English 
 wool-mart from Antwerp to Calais by Henry VH, and the 
 enormously advantageous commercial treaty which that King 
 was able to wring from the Archduke Philip when fortune 
 had thrown the latter into his hands in 1506, had completely 
 altered the situation to England's profit^. The efforts of 
 Henry VIH and Wolsey had been directed towards preserving 
 the provisions of the agreement of 1506, the validity of which 
 the Netherlanders were of course unwilling to acknowledge. 
 Cromwell went further than this ; his administration witnessed 
 not only the maintenance and increase of all the advantages 
 which his predecessor had secured, but also the discussion 
 of a plan for attaining complete commercial independence of 
 the Low Countries, by bringing home the English wool-mart 
 to London^. This scheme was not carried through, owing to 
 the unwillingness of the King to offend the Emperor ; but the 
 news of the proposals for it was soon known in the Nether- 
 lands, and was not without its effect there. The merchants 
 of the Low Countries were greatly alarmed lest they should 
 lose the English trade, and instead of opposing every move 
 which their rivals made, now began to grant them all possible 
 concessions. The Emperor's dread of alienating Henry also 
 contributed to force them to adopt a more conciliatory attitude 
 than ever before, and it may be justly said that at the close 
 of Cromwell's administration the mercantile relations of 
 England and the Netherlands were so regulated as to secure 
 every advantage for the former. Cromwell's whole commercial 
 
 ' Busch, vol. i. p. 149. ^ Schanz, vol. i. pp. 76-86, 107-8. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 141 
 
 policy was strongly influenced by his desire to increase 
 and improve English shipping, especially at the last, when 
 an invasion was threatened from the Continent i. His 
 'remembrances' are filled with items for appropriations for 
 building and rigging vessels of various kinds, and for making 
 and improving harbours 2. He did his utmost to clear the 
 Channel of pirates, and was diligent in writing letters to 
 demand restitution of goods taken from English merchants at 
 sea^. In 1540 he caused an Act to be passed for the 
 'maintenance of the navy*': one of its provisions restricted 
 the privileges conferred on all foreign merchants by a pro- 
 clamation in the previous year^ to those who transported 
 their wares in English ships. 
 
 Throughout Cromwell's ' remembrances ' occur countless 
 minor items dealing with miscellaneous questions of internal 
 reform. Memoranda for the building and improvement of 
 roads and highways, for bettering the state of the coast 
 defences, and for the regulation of the rates of wages, are 
 especially numerous. In 1,538 he aided Norfolk in suppressing 
 a sort of strike among the Wisbech shoemakers, who had 
 agreed to stop work unless their wages were raised from 
 15^. to iSd. per dozen boots sewed®. It is perhaps un- 
 necessary to state that this strike was regarded as a revolt 
 against authority, and that the masters gained an easy victory 
 over the men. Among Cromwell's injunctions to the clergy 
 in 1538 is an order to keep parish registers of births, marriages, 
 and deaths ''. Apparently this measure was intensely un- 
 popular, especially in the south-west of England, where 
 people seem to have got the notion that ' some charges more 
 than hath been in time past shall grow to them by this 
 occasion of registering of these things ^.' Precisely what the 
 immediate object of the injunction was it is difficult to say, 
 
 ' Schanz, vol. i. pp. 372-4. custome and subsidy as the hinges 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 399, 655. subiects.' British Museum, Titus B. 
 
 ' Letters, 74, 190, 213. i. 572. 
 
 * 32 Hen. VIII, c. 14. " Cal. xiii. (ii) 57, 84, 91. 
 
 ° This proclamation, issued Feb. ' Letters, 273. 
 
 26, 1539, decreed that for seven * Dixon, vol. ii. p. 83. 
 years ' straungers shall paye like 
 
142 THOMAS CROMWIiXL 
 
 though there is little reason to think that the fears it aroused 
 among the people of Cornwall and Devonshire were realized. 
 It has been grudgingly applauded by one writer, and 
 characterized as ' an inadequate attempt to supply the loss 
 of the registers of various kinds which had been kept by 
 the monks ^ ' ; but its inadequacy, however great, might well 
 pass unmentioned, in the face of the many benefits which 
 later resulted from it. However unpopular the measure may 
 have been at the time, its author certainly deserves the thanks 
 of posterity for preserving a vast amount of valuable informa- 
 tion which would otherwise have been lost. 
 
 A few words remain to be added concerning Cromwell's 
 zeal for the advancement of learning. As his political schemes 
 had caused him incidentally to take sides with the Reforma- 
 tion, his object was to strengthen those who favoured the 
 new religion and opposed Rome. Education is necessary to 
 reform ; and Cromwell did not intend to leave to ignorant 
 men the task of carrying on the work he had begun. He 
 therefore took steps to see that the opportunities for learning 
 were improved. Among the injunctions which he issued to 
 the clergy in 1536^, is a clause providing for an increased 
 number of exhibitions at the schools and the Universities, 
 ' to thintent that lerned men maye hereafter spring the more.' 
 His dealings with Oxford and Cambridge do not seem to 
 have been very important, although in June, 1535, he was 
 appointed Chancellor of the latter in place of Fisher. He 
 appears to have been much occupied in suppressing the 
 various quarrels that constantly took place between the 
 students and the townspeople, and the letters which he wrote 
 to the Magistrates of Cambridge deal for the most part with 
 this problem^. In October, 1535, the King appointed him 
 Visitor to the Univei'sity, and at the same time promulgated 
 nine injunctions in which he directed the Chancellor, Masters 
 and Scholars of Cambridge to abandon the 'frivolous questions 
 and obscure glosses ' of the schoolmen, to read and teach the 
 Scriptures, and to swear to the Royal Supremacy and the new 
 
 ' Dixon, vol. ii. p. 83. ' Letters, 106, 116, 124, 129, 186, 
 
 ' Letters, 159. 206. 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 143 
 
 Succession'. Henry's minister, as usual, was tlie instrument 
 employed to see that the injunctions were enforced. Of 
 Cromwell's relations to Oxford still less remains to be said. 
 There are letters from him concerning the admission of a 
 President of Magdalen in 1535 ^ and the election of a Master 
 of Balliol in 1539. The latter appears to have been a most 
 disreputable character, and Cromwell's assertion that he was 
 chosen without ' any parcyalyte or corruptyon '' was certainly 
 false ^. A very interesting but comparatively well-known 
 report from the pen of Dr. Layton gives us a vivid picture 
 of the state of the University in 1535, and tells of the founda- 
 tion of several new lectures at the various colleges *. 
 
 As a reward for his success in the management of domestic 
 affairs, the King conferred on him the many dignities and 
 titles which, in 1536, marked the height of his power. He 
 had been raised to the offices of Privy Councillor, Master of 
 the Jewels, Clerk of the Hanaper, and Master of the King's 
 Wards in 1531 and 1533. The Chancellorship of the Ex- 
 chequer had followed in 1533. He became Principal Secre- 
 tary to the King in 1534, Master of the Rolls in the same 
 year. Vicar-general and Visitor-general of the Monasteries in 
 January, 1535, Lord Privy Seal, Vicegerent of the King in 
 Spirituals ° in July, j ^^6. He was also created Baron Crom- 
 
 ^ Cooper, vol. i. pp. 374, 375. In Cootes, formerly of Magdalen. He 
 
 the Calendar, ix. 615, these in- was Proctor in 1529. Davis, Balliol 
 
 junctions are apparently attributed College, pp. 82-86 ; Wood, Fasti 
 
 to Cromvirell. But Cooper expressly Oxonienses, pt. i. p. 86. 
 
 states that the King promulgated ^ Cal. ix. 350. 
 
 them, while Strype (Ecclesiastical ° On the Commissions to Crom- 
 
 Memorials, vol. i. (i) p. 322, and well as Vicar-general and Vice- 
 
 vol. i. (ii) pp. 218, 219) seems to gerent cf. Burnet, vol. i. pp. 292-3 
 
 think that they were drawn up by «., 342-3 «• I Collier, vol. ii. 
 
 Legh and Ap Rice, though he p. 104 ; Gutch, vol. ii. p. 192 ; Her- 
 
 admits that they were issued in the bert, p. 202 ; Dixon, vol. i. pp. 244- 
 
 King's name. It seems very im- 247 ; Child, Church and State, 
 
 probable then that Cromwell wrote pp. 78, 79. It is probable that the 
 
 them, and I have not placed them last writer has confounded the two 
 
 among the letters. commissions : certainly there is 
 
 ^ Letters, 104, and Wilson, Mag- little reason to think that the title 
 
 dalen College, p. 80. of Vicar-general was granted laier 
 
 ' Letters, 325, 326. The name than that of Vicegerent, 
 of the Master was George Cotes or 
 
144 THOMAS CR^5SFWEEE 
 
 well of Okeham in the same month, and Knight of the Garter 
 in August, 1537. During the last seven years of his ministry- 
 he was granted no less than nineteen minor offices, through 
 which his income must have been very greatly increased '. Just 
 prior to the outbreak of the Pilgrimage of Grace, Cromwell's 
 position was almost that of a despot. He was supreme in 
 Convocation, Privy Council, and Parliament ; he enjoyed para- 
 mount authority in the direction of internal affairs, and next 
 to the King was by far the most important man in the realm. 
 A letter of Chapuys in the summer of ^536^, soon after 
 Anne Boleyn's execution, tells us that it was even rumoured 
 that Cromwell might marry the Princess Mary, but the Im- 
 perial ambassador himself was too shrewd to be misled by such 
 an improbable report^. Had Cromwell seriously entertained the 
 idea of a union with the daughter of the divorced Queen, he 
 would scarcely have permitted himself to be made use of by the 
 King as an instrument for breaking down her resolution : he 
 could scarcely have written her such a brutal letter as that of 
 June 10, 1536*. But the inequality in rank is certainly in 
 itself sufficient proof of the absurdity of the proposition. 
 Cromwell was about the last man in the world to become 
 
 ^ See vol. ii. p. 283. This ring he intended to bestow on 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 41. the Princess Mary, but apparently 
 
 ' An event which took place in the King got wind of the plan and 
 
 July, 1536, may possibly have been put a stop to it, taking the ring 
 
 the source of this rumour. It ap- away from his minister, on the plea 
 
 pears that Cromwell had a gold that he desired to have the honour 
 
 ring made, with the figures of the of presenting it to his daughter 
 
 Queen, King, and Princess carved himself. The episode should have 
 
 on it, and the following Latin in- been sufficient to show that even if 
 
 scription : — Cromwell had any idea of marrying 
 
 ' Obedientia unitatem parit, the Princess, the King's opposition 
 
 Unitas animi quietem et con- to the plan would prove insur- 
 
 stantiam ; mouBtable. The inscription on the 
 
 Constans vero animi quies the- ring, moreover, surely indicates that 
 
 sauriis inestimabilis. the gift was intended rather as a 
 
 Respexit humilitatem reminder to the Princess of her duty 
 
 Qui in Filio nobis reliquit towards her father, than as a preli- 
 
 Perfectum humilitatis exemplar. minary to a matrimonial proposal. 
 
 Factus est obediens Patri. Cal. xi. 148. 
 
 Et ipsa etiam natura parentibus * Letters, 150. 
 
 Et patrie obediendum docuit.' 
 
INTERNAL POLICY 145 
 
 reckless with success ; he never for a moment forgot his low 
 birth, and the imprisonment of the brother of his rival the 
 Duke of Norfolk for presuming to wed the King's niece was 
 a warning of the danger of such a proceeding, which could 
 not have been lost on him\ If such a proposition were put 
 forward at all, and we cannot believe that it was, it could 
 only have been as a pretext to prevent the Princess from 
 leaving the realm and joining with her cousin the Emperor 
 in an attempt to dethrone the King. 
 
 Cromwell was certainly shrewd enough to see that he 
 could never hope to marry into a reigning house himself, 
 but he was none the less anxious that his son Gregory 
 should wed such a wife as would enable him to found a noble 
 family. In April, 1533, Gregory had been taken from Cam- 
 bridge, and sent to live with his father's friend Dr. Rowland 
 Lee, with whom he appears to have spent a summer in hunt- 
 ing ^. In 1535 he came out into public life, and in 1539 
 he was summoned to Parliament as a peer of the realm. 
 Two years earlier he had been able to contract an advantageous 
 marriage with the widow of Sir Anthony Ughtredj sister 
 of Jane Seymour^. This fortunate match must be attributed 
 to his father's influence, for Gregory seems to have been 
 entirely without ambition, and such an idea would never 
 have entered his mind ; his father, on the contrary, was pre- 
 cisely the man to think of it. The number of grants either 
 made jointly to Cromwell and his son, or providing for the 
 succession of the latter at his father's death *, corroborates 
 the theory that the King's great minister wished Gregory 
 to be the heir of all his possessions and emoluments as far 
 as might be, and desired to raise his family to a permanent 
 position among the English nobility. 
 
 Of course Cromwell was obliged in large measure to abandon 
 his private business after he definitely entered the King's ser- 
 vice, but his new position brought him far greater riches 
 than he could possibly have amassed in his old occupations. 
 The various inventories of his goods indicate great wealth 
 
 ' Cal. xi. 147. ' Cal. xii. (ii) 423. 
 
 " Cal. vi. 913, 981, loii, 1014. * As Cal. viii. 571. 
 
 UERGIUAN. I L 
 
146 THOMAS CRUMWiiLL, 
 
 and prosperity. He gave costly New Year's presents at the 
 Court, and owned several houses, all of them magnificently 
 furnished \ After October, 1534, when he was made Master of 
 the Rolls, his correspondence shows him to have been con- 
 stantly in residence at the Rolls House, where he held his 
 Court. Writing in 1535, the Prioress of Little Marlowe 
 complained that so great was the crowd of his visitors there, 
 that it was impossible to gain access to him ^ 
 
 ' Cal. ix. 478, 862 ; xiv. (i) 5. ^ CaL viii. 108. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 
 
 Though Cromwell was so busily occupied in England 
 itself, he was far from neglecting the adjoining countries. 
 The subjugation of Ireland, the pacification of Scotland, and 
 the reform of Wales and Calais, played a very important part 
 in his political programme. He plainly saw that the English 
 King's position could not be regarded as secure while these 
 countries remained in the state in which they were at Wolsey's 
 fall, and he determined as soon as possible to deal with them 
 in such a way that they should cease to be a menace to the 
 English Crown in the future. 
 
 When he entered the King's service he probably found 
 little difficulty in persuading Henry that, in order firmly to 
 establish his supremacy, he must take Ireland in hand as he 
 had never done before. Throughout Wolsey's administration 
 the tranquillity of the country had been continually disturbed 
 by the feuds of two rival Anglo-Norman families, the Fitz- 
 geralds under the Earl of Kildare, and the Butlers under the 
 Earl of Ormond. To repress these quarrels the Cardinal had 
 taken the office of Lord Deputy from the young Earl of Kil- 
 dare, and created the Earl of Surrey Lord Lieutenant. After 
 a year's hard service in Ireland, however, Surrey was recalled 
 at his own request, and the Deputyship devolved on Sir 
 Piers Butler. He in turn was forced to resign his office to 
 his rival Kildare, who passed it on to Sir William Skeffington 
 of Leicestershire, just at the time of Wolsey's fall ^. 
 
 The affairs of Ireland had naturally been thrown into con- 
 fusion by these numerous changes, and Cromwell became 
 convinced that subjugation by the sword was absolutely 
 essential, before any attempt could be made to govern the 
 
 * Bagwell, vol. i. pp. 124-52. 
 L 2 
 
148 THOMAS CROTWWETL 
 
 country, or to draw revenues from it. This policy brought 
 him into collision with his rival Norfolk, but he seems to 
 have succeeded in convincing the King of the superiority 
 of his plan to that of the Duke, whose idea had been to 
 conciliate the Irish chieftains, and to pacify rather than 
 subjugate the country ^. 
 
 During his first two years in the King's service, Cromwell 
 was so busy in establishing the Royal Supremacy, that he 
 could not pay much attention to Irish affairs. The three 
 years of Skeffington's administration, moreover, appear to 
 have been fairly quiet. In 1532, however, a change came. 
 The Earl of Kildare, by craftily misrepresenting Skeffington's 
 doings at the English Court, secured the latter's recall, and 
 obtained for himself the post of Lord Deputy for the third 
 time^. On regaining the coveted office, however, he returned 
 to Ireland, and instead of following out the King's instructions, 
 proceeded to stir up his adherents into open rebellion, and 
 neglected the English at Dublin. Unmindful of his 'hole 
 duetie to the Kingis Highnes,' he used the royal authority 
 deputed to him, ' as a cloke or habyte to cover his cruele 
 persecutions, mynding utterly to extynguyshe the fame and 
 honor of any other noble man within that lande ^.' It is 
 possible that he thus served Henry's and Cromwell's ultimate 
 purpose of subjugation better than he knew, as he certainly 
 weakened the power of many of the wildest clans, who hated 
 the English rule as njuch as his. But his use to the Crown 
 in this direction, if it amounted to anything, was only tem- 
 porary, and things became ripe for his dismissal. Continual 
 complaints of him reached the King and Cromwell. Dublin 
 was almost the only place in the country, which remained 
 perfectly loyal to England. The neighbouring tribes were so 
 hostile, that the citizens were hard put to it for food, and its 
 inhabitants almost perished from starvation. John Deythyke, 
 a priest, wrote sarcastically to a friend in the autumn of 1533, 
 that although it was the custom to refrain from meat on 
 Wednesdays as well as Fridays, provisions were so scarce 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1 141. ^ Bagwell, vol. i. pp. 152-5. 
 
 " State Papers, vol. ii. p. 167. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 149 
 
 that people had become more devout still, and abstained 
 also on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. ' This 
 is a very sore abstenaunce . . . the country is so quiett that 
 they dare nott ryde one myle owte of the towne, to by 
 any maner of vytteyles ; and they make there complaynt to 
 the Deputie and the wynde hath blowen hym soo in the erys 
 that he can nott here them. But yt is a comon sayinge 
 "whoo is so defe as he that lyst not to here^'" Things 
 went Off from bad to worse, and finally John Alen, Master 
 of the Rolls in Ireland, was sent over by the Council there to 
 report Kildare's doings at the English Court, and further 
 to submit to the King a set of articles for the reformation 
 of the abuses which had become prevalent in the country ^ 
 Alen finally succeeded in procuring Kildare's recall ; and the 
 Deputy arrived in London in April, 1534, having left his 
 eldest son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, in his place. Efforts were 
 made to induce the young man to come to England also ; and 
 when he persistently refused to put himself into the King's 
 hands, his father was arrested and sent to the Tower. These 
 vigorous measures, according to Chapuys, were due to Crom- 
 well ; they were the beginnings of his policy of subjugation ^. 
 
 The arrest of Kildare, coupled with a premature report of 
 his death, set half Ireland aflame, and his son, making up 
 a slight quarrel he had had with his kinsmen the Desmonds 
 threw off" his allegiance. All the English were ordered out 
 of the Geraldines' land before a certain day. The Archbishop 
 of Dublin attempted to flee the country, but encountering 
 a storm, was driven back on the Irish coast, fell into young 
 Thomas' hands, and was murdered with most of his following *. 
 A formidable revolt against the royal authority was evidently 
 pending. Henry and Cromwell were seriously alarmed, and 
 the extraordinary popularity of the rebellion among the people 
 in England, who, as Chapuys said, thought it 'a very good be- 
 ginning to remedy matters at home,' greatly increased their 
 fears ^. Cromwell had to bear the brunt of all the blame, 
 
 ' State Papers, vol. ii. p. 180. * Cal. vii. 1057. 
 
 2 Cal. vi. 1586. " Cal. vii. 1095. 
 
 • Cai vii. 957, 1 141. 
 
150 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 and the Duke of Norfolk seized the opportunity to speak 
 ill of his successful rival. According to Chapuys, the Duke 
 had ' left the Court to be away when the affairs of Ireland 
 were discussed, and this out of disdain that the King 
 despised his advice, and at the suggestion of Cromwell and 
 Skeffington had ill-treated the earl of Kildare, and ruined the 
 affairs of Ireland. On this subject the Duke and Crom- 
 well had i-eproached each other with many things . . . which 
 shows the ill-will they have borne each other a long time, 
 however much they have dissembled it^.' But Norfolk's 
 efforts to undermine the influence of his rival were as yet un- 
 availing. The time for pacific measures had now passed ; 
 Henry would have been only too glad to grant Kildare peace 
 on any terms, but the latter refused every offer. Skeffington, 
 who was Cromwell's friend, was sent over again as Deputy to 
 quell the rebellion. After many delays he crossed on the 
 14th of October, with troops which the King had secretly 
 raised for him ^. 
 
 Meantime the rebels had gained a decisive victory, and 
 were just outside the walls of Dublin. Piteous entreaties 
 from the inhabitants, begging him to come to the relief of 
 the beleaguered city, reached Skeffington, and after some 
 delay he advanced. His arrival made the rebels retreat, 
 but instead of pursuing them vigorously, and striking a telling 
 blow, he remained at Dublin, and wasted time in trying to 
 get a sentence of excommunication passed against the mur- 
 derers of Archbishop Alen ^. But in spite of the Deputy's 
 dallying inefficiency, the superiority of Cromwell's policy to 
 Norfolk's was destined to be made evident by succeeding 
 events. A new complication in Irish affairs arose when 
 young Kildare, taking advantage of Skeffington's inactivity, 
 sent an embassy to the Emperor, promising to hold Ireland 
 as a fief of the Holy See, on condition that he would offer 
 him protection against the English schismatics *. An ambas- 
 sador, Dominick Power by name, was sent by Charles to 
 Ireland and Scotland, but Henry soon discovered it, and 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1141. ' Cal. vii. 1418. 
 
 " Cal. vii. 1193, 1257, 1366, 1389. * Bagwell, vol. i. p. 172. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS l5l 
 
 complained ^ ; Charles was not quite ready as yet to do 
 anything active in aid of the rebels, and so the affair came 
 to nothing. Meantime, at the request of Cromwell, Skeffing- 
 ton was induced to shake off his apathy, leave Dublin and 
 Drogheda, and move after the rebels^. The Lord Privy 
 Seal's boast that the young Kildare would soon be a prisoner 
 in the Tower, was not as empty as Chapuys thought. May- 
 nooth Castle, a rebel stronghold, was besieged and taken ^ ; 
 many rebels were executed, others fell away from Kildare, 
 the young Earl finally surrendered, and was sent a prisoner 
 to London. Two years later he was hanged with five uncles 
 at Tyburn *. With his surrender other chieftains came to 
 terms ; many districts became comparatively quiet, and by 
 the end of 1535 Ireland seemed further on the road to 
 tranquillity than she had been for some time. This was 
 a significant triumph for Cromwell's policy over that of 
 Norfolk, and did much to increase his influence with the 
 King. On the last day of December, 1535, Skeffington 
 died, and Lord Leonard Grey was made Deputy in his 
 place '. 
 
 Before Cromwell could hope to derive much benefit from 
 Ireland, it was necessary to establish some sort of government 
 in the country, as well as to subjugate it. To this intent. 
 Lord Grey summoned a Parliament, which met at Dublin in 
 the spring of 1536^. Its first act was to pass a bill securing 
 the succession of Anne Boleyn's issue: the report of this 
 came to Cromwell in London in June, two weeks after Anne's 
 execution ''. He must have been somewhat puzzled, when he 
 heard the news ; events were moving so rapidly, that even an 
 ' ordered ' Parliament could not keep pace with them. He 
 finally wrote back that in case the act for the succession was 
 not 'passed thoroughly' they were to 'staye the same tyl 
 further knowleage of his grac^j pleasure *.' It was too late, 
 however, to do this ; but when the report came that Anne had 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1297; viii. 140. 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1573, and Bagwell, vol. i. p. 173. ' Cal. viii. 448. 
 
 • Bagwell, vol. i. p. 180. " Cal. x. 15 «. 
 
 ' Cal. X. 822. ' Cal. X. 897, 937. 
 
 * Letters, 179. 
 
152 THOMAS CR^MWE^ 
 
 been executed, and that Jane Seymour had become Queen, the 
 Parliament was ready enough at once to rescind the old statute, 
 and pass a new one in favour of the issue of Henry's third 
 wife. Later there were enacted a series of measures to loosen 
 the bonds that held the Irish Church to Rome ^, and George 
 Browne, Provincial of the Austin Friars, who had already 
 made himself useful in forcing the oath of succession • on his 
 brethren in the south of England, was nominated in 1535, 
 by Cromwell's influence, to succeed Alen as Archbishop of 
 Dublin. The Deputy meantime carried on the subjuga- 
 tion steadily and consistently in the wilder portions of the 
 country. 
 
 Everything in Ireland was now proceeding to the complete 
 satisfaction of Henry and Cromwell, except the finances. 
 Few could equal Cromwell's ideal, or satisfy Henry's avarice 
 in this respect. Ireland had never paid its expenses before ; 
 and it was largely in the hope of deriving revenue from 
 a land which had hitherto been only a burden, that the King 
 and his minister had undertaken to subjugate it. A letter 
 from Henry to the Deputy and Council in 1537 blames them 
 for taking excessive fees, thinking only of private gain, and 
 not taking care of the royal income ^. To remedy this 
 Cromwell appointed and sent over Commissioners, who were 
 ordered to try to reduce expenses and increase revenue, and, 
 to this end, to inquire into the conduct of every royal officer 
 in Ireland, learn all the particulars of the local government, 
 and cut down the retinue of the Deputy and Treasurer to 
 340 men ^. In the list of Commissioners occurs the name of 
 William Brabazon (Cromwell's old friend and fellow servant 
 under Wolsey), who later attained a very important posi- 
 tion in Irish affairs. The extant letters of Cromwell to 
 the Commissioners deal for the most part with the adjustment 
 of petty land claims. The most interesting of them is the 
 one concerning the policy to be pursued towards 'that 
 traytor Bryan Oconor*.' 
 
 There are significant depositions against some of these Com- 
 
 ' Bagwell, vol. i. pp. 196, 197. 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (i) 503. ' Cal. xii. (ii) 382. 
 
 * Letters, 198-205, 207, 208, 21 1, 212, 214, 215, 232. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 153 
 
 missioners who dared to murmur at Cromwell's notorious 
 accessibility to bribes, which seems to have been more notice- 
 able in his dealings with Ireland than anywhere else. He 
 appears to have received enormous sums from the rich 
 and powerful family of the Butlers, kinsmen of Anne Boleyn 
 and of the Duke of Norfolk, in return for a promise to 
 protect their castles from the search of the royal agents. 
 There was a great deal of discontent among the Com- 
 missioners on account of his rapacity, and though they openly 
 flattered him, they continually spoke ill of him behind his 
 back. ' My Lorde Pryvee Scale hathe wrought to his awne 
 confusion and dethe/ said one, ' and of late tyme was veray 
 nere the same, and escapid veray narrowly . . . noo lorde or 
 gentilman in Englande berith love or favor to my Lorde 
 Pryvee Scale by cause he is soo great a taker of money, for 
 he woll speke, solicite, or doo for noo man, but all for money. 
 ... I wold not be in his case for all that ever he hathe, 
 for the King beknaveth him twice a weke, and sometyme 
 knocke him well aboute the pate ; and yet when he hathe 
 bene well pomeld about the hedde, and shaken up, as it 
 were a dogge, he will come out into the great chambre, 
 shaking of the bushe with as mery a countenaunce as thoughe 
 he mought rule all the roste^' We may well believe that 
 Henry was willing that Cromwell should make some private 
 gains, provided he brought money to the royal treasury 
 as well. 
 
 The subjugation of the country, however, had not yet been 
 thoroughly accomplished. Though 1537 was comparatively 
 quiet, the following year witnessed a fresh outbreak. Taking 
 advantage of the precarious condition of England's foreign 
 affairs at the time, young Gerald, brother of the late Earl 
 of Kildare, and heir to his power, stirred up various chief- 
 tains, and baffled all the attempts of the Deputy to lure him 
 into the King's hands. Letters for aid were written to the 
 Pope and to Cardinal Pole, and were sent by a certain monk, 
 as the safest means of transmitting them to their destination^. 
 The monk sailed from Scotland in a French ship, which was 
 
 1 State Papers, vol. ii. pp. 551, 552- ^ Cal. xiii. (ii) 999. 
 
154 THOMAS CRCWrWELL 
 
 blown ashore on the English coast at South Shields ; th6 
 messenger was captured, and the letter intercepted^. In 
 September, 1539, there were several skirmishes between the 
 various forces of the rebels and the Deputy ; but the latter 
 was generally victorious, and another crisis was tided over ^. 
 Young Gerald was forced to flee into Brittany, and the rebels 
 were left without a leader. The Deputy, Lord Grey, appears 
 to have become very unpopular during his term of service, 
 however, and in the spring of 1540 he was recalled ', on the 
 accusations of violence to the King's Council, extortion, 
 injustice, and maintaining the King's enemies. Affairs were 
 in a bad state after he left ; Scotch intrigues, even an invasion 
 of the country by James, were rumoured *, and Sir William 
 Brereton, who temporarily filled Grey's place, had a very hard 
 time. Grey was finally condemned and executed a year 
 after Cromwell's fall, and Sir Anthony St. Leger, 'the dis- 
 creet,' who had been the Chief of Commissioners of 1537, was 
 sent over as Deputy in 1541 ^. 
 
 It may be said that from 1534 until his fall, Cromwell 
 was the virtual ruler of Ireland. His significant triumph 
 over Norfolk and his policy of pacification, mark the beginning 
 of his influence. From that time onward the King left to him 
 the entire direction of Irish affairs ; he appointed the officers, 
 regulated the revenues, and in short managed everything con- 
 nected with the country until 1540. From the instructions 
 which the Commissioners received in 1537, we gather that 
 the main object of the Crown was to get a revenue from 
 Ireland, and the plan which Cromwell pursued in order to 
 attain this end is noteworthy, in that it differed so entirely 
 from his policy in all the rest of England's dependencies. 
 Realizing that the country was worse than useless to the 
 King, while it remained in the state in which it was when 
 he came into power, he saw that it was so wild and dis- 
 organized, that subjugation by force would be possible and 
 profitable, if attempted vigorously, and in time. He there- 
 
 ^ Letters, 397, 298. * State Papers, vol. v. p. 178. 
 
 " Cal. xiv. (ii) 137. ° Bagwell, vol. i. p. 249, 
 
 * Cal. XV. 441. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 155 
 
 fore pursued a most aggressive policy, which in Scotland, for 
 instance, where the conditions were so different, he would 
 never have dared to adopt. 
 
 In Wales he was confronted with a problem of a very 
 different nature. What was needed there was thorough legal 
 reform. The country was not large enough to render an 
 insurrection there very formidable, but the wild and law- 
 less state of the Welsh Marches, which afforded hiding-places 
 for criminals of all kinds, was a source of much evil. One 
 Thomas Philips wrote to Cromwell in May, 1532^, that the 
 whole country was in great decay, and that the King's repre- 
 sentatives there took fines for felony and murder, and used 
 the money for their own purposes ; he begged that such 
 a council might soon be established in Wales, that the best 
 officer should ' quake,' if found in fault. The Bishop of 
 Exeter, who was President of the Marches, was an inefficient 
 ruler and took no pains to remedy the existing evils. The 
 crimes of making and uttering counterfeit money seem to 
 have been extremely common^. Cromwell saw that it was 
 high time measures were taken to rectify this lawlessness, 
 and his ' remembrances ' are full of items for the reform of 
 Wales. He replaced the Bishop of Exeter by his own friend 
 Rowland Lee, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, who in his 
 younger days had served with him under Wolsey''. Lee's 
 energetic and business-like methods rendered him a fit man 
 for the place, and he set about reorganizing and reforming 
 Wales in earnest. It was probably at his instance that 
 Cromwell devised several Acts, passed in the Parliament of 
 1534, to establish justice and maintain order*. As the King's 
 writ did not run in Wales, it was next to impossible to get 
 a case fairly heard there ; so Royal Commissioners were sent 
 thither, with authority to punish crimes and felonies (which 
 were to be tried in the next English court), and to establish 
 Justices of the Peace. Chapuys, in a letter written in 
 December, 1535, describes the distress of the Welsh at 
 
 1 Cal. V. 991. ' Cal. vi. 946 ; vii. 1026 (28). 
 
 ^ Ruding, vol. i. p. 308; Cal. vii. * 26 Hen. VIII, c. 4, c. 6, c. 11, 
 1225. c. 12. 
 
156 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 these measures as incredible, saying that Parliament 'has 
 just taken away their native laws, customs, and privileges, 
 which is the very thing they can endure least patiently ^.' He 
 further states that the Welsh were violently in favour of the 
 cause of Katherine and Mary, and longed for an opportunity 
 to declare themselves. A rising was probably prevented by 
 the fact that the King himself was of Welsh descent. 
 Cromwell was exceedingly active in his endeavours to stamp 
 out all sedition of this sort, and was ably seconded by Lee, 
 who, when the clergy in 1535 were required to preach in 
 favour of the Royal Supremacy, and against the power of the 
 Pope, declared himself ready to ride into his diocese in his 
 own person and carry out the decree, though, as he confessed, 
 he had never before been in a pulpit ^. But Lee adopted 
 other measures to extirpate sedition, far more vigorous than 
 preaching in favour of the Royal Supremacy ; he never 
 failed to enforce his words by deeds. He hung and beheaded 
 offenders and criminals right and left, and sent full reports 
 of his doings to Cromwell, who must have rejoiced to 
 find an agent whose energy corresponded so closely to his 
 own*. 
 
 But in spite of Lee's good-will, the state of Wales was not 
 satisfactory, until Cromwell's great statute of 1535 was passed *. 
 By this Act, Wales was formally declared to be incorporated 
 with England, to be entitled to the same privileges, and to be 
 subject to the same laws. The Marches were declared to 
 be in disorder, and were annexed or divided into shires. 
 The King was further empowered by the Act to erect courts 
 in Wales every five years. These fundamental reforms laid 
 the basis for an entirely new method of administration of 
 justice there, and the country henceforth ceased to cause 
 anxiety to its prince. 
 
 In striking contrast to Cromwell's vigorous policy in Ireland 
 and Wales, was his conciliatory attitude towards Scotland. 
 The strength and proximity of this country, and the weak 
 defences of the northern marches of England, were a con- 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1554. ' Cal. viii. 133, 195, 240, 509, 915, 1058. 
 
 " Cal. viii. 839. * 27 Hen. VIII, c. 26. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 157 
 
 stant source of alarm, which was rather increased than 
 diminished by Henry's strained relations with those continental 
 powers who were on the best of terms with James. It was 
 obvious that in case of a foreign invasion of England from 
 the Continent, the enmity of Scotland would be the only thing 
 lacking, to render disaster certain. It is also not improbable 
 that an attack from the north would have been welcomed 
 by some of Henry's more disaffected subjects. In his speech 
 in the Parliament of 1523 Cromwell had advocated a policy 
 of unification with Scotland : from this principle he never 
 departed, but he saw that it was now no time to gain his 
 ends by force. He therefore adopted a pacificatory attitude 
 towards Scotland at the opening of his ministry, and con- 
 sistently followed it until the end. He began by persuading 
 his master to make every effort to strengthen the rather 
 precarious truce which, owing to French mediation, had been 
 concluded between the Commissioners of the two countries 
 upon the Borders, Oct. i, 1533 ^. Anxious to show all pos- 
 sible courtesy to the Scottish delegates who were finally sent 
 to London to open negotiations, the King prepared for them 
 a house, which had been occupied by the Grand Master of 
 France, and, contrary to his custom with most ambassadors, 
 supplied it with choice wines and provisions^. The Scots 
 were not slow to realize the strength of their position, and 
 in proportion as Henry's desire to conclude a permanent 
 peace increased, their movements grew more and more de- 
 liberate. After long delays, which exasperated the King 
 greatly, an alliance was finally made, to continue during the 
 joint lives of the two sovereigns, and one year longer. During 
 the two following years Henry continued his pacific policy 
 by making James a Knight of the Garter, and by sending an 
 embassy to induce him to abandon the Pope. The latter 
 plan was doubtless a suggestion of Cromwell's ; a mention 
 of the ambassadors Barlow and Howard occurs in his ' remem- 
 brances,' and Barlow later wrote him continual reports of 
 his progress. The mission was unsuccessful in attaining its 
 
 ^ Cal. vi. 1196. Cf. also Hume Brown, vol. i. p. 381. 
 ' CaL vii. 296. 
 
158 THOMAS CR>5MWEHE, 
 
 purpose; but there were no signs that James' leaning to 
 Rome would render him an active enemy of England ^. 
 
 The year 1537 brought with it new developments of Scottish 
 policy. James had gone abroad to marry Madeleine of Valois, 
 an alliance highly displeasing to Henry, after all his efforts 
 to counteract his nephew's tendency to lean upon the good- 
 will of Francis. The King proceeded to express his vexa- 
 tion in an emphatic manner, and, contrary to the advice of 
 his Council, refused to permit James to return to Scotland 
 from France through England ^. James' marriage and Henry's 
 outspoken wrath stultified all Cromwell's efforts to bring 
 about a cordial personal feeling and a lasting peace between 
 the two sovereigns. The Scots' King was forced to travel 
 by sea ; but events took place on the voyage which filled 
 Henry with suspicion. Twelve Englishmen boarded the 
 Scottish ship when it touched at Scarborough for provisions, 
 welcomed James, and promised their aid if he invaded Eng- 
 land. This episode was repeated at another town further 
 north, and it was even reported that the Scottish King had 
 boasted, that if he lived a year longer, 'he would himself 
 break a spear on one Englishman's breast ^.' Such incidents 
 must have been unpleasant, coming as they did just after 
 a serious northern revolt had with difficulty been quelled, 
 and while the Borders were still in a wild and lawless state. 
 But any thoughts James may have entertained of an in- 
 vasion were interrupted by the sudden death of his young 
 French Queen. Henry perhaps had hoped that his nephew 
 would come to him with offers of peace and a petition for 
 the hand of the Princess Mary, but, if so, he was rudely 
 disappointed. In October it was announced that James was 
 engaged to marry a second French wife, Mary of Guise * ; 
 and though Henry, at that time a widower, made every effort 
 to prevent the match by putting himself forward as a rival 
 to his nephew, his proposals were courteously set aside''. 
 
 ' Cal. ix. 178, 730; X. 75, 227, ' Cal. xii. (i) 1286. 
 
 482, 863, 944, and Pinkerton, vol. ii. * Cal. xii. (ii) 829. 
 
 pp. 327-a ' Cal. xii. (ii) 1201. 
 
 * Cal. xii. (i) 398, 399. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 159 
 
 That the King of France should have distinctly preferred 
 a Scottish to an English alliance when the choice lay open, 
 stung Henry to the quick ; but he was quite aware that he 
 could not afford just then to quarrel with Francis or James, 
 and he may have regretted that he had not taken his mini- 
 ster's advice to conciliate the latter. The history of Henry's 
 relations with his nephew from this time until Cromwell's 
 fall, yields ample proof of the complete triumph of the 
 English minister's pacificatory policy. Attempts made in the 
 past to stir up Border jealousies were completely abandoned, 
 and England seemed almost suspiciously desirous to show every 
 courtesy to her troublesome northern neighbour. A letter 
 of Cromwell to Sir Thomas Wharton ^, deputy Warden of 
 the West Marches, directs him to hand over to the Scottish 
 oflRcers an arrant traitor who had made his escape to England, 
 even if the Scots failed to ' doo the semblable.' Actions as 
 gracious as this were a new thing on the Borders : the usual 
 policy in the past had been for each nation to give shelter 
 to the outlaws who had fled to it from the other. The news 
 that David Beton, Abbot of Arbroath, had been raised by 
 the Pope to the cardinalate and was working at the Scottish 
 Court in the interests of Rome, made Henry still more anxious 
 to preserve friendship with his nephew, and to preclude all 
 chances of his being induced to join a continental league 
 against England^. So in January, 1540, we find him sending 
 Ralph Sadler, Cromwell's old friend, to James, to counteract, 
 if possible, the effect of the visit of Beton ^. By the capture 
 of certain letters in a Scottish ship which had been wrecked 
 on the Northumbrian coast, Henry had been furnished with 
 the means of misrepresenting the objects of the Cardinal 
 at his nephew's Court. Sadler was instructed to hint that 
 Beton was plotting to usurp all the authority of the King 
 of Scotland, and to advise James to be on his guard. The 
 ambassador was further directed to conciliate the Scottish 
 King by a present of six geldings, to assure him of Henry's 
 friendship, and to suggest that James augment his revenue 
 
 ' tetters, 330. "^ Cf. Pinkerton, vol. ii. pp. 352-3. 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 136. 
 
160 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 by suppressing the monasteries in his kingdom as his uncle 
 had done in England. Finally Sadler was to represent to 
 the Scots' King the advantages of an alliance with England 
 over one with France, and to request him to ponder on the 
 desirability of eradicating the ancient enmity of the two 
 peoples, especially in view of the fact that he might some 
 day himself succeed to his uncle's crown. The result of the 
 mission taken as a whole was satisfactory. Though James 
 refused to accede to any of Henry's more definite requests, 
 and would not listen to any proposals to abolish the old 
 religion or to suppress the monasteries, he still assured Sadler 
 that no alliance he made on the Continent would lead him 
 to break with England, and further enlarged on the benefits 
 that would result from a meeting with his uncle, though he 
 puzzled the envoy by suggesting that Francis should also be 
 present^. ' The mission of Sadler marks the last stage of 
 the relations of England and Scotland during Cromwell's 
 ministry; and the fact that war between the two countries 
 broke out so soon after his fall, furnishes a final reason for 
 believing that it was by the able and unceasing efforts of 
 the Privy Councillor that an open rupture was so long 
 averted. 
 
 Lastly, a few words remain to be said on the subject of the 
 government of Calais. If the name of that town were graven 
 on the heart of Mary Tudor at her death, from the grief 
 which its loss during her reign caused her, it must have been 
 also graven upon the minds of her father and his minister, 
 from the trouble its maintenance gave them during the last 
 seven years of the latter's power. In March, 1533, Arthur 
 Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, was nominated successor to that 
 learned soldier, Lord Berners, as Deputy there, and took the 
 oaths at the town, on the loth of June 2. The choice was 
 certainly unfortunate, and Lisle's unfitness for his new position 
 was destined soon to be made evident. He seems to have 
 been a man completely lacking in the qualities necessary 
 for a good ruler of such a place as Calais was in those 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 248. Cf. also Hume ^ Cal. vi. 300 (21), 619, and 
 
 Brown, vol. i. pp. 388-9. Rymer, vol. xiv. p. 452. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 161 
 
 days : he possessed small discrimination in judging what things 
 he could deal with by his own authority, and what things 
 it was necessary to report to head quarters. Hence there are 
 many mild rebukes among Cromwell's letters to him ^, in 
 some of which he chides him for bothering the King about 
 such a trivial thing as a private quarrel between two minor 
 officials in Calais, while in others he ' mervayles not a litel ' 
 that he should be so negligent as not to make immediate 
 report of sacrilegious preaching. Calais was by no means 
 an easy post to manage; Henry and Cromwell kept its 
 officers and garrison exceedingly short of money ; the soldiers 
 wrangled and mutinied, and religious conferences amongst 
 the townspeople sometimes took most violent forms, and not 
 seldom resulted in dangerous riots. Placed as a sort of spy 
 on the movements of Francis and the Emperor, in a town, 
 the government' of which on a small scale presented all the 
 difficulties of that of a great kingdom, the Deputy was in 
 a position which demanded resources greater than his own. 
 
 The first part of Lisle's administration seems to have been 
 comparatively uneventful. Cromwell, always keenly alive to 
 the necessity of having the country in an adequate state of 
 defence, at once caused him to repair all breaches in the 
 ramparts, a task which Lisle set about without competent 
 men or supplies ; and the immediate result of his ill-judged 
 attempts to lay a new foundation for one of his walls was the 
 fall of the small part of the old fortification which was yet 
 standing ^. Lisle was of course continually busied in pre- 
 venting his neighbours, French and Flemish, from meddling 
 with the King's Pale, especially throughout the year 1536, when 
 the war between Francis and the Emperor broke out afresh ^. 
 He tried to keep the town well victualled and in good defence, 
 and was zealous to do as he was bidden by Cromwell, though 
 seldom successful, for he lacked ability. After 1537 he was 
 confronted with a new and more difficult problem. 
 
 In the spring of 1538, Cranmer heard that there were seven 
 or eight persons in Calais, who manifestly denied Christ. 
 
 1 Cf. Letters, 86, 260. ' Cal. x. 541. 
 
 » Cal. xi. 183. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I M 
 
163 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 His Commissary there^ John Butler, asserted that this report 
 was false, but in a later epistle advised the Archbishop that 
 there were three papists in the town, who slandered those 
 who applied themselves to God's word ; the letter went on to 
 suggest that Ci-omwell be requested to write to Lisle to have 
 them punished 1. The minister, however, had heard of the 
 existence of ' certayn Sacramentaryes ' or deniers of transub- 
 stantiation there, before this report arrived, and had written 
 the Deputy a severe reproof for not informing him about 
 them 2. The state of foreign affairs at that moment was such 
 as to render it indispensable for the King to preserve the 
 appearance of being zealous for orthodoxy, and he had called 
 on his efficient minister to aid him in his attempts to extirpate 
 heretical doctrines. The rebuke which the latter had ad- 
 ministered to the Deputy seems in this case to have been 
 undeserved, for Lisle, who apparently was more on the watch 
 than usual this time, had certainly sent home information 
 about the Sacramentaries before he received Cromwell's 
 epistle : the two letters perhaps crossed on the way. That 
 of the Deputy reported the arrival in Calais of a young 
 English priest, lately come from Germany, who had uttered 
 opinions about the Eucharist which the King would not 
 tolerate, and which had shocked the good people of Calais 
 beyond measure. This young priest can have been none 
 other than Adam Damplip, originally a strong papist, who 
 (according to Foxe) had been chaplain to Fisher, and at the 
 Cardinal's execution had left England and travelled in France, 
 Germany, and Italy. His sojourn in foreign lands must have 
 altered his opinions completely, for when he came to Calais 
 his doctrines were so 'advanced ' and heretical, that as a result 
 of a warning of Cromwell's, in his letter to Lisle of May 14 ^, 
 a decree was made out by the Council of the town that Butler, 
 the Commissary who had given Damplip licence to preach, 
 would be held responsible for any false opinions that the 
 priest expressed *. 
 
 Determined as he was to extirpate unlawful and treasonable 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (i) 813, 934. ' Letters, 263. 
 
 " Letters, 260. * Cal. xiii. (i) 1219. 
 
IRELAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, CALAIS 163 
 
 doctrines both at home and abroad, Cromwell was too much 
 absorbed in the maintenance of his foreign policy, and the 
 prevention of the pressing dangers which threatened the 
 country from without, to pay much attention to Damplip at 
 Calais during the latter part of 1538 and 1539. He was far 
 more anxious to have the town well victualled and defended, 
 in case of a sudden attack from France or Spain. Damplip 
 himself, however, had gone over to England to answer to the 
 charges brought against him before Cranmer ^ The result of 
 the examination seems to have been very favourable to him, 
 and the Archbishop, in a letter to Cromwell about it, supported 
 the position which the priest had taken up in only denying 
 Transubstantiation while admitting the Real Presence^. 
 But the accusations from Calais against the Sacramen- 
 taries did not cease. Lisle and the Council, now thoroughly 
 roused, kept sending in depositions against Damplip, until 
 Cromwell, in May, 1539, rebuked them for uncharitable 
 behaviour, saying that the affair was being made too 
 much of, and that the King was busy about other things '. 
 Exhortations to ' charyte and myld handeling ' were not 
 Cromwell's usual style ; and in this case at least they were 
 superseded within ten days by instructions of a very different 
 nature. The cause of the sudden change is doubtless to be 
 found in the debate on the Six Articles, just then at its 
 height. Cromwell saw the trend things were taking, and 
 understood that as the doctrine of Transubstantiation was 
 evidently about to be confirmed at home, it would be ex- 
 tremely dangerous for him to urge leniency towards those 
 who opposed it at Calais. He consequently sent another letter 
 to Lisle *, in which he retreated from his former position, and 
 ordered the Commissary and the parish priest of Our Lady 
 Church to be sent in custody to England. The subsequent 
 appearance of these men before the Privy Council seems to 
 have resulted in their acquittal, and a public recantation in 
 the Market Place at Calais was deemed sufficient to prevent 
 a recurrence to the heresy. The recall of Lord Lisle in the 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (i) 1446, 1464. ° Letters, 312. 
 
 " Cal. xiii. (ii) 97. * Letters, 314. 
 
 M a 
 
164 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 spring of 1540 was probably less due to his inefficiency in 
 handling the affair of the Sacramentaries, than to the many 
 proofs he had given of general incompetence. He was com- 
 mitted to the Tower, where he remained a close prisoner till 
 January, 1542, when a message was sent to him that he was 
 pardoned and restored to favour. The story is that his joy 
 at hearing this news was so great, that he died of excitement 
 that same night ^. 
 
 That Calais was not lost to England under the incompetent 
 management of Lisle (whose actions from first to last were too 
 much influenced by the whims of a foolish wife), was solely 
 due to the guidance which he received from Cromwell. The 
 brilliant success of the great minister's administration in 
 England was fully equalled by the wisdom and skill of his 
 dealings with her immediate neighbours and dependencies. 
 In every case the dominant principle of his policy had been 
 the same ; the completion of the work begun by Henry VH 
 — the elevation of the Crown to absolute power on the ruins 
 of every other institution which had ever been its rival. In 
 attaining this end, which (as we must not forget) was one that 
 commended itself to most patriotic Englishmen of the time, 
 Cromwell had been confronted by a multitude of problems of 
 great difficulty and infinite diversity : he handled them all with 
 uniform success ; and the monarchy, under his guidance, passed 
 safe through one of the gravest crises in the history of the 
 realm, finally to emerge triumphant, absolute, supreme in 
 Church and State. 
 
 ^ .See Life of Arthur Lord Lisle in the Dictionary of National Biography, 
 vol. xlv. p. 400. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Monasteries 
 
 The suppression of the English monasteries, though in one 
 sense but a single branch of Cromwell's internal administra- 
 tion, still deserves to be considered in a separate chapter. 
 Of all the changes that followed the breach with Rome, none 
 bears as plainly as this the stamp of Cromwellian origin. 
 The sinister genius of the King's minister particularly fitted 
 him for this task of destruction, and his title of malleus- 
 monachorum is thoroughly well deserved. Cromwell's intent 
 in suppressing the monasteries was obviously, like that of 
 all the rest of his internal administration, the strengthening 
 of the Crown : how far his measures were successful in 
 accomplishing what was expected of them must be deter- 
 mined not only from their immediate effects, but also from 
 the developments which later resulted from them. 
 
 It has been pointed out in an earlier chapter that the state 
 of the lesser monasteries was far from satisfactory in Crom- 
 well's time ; but that in spite of this, when Wolsey's agents 
 suppressed a few of them in order to convert their revenues 
 to the use of the Cardinal's cherished colleges, a loud cry 
 of indignation was immediately raised among the rural 
 population. During his first few years in Wolsey's service 
 Cromwell had acquired suflScient experience to master at least 
 the elementary principles of monastic confiscation, but before 
 he had gone half as far as he had probably intended, his 
 master's attainder and his own consequent change of life had 
 temporarily interrupted the work. We have seen that as soon 
 as the King had arbitrarily assumed the Headship of the 
 Church of England, Cromwell immediately cast about for 
 means to secure him in his new position. To this end he had 
 
166 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 weakened the bishops and also the lesser clergy ; the dissolu- 
 tion of the monasteries immediately presented itself to him as 
 a consistent method of following up these measures. It all 
 tended in the same direction of severing England's connexion 
 with Rome and of establishing the Royal Supremacy. The 
 scheme of suppressing the monasteries also promised great 
 things from a financial point of view ; Cromwell could have 
 hit upon no better plan than this to aid him to fulfil his 
 promise to make Henry ' the richest King that ever was in 
 Christendom.' If the idea of dissolving the religious houses 
 in order to increase the wealth of the Crown, had occurred to 
 Henry during Wolsey's administration, he would hardly have 
 dared to carry it out while there was any chance of avoiding 
 a breach with the Pope ; but now the course of events had 
 converted the only objection to the plan into an argument in 
 its favour. There was certainly nothing in the conscience of 
 the King or of his minister to deter them from such a step, 
 when so much advantage both political and financial promised 
 to result from it. 
 
 In January, 1535, two documents appeared — the first, a 
 royal commission to Thomas Cromwell authorizing him as 
 the King's Vicar-general to undertake a general visitation 
 of churches, monasteries, and clergy, and to depute others 
 to act as his agents; the second consisting of a series of 
 formal inquiries to be made concerning the state of the 
 religious houses, and royal injunctions for their reform. The 
 latter is written in a strange hand, copiously interlined and 
 corrected by that of the King's minister ^. The decrees were 
 quickly put in operation. By the month of August in the 
 same year Cromwell's two agents, Legh and Ap-Rice, were 
 hard at work among the Wiltshire monasteries, and sent in 
 their reports to their master full of ludicrously pathetic 
 lamentations, when unable to trump up any plausible charges 
 against the monks ^. Doctor Richard Layton, who had come 
 under Cromwell's notice at the time of the trials of More 
 and Fisher, sent him a request for employment on the same 
 mission, and eventually got permission to go to Gloucester- 
 
 ^ Cal. viii. 75, 76. "^ Cal. ix. 139. 
 
THE MONASTERIES 167 
 
 shire ^. He had made a preliminary visitation at Bath and 
 Farley, and while there had aroused the jealousy and hatred 
 of Legh, who wrote to Cromwell complaining that he was 
 not sufficiently severe, and urging the necessity of uniformity 
 of action^. A great many grumbling letters of this kind 
 were sent to Cromwell by his visitors. Layton and Ap-Rice 
 were not slow to revenge themselves on Legh by reporting 
 to the Vicar-general the pride, arrogance, 'sumptuus vsage, 
 and roughe fasshyon ' of their hated colleague ^. 
 
 The bad character of Cromwell's agents, and the devices 
 to which they were forced to have recourse in order to extort 
 from the monks the information they desired, furnish ample 
 proof of the unfairness of many of the reports which they made. 
 The ' Commissioners found means,' as it has been significantly 
 stated, ' to make divers monasteries obnoxious *.' Cromwell 
 had taken special pains that the efforts of his agents should 
 not be hindered by any external interference : it was to this 
 end that he had issued the Prohibitory Letter to the bishops 
 in the month of September °. Legh, Layton, and Ap-Rice 
 , were left a perfectly clear field, and devoted themselves to 
 examining into the monastic discipline, and to inducing 
 discontented monks to accuse their fellows. The arrogant 
 Legh was especially efficient in this particular, as is shown 
 by the letters Cromwell received from the monasteries he 
 had visited. One monk wrote to the Vicar-general that 
 the inmates of his house cared nothing for true religion, but 
 came to mattins 'as dronck as myss and [played] sume at 
 cardes, sume at dyyss * ' — and finally imparted the significant 
 piece of information that Cromwell's visitors had ordered 
 
 ^ Cal. viii. 822, 1 127. The King Cromwell were also desirous per- 
 
 and Cromwell were both absent on sonally to inform themselves con- 
 
 a tour in the west and south of cerning the religious houses in the 
 
 England from the end of July until south and west counties, before 
 
 the beginning of October, 1535. permitting their agents to com- 
 
 Chapuys states that the object of plete the visitation. Cal. ix. 58. 
 
 this trip was to win the affection ' Cal. ix. 138. 
 
 of the people on the Borders of ' Cal. ix. 621, 622. 
 
 Wales, and to enjoy the excellent * Herbert, p. 186. 
 
 hunting which that region afforded. * See ante, chap, vii, p. 115. 
 
 It is probable that Henry and « Wright, p. 133. A tag of verse. 
 
168 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 him to write these opinions to head quarters. Another, John 
 Placett by name, sent cringing letters to the Vicegerent, 
 begging that his zeal in advancing the new doctrines and in 
 reporting those who opposed them, might be rewarded by 
 official exemption from rising at midnight and from observing 
 the customary fasts ^. Epistles of this sort form the bulk of 
 Cromwell's correspondence during the years T-535 ^.nd 1536. 
 The chief reason why the Vicar-general did not protest 
 against this flood of defamatory information, which through 
 the efficiency of the zealous Legh continually poured in upon 
 him, lay probably in the fact that along with these reports 
 there came also letters of a somewhat different nature which 
 afforded him excellent opportunities for private gain. ' I sub- 
 mytt niyselfe,' wrote the Abbot of Rewley, ' fuUe and holle 
 to your niastershipp, as all my refuge, helpe, and socor is yn 
 yow, glad of my voluntarye mynde to be bounde in obligacion 
 of one hunderd powndes to be payed to your mastershipp, so 
 that our house may be savyd ^.' We may well believe that 
 this proposal did not fall on deaf ears. Though we do not 
 possess the reply of Cromwell in this particular case, the 
 letters which he sent to the Priors of St. Faith's and of 
 Coxford in the same year, indicate that he was as willing to 
 accept bribes from the heads of monasteries as from any 
 one else ^. 
 
 Less crafty but scarcely less efficient than the untiring 
 Legh was his brutal colleague Layton. The Sussex monas- 
 teries which he visited in October, 1535, were so unfortunate 
 
 ' Cal. ix. 321, 322. Warwickshire, Yarmouth in Nor- 
 
 ^ Wright, p. 73. folk, and Laund in Leicestershire. 
 
 ' Letters, 163, 180. Cf. also Gas- Sir Richard Cromwell, his nephew, 
 
 quet, English Monasteries, vol. i. and great-grandfather of Oliver, 
 
 pp. 413, 421. Cromwell also took received Ramsey Abbey, Hinchin- 
 
 good care that some of the sup- brooke Nunnery, Sawtry Abbey, 
 
 pressed houses also should fall to his St. Neot's Priory, and a house of 
 
 portion. He ' appropriated to his Austin canons in Huntingdonshire, 
 
 own share the rich Priory of Lewes with Neath Abbey in Glamorgan- 
 
 in Sussex (including its cell of Mel- shire, and St. Helen's Nunnery in 
 
 ton-Mowbray in Leicestershire), the London.' Blunt, vol. i. p. 377. See 
 
 Priory of Michelham in the same also note 4 at the bottom of the 
 
 county, that of Modenham in Kent, same page, 
 of St. Osythe in Essex, Alceter in 
 
THE MONASTERIES 169 
 
 as to incur his particular displeasure. He does not appear 
 to have troubled himself, like Legh, with devising means 
 to make the monks accuse one another : he reported every- 
 thing to head quarters on his own responsibility, and wrote 
 to Cromwell how at one place he found the abbot the 
 'varaste hayne betle and buserde and the aranttes chorle' 
 he ever saw, while at another he swore that his master would 
 scarcely believe 'quanta sit spurcities.' He concluded with 
 two philosophic reflections that ' sacerdotes omnes non creati 
 ex natura angelica, sed humana,' and 'that the blake 
 sort of dyvelisshe monkes ... be paste amendment ^.' He 
 possibly bore a personal grudge against these southern 
 houses ; at least this seems a likely explanation of the fact 
 that later investigation showed them to be no worse than 
 ordinary, and especially popular with their neighbours^. 
 Layton, however, found willing listeners to his accusations 
 in the King and Cromwell, and a commission was sent 
 down to confiscate the property of the monasteries of 
 Dover, Langdon, and Folkestone, and to take the surrender 
 of these houses into the King's hands. It was the first 
 step of the great devastation which was to ensue during the 
 following four years. 
 
 The next scene of the visitors' operations was in the 
 northern counties. Early in 1535 Layton had taken occasion 
 to inform Cromwell that he and Legh were particularly 
 competent to carry on the work there. 'Ther ys nother 
 monasterie, selle, priorie, nor any other religiouse howse in 
 the north,' he wrote, ' but other doctor Lee or I have familier 
 acqwayntance within x or xii mylles of hit. . . . We knowe 
 and have experiens bothe of the fassion off the contre and 
 the rudenes of the pepull . . . ther is matter sufficient to 
 detecte and opyn all coloryde sanctitie, all supersticiouse 
 rewUes of pretensyde religion, and other abusys detestable 
 of all sorttes^' Cromwell certainly had no reason to be 
 dissatisfied with the results which his agents had already 
 accomplished, and doubtless welcomed their zeal to continue 
 their labours in a new field. With most astounding rapidity 
 
 ' Cal. ix. 509, 632. ^ Cal. ix. 829. " Wright, p. 156. 
 
170 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 the visitation was carried through : all the houses in the north 
 had been reported on by the end of February. There was 
 certainly an object in having the work completed so quickly, 
 for Parliament had already met, and was prepared to take 
 action on the ' comperta ' or catalogue of offences sent in by 
 Cromwell's agents. The extraordinary hurry in which the 
 latter part of their task was accomplished, and the suspicious 
 uniformity of the offences reported, furnish a last and most 
 cogent reason for doubting the truth of the statements of 
 the visitors. There must of course have been some im- 
 morality in the monasteries : the abbots and heads of houses 
 were elected by the monks themselves, who were sure to 
 have an eye to their own ease, and would tend to choose 
 those whose discipline was lax. But it must be a prejudiced 
 person indeed who will accept word for word the catalogues 
 of the religious persons reported guilty of the lowest and most 
 degrading forms of vice, which Legh and Layton seemed to 
 delight in sending to their master. Parliament, however, was 
 too completely in Cromwell's hands fairly to judge of the 
 character of the visitors, or of the circumstances under 
 which they drew up their ' comperta,' and the report was 
 strong and clear ; so it was not long before the first Act for 
 the dissolution of the smaller monasteries was passed. The 
 statute declared that 'all Relygeous Houses of Monkes 
 Chanons and Nonnes, whiche may not dyspend Manors, 
 Landes, Tenementes, & Heredytamentes above the clere 
 yerly Value of ij C li. are geven to the Kinges Highnes, his 
 heires and successours for ever ^.' Another Act was passed 
 at the same time establishing a Court of Augmentations of 
 the King's revenue^. Power was given to this court to 
 collect the spoils, lands, and buildings of the suppressed 
 abbeys, and dispose of them in the way most profitable to 
 the Crown. It consisted of a chancellor, treasurer, solicitor, 
 and thirty subordinates. The chief persons in it were friends 
 and hirelings of Cromwell's. In April commissions were 
 sent to the principal men in every county ^, authorizing them 
 to inquire further into the state of each house, to make 
 
 27 Hen. VIII, c. 28. ^ 27 Hen. VIII, c. 61. ' Cal. x. 1191. 
 
THE MONASTERIES 171 
 
 inventories and estimates of their property, and to ascertain 
 the number of monks who desired 'capacities' for entering 
 secular life, and the number who intended to remove to some 
 other religious house. It is significant that the reports of 
 these men, concerning the character and morality of the 
 inmates, are uniformly of a more favourable description than 
 those of Layton and Legh. 
 
 The process of the surrender immediately followed the 
 first visit of the Commissioners. They sent in their report 
 to the Court of Augmentations, which then issued its final 
 orders for the dissolution of the house, and its conversion 
 to the King's use. A ' receiver ' was appointed to plunder 
 the church, and sell the lead, bells, &c. An interesting 
 letter, from an agent of Cromwell's to his master, sheds some 
 light on the usual methods of these officials. 'We ar 
 pluckyng down an hygher vaute,' writes the receiver, ' borne 
 up by fower thicke and grose pillars xiiij fote fro syde to 
 syde, abowt in circumference xlv fote ... we browght 
 from London xvij persons, 3 carpentars, a smythes, a plum- 
 mars, and on that kepith the fornace. Euery of these 
 attendith to hys own office: x of them hewed the walles 
 abowte, amonge the whych ther were 3 carpentars : thiese 
 made proctes to undersette wher the other cutte away, 
 thother brake and cutte the waules ^.' Coupled with reports 
 like this, came curiously confused accounts of the saleable 
 articles of the house, which had been disposed of, such as 
 
 /fern ij brasse pottes sold to Edward Scudamor . iiij' 
 lUm a vestment and ij tynakles of old prest 
 
 velvet sold to Johan Savage baylyf . . xiij^ iiij* 
 Item ij pannes ........ vi* 
 
 Item a cope of tawny damaske xij"* 
 
 Item a image of Seynt Katerine sold to Lee . . vj* 
 liem sold to John Webbe the tymber worke 
 of the hyegh quyer, and a auter of alablaster 
 in the body of the churche . . . . ix= viij*^ 
 
 It will be noticed that the sums for which these articles were 
 ' Wright, pp. 1 80- 1. ' Wright, pp. 367-9. 
 
172 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 sold, were very small. It is said that not more than j^ 100,000 
 were obtained from the sale of the jewels, plate, lead, 
 bells, and other valuables, which were seized in the first 
 suppression of the monasteries. The annual incomes of the 
 three hundred and seventy-six houses which were suppressed, 
 however, probably amounted to about ;£'32,ooo, a sum 
 which was quite sufficient to render the measure a successful 
 one from a financial point of view. 
 
 In spite of the Act of Parliament, which declared that the 
 monks were either to be pensioned, or else moved to some 
 other religious house, there is no doubt that great misery 
 and wretchedness invariably accompanied the dissolutions. 
 Chapuys writes : ' 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 ^.' The Act 
 for the protection of the exiled inmates cannot have been at 
 all strictly enforced, and there were certainly many monks, to 
 whom no homes or means of living were assigned. Sir 
 Henry Ellis has printed a document, concerning the dissolu- 
 tion of some of the monasteries, which was written in 1591 
 by one whose father and uncle witnessed the scenes he 
 describes. It tells how ' it would have made an heart of flint 
 to have melted and wept to have seen the breaking up 
 of the House, and their sorrowful departing ; and the sudden 
 spoil that fell the same day of their departure from the 
 House. And every person had everything good cheap ; 
 except the poor Monks, Friars, and Nuns, that had no money 
 to bestow of any thing.' The people entered the church, ' and 
 
 took what they found, and filched it away It would have 
 
 pitied any heart to see what tearing up of the lead there was, 
 and plucking up of boards, and throwing down of the sparres ; 
 
 .... and the tombs in the Church (were) all broken, and all 
 
 things of price either spoiled, carped away, or defaced to the 
 uttermost ^.' Nor is this tendency of the people of the neigh- 
 
 ■ Cal. xi. 42. "^ Ellis, 3rd Series, vol. iii. pp. 33, 34. 
 
THE MONASTERIES 173 
 
 bourhood to plunder in the least to be wondered at. They 
 knew that as the monasteries were to be pulled down they 
 would lose all the old charities, easy rents, and other advantages 
 to which they had so long been accustomed, and they naturally 
 wished to make good the loss. Cromwell probably did not 
 object to this ruthless waste as much as one would expect, 
 for he saw that if he attempted to stop it, the feeling against 
 the suppression would be so strong, that it would be impossible 
 to continue it. As it was, the famous rebellion of the 
 Pilgrimage of Grace, which broke out in the northern counties, 
 just as the first houses were being suppressed, gave him 
 a terrible warning of the general unpopularity of the change. 
 The insurrection, however, was soon quelled, and Cromwell's 
 genius was able to turn it to his own advantage, and make it 
 the pretext for carrying out the scheme which had probably 
 been part of his original plan, namely the suppression of all 
 the monasteries ; a step which, without some valid excuse, he 
 would have hardly dared to take. 
 
 In 1537 the visitors began to go to the larger monasteries, 
 and intimidate their inmates into surrender, mainly by threaten- 
 ing them with punishment for complicity in the rebellion 
 which had just been put down. An excellent example of the 
 way in which this was done, is given by the story of the 
 suppression of the two large Cistercian abbeys in Lancashire, 
 Whalley and Furness^. John Pasleu, Abbot of Whalley, 
 had been executed in March, 1537, by the Earl of Sussex 
 for his treason in taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. 
 The Earl was commended for this action by the King, who 
 further desired him with ' good dexteritie ' to ' laye unto the 
 charges of all the monkes there their grevous offences, ..... 
 and therwith assaye their myndes, whither they woll conforme 
 themselfes gladly for the redubbing of their former trespaces 
 to goo to other houses of their cote ... or rather take 
 capacities and soo receyve seculer habite^.' The Abbot of 
 Furness was doubtless threatened with death if he refused to 
 surrender his house, for a month after the execution of his 
 brother at Whalley, he signed a document, by virtue of which 
 
 1 Cal. xii. (i) 632, 668. ^ State Papers, vol. i. p. 540. 
 
174 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 he handed over to the King his abbey, and all its lands and 
 possessions, ' knawyng the mysorder and evyll liff both unto 
 God and our prynce of the bredren of the said monasterie ^.' 
 
 Another method of intimidation was to threaten punish- 
 ment for superstition and image worship. Against the latter 
 Henry's minister was particularly zealous. Some of the 
 images were very valuable, and could be sold for a high price. 
 Two of the most extraordinary of the venerated relics found 
 in the ' defacement ' of the monasteries have become famous 
 to posterity, under the names of the Rood of Grace, and the 
 Blood of Hailes. The former was a wonder-working crucifix, 
 held in great veneration at Boxley Abbey, which Geoffrey 
 Chambers ^, an agent of Cromwell's, found full of ' certen 
 ingynes and olde wyer wyth olde roton stykkes in the backe 
 of the same, that dyd cause the eyes of the same to move and 
 stere in the hede thereof lyke unto a lyvelye thyng^.' It 
 was seized and exhibited, first in Kent, and then in London, 
 and the 'abusion thereof dyvulged.' The Blood of Hailes 
 was a phial of liquid, which a tradition of three centuries 
 asserted to have been the blood of the Saviour *. The head 
 of the monastery brought it to Cromwell in great perplexity, 
 swearing that he was willing to suffer the most shameful 
 death, if the phial had been meddled with in his day. A 
 commission, appointed to inquire into it, took the liquid out 
 of the phial, and found it to be a thick, red, sticky substance. 
 They then gave it back to the abbot, to keep until he heard 
 the King's pleasure concerning it. Meantime Bishop Hilsey 
 had preached a sermon in denunciation of the fraud, in which 
 he asserted that a former abbot had told his paramour that the 
 phial contained only drake's blood ; but he was later compelled 
 to take back this last statement, as a result of the Commissioners' 
 inquiry. What ultimately became of the Blood of Hailes has 
 remained a mystery, but it is noteworthy that Cromwell was 
 so annoyed, at having unearthed a relic which proved value- 
 
 ' Wright, p. 153. ' Ellis, 3rd Series, vol. iii. p. 
 
 ^ This was perhaps the man 168. 
 
 whom Cromwell years before had * Introduction to vol. xiii. of the 
 
 helped to obtain from the Pope the Calendar, pp. 8-14; Wordsworth's 
 
 indulgence for the Boston Gild. Cromwell, pp. 346-7 nn. 
 
THE MONASTERIES 175 
 
 less from a financial point of view, that when the ' bluddy 
 abbot,' as Latimer called him, came to consult him about it, 
 he was forced to pay ;^i40, his best mitre, cross, and 
 'another thyng or two,' to make good the amount which 
 Cromwell had expected to obtain from the relic. The icono- 
 clastic zeal of the Vicar-general varied in proportion to the 
 value of the image ^. 
 
 The first Act of dissolution had only given to the King 
 the monasteries of which the annual income was less than 
 ^aoo. But now that Cromwell, on the plea of com- 
 plicity in the late rebellion, had contrived to bring in all the 
 larger religious houses, so that a general suppression had in 
 fact begun, a fresh Act was needed to legalize his proceedings. 
 So in the spring of 1539, a new statute was passed for the 
 dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys ^. But long before 
 this the main part of the work had been accomplished. When 
 the monks refused to be terrorized into submission, attainder 
 and death invariably followed. It is but justice to Cromwell's 
 agents to say, however, that their methods of intimidation 
 were so highly effectual that attainder was the exception, 
 and surrender the rule. The Commissioners may well have 
 been surprised that any of the abbots dared to stand out 
 against them. 
 
 From 1537 to the end of 1539, the story of the suppres- 
 sion of the monasteries is simply a catalogue of houses 
 surrendered or confiscated, on more or less unjust pretexts. 
 So rapidly and thoroughly did Cromwell and his Com- 
 missioners accomplish the work, that by the end of Decem- 
 ber no monastery in the country had been left untouched, 
 except Westminster Abbey, and a few other larger houses. 
 The climax of cruelty and injustice was reached in the 
 executions of the Abbots of Glastonbury and Reading. 
 Cromwell's famous remembrance concerning the latter was 
 literally obeyed. There was no pretence of a fair hearing of 
 his case. He was sent down '■to be tryed and exceaityd,' as 
 Cromwell had ordered it ^. The punishment of the Abbot of 
 
 ^ Wriothesley's Chronicle, vol. i. pp. 76, 90. Cal. xiii. (i) 347 ; xiii. (ii) 
 186, 709-10. 
 ' 31 Hen. VIII, c. 13. ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 399. 
 
176 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Glastonbury was, if possible, even more unjust. Though 
 weak and broken, with age and illness, he was arrested and 
 sent up to the Tower, simply on the charge of having in his 
 monastery a book against the King's divorce, divers pardons 
 and bulls, and a printed life of Becket ^. It is stated that on 
 examination Cromwell discovered that he had lent money to 
 the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace, but it mattered little 
 whether this serious charge was proved or not. His execution 
 was determined on long beforehand, and his rich and ancient 
 abbey was plundered immediately after his arrest. His 
 fate was sealed long before his mock trial at Wells took 
 place ; the verdict of the ' worshypfull jury ' was of course 
 ' giailty,' and he was executed two days later on Glastonbury 
 Tor 2. 
 
 Hand in hand with the suppression of the monasteries 
 came the fall of the various houses of the friars. This had 
 probably been a part of Cromwell's scheme from the very 
 first ; it will be remembered that several houses suffered in 
 the early part of his ministry, as a penalty for permitting 
 their inmates to preach against the King's divorce. A sort 
 of preliminary visitation "had been carried on in 1534, at 
 Cromwell's command, by his agents Browne and Hilsey ^ : but 
 a far more energetic person was found in Richard Ingworth, 
 Bishop of Dover, who, on the 6th of February, 1538, was 
 commissioned by the Vicar-general to carry on a second 
 investigation, in which he was to visit all the houses of the 
 various orders of friars in England, to examine into and cor- 
 rect abuses, and to expel and punish the guilty inmates *. As 
 he refers to the King's Vicegerent, as his ' synguler helper for 
 Xn yeres past ^,' there is reason to think that he had been an 
 intimate of Cromwell's before the latter had entered the royal 
 service : it is possible that they had worked together in the sup- 
 pression of the monasteries which furnished funds for Wolsey's 
 colleges. A greater traveller than Ingworth could scarcely 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 206. * Cal. xiii. (i) 225. 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 530, 531. Cf. ° Cal. xiii. (ii) 1021. Cf. also 
 
 also Gasquet, The Last Abbot of the Introduction to vol. xiii of the 
 
 Glastonbury, chaps, vi and vii. Calendar, p. 23. 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 587 (i8). 
 
THE MONASTERIES 177 
 
 have been found in those days. The nunniber of houses he 
 visited during the first six months of 1538 is perfectly amazing, 
 but with all his energy, Richard of Dover was far less efficient 
 than his terrible master. When he hesitatingly wrote to 
 Cromwell to ask whether he should meddle with the White 
 Friars of Winchester, he received a smart rebuke for his 
 doubts, and was told that though he had changed his friar's 
 habit, he had not changed his friar's heart ^. The Vicar- 
 general found it necessary to give him a coadjutor, and chose 
 a singularly apt man for his purpose in Dr. John London, 
 Warden of New College, Oxford, who received a special com- 
 mission with the mayor and two others to 'loke vpon' the 
 friars of that town^. The friars gave the Commissioners 
 more trouble than the monks. They seemed to have secret 
 ways of learning when the visitors were going to arrive, and 
 either carefully hid, or else sold all their valuables beforehand, 
 a fact which affords the most probable explanation of the 
 amount of poverty reported by the visitors. Still the houses 
 fell without ceasing ; if not by voluntary surrender, by com- 
 pulsion. Nor did the visitors hesitate in the case of nunneries, 
 to resort to the most shameful devices to elicit a surrender. 
 London's conduct was so disgraceful, that Cromwell was 
 obliged to recognize the justice of the complaints of the 
 Abbess of Godstow against him, and ' steye his procedinges ^.' 
 'Doctor Londone,' wrote the abbess to the Vicar-general,' whiche 
 . . . was ageynste my promotyon and hathe ever sence borne me 
 greate malys and grudge like my mortall enmye, is sodenlie 
 cummyd unto me withe a greate rowte with him, and here 
 dothe threten me and my susters, sayeng that he hathe the 
 kynges commyssyon to suppres the house spyte of my tethe*.' 
 It appears that London himself wrote to Cromwell the day 
 after to beg him to favour the abbess and her sisters °. Did 
 he perhaps feel that he had gone too far, or are we to 
 infer that his usual methods were even more brutal than 
 this? 
 
 ' Wright, pp. 195, 197. * Wright, p. 230. 
 
 " Cal. xiii. (i) 1335. " Cal. xiii. (ii) 767. 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (ii) 758, 911. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I N 
 
178 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 And thus the work was finished. Within five years of the 
 time that the first visitation of the monasteries had begun, 
 a complete devastation of all the religious houses had been 
 accomplished, and a torrent of wealth had been poured in 
 upon the Crown, 'such,' says Hallam, 'as has seldom been 
 equalled in any country, by the confiscations following a 
 subdued rebellion^.' The suppression which included the 
 larger houses was evidently a far greater financial success 
 than the first. A new device for gaining revenue had been 
 invented, and put in operation during the last few years. It 
 consisted in imposing a fine on every place in which a religious 
 house had existed, ' for the toleracyon and contynuaunce of 
 the monastery ther ^ ' ; an ingenious device, which yielded 
 a most substantial income. ' The King had then in his hand,' 
 says Burnet, 'the greatest opportunity of making royal and 
 noble foundations that ever King of England had. But 
 whether out of policy, to give a general content to the gentry 
 by selling to them at low rates, or out of easiness to his 
 courtiers, or out of an unmeasured lavishness of expense, it 
 came far short of what he had given out he would do. . . . 
 He designed to convert ;£^i 8,000 into a revenue for eighteen 
 bishoprics and cathedrals. But of these he only erected six. . . . 
 Great sums were indeed laid out on building and fortifying 
 many ports in the Channel, and other parts of England V 
 
 Lacking any evidence from the sources on the subject 
 of the use to which the revenues from the suppression of the 
 monasteries were put, one must judge from this passage, and 
 from subsequent events. An Act giving Henry the power 
 to erect bishoprics by letters patent, was passed in Parliament, 
 May 23, 1,539*. It was by the authority of this statute, that 
 the King founded the six new bishops' sees above mentioned, 
 and also converted some of the old houses, such as Beverley, 
 Ripon, and Manchester, into collegiate churches. But the 
 passage in Burnet also hints at other methods of employing 
 the money gained from the suppression, of the monasteries, 
 which it seems likely that Cromwell suggested. The use 
 
 ' Hallam, vol. i. p. 76. ' Burnet, vol. i. p. 431. 
 
 =■ Cal. xiii. (ii) 457 (3). * 51 Hen. VIII, c. 9. 
 
THE MONASTERIES 179 
 
 of the funds to strengthen the coast defences along the 
 Channel was always one of his favourite schemes ; it is 
 probable that he found no difficulty in persuading the King 
 how necessary such a precaution was, in view of the danger 
 of foreign invasion, which threatened England at the close of 
 1539. But the plan of selling the lands of the confiscated 
 houses to the nobles at low prices, is even more Cromwellian. 
 It immediately reminds the reader of the course which 
 Wolsey, ten years before, had pursued at his servant's advice, 
 when he bought off the popular hatred by grants out of his 
 own lands and revenues. Cromwell plainly saw that after the 
 suppression, steps must be taken to ensure the permanence 
 of the reform he had effected. By judicious grants he turned 
 aside the hatred of some of the rural gentry, who were at first 
 opposed to the destruction of the monasteries, and thus, 
 by rendering the work popular at home, he secured himself 
 and it from the attacks of Catholic potentates abroad. But 
 his action at this juncture had another more subtle and more 
 important result. For by the grants which he made to the 
 rural gentry, he laid the basis for the foundation of a territorial 
 aristocracy, destined at a later day to wrest from the Crown 
 the power which he had wrung from the older nobility, lay 
 and clerical. This after-effect of Cromwell's policy, which was 
 in direct opposition to the aims of his government, did not take 
 place till long after his fall. It was rendered possible solely 
 by the movement of events over which he had no control, 
 and he could have scarcely anticipated it. But it is only 
 fair to mention it here, in order that we may be able to look 
 on the suppression of the monasteries and its after-effects as 
 a connected whole. If we do this, the cruelty and treachery 
 of Cromwell and his agents in gaining their ends will not 
 make us blind to the fact, that in the end the destruction of 
 the religious houses in England certainly accomplished 
 other and better results than those it was originally intended 
 to compass. 
 
 N a 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE. 1536 
 
 When Cromwell entered the King's service, it was inevitable 
 that the policy he adopted should force him to abandon all 
 hope of popularity with the people at large, as soon as 
 his real position became generally known. The efforts 
 Henry and his minister made to conceal the identity of the 
 true author of the sweeping changes of the years 1530-34, 
 bear testimony to the fact that they were both perfectly well 
 aware of the opposition the new measures must arouse in the 
 minds of those who were outside the Court circle and 
 consequently could not see the reason of them. For a long 
 time these efforts were crowned with success. We have seen 
 that it was not until the year 1535 that those who were in 
 close proximity to the King discovered what a power Cromwell 
 had become in Church and State. It was even longer before 
 the country people began to realize the true state of affairs. 
 News of the extraordinary revolution in ecclesiastical matters, 
 of the King's divorce and second marriage, of the packed 
 Parliaments, and of the ruthless execution of so-called heretics, 
 slowly spi"ead among the rural population. The changes were 
 certainly unwelcome, but they were universally thought to be 
 the work of the King alone, and traditional English respect 
 for royalty was sufficient to check any serious outbreak. The 
 common people contented themselves with vague murmurings 
 and disloyal speeches which were soon suppressed through 
 the efficiency of Cromwell's agents ; and by the opening of the 
 year 1535 the King and his minister began to hope that the 
 crisis had been tided over. 
 
 But they were destined to be disappointed. At the very 
 moment when he began to think himself secure in his almost 
 exclusive enjoyment of his master's favour, Cromwell took a 
 measure which was destined to conduce directly to the formid- 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 
 
 181 
 
 able rising that nearly hurled him from his hard-won place. 
 The moment the Vicar-general sent out his agents to visit the 
 monasteries, the Englishman of the country began to realize 
 that the puzzling changes, of which he had hitherto under- 
 stood so little, were going to have an important and also a 
 disagreeable effect on his own life. Up to this time he had 
 been unwilling actively to express his dissatisfaction at the 
 new measures, because they had seemed but remotely 
 connected with his own fortunes : but now there came an 
 evidence to the contrary which he did not fail to appreciate. 
 The army of outcast monks and nuns, from whom in old days 
 he had been accustomed to receive every sort of kindness, 
 now passed his door, begging for food and shelter. The spoil 
 which he had perhaps filched from the monastery suppressed 
 near by, had not been sufficient to repay him for the injury 
 to the inmates whom he had been taught to love and respect. 
 His griefs are vividly described in the following verses of a 
 song written for the Yorkshire rebels in the autumn of 1536 : 
 
 Crist crucifyd 
 
 for thy wound« wide 
 
 vs cowzmons guyde 
 
 which pilgramw be 
 thrughe god^j grace 
 for to purchache 
 olde welth & peax 
 
 of the spzW/ualtie. 
 2. 
 Gret god^j fame 
 doith church proclame 
 now to be lame 
 
 and fast in bound^j 
 robbyd spoled & shorne 
 from catell & come 
 and clene furth borne 
 
 of howsez & land^J. 
 
 3- 
 alacke alacke 
 
 for the church sake 
 
 pore comons wake 
 
 & no m^rvell 
 
 for clere it is 
 the decay of this 
 how the pore shall mys 
 no tong can tell. 
 
 4- 
 for ther they hade 
 boith ale & breyde 
 at tyme of nede 
 
 and succur grete 
 in alle distresse 
 and hevynes 
 * * * * 
 
 and wel intrete. 
 
 In troubil & care 
 where that we were 
 in ma.ner all here 
 
 of our substance 
 we founde good bate 
 at churche me« gate 
 without checkmate 
 
 or varya«nce\ 
 
 1 Cal. xi. 786 (3). 
 
183 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Such were the complaints which arose among the country 
 folk as a result of the suppression of the monasteries. And 
 just at the moment that this intensely unpopular measure 
 began to be carried out in earnest, and largely as a result 
 of it, the veil which had hitherto prevented the people from 
 recognizing the true author of the hated innovations was torn 
 away, and a pretext was offered for a revolt, which had it 
 been directed against the King, would have been no better 
 than treason. The people fastened on Cromwell as the author 
 of all their troubles ; and the thought that a man whom they 
 knew to be low-born, of no better or more noble origin than 
 themselves, had been able to cause them such misery, was 
 enough to kindle a smouldering fire of discontent into 
 a brilliant blaze. A crusade against Cromwell, they argued, 
 could not be regarded as a revolt against the royal authority. 
 They had no complaint against the King, or even against any 
 of the nobles, but they were determined to rid themselves 
 at one blow of the plebeian minister whom they thoroughly 
 detested and whom they had no cause to respect : with the 
 destruction of Cromwell and his agents, they were certain 
 that the good old days would return. The last verse of their 
 war-song contained a frank avowal of their object : 
 
 ' Crim ' crame " & riche ' 
 wXh thre HI' and Me liche' 
 as sum me« teache 
 
 god theym amend 
 And that aske may 
 wzttout delay 
 here make A stay 
 
 and well to end'.' 
 
 The reasons why the rising against the authority of Crom- 
 well, known to posterity by the suggestive name of the Pil- 
 grimage of Grace, was organized, and set afoot in the northern 
 counties, are not far to seek. In the first place devotion to 
 the Old Faith, and to the cause of Queen Katherine, was 
 far stronger in the north than in the south of England. 
 
 » Cromwell. » Cranmer. ' Richard Riche. 
 
 * The Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Legh, and Dr. Layton. 
 
 ^ The Bishop of Lichfield. « Cal. xi. 786 (3). 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 183 
 
 A comparison of the ' comperta ' of the northern and southern 
 monasteries, or of the details of the different visitations, 
 will easily convince the reader of this discrepancy. In the south 
 occur constant complaints by the monks that their superiors 
 failed to observe the canons of religious asceticism ; and 
 on the other hand, whenever an abbot refused to acknowledge 
 the Royal Supremacy, his subordinates were always sure 
 to report him to head quarters, in the hope of gaining favour 
 with the King or Cromwell ^ The letters of Dr. Legh from 
 the south of England contain frequent reports of 'towardness' 
 among the inmates, and willingness to adopt the New Faith ^. 
 In the north one finds none of this. The reports concerning 
 the monasteries there are of a very different sort : immorality 
 and unnatural crimes are the principal charges against the 
 inmates ^. There is scarcely a record of apostasy ; scarcely 
 a case of mutual accusation among the monks. The abbots 
 and their subordinates almost invariably supported each other, 
 and their loyalty to the Old Faith and their hatred of those 
 who tried to disestablish it, gave the Commissioners a far 
 harder task in the north than in the south. There is also 
 reason to think that Cromwell's spy system operated less 
 perfectly there, partly owing to this spirit of conservatism 
 and love of the old usages permeating every sort and 
 condition of life, and partly owing to the great spaces of wild, 
 uninhabited land. 
 
 This is only the religious side. But there were other almost 
 equally valid reasons for the localization of the revolt in the 
 north. The south was thickly populated, and to a certain extent 
 commercial ; the north sparsely populated, and for the most 
 part pastoral and agricultural. Cromw^ell had done everything 
 that he could to facilitate trade, and his efforts in this direction 
 had been rewarded by comparative popularity in the com- 
 mercial counties. The discontent in the agricultural north, 
 however, was most pronounced. The Statute of Uses had 
 not been in all cases correctly interpreted. It was said that 
 the King made such laws that when a man died his wife and 
 
 ^ Cal. ix. 314, 321, 322. ' Cal. ix. 694. 
 
 s Cal. X. 364. 
 
184 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 children had to go a-begging ^. Lastly, the proximity of the 
 Scottish Borders, which were in a continual state of disorder, 
 offered great encouragement for undertaking a rebellion in 
 the north. Cromwell was constantly occupied with the 
 suppression of minor disturbances there ^, owing to the very 
 lax administration of the Courts and Wardens of the three 
 Marches, while across the Tweed an attitude of more or less 
 active hostility to the English government was always 
 maintained. There was every probability that a revolt in the 
 northern counties of the realm would receive substantial aid 
 from Scotland. 
 
 But though the Pilgrimage of Grace was locally restricted 
 to the northern counties, it embraced all classes, animated 
 by the most varied interests ^. The objects of the insurgents 
 were secular and religious, their mottoes conservative and 
 progressive. On their banners were borne the emblems of 
 the five wounds of Christ, a chalice and a host, a plough, and 
 a horn. The first of these syinbols indicated that the 
 insurrection had been undertaken for the defence of the 
 faith ; the second was to remind the commons of the spoils 
 of the Church. The plough was to encourage the husband- 
 men, and ' the horn was in token of Horncastle ' : for the 
 banner ' was brought among the rebels by the commons of 
 Horncastle*.' The watchwords of the rebels were of the 
 very most diverse nature. Some of them cried out for the 
 restoration of the suppressed monasteries ; others for the re- 
 newal of guarantees against exorbitant taxation, for remedies 
 for the agrarian discontent, or for legal permission to leave 
 land by will to daughters and younger sons. All of them 
 united in demanding the destruction of Cromwell, whom the 
 people regarded as the cause of all their woes ^. The leaders 
 and participants in the revolt were not of any one rank or 
 station in life ; the popular and aristocratic elements were 
 almost equally mixed. It is no wonder that a rising, 
 
 1 Cal.xi. 705, 780 (2) ; xii. (i) 70; also A. L. Smith m Social EnglancI, 
 
 xiii. (ii) 307. vol. iii. pp. 21 ff. 
 ^ Letters, 105. ■• Cal. xii. (i) 70 (13). 
 
 •'' Cal. xii. (i) 138, 786, 900. Cf. ^ Cal. xii. (i) 163. 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 185 
 
 supported by men of such various classes, which aimed at 
 the extirpation of abuses of so many different sorts, and 
 which yet was united by the feeling that all these abuses 
 were due to one man alone, was regarded as ' the daungerest 
 insurrection that haith ben seen ^.' 
 
 On September 29, 1536, when the Commissioners for the 
 suppression of the monasteries came to Hexham in Northum- 
 berland, they were rudely surprised by finding the house 
 there fortified, and prepared to defend itself to the last. 
 The Commissioners left the town and reported the affair to 
 the King, who ordered them to assemble all the forces they 
 could muster, and if the monastery did not yield, to treat 
 the monks like arrant traitors ^. But scarcely was this danger 
 past when news came that the Commissioners for levying the 
 lay subsidy, the collection of which was superintended by 
 Cromwell, had met with a similar experience at Caistor in 
 Lincolnshire. It seems they had feared some disturbance 
 at their arrival, and had invited several country gentlemen 
 to join them in case of any danger. A large force had 
 meantime assembled to resist the payment of the subsidy. 
 The country gentlemen were pursued, taken, and forced to 
 write to Lord Hussey at Sleaford, to summon him to join 
 the rebel commons, unless he wished to be treated as an 
 enemy, and also to send to the King to seek a general 
 pardon ^ Hussey promptly reported the state of affairs to 
 Cromwell, and though he put a bold face on the matter in 
 presence of the rebels, it is evident that he was seriously 
 alarmed *. The King meantime himself received the letter 
 the captured gentlemen had been forced to send him, caused 
 the bearers of it to reveal the names of the ringleaders, and 
 wrote to the Commissioners for levying the subsidy, express- 
 ing his distress at the ' vnnatural vnkyndness ' of his subjects, 
 and marvelling 'that he that is worth xxli sholde rebell for 
 the payment of x s ^.' But this sort of letter of mild surprise, 
 with which Henry had sometimes successfully warded off 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 585. ' Cal. xi. 504, 544. 
 
 « Cal. xi. 533-4, 536-9, 552-3, 567-8. 
 
 * Cal. xi. 547. , ° Cal. xi. 569. 
 
186 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 pressing danger, did not prove to be sufficient in this case. 
 He was relieved from any apprehension on his own account ; 
 the rebels had expressly denied any desire to be disloyal to 
 the King : they only wished that the Church of England 
 should have its old privileges, 'without any exaction,' that 
 the suppressed houses of religion be restored, and that they 
 should not be taxed, except for defence of the realm in time 
 of war. Again and again did they repeat their demands for 
 the surrender or banishment of Cromwell, Audley, Cranmer, 
 Riche, and others of the Privy Council. That the King did 
 not throw over his ministers in their hour of need, surely 
 shows that Henry was committed to them and to their policy, 
 and believed in it. 
 
 The situation was certainly alarming. It was very fortunate 
 that at the time of the outbreak the position of the King was 
 otherwise so strong, and England's foreign affairs in such 
 good condition, that every effort could be centred on the 
 suppression of the revolt. The insurgents evidently meant 
 business. Sir Christopher Ascugh, gentleman usher to the 
 King, wrote to Cromwell, October 6, ' The rebels ar in nombre 
 of men of armys well harnesyd x or xii m spars and bows ; & 
 
 XXX m other sum harnesyd and sum not harnesyd and 
 
 all the contrey Rysys holly as they goo before them 
 
 Mellessent your seruaunt they have hanged & Baytyd Bellowe 
 to deth wyth Dogges wyth a bull skyn vpon his bake wyth 
 many Regorous word^j agaynst your lordeshepp ^.' Letters 
 were sent to the principal men in the county, asking them to 
 use all their efforts to check the revolt, and the King later 
 declared his intention to take the field himself^. Cromwell's 
 nephew Richard ^ got all the arrows and implements of war 
 out of the Tower, and dispatched a number of men to 
 Lincolnshire, among them sixty or eighty masons and 
 carpenters, who were at work on his uncle's house. Cromwell 
 himself was in great fear. The Imperial ambassador informs 
 us * that the whole blame for the insurrection was laid 
 
 ' Cal. xi. 567. and Katherine Cromwell. Cf. chap. 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 579-80. iii. pp. 54-5. 
 
 ' The son of Morgan Williams ■* Cal. xi. 576. 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 187 
 
 on him. Norfolk was recalled to the Court, whence he 
 had been banished at Cromwell's suggestion, and the Duke 
 arrived at London, happy as he had never been before in the 
 thought that the first step towards the ruin of his rival had 
 been taken. But in this he was doomed to disappointment, 
 for Cromwell retained his ascendancy ; the King, according 
 to Chapuys, had been very reluctant to send for the Duke, 
 and when the latter was dispatched again to raise men and 
 prevent the spreading of the revolt, he was overtaken by 
 a most ' discomfortable ' message from the Court, ordering 
 him to send his son in his place while he himself remained at 
 horned Cromwell had not only succeeded in getting him 
 away from the Court, but had also prevented his having 
 a hand in the suppression of the rebellion. The Lord Privy 
 Seal himself was content with maintaining his position at 
 the King's side. It would have been sheer madness for him 
 to have marched against the rebels in person. If the Lincoln- 
 shire men could have murdered him, they probably would 
 have been induced to return quietly to their homes. Nor 
 did Cromwell even dare to give orders at arm's length, or 
 in any way to undertake the management of the royal forces. 
 He kept himself consistently in the background ; almost all 
 our information concerning the rebellion is contained in 
 the correspondence of the King with Norfolk and Suffolk. The 
 few letters which Cromwell did write in connexion with the 
 Pilgrimage of Grace are quite unimportant^. They consist 
 for the most part of messages of profuse and almost hysterical 
 thanks to the leaders of the King's party for their loyal 
 service. It was not until the revolt had been thoroughly 
 suppressed that Cromwell ventured again to assume the 
 general direction of public affairs. 
 
 Meantime the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury 
 had been sent against the rebels, who were waiting in Lincoln- 
 shire for the King's answer to their first letter. Richard 
 Cromwell had found great difficulty in conveying to the 
 scene the arms and artillery he had got out of the Tower, 
 because the people were at first unwilling to furnish the 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 601-2. ^ Letters, 165, 167, 169. 
 
188 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 requisite number of horses, owing to sympathy with the 
 insurgents, if one may believe the report of Chapuys' nephew ^ 
 Finally, however, he succeeded in overtaking the Duke of 
 Suffolk, who was marching with an army against the rebels 
 from the south, at Stamford on October lo. The Earl of 
 Shrewsbury, according to the King's orders, was advancing 
 at the same time from Nottingham. Caught between two 
 armies supplied with the ordnance which the insurgents so 
 much dreaded, the Lincolnshire men, further frightened by 
 a proclamation from the Earl of Shrewsbury transmitted to 
 them by one Thomas Miller, Lancaster Herald, began to lose 
 heart and finally consented to surrender, on condition that 
 they should receive assurance of merciful treatment. The 
 King was pleased, ordered the rebels to deliver up their 
 arms, and commanded Shrewsbury and Suffolk to examine 
 the country gentlemen who had aided them, and I'eport to 
 him ^. He further wrote an answer to the insurgents, calling 
 them the 'rude commons of one shire, and that one of the 
 most brute and beestelie of the hole realme ",' expatiating on 
 the trouble he had given himself in their defence, and assuring 
 them that they had no grounds to complain of any of the 
 new measures, either secular or religious. He was just 
 thinking that the worst part of the danger was over, when 
 suddenly news came from Lord Darcy, who was the chief 
 person in the north, that all Yorkshire had risen in a 
 similar way *. 
 
 The news of this outbreak was even more disquieting than 
 that of the first. Besides being much further from London, 
 where the King's armies could only reach them with great 
 difficulty, the Yorkshire rebels were nearer the lawless and 
 hostile Scottish borders. They had from the very first been 
 in sympathy with their neighbours in the south, and had 
 communicated with them by means of beacons burned on 
 the banks of the Humber ^. The same motives had prompted 
 them to rise in arms. They elected as captain a young 
 
 ' Cal. xi. 714. * Cal. xi. 611. 
 
 " Cal. xi. 674, 694, 706, 715, 717. « Cal. xi. 563, 622. 
 
 ^ State Papers, vol. i. p. 463. 
 
• THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 189 
 
 barrister named Aske, who issued a proclamation for all men 
 to assemble on Skipworth Moor, and take oath to be faithful 
 to the King's issue and noble blood, to preserve the Church 
 from spoil, and be true to the commonwealth — a clever 
 euphemism for demanding the death of Cromwell and his 
 adherents. The Yorkshiremen had gone about their revolt 
 with far more method and system than the Lincolnshire 
 rebels. The latter had been easily conquered, mainly because 
 they lacked a head ; but the Yorkshiremen promised to 
 give far more trouble. They made musters by scrolls and 
 bills nailed to the door of every church in the county, and 
 proclaimed that any one who refused to take their oaths 
 and rise with them should be put to death, whether he 
 was lord or peasant. It was even rumoured that they in- 
 tended to send an embassy to Flanders, to ask for aid in 
 money and armed men, and to petition the Pope for abso- 
 lution for all offences committed in the course of their holy 
 pilgrimage \ 
 
 The King replied at once to Darcy's letter, commanding 
 him to arrest all seditious persons, and promising so to treat 
 the originators of the revolt in Lincolnshire that all York 
 should soon learn that they had got their deserts ^. Darcy 
 wrote to the Lord Mayor of York, warning him to be 
 prepared to resist the insurgents, while he himself proceeded 
 to Pomfret Castle to hold it against the rebels, and there 
 awaited further instructions from the King'. He succeeded 
 in maintaining his position at Pomfret for only ten days 
 however, for on October 20 he surrendered the town to 
 the rebel army under the leadership of Aske, and together 
 with the Archbishop of York, who had sought refuge there, 
 swore to take part with the insurgents *. At his trial in the 
 following year he pleaded that he was unable to hold out 
 any longer because the provisions had run short, and further 
 stated that he had been compelled to side with the rebels 
 under pain of death. He also alleged as an excuse for his 
 conduct that he thought that if he got in touch with the 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (i) 163, 259, 1080. ' Cal. xi. 627. 
 
 2 Cal. xi. 611. * Cal. xii. (i) 900, 944. 
 
190 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 insurgents, he could the more easily induce them to lay- 
 down their arms. How loyal he really was to the King 
 must remain a matter of conjecture, but there is strong 
 reason to think that he had much sympathy with the 
 revolt '. 
 
 For a time the rebels seemed to carry all before them. 
 Shrewsbury had been ordered to go to Yorkshire and engage 
 the insurgents there, now that Lincolnshire was regarded as 
 safe. Meantime Thomas Miller, Lancaster Herald, who had 
 been so successful in obtaining the submission of the Lincoln- 
 shire men, was sent by the King from Scrooby, on October 
 31, to read a royal proclamation to the rebels at Pomfret, 
 upbraiding them for their conduct, but promising them pardon 
 on condition that they should immediately disperse. When 
 he arrived at his destination the town had been surrendered. 
 Aske, although he treated the royal envoy with all due 
 respect, entirely refused to let him read his proclamation in 
 public, and sent him away with two crowns and his errand 
 unaccomplished ^. 
 
 Meantime the Duke of Norfolk, who two weeks before had 
 returned sadly to Kenninghall with all his hopes of regaining 
 the royal favour blighted, had been hurried to and fro in the 
 south of England by a continued stream of conflicting orders 
 from Cromwell and the King, until he finally heard of the 
 disturbances in Yorkshire from Shrewsbury^: He imme- 
 diately turned his steps with a small company of men towards 
 Doncaster, in the hope of regaining the King's favour by 
 a prompt suppression of the new outbreak. So anxious was 
 he to recommend himself to Henry, that he spent ;£'i,5oo 
 of his own in paying the wages of the King's soldiers ; and 
 when this was not sufficient, and Henry refused to advance 
 any money, he asked for a loan to meet the expenses, and 
 took the responsibility for its payment upon himself*. Nor- 
 folk's whole proceeding in this crisis was eminently character-- 
 istic. He never hesitated to spend money or to tell lies, if he 
 thought that by so doing there was any possibility of gaining 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (i) 853, 1087. ' Cal. xi. 626, 671, 758. 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 826. * Cal. xi. 793, 800. 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 191 
 
 the royal favour. He assured the King that, in treating with 
 rebels, he would pay no respect to what others might call his 
 ' honour distayned,' for he considered it perfectly permissible 
 to break promises in order to serve the Crown ^. Henry, it 
 would seem, did not take Norfolk's treacherous proposals to 
 sacrifice his own honour in the royal service in as good part 
 as the Duke had hoped, and wrote back hinting that if Nor- 
 folk made promises to the rebels that he could not keep, he 
 must make them on his own responsibility, and take great 
 care that the King's name remained unsullied. 
 
 When the Duke arrived in the rebel country he issued 
 a proclamation to the insurgents, commanding them in proud 
 and haughty terms to submit, and promising to be an inter- 
 cessor for them with the King. This was on October 27. 
 But the very next day he wrote to Henry that he had been 
 forced to declare to the insurgents the royal pardon, in order 
 to ' sparple ' them, and get them to return to their homes ^. 
 It is evident that in the meantime a meeting must have taken 
 place between the Duke and the rebels, in which the latter 
 succeeded in convincing their enemy that they, and not he, 
 were in the position to dictate terms. A general truce was 
 arranged, and Lord Darcy was ordered to cease to molest 
 the insurgents ^ The dread with which Norfolk awaited his 
 first interview with the King is vividly described in the letter 
 in which he announced to the Council his prospective return 
 to the Court. ' I come,' wrote the Duke, ' viith my hert nere 
 bresten .... inforced to appoynt with the rebelkj .... and 
 fearing how his maieste shall take the dispeachyng of our 
 bande ^' 
 
 Norfolk finally arrived at Windsor with two emissaries 
 from the insurgents, who were to report their grievances 
 and receive the King's answer, Henry was just composing 
 his reply when news came that Aske had attempted to stir 
 up the rebels in the other northern counties. Norfolk wrote 
 to Darcy that the King suspected him of treachery in deliver- 
 ing up Pomfret to Aske, and advised him to do his best to 
 
 1 Cal. xi. 864. ' Cal. xi. 901. 
 
 " Cal. xi. 887, 902. * Cal. xi. 909. 
 
193 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 ' extinct the ill bruit,' by taking the rebel leader dead or 
 alive ^ Meantime the King detained EUerker and Bowes, 
 the two rebel envoys, as hostages, while Darcy attempted 
 to allay any fears of a third outbreak. The King in fact 
 was so seriously alarmed at the danger in the north, that 
 he dreaded that his letter to the Lincolnshire men in eai'ly 
 October might not prove sufficient to prevent their joining 
 a new revolt, if such occurred. So seeing their ' maner, im- 
 plieng a great repentance,' and contrasting it with the rebel- 
 lious attitude of the Yorkshiremen, he sent them on the I4tli. 
 of November a full pardon ^. Meantime the report of the 
 probability of a fresh insurrection passed by, and Ellerker 
 and Bowes returned with the King's answer, with which 
 Henry had taken much trouble, and had endeavoured to 
 disguise the fact that he was really suing for peace, by pro- 
 mising to pardon those who were truly penitent. A conference 
 for discussion of terms was arranged to assemble at Doncaster 
 on the 5th of December, in which Lords Scrope, Latimer, 
 Lumley, Darcy, and others were to represent the rebels, and 
 Norfolk, Suffolk, Shrewsbury, Rutland, and their subordinates 
 the King ^. 
 
 Henry laid his plans carefully in preparation for this 
 meeting. . He instructed Shrewsbury to. do his utmost to 
 prevail upon Aske and Darcy to betray the rebels, upon 
 promise of a free pardon for themselves. He also ordered 
 the Duke of Suffolk to hold himself in readiness with a large 
 force in case of another outbreak *. There was probably far 
 less danger that the truce would be broken by the rebels 
 than by the King ; but the former certainly had no intention 
 of returning to their homes without at least an assurance of 
 a general amnesty. Henry soon realized that they were in 
 earnest, and reluctantly instructed SufTolk, in a second letter, 
 to yield to their demands for a free pardon and a Parliament 
 as a last resort, if all other expedients to induce them to 
 disperse should fail ^. Th.e conference at Doncaster lasted 
 
 ' Cal. xi. 995. * Cal. xi. 1224, 1225. 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 1061. " Cal. xi. 1236. 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 957, 995, 1 1 15, 1206. 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 193 
 
 four days, but in the end the rebels were successful in gaining 
 their wishes, and the desired pardon was proclaimed on the 
 9th of December ^. Henry had never before been forced to 
 acknowledge such a complete check at the hands of his 
 subjects, and the sensations of the proud King must have been 
 as disagreeable as they were novel. Still it was impossible 
 for him to give vent to his rage until he had once more 
 obtained the upper hand. 
 
 So he wrote to Aske requesting an interview with him in 
 London. The tone of the letter is noteworthy. Though 
 evidently beaten, Henry spoke as if he were master of the 
 situation, and began by stating that he had learned that 
 Aske was sorry for his offences in the late rebellion. The 
 King also did his utmost to stop any rumours on the Con- 
 tinent which might give the impression that the rebels had 
 come off victorious. He instructed Cromwell to write a full 
 account of the revolt to Gardiner and Wallop at the French 
 Court, ordering them to tell all people that though at first 
 the insurgents ' made petic/on to haue obteyned certain 
 articles, .... in thende they went from all and remytted all 
 to the king^j highnes pleasure only in moost humble and re- 
 uerent sorte desiring their pardon, -wztk the greatest repentance 
 that could be deuised ^.' But Henry was a little premature 
 with his boasts that peace had been concluded on terms so 
 favourable to himself. Aske indeed came up to London, 
 had what certainly appeared to be a most successful interview 
 with the King, and returned to the North, January 5, 1537, 
 to confirm the royal pardon, and to promise that all reason- 
 able petitions should be heard by Parliament ^. But the other 
 rebels did not seem by any means as sure of Henry's good faith. 
 Aske wrote to the King a letter containing six ' marvilus 
 congectures' of the people, among which were the dread 
 with which they regarded the fortifying of strongholds, and 
 their distrust that Cromwell and his adherents were as high 
 in favour as ever *. Henry of course paid no attention to 
 these complaints, with the result that many of the insurgents, 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 1276. ' Cal. xii. (i) 44. 
 
 2 Letters, 174. ■ * Cal. xii. (i) 67. 
 
 MERBIMAN. I O 
 
194 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 who 'saw plainly,' as the Court historian writes, 'that the 
 King did constantly follow the reformation of the abominable 
 Church . . . incontinently renewed the old practice of rebelling 
 again ^.' A plan was evolved by Sir Francis Bigod and a 
 certain John Hallam, to attack and take both Hull and Scar- 
 borough : the whole country was ready to rise again, and they 
 anticipated an easy victory ^. But the success of this last out- 
 break was very short-lived. The attempt which Hallam made 
 against Hull failed, owing to the fact that the plot had been 
 reported to the mayor there, and Hallam himself was cap- 
 tured ^. At Scarborough Bigod was scarcely more fortunate. 
 He had succeeded in calling out the people of the East Riding, 
 and had harangued them ; ' Ye are deceaued by a colour of 
 a pardon,' he said, ' for it is called a pardon that ye haue, and 
 it is none But a proclamacion.' The commons responded to 
 his words with a great shout, and he marched off with a large 
 following to repair his comrade's disaster at Hull, leaving 
 the son of Lord Lumley with a handful of men to attack 
 Scarborough *. But Lumley deserted his post, abandoning 
 the command to two subordinates, who attempted to lay siege 
 to the castle of Scarborough in the absence of its keeper, Sir 
 Ralph Evers ; the latter, however, soon returned, and they 
 gave up the enterprise, only to be captured and imprisoned. 
 Bigod's second attempt on Hull had meantime also failed, 
 and Bigod himself fled ^ 
 
 Meantime the Duke of Norfolk had returned into the 
 north, no longer as a peace commissioner, but as a messenger 
 of death and destruction ^. Now that the tide of affairs had 
 turned and the rebels were weakened, the King thought it at 
 last safe to inflict the long-deferred punishment on the leaders 
 of the revolt. It is true that Norfolk was accompanied by a 
 few persons, who together with certain gentlemen in the north 
 were to compose a council to aid him in carrying out a general 
 pacification : this arrangement, however, was obviously tem- 
 porary, and it was soon to be replaced by a more stable form 
 
 ^ Thomas, The Pilgrim, p. S3- * Cal. xii. (i) 369. 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (i) 201, 370. » Cal. xii. (i) 234, 369 (p. 166). 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (i) 104. « Cal. xii. (i) 86, 98. 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 195 
 
 of government. The true mission of the Duke was to do 
 'dreadful execution.' Before a permanent reorganization of 
 the north could be attempted, it was absolutely essential 
 that the chief rebels should be dealt with in such a way 
 •as would deter others from attempting a fresh insurrec- 
 tion. The situation demanded severity, and there can be 
 no doubt that the inclination of the King tallied closely 
 with the dictates of political expediency. Norfolk justified 
 to the full the confidence that Henry reposed in his 
 ruthlessness. He reported that he thought that so great 
 a number had never before been put to death at one time, 
 and confessed that had he proceeded by jury, not one in five 
 would have suffered ^. All the rebel leaders were taken and 
 sent up to London, and by the end of July, 1537, Aske, 
 Darcy, Hussey, Bigod, and many others had been condemned 
 to death as traitors. Darcy at his mock trial had dared to 
 tell Cromwell : ' It is thow that art the verey originall and 
 chif causer of all thies rebellyon and myschif . . . and dust 
 emestly travell to bring vs to owr end and to strik of our 
 heddes and I trust that . . . thought thow woldest procure 
 all the nobell mens hedd^j within the Realme to be striken 
 of, yet shall ther one hedde remayn that shall strike of thy 
 hede^.' But the Lord Privy Seal was still in too secure 
 a position to be harmed by any such words as these. He 
 seemed in higher favour than ever. If Norfolk had enter- 
 tained the notion that he had begun to supplant his rival 
 in the royal favour, when the King chose him rather than 
 Cromwell to carry out the 'dreadful execution,' he was 
 again doomed to disappointment. The reason why the 
 King had not been willing to employ his favourite instru- 
 ment of destruction in this case, lay for the most part in 
 the fact that he needed his aid in a far more important 
 task, to which Norfolk's proceedings were merely 
 a necessary preliminary. For the moment had now arrived 
 for the long-contemplated reform of the government of the 
 north, a matter in which the Duke vainly attempted to 
 give advice. His proffered counsel was consistently rejected : 
 
 ^ Cal. xii. (i) 498. " Cal. xii. (i) 976. 
 
 o a 
 
196 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 in dealing with this problem the King preferred to consult 
 Cromwell. 
 
 The Border Counties of England had never been governed 
 like the rest of the kingdom K The institution of the three 
 Scottish Marches, which at first included the greater part of 
 Northumberland and Cumberland, took its rise as early as 
 the middle of the thirteenth century. Each of these three 
 Marches was placed in charge of a Warden, who, aided by 
 a special court, exercised general authority, judicial, military, 
 and administrative, according to his commission. There 
 appears also at a very early date a kind of informal confer- 
 ence or Council of the Marches, composed of the ordinary 
 March authorities, sitting in conjunction with local magnates. 
 When the war with Scotland broke out at the end of the 
 thirteenth century, the King attempted through the Privy 
 Council to increase his personal influence in the north. He 
 did not disturb the existing organization however. By special 
 commissions he strengthened the power of the Wardens, and 
 later gave the government of the Marches a definite head in 
 an officer called the Lieutenant of the North, who represented 
 the King's interest, and derived his authority from the Crown 
 and Council and not from Parliament. The Border Counties 
 were thus placed under a special jurisdiction and outside the 
 ordinary administration of the kingdom. The tendency of 
 the Privy Council to mingle in the affairs of the north in- 
 creased during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and (as 
 a result of the strained relations between England and Scot- 
 land in the early part of the reign of Henry VIH) reached 
 its culmination under Wolsey. The Lieutenant's control had 
 meantime been extended southward into Yorkshire. 
 
 It may perhaps seem strange that the Tudors, with their 
 special genius for centralization and conciliar government, had 
 not yet succeeded in rendering the condition of the north 
 more satisfactory, when its administration lay so completely 
 in their own hands. But the ever-threatening danger of a 
 
 ' On this and the succeeding rican Historical Review for April, 
 pages, cf. G. T. Lapsley, ' The 1900, pp. 440-66. 
 Problem of the North,' in the Ame- 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 197 
 
 raid from the Scots, coupled with the bitter feuds of the local 
 baronage, tended so far to disorganize the region that the 
 problem of the north had remained unsolved. The attempt 
 of Wolsey to reform the government of the Border Counties 
 had consisted in a thorough rehabilitation of the old Council 
 of the Marches. He replaced the ill-defined, loosely-con- 
 structed body which had hitherto done service by a secret, 
 permanent organization, composed principally of northern 
 gentlemen, but still entirely dependent on the Privy Council. / 
 His reluctance to grant the local organ a sufficient degree of 
 autonomy was the cause of the failure of his plan. The 
 renovated Council of the Marches was forced to confess itself 
 incompetent to deal with even the simplest problems which 
 presented themselves for solution, and the old unsatisfactory 
 state of affairs continued with little change, until after the 
 Pilgrimage of Grace. 
 
 The problem of the reorganization of the north was now 
 vigorously attacked by Henry and Cromwell during the 
 absence of Norfolk. The question which presented itself 
 after the suppression of the revolt was whether it would 
 be better to create an entirely new form of government 
 for the north, or to reconstruct, readapt, and strengthen the 
 old. The principle of control by a permanent local council, ] 
 first definitely established by Wolsey, was essentially charac- 
 teristic of the Tudor policy, and Henry and Cromwell saw 
 no reason to depart from it. It had been one of the chief 
 sources of the strength of their rule, that though they never 
 shrank from any change, however radical, which the demands 
 of a royal despotism in Church and State rendered necessary, 
 they carefully avoided any gratuitous innovations which they ] 
 knew would be unwelcome to the people at large. An 
 entirely fresh organization of the north would have been \ 
 exceedingly unpopular, especially in that most conservative / 
 portion of England: it was far less obnoxious, and equally 
 effective, to infuse new life into the old regime, by granting 
 the Council of the Marches a sufficient degree of independence, i[ 
 and above all by changing its composition. The problem 
 was in many respects similar to that with which Cromwell 
 
198 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 had been confronted in connexion with the election of bishops. 
 No radical innovation was needed in either case ; the status 
 quo, when fortified by official sanction, was perfectly satis- 
 factory, save for a few trifling readaptations. It was on this 
 basis accordingly, that Henry and Cromwell resolved to re- 
 construct the government of the Border Counties. The old 
 forms were retained though under different names. The 
 jurisdiction of the Council of the North (merely a new version 
 of the old Council of the Marches) was extended so as to 
 include the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, West- 
 moreland, York, and Durham. It was given wider competence 
 in general administration, and its judicial authority in certain 
 cases was so strengthened as to exclude that of the ordinary 
 courts in the districts in which it exercised its functions ^. 
 
 Far more interesting for our purpose than the jurisdiction 
 of the newly-organized Council, is its composition, especially 
 y{ as revealing the identity of its originator. It seems that the 
 new body was largely composed of men of low birth, a certain 
 indication that Cromwell's was the guiding hand in its 
 organization ''■. The ' base-born knave ' at whose feet England 
 lay had succeeded in proving to the King, that he and others 
 of humble origin had as much power and willingness to serve 
 the Crown as any nobleman in the land. Moreover the 
 personal character of many of the members of the new 
 Council was hot above reproach, and though this fact does 
 not seem to have disturbed the King, a bitter protest was 
 evoked from Cromwell's rival, the Duke of Norfolk, who, 
 from his isolated position in the north, had watched with 
 increasing impatience the success of the Lord Privy Seal 
 in maintaining his influence at Court, and in organizing a 
 body obviously intended to supplant the temporary council 
 composed in the previous January. Norfolk's anxiety to 
 recommend himself to the King had alone induced him 
 to take upon himself the task of punishing the revolt ; now 
 that he discovered that with all his subserviency Cromwell 
 had again stepped into the place which he had coveted for 
 himself, his enthusiasm for executing rebels gave place to 
 • Cal. xii. (i) 595. ' Cal. xii. (ii) 914. 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 199 
 
 petitions to be permitted to return to Court. But Cromwell 
 was strong enough to keep him in the north till September, 
 and the Duke was forced to content himself with writing 
 letters to the King and Council, to complain of the new 
 arrangements for the government of the Borders which had 
 been made in his absence^. He and Cromwell came into 
 collision here, just as they had done before over Irish affairs : 
 each had his own idea as to the best method of government 
 in both cases, and the antagonism of the two men was the 
 sharper in that each knew that his favour with the King 
 depended on the success of his plan of administration. The 
 Duke from the very first was convinced that ' the wylde 
 peple of all the Marches wolde not be kept in order vnles 
 one of good estimacion and nobilitie have the ordering 
 therof,' while Cromwell and the Council asserted that the 
 King had already been ill served on the Borders 'by th& 
 reason of controversy & variaunce depending between thz 
 great men thaX. \y upon th& same ' ; but, they continued, ' if 
 it shal please his Majesfy to appoynt tAe meanest man . . . 
 to rule & govern in tAat place ; is not his Graces aucthoritie 
 sufficient to cause al men to serve his Grace under him with- 
 out respect of t^e very estate of (Ae personage ? ^ ' The 
 dispute on this point began in early February, when Norfolk 
 wrote to protest against certain names in a list of officers 
 for the north which the !Privy Council had sent him. 
 'More arraunt thev^j and murderers be not in no Realme,' 
 asserted the Duke, 'then they haue of Long tyme been 
 and yet ar . . . and the same shall not only cause Light 
 persounes to saye and beleve that the King^j Highnes 
 is fayne to Hire with Fees the moost malefactors (in 
 order) to syt in rest, but also not to Loke vppon theire 
 most detestable offenc^j*.' An animated correspondence 
 on this topic continued for several months, the dispute 
 finally centering about the Presidency of the new Council 
 and the Wardenships of the three Marches ; Norfolk insisted 
 that only noblemen were fitted to hold these offices*. In 
 
 ^ Cal. xii. (i) 318, 319, 321, ' Cal. xii. (i) 319. 
 
 594, 651. * Cal. xii. (i) 651, 667, 916, 
 
 ^ Cal. xii. (i) 594, 636. 919. 
 
200 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 May the discussion was finally closed by the King-, who had 
 steadily supported the position adopted by Cromwell and 
 the Council. Henry now took the matter into his own hands, 
 and sent a peremptory letter to the Duke. ' We doo accept 
 in good parte,' wrote the King, 'the declaracwn of ycMr 
 opinion for the March^j. Neuertheles we doubt not but you 
 woll both conforme your owne mynde to fynde out the good 
 order whiche we haue therin determyned and cause other by 
 your good meane to p^rceyve the same For surely we woll 
 (/ not be bounde of a necessitie to be serueA there with lord^j. 
 But we wolbe s^rued with such men what degre soeuer they 
 be of as we shall appointe to the same ^.' The Presidency 
 of the Council was finally conferred on Cuthbert Tunstall, 
 Bishop of Durham. The death of the Earl of Northumber- 
 land in June, 15373 served as a convenient pretext for the 
 suppression of the Lord Wardenship of the East and Middle 
 Marches, which that nobleman had previously enjoyed ; and 
 the Earl of Cumberland, who had hitherto held a similar 
 office on the West Marches, was not permitted long to retain 
 it. Three Deputy Wardens, Sir William Evers, Sir John 
 Witherington, and Sir Thomas Wharton, were appointed in 
 their places by the King and Cromwell ^ ; the three March 
 Courts were revived, and exercised concurrent jurisdiction 
 with the new Council ^, which was also composed as Henry 
 and his minister had originally planned it ^. In every point 
 the advice of Cromwell had been taken in preference to that 
 of Norfolk, and when the Duke finally obtained leave to 
 return to Court in September, it must have been with the 
 feeling that he had again suffered defeat at the hands of his 
 plebeian rival. The rebellion, which eleven months before 
 had threatened to hurl Cromwell from his place, had been 
 completely quelled, and the country had been again reduced 
 to internal quiet. The danger while it lasted had indeed 
 been pressing, but so firmly had Cromwell been established 
 as the King's chief minister by the events of the years 1530 
 to 1536, that the storm passed over him and left him scath- 
 
 ^ Cal. xii. (i) 11 18. 2 q^^_ ^^jj^ ^jj^ 254, 914. 
 
 * Cf. Gneist, pp. 513-4. 
 
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 201 
 
 less. The failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace and the process 
 of reconstruction which followed it, bore witness to the 
 thoroughness with which he had carried out his main aim 
 in internal government, and to the security of the position 
 to which he had elevated himself by his temporary success 
 in establishing a royal despotism. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CARDINAL POLE 
 
 The story of the life of Reginald Pole and of the destruc- 
 tion of his illustrious family will always be inseparably bound 
 up with the history of Thomas Cromwell. It affords the 
 most striking example of the unscrupulous policy of the 
 King's minister towards those who stood in the way of 
 'the royal despotism in Church and State. It forms moreover 
 a valuable connecting link between the internal and foreign 
 administration of the time, as it concerns itself with nearly 
 all the great problems which Cromwell had to face. 
 
 To turn for a moment to the earlier history of Pole ; he 
 was born in March, 1500, the fourth son of Sir Richard Pole, 
 and his wife Margaret, Countess of Salisbury ^. In his youth 
 Henry had helped him forward in his education, paying 
 twelve pounds for his maintenance at school, and later obtain- 
 ing for him a pension from the Prior of St. Frideswide's, 
 while he was an undergraduate at Magdalen College ^. Sub- 
 sequently, by the royal munificence Pole was enabled to go 
 to Italy, where he worked with the foremost scholars of the 
 time ^ He returned to England in 1527 and there received 
 many marks of distinction, but wishing to continue his studies, 
 he soon removed to Paris. Henry was particularly anxious 
 that the University there should pronounce in favour of the 
 divorce, and with some difficulty induced Pole to carry on 
 negotiations with it to that intent. When the University 
 finally came to the decision that the King desired, Pole 
 received a hearty letter of commendation and was subse- 
 quently induced to return to England *. 
 
 ' Phillips, Pole, p. 3. Cf. also ' Cal. i. 4190. 
 
 the genealogy at the beginning of ' Cal. iii. p. 1544. 
 the book. * Cal. iv. 6252. 
 
CARDINAL POLE 203 
 
 Henry now urged him openly to support the divorce, and 
 offered him as an inducement the archbishopric of York, 
 which had been left vacant at Wolsey's death, but in vain. 
 Pole firmly refused to approve of the King's new measures, 
 saying that to do so would be inconsistent with his prin- 
 ciples ^ A little later he witnessed the concessions wrung 
 from the clergy concerning the Royal Supremacy, and was 
 not slow to perceive that it was by Cromwell's agency that 
 the entire ecclesiastical system of the country had been 
 overthrown. He called to mind the conversation he had 
 held years before with the ' Satanae Nuncius,' when the latter 
 had dared to uphold the superiority of Machiavelli's doctrines 
 to the scholastic learning, and soon became convinced that 
 England was not a safe place for a man of his ideas, while 
 such a person as Cromwell was in power. He accordingly 
 requested leave to continue his study of theology abroad, and 
 obtained Henry's consent ^. 
 
 He settled down at Padua, and there lived the quiet life 
 of a scholar until 1535, when the King determined to find 
 out about him. He sought information concerning Pole and 
 his beliefs from one Thomas Starkey, who had long been 
 an intimate of the future Cardinal. In answer to the King's 
 inquiries Starkey sent back an imaginary dialogue between 
 Pole and his companion Lupset, in which the former was 
 represented as opposed on principle to a royal despotism, 
 but still personally faithful to Henry VIII. The King, how- 
 ever, was not contented with this vague and half-contradictory 
 reply, and caused Starkey to write again to Pole and ask 
 him honestly to express his views about the divorce and the 
 Royal Supremacy ^ To this Pole responded in May, 1536, 
 with a letter enclosing his famous treatise, 'De Unitate 
 Ecclesiae,' which he sent by his faithful servant Michael 
 Throgmorton *. This work fulfilled all too perfectly Henry's 
 request for a candid opinion; so plain were its expressions 
 of disapproval, that even Starkey himself felt obliged to write 
 to the King to say how much he had been shocked by its 
 
 ' Poli Epistolae, i. 251-62. ' Cal. viii. 217-9. 
 
 2 Cal. V. 737. * Cal. X. 974-5- 
 
204 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 violence^. Henry dissembled his anger, and sent Throg- 
 morton back to Pole with a message urging him to come 
 home in order that he might talk with him more fully. The 
 King took good care to make Throgmorton himself promise 
 to return in any case^. Coupled with the King's message 
 came a letter of reproof from Pole's mother, which had 
 evidently been written at Henry's command ^. This letter 
 aroused Pole's suspicions and he refused to return, alleging 
 as his excuse the fact that the King enforced with 'sore 
 severitie' a law by which any man who would not consent 
 to his supremacy was declared a traitor. It appears from 
 Pole's reply that Cromwell had also written to him, ' to styrr 
 hym the more vehemently.' If the letter of the King's 
 minister was half as savage and threatening as those which 
 he later wrote, it is no wonder that Pole was alarmed. 
 
 On the aand of December, 1536, Pole much against his will 
 was created Cardinal at Rome, and two months later was 
 appointed Papal legate to England *. It appears that in spite 
 of the Ten Articles the Pope had not yet given up all hope 
 of re-establishing his power in Henry's dominions, and had 
 determined to make use of Pole as the most likely means of 
 accomplishing this end. The news of the latter's new dignity 
 and of the Papal intentions against England was received with 
 dread at the King's Court. It was remembered that as far 
 back as 151a a prophecy had been made to the effect, 'that 
 one with a Red Cap brought up from low degree to high 
 estate should rule all the land under the King and after- 
 wards procure the King to take another wife, divorce his lawful 
 wife. Queen Catherina, and involve the land in misery ' ; and 
 that further ' that divorce should lead to the utter fall of the 
 said Red Cap . . . and after much misery the land should 
 by another Red Cap be reconciled, or else brought to 
 utter destruction**.' We are told that Cromwell knew this 
 prophecy well, and that he often discussed it, and sought to 
 learn whether the last part of it should some day come to 
 pass, as he had seen the first fulfilled in his own time. Had 
 
 ' Cal. xi. 156. = Cal. xi. 229. * Cal. xi. 1353 ; xii. (i) 779. 
 
 ^ Cal. xi. 93. 5 Cal. xiv. (i) 186. 
 
CARDINAL POLE 205 
 
 Pole been able to arrive in England promptly, so that he 
 could have taken advantage of the disturbance caused by 
 Bigod's rebellion, it is possible that Cromwell's fears might 
 have been realized before his death, and that a reconciliation 
 with Rome might have taken place in 1537 instead of in 
 1554- But the bull of legation was unaccountably delayed 
 till the 31st of March ^ Meantime the northern revolt had 
 been crushed, Francis and Charles were still at war, and 
 Pole's chance had gone. By this time Henry had doubtless 
 perceived that the new-made Cardinal could never be induced 
 to support his cause, but would certainly oppose it as long as 
 he lived. As reconciliation seemed impossible, the King 
 turned his thoughts to arrest or execution. The foreign affairs 
 of England at that juncture were in such a favourable con- 
 dition that Henry felt strong enough to dictate both to the 
 Emperor and to the King of France. Informed by the latter 
 (who was just then in terror of losing England's friendship 
 because of his war with Charles) that Pole was coming 
 through France with money to help the northern rebels, 
 Henry was bold enough to demand in answer that he should 
 not be received as a legate, and also that he should be 
 extradited as a traitor ; he also wrote to Gardiner at Paris to 
 keep ' good espyall ' on his movements ^. A letter from 
 Sir Thomas Palmer, a somewhat quarrelsome knight at Calais, 
 would seem to indicate that a plot to apprehend or assassinate 
 Pole had been set on foot as early as the spring of 1537, and 
 Cromwell in a letter to Gardiner of May 18 further discusses 
 the matter^. Pole, however, had been advised of these 
 treacherous schemes, and had escaped first to Cambray and 
 later to the palace of the Cardinal of Li^ge, where he remained, 
 grieved and mortified at the failure of his mission, but per- 
 fectly safe from Cromwell's assassins *. Returning thence to 
 Rome at the Pope's command, he reported the unsuccessful 
 result of his journey in October. 
 
 Meantime in January, 1537, Michael Throgmorton had 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (i) 779. * Life of Pole, Dictionary of 
 
 ^ Cal. xii. (i) 625, 939. National Biography, vol. xlvi, 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (i) 1219; Letters, 187. p. 38. 
 
206 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 fulfilled his promise and returned to England^. If Henry 
 had once thought that Pole's servant would put his loyalty 
 to the Crown before his faithfulness to his master ", he must 
 have been convinced of his mistake by this time ; but 
 Throgmorton was saved from punishment for the present by 
 Henry's temporary failure to subdue the Pilgrimage of Grace, 
 and anxiety lest fresh hostility should be aroused abroad ; and 
 was soon sent back to carry to his master a final warning 
 to desist from attacking the Royal Supremacy ^. From this 
 errand Throgmorton did not return ; it would have been the 
 act of a madman to do so, considering the way in which 
 events were moving. Instead, he wrote two long and con- 
 ciliatory letters to Cromwell, one from Rome on February 15, 
 the other from Li^ge on August 20*. In the first he 
 attempted to appease the anger of the King, which had 
 been aroused by Pole's acceptance of the Cardinalate. In the 
 second he insisted that Pole had always done his utmost for 
 the advancement of the King's honour and good name, except 
 in matters which concerned the unity of the Church. Further- 
 more he pointed out that though Henry had treated him as 
 a rebel and put a price upon his head, the Cardinal had shown 
 great forbearance in not leaving his book against the King 
 in the hands of the Pope, who would infallibly . have published 
 it, and in refusing the exercise of certain censures which had 
 been prepared against Henry in Rome. Throgmorton added, 
 moreover, that the Pope had just called Pole back to Italy to 
 take part in the General Council appointed for the following 
 November, at which it was inevitable that strong measures 
 would be taken against England. He assured Cromwell that 
 if the King desired to avoid this danger it would be indispens- 
 able for him to become reconciled to Pole, on whose attitude 
 at the Council so much depended. Throgmorton appears to 
 have supplemented this letter with a verbal suggestion that 
 a conference should be arranged between the King's chaplain 
 Dr. Wilson and the Cardinal, before the latter's departure for 
 
 ^ Cal. xii. (i) 34, 249. the King. Cf. Letters, 218. 
 
 ^ There is reason to think that ' Cal. xii. (i) 249, 296, 313. 
 
 Throgmorton had promised to be * Cal. xii. (i) 429; xii. (ii) 
 
 a spy on Pole's movements for 552. 
 
CARDINAL POLE 207 
 
 Rome, in the hope that some final agreement might be reached. 
 He promised to use his own efforts to induce Pole to do his 
 part, and seized the opportunity to excuse himself for not 
 returning to England, by observing in this connexion that he 
 could best further the King's interests by tarrying with his 
 master. At first the plan which Throgmorton proposed 
 seems to have found acceptance with Henry. A favourable 
 reply was drawn up by Cromwell, and Dr. Wilson and his 
 companion, Dr. Nicholas Heath, received instructions prepara- 
 tory to a conference with Pole^. But though Henry, 
 discouraged as he was by his failures to kill or capture the 
 Cardinal, appears to have been momentarily persuaded that 
 Throgmorton's siiggestion was feasible, his minister from the 
 first was strongly opposed to it. The first draft of the reply 
 to the letter of Pole's servant bears every evidence of having 
 been written under compulsion, and Cromwell must have 
 succeeded, before it was actually sent, in persuading the King 
 that a mission which was to meet the Cardinal on his own 
 ground could only result in failure, and that the sole 
 thing to do was openly to menace Pole and his family with 
 assassination. Such at least seems the most probable 
 explanation of the fact that Wilson and Heath never started 
 on their errand, and of the singularly abusive and malevo- 
 lent letter with which Cromwell finally replied to that 
 of Throgmorton ^. The last hope of reconciliation with the 
 Cardinal had vanished ; not he alone, but also his aged 
 mother and brother in England, had been threatened with 
 destruction. Another obstacle to Henry's despotism was 
 to be annihilated, as every attempt to surmount it had 
 failed. 
 
 Pole meanwhile remained in Italy, assured of his personal 
 safety but grieved to the heart that his mother and brother 
 were still in England, where the King could take vengeance 
 on them for his own alleged treason. In August, 1538, his 
 brother. Sir Geoffrey Pole, was arrested and placed in the 
 Tower, where he was examined on the charge of having had 
 treacherous correspondence with his brother Reginald, and 
 
 1 Letters, 216-7. ^ Letters, 218. 
 
208 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 having interfered with the King's endeavours to arrest him ^ 
 His replies to the questions put to him implicated many- 
 others, and before the close of the year the heads of the 
 powerful families of Montague, Courtenay, Delawarr, and 
 Nevill had been arrested and sent to the Tower ^. There is 
 reason to believe that the confessions of Sir Geoffrey Pole 
 were extorted from him by threats of torture, to serve as an 
 excuse for the arrest of these noblemen, and a letter of 
 Castillon to Montmorency asserts that their destruction had 
 been decided on long before, on account of their connexion 
 with the Yorkist dynasty ^. Cromwell's activity in procuring 
 matter for the various indictments is sufficiently attested by 
 an enormous number of notes of evidence and memoranda for 
 prosecution in the hand of his chief clerk. The apparent 
 difficulty which he had in trumping up any plausible charges 
 against his victims, would seem to show that no adequate 
 proof of any really disloyal intent could be found. Indeed, 
 in order to have any sort of excuse for the arrests of the 
 Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter, Cromwell had to exhume 
 a long forgotten episode, and accuse the latter of having 
 ridden in disguise three years before to confer with the Holy 
 Maid ; while it was remembered that the Marquis had been 
 put in the Tower in 1531 on the charge of assembling the 
 commons of Cornwall for an insurrection, with intent to 
 depose the King. An unfortunate remark of Courtenay's 
 that ' Knavys rule about the Kyng,' and that he hoped ' to 
 gyue them a buffet oone day,' was brought up against him as 
 a treasonable sentence ; it certainly could not have been 
 pleasing to Cromwell, who was doubtless the arch-' knave' 
 referred to*. But it is very unlikely that any of the un- 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (ii) 232 (p. 91). to death for treason in Parliament 
 
 ^ Cal. xiii. (ii) 695, 770, 771. without a hearing, the attainder 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (ii) 804, 805, 954-60. could ever be disputed. He finally 
 
 * Cal. xiii. (ii) 802, 979 (7). It is succeeded in obtaining the reluc- 
 
 said that CromweU, in the course tant but correct reply that ' an at- 
 
 of these prosecutions, contrived to tainder in Parliament, whether or 
 
 deprive the victims of all chance not the party had been heard in his 
 
 of escape by inquiring of the judges own defence, could never bereversed 
 
 whether, if a man were condemned in a court of law.' Cf. Hallam, 
 
■ CARDINAL POLE 209 
 
 fortunate noblemen had been guilty of crimes which could 
 fairly be interpreted as treason. The French ambassador had 
 hit upon the real secret of their offences when he remarked 
 that they all were adherents of the White Rose ^. In fact the 
 whole plot against Pole may in one sense be regarded as 
 preparatory to a final attack on the Yorkist nobles, whose 
 position had never been secure since the accession of the 
 House of Tudor. Blow after blow had been struck against 
 them by Henry VIII and his father, but still some vestige of 
 them seemed always to remain, to threaten the King's position 
 and endanger his succession. There can be no doubt that 
 Cromwell, whose action in the case was certainly influenced 
 more than usual by personal animosity, found little difficulty 
 in persuading the King that the existence of Courtenay was 
 a serious menace to the security of the reigning dynasty, on 
 account of the claim that he had to the throne as grandson of 
 Edward IV. At any rate, Henry seemed resolved on a whole- 
 sale destruction of all nobles who could possibly be regarded 
 as rivals of the Crown, and the relationship of most of his 
 victims to the family of the persecuted Cardinal afforded him 
 a pretext of which he did not fail to take advantage. Exeter, 
 Montague, and Nevill were beheaded in December, on Tower 
 Hill, while Sir Geoffrey Pole, who had been tried and con- 
 demned with them, was spared, mainly, as Cromwell frankly 
 told Castillon at the end of December, because the King 
 expected to get something more out of him^. He was 
 ultimately pardoned, but passed the rest of his life in musing, 
 ' going about,' says a contemporary writer, ' like one terror- 
 stricken all his days ^' 
 
 The Marchioness of Exeter and the Countess of Salisbury 
 were meantime held prisoners in the Tower. On May la, 
 
 vol. i. pp. 29-30. Coke, Fourth In- whereupon that erroneous and vul- 
 
 stitute, p. 38, adds, ' The party gar opinion amongst our historians 
 
 against whom this was intended grew, that he died by the same law 
 
 was never called in question, but which he himself had made.' 
 
 the first man after the said reso- ^ Cal. xiii. (ii) 753. 
 
 lution, that was so attainted, and ^ Cal. xiii. (ii) 986, 1 163. 
 
 never called to answer, was the said ' Wriothesley's Chronicle, vol. i. 
 
 Earl of Essex (Thomas Cromwell) : p. 92- 
 
 MERRIMAN. I P 
 
210 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 1539, ' tlie moste tractable parlament ' that Henry ever had 
 passed a sweeping bill of attainder, to legalize the wanton 
 massacres of the preceding year and to destroy the victims 
 who still remained^. The Marchioness of Exeter was sub- 
 sequently pardoned, but the Countess dragged on a miserable 
 existence in prison for more than two years after her attainder. 
 The only evidence of her treason was a cloth which had been 
 found in her house, embroidered on one side with the arms 
 of England aiid on the other with the five wounds of Christ, 
 the emblem carried by the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace. 
 Still execution was delayed, and it was not until the spring 
 of 1541, almost a year after the death of Cromwell, that an 
 insurrection in Yorkshire under Sir John Nevill sealed her fate, 
 and she was barbarously beheaded by a clumsy executioner 
 on May 38 I 
 
 Meantime the Cardinal at Rome, powerless as he was to 
 prevent the ruin of his family, was contriving in some way 
 to humble the arrogant King and the ruthless minister who 
 had caused him so much woe. The Pope saw that what 
 Henry dreaded most of all was a coalition of Francis and 
 Charles, and as there was a good prospect of this event at the 
 close of 1538, he sent Pole to each of these two sovereigns 
 to urge them to agree to stop all trade with England and lay 
 the foundation for a continental league against her. Pole 
 gladly accepted the task, and careless of his own safety, 
 though he knew that his path would be full of Henry's hired 
 assassins, he set out for Spain and reached the Emperor's 
 Court at Toledo in safety in February, 1539. When the 
 King heard of his arrival there, he wrote to Charles in very 
 much the same way that he had addressed Francis two years 
 before, accusing Pole as a traitor, and demanding his 
 extradition as such, or at least insisting that Charles should 
 not grant him an audience ^. But unfortunately Henry was 
 now no longer in a position to dictate, and the Emperor, 
 realizing this, saw no reason to accede to his request, and 
 answered, as Cromwell later wrote to Wriothesley, that if 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 867, c. 15. ^ Cal. xvi. 868. 
 
 ' Cal. xiv. (i) 279-280. 
 
CARDINAL POLE 211 
 
 Pole 'wer^ his owne traytour, commyng from that holy 
 father ' he could not refuse him audience ^. But in spite 
 of all this, the Cardinal's mission was a failure. Charles for 
 the present was content with the slight rebuke that he had 
 given Henry for his bullying ways ; cautious as ever, he did 
 not propose to put himself in a position from which he could 
 not retreat until he was sure of his ground, and intimated 
 to the legate that the Pope had made a great mistake in 
 publishing censures which he could not enforce. Pole could 
 not obtain his consent to the Papal proposals and left Toledo 
 much discouraged ^. He was also exceedingly suspicious 
 of some design of Sir Thomas Wyatt's to cause his assassina- 
 tion, and mentioned it in a later letter to Cardinal Contarini ^. 
 That his fears were not entirely groundless is shown by 
 a cipher letter from Wyatt to Cromwell containing many 
 passages pregnant with hidden meaning which can only be 
 explained if such a design is premised *. Pole soon betook 
 himself to his friend Sadolet at Carpentras, whence he sent 
 a messenger to Francis on the same errand as that on which 
 he himself had gone to Charles. The French King's reply was 
 as unsatisfactory as the Emperor's had been, and in 1540 the 
 Cardinal returned to Rome with his mission unaccomplished, 
 and deriving only small consolation from the thought that he 
 had been successful in baffling the attempts of Henry's and 
 Cromwell's assassins. 
 
 The story of Pole's life between 1535 and 1540 is the 
 thread which binds together the foreign and domestic, secular 
 and religious history of Cromwell's administration. The 
 Cardinal's attempts to make the King renounce his title 
 of Supreme Head and the other insignia of the despotism 
 to which Cromwell had raised him at home were an absolute 
 failure, and were punished with the shockingly unjust and 
 cruel destruction of his family. Still his efforts to thwart 
 the main aim of the foreign policy of the time, namely the 
 separation of the interests of France and Spain, though not 
 directly successful, were instrumental in bringing about the 
 
 ' Letters, 301. ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 212. 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 603. * Cal. xiv. (i) 560. 
 
 P 2 
 
213 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 fall of his arch-enemy Cromwell. For the endeavours of 
 the Cardinal were one of a number of things which combined 
 to persuade the minister that the catastrophe which seemed 
 imminent throughout the year 1539 could not be averted 
 without external aid, and thus to induce him to take a step 
 on his own responsibility which soon led him into disastrous 
 conflict with the King. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY 
 
 During the ten years of Cromwell's ministry, the relations 
 of England with the great continental powers presented 
 a problem fully as difficult as that afforded by the course of 
 events at home. Cromwell's efforts to cope with the dangers 
 which threatened England from without were far less success- 
 ful than his internal administration : in the latter he never 
 failed to render invaluable service to the Crown, while in the 
 former he made the mistake which finally lost him the royal 
 favour and brought him to the block. As the results of the 
 minister's external policy thus led directly to his fall, we may 
 now return to the chronological order of events, which was 
 abandoned while the various phases of his home government 
 were under consideration. 
 
 Cromwell had entered the King's service in 1530 with 
 training and talents which rendered him far more competent 
 to undertake the domestic administration of the country than 
 to guide its foreign affairs. His acquaintance with different 
 trades, his legal ability, and his experience in the suppression 
 of the smaller monasteries for Wolsey's purposes were of 
 inestimable value to him throughout his ministry in dealing 
 with problems at home. But in the management of affairs 
 abroad he was still very inexperienced. He had borne no part 
 in the great schemes of external policy which had occupied the 
 Cardinal, and though his speech in the Parliament of 1523 
 showed a very just appreciation of the situation of England 
 abroad, he had had no opportunity to put his ideas into 
 practice. Thus at the outset we find him cautiously remaining 
 in the background and awaiting the development of the 
 King's foreign policy. In this he was wise, for at Wolsey's 
 fall Henry had resolved to take the external administration 
 
214 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 of England into his own hands. We have seen that the 
 Cardinal's failure had taught him the danger of concluding 
 any definite alliance with either France or Spain, while the 
 two great continental rivals remained at war. He had learned 
 that England's best security lay in maintaining a position 
 of neutrality between Charles and Francis, and in balancing 
 one against the other, while all disputes between them were 
 encouraged under cover of offers of mediation. It was along 
 these lines that Henry had determined to guide the foreign 
 affairs of England, as soon as order could be brought out 
 of the chaos caused by the divorce. How correct his decision 
 was is proved by the utter collapse of the Imperial alliance 
 of 1543, the only really permanent departure from the policy 
 of neutrality which Henry ever made after the death of 
 Wolsey. A complete change of the political horizon led him 
 into it, only to be left in the lurch by the Emperor at the 
 peace of Crepy^ in the same way that he had been abandoned 
 before by Francis at the treaty of Cambray. • But during the 
 life of Cromwell the King made no such blunder as this. 
 Though he sometimes wavered, he never definitely renounced 
 the policy of neutrality, although his minister, who sometimes 
 doubted its efficacy, made several efforts to induce him to 
 abandon it. There can be no doubt that, from the very first, 
 Cromwell over-estimated the danger of a foreign invasion Eind 
 failed to appreciate the real strength of England's isolated 
 position : he was deceived by constant menaces which never 
 really bore fruit. A more intimate acquaintance with the 
 practical and calculating nature of Charles V would certainly 
 have convinced the King's minister that however much the 
 Emperor threatened, he would never actually embark on 
 the somewhat remote project of a crusade against England, 
 until a great many affairs in his own scattered dominions on 
 the Continent had first been settled to his satisfaction. But 
 Cromwell's inexperience in the management of foreign affairs 
 blinded him to this important fact : and his over-eagerness to 
 seek means for England's defence proved his ultimate ruin. 
 After successfully co-operating with Henry for seven years on 
 
 ' Cf. Robertson, vol. ii. p. 135. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 215 
 
 the basis of maintaining strict neutrality between France and 
 Spain, and of encouraging all disputes between them, he 
 abandoned the wise policy of his master in favour of an 
 alliance in Germany which, in one form or another, had been 
 under consideration on several occasions before, but which 
 had been abandoned every time as unnecessary. This new 
 alliance turned out disastrously. At the moment of its 
 completion, the situation on the Continent which had called 
 it into existence suddenly changed ; it was thrown over, 
 together with the minister who had originated it. Such 
 is the outline of the history of England's foreign affairs 
 from 1530 till Cromwell's fall. We can now take up the very 
 complicated story in detail. 
 
 Although Henry ardently desired at once to put in practice 
 the policy of neutrality which he had learned from Wolsey's 
 failure, the affair of the divorce had thrown everything into 
 such confusion that an immediate application of the new 
 principle was impossible. In fact it was not until the 
 beginning of the year 1536 that the King was able to assume 
 the position he desired in his relations with France and Spain. 
 The alliance with France which Wolsey had bequeathed to 
 Henry was so close that the King saw that he must at least 
 partially withdraw from it, before he could hope to come 
 to such terms with the Emperor as would enable him to act 
 the part of a neutral and benevolent mediator between the 
 foreign powers. But at this juncture the King's anxiety 
 to obtain a legal justification for his second marriage was 
 paramount in his mind. In fact it almost seems to have 
 blinded him temporarily to the policy that he doubtless 
 intended ultimately to pursue. His energies were all bent 
 towards securing the aid of Francis in his ' grete matier ' ; 
 and for the moment he postponed his policy of conciliating 
 the Emperor, who was of course at that time in league with 
 the Pope. Each pair of allies had interviews and counter- 
 interviews, but with very different results. While Henry and 
 Francis were at first most cordial, Clement counted Charles' 
 proffered friendship as of slight weight, against the prospect 
 of losing the support of the two most powerful kings of 
 
216 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Christendom, and of being forced to submit to the summoning 
 of the General Council by which the Emperor proposed to 
 rectify the abuses which had crept into the Holy Church'. 
 The visit at Bologna of Francis' ambassadors, Cardinals 
 Tournon and Grammont, undid all that Charles' threats had 
 accomplished ^, and Clement, although he feebly menaced 
 Henry with excommunication in case he proceeded with his 
 second marriage ^, refused to accede to the Emperor's wishes 
 that he should take more active measures against England. 
 Meantime Henry had endeavoured to come to an under- 
 standing with the See of Rome concerning the hearing of his 
 case before a Council, in the hope that by giving the Pope 
 fair words, he might still obtain a favourable decision *. The 
 King's confidence in the ultimate success of his efforts was 
 so high at the opening of the year 1533, that he dared to give 
 it expression by increasingly harsh treatment of Katherine. 
 She was moved further away from the Court than ever 
 before, and hardly a day passed without seeing her subjected 
 to some new indignity. Every effort which her friends made 
 on her behalf seemed unavailing. As petitions to Henry 
 himself were unanswered, Chapuys in despair turned to 
 Cromwell, whom he had by this time recognized as the man 
 who managed all the King's affairs ^. But Cromwell succeeded 
 in evading the demands of the Imperial ambassador also ; in 
 fact he displayed such ability in 'beknaving' Chapuys that 
 Henry always employed him in future to answer the perfectly 
 justifiable complaints of the Spanish representative. Cromwell 
 delayed the interview which the ambassador had requested 
 until he had had time to consult with the King ^ : and when 
 he finally met Chapuys, he spent much time in applauding 
 all the efforts that had been made to maintain friendly 
 
 ■^ Ranke, Popes, vol. i. p. 77. illness. Cf. Cal. vii. 959. Though it 
 
 ' Cal. vi. 64, 92. is certain that he suffered at times 
 
 ' Cal. V. 1545. from violent attacks of ague, it is 
 
 * Cal. vi. no. doubtful if it was always his ill- 
 
 ^ Cal. vi. 465. health which prevented him from 
 
 " Cal. vi. 508. Cromwell often fulfilling his engagements to the 
 
 begged to be excused from a pro- Imperial ambassador. 
 
 mised interview on the plea of 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 217 
 
 relations between Spain and England. But when urged to do 
 his best to protect the Queen and Princess from the ignominies 
 to which they were subjected, Cromwell's replies were evasive, 
 if not absolutely untruthful. Chapuys was so exasperated at 
 the cool way in which his claims to justice had been set aside, 
 that he took occasion to hint that Charles and Francis might 
 some day join forces against England, to 'which Cromwell 
 assented^ but showed no great joy thereat.' The threat, 
 however, had no lasting effect. The treatment of the Queen 
 went on from bad to worse, and two months later the same 
 conversation took place all over again, with the same 
 unsatisfactory result^. As long as Cromwell consented to 
 obey his master's commands implicitly, and to devote himself 
 solely to finding means to carry out the plans which the 
 King's riper experience told him were feasible, without trying 
 to take the lead himself, the two were an almost invincible 
 combination. 
 
 But the time was soon to come when Chapuys' prophecy 
 of a coalition of France and Spain seemed more likely to be 
 fulfilled. Henry's impatience to conclude his matrimonial 
 troubles finally led him to throw caution to the winds. He 
 had, as we have already seen, postponed the application of 
 his wise policy of neutrality in the hope of obtaining aid from 
 France. But the French King did not move quickly enough 
 to suit him, and in the summer of 1533 he committed such 
 a breach of diplomatic courtesy that he completely alienated 
 his ' nere and dere brother.' He had overtaxed his friendship 
 with the King of France by requiring him to support every 
 move he made, and to threaten the Pope, if his Holiness 
 refused to do the same. Francis only partially acceded to 
 Henry's wishes. Meantime all hope of obtaining the divorce 
 from Rome had been abandoned owing to Cromwell's advice ; 
 the affair was tried in England, and Anne Boleyn was 
 publicly proclaimed Queen. A provisional sentence of ex- 
 communication was passed on Henry in July, giving him 
 till September to decide whether he would take Katherine 
 back or not. A few months before, Francis and Henry had 
 
 1 Cal. vi. 918; viii. 263,327, 355, 948; ix. 594. 
 
218 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 together endeavoured to win over the Pope against the 
 Emperor : now that the bull of excommunication had come, 
 Francis continued his good offices by offering to mediate 
 for Henry with the Holy See. Henry, however, blusteringly 
 assured him that he was not in need of any mediation — he 
 hoped that Francis would not trouble himself^. But the 
 latter would not take the hint that England's policy towards 
 the See of Rome had changed from conciliation to open 
 hostihty, and invited Clement to meet him at Marseilles, to 
 see if he could not bring about an agreement. The Pope, 
 who needed Francis' aid in the furtherance of his own plans 
 for the prevention of the dreaded Council, readily accepted 
 the opportunity which had been offered ^. Henry was of 
 course unable to prevent an interview between the two 
 potentates, but he attempted to throw cold water on the 
 whole affair by sending an embassy to Clement while the 
 latter was the guest of the King of France, to announce to 
 his Holiness that he intended to appeal against his sentence 
 to the very General Council which the Pope was attempting 
 to forestall. The chief result of this extraordinary proceeding 
 was simply to deprive the King of the only ally that he had. 
 Francis was naturally exceedingly angry, and flatly refused 
 to fight Henry's battles for him any more '. Such was the 
 reward reaped from the alliance which Wolsey six years 
 before had been at such pains to bring about, in the hope of 
 obtaining much-needed support in the matter of the divorce * ! 
 So far it certainly seemed as if Henry's foreign, policy, 
 
 ■■ Cal. vi. 614, 641. Neither writer produces any very 
 ^ Ranke, Popes, vol. i. p. 77. conclusive evidence in support of 
 ' Cal. vi. 1426, 1427. his theory : but Mr. Friedmann's 
 * Mr. Friedmann (Anne Boleyn, view is certainly, on the face of it, 
 vol. i. pp. 225, 250 ff.) believes that the more plausible. It may be too 
 this break with France was due to much to say that it was by Crom- 
 the influence of Cromwell, who had well's advice that Francis was in- 
 urged the King to strike out an suited at Marseilles, but it is certain 
 independent policy as regards the that the King's minister evinced 
 Pope. M. Bapst (Deux Gentils- a decided preference for an Imperial 
 hommes, pp. 97, 113), on the other alliance long before the year 1535. 
 hand,thinks that the King's minister Cf. Froude, The Divorce of Cathe- 
 originally favoured the French alii- rine of Aragon, p. 308. 
 ance, and adhered to it until 1535. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 219 
 
 instead of gaining him his desired position as neutral and 
 pretended mediator between France and Spain, had only- 
 served to alienate both. As his cruel treatment of Katherine 
 and Mary had not improved his position with Charles, he 
 had to cast about for other allies to counterbalance the effect 
 of his tiff with Francis. It is at this juncture that Cromwell 
 first steps into prominence in connexion with foreign affairs. 
 There can be little doubt that the negotiations with the 
 Lutheran princes, which began in July, 1533, were planned by 
 him. It is of course natural to look to the man, whose 
 name six years later became inseparably associated with a 
 German alliance, as the originator of the scheme ; in addition 
 to this there is documentary evidence. A letter which 
 Chapuys wrote to the Emperor, July 30, 1533, informs us that 
 two of Cromwell's men (one of whom later turned out to be 
 his trusty Stephen Vaughan) had been sent to Germany pre- 
 sumably ' to embroil ' all they could ^ ; and on August 3, 
 a letter reporting the progress of the ambassadors was written 
 by them to Cromwell from Antwerp^. Vaughan and his 
 companion, a certain Christopher Mont, arrived in Nurnberg 
 on the 22nd, whence they sent home minute accounts of the 
 state of religion in Germany ; the one observing, with apparent 
 regret, that the country was not nearly as disturbed as had 
 been thought, while the other assured Cromwell that he had 
 never seen a land whose towns were so much divided ^ Some 
 time in the autumn Cromwell sent a reply to Mont, praising 
 his diligence, and urging him above all things to discover the 
 state of feeling in Germany towards the King of England 
 and the Emperor*. The envoy appears to have returned 
 from his preliminary tour of investigation before the close of 
 the year, for in January, 1534, he was sent back again to 
 Germany, this time accompanied by Nicholas Heath, with 
 instructions to convey to the Lutheran princes the sym- 
 pathy of the King of England, as being also an enemy of 
 the Pope, and to express his willingness to unite with them 
 for the extirpation of false doctrines ^. England's overtures, 
 
 ^ Cal. vi. 918. ^ Cal. vi. 934. ' Cal. vi. 1039-40. 
 
 * Letters, 64. ° Cal. vii. 21. 
 
220 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 however, were not received with as much enthusiasm as 
 Henry perhaps had expected, and nothing definite resulted 
 from the mission of Heath and Mont for a long time. The 
 Germans probably had serious misgivings about the genuine- 
 ness of Henry's Protestantism, and their suspicions of his 
 sincerity were confirmed by a new development of England's 
 foreign policy in the same year. 
 
 As one of the consequences of an unwarrantable act of 
 piracy near the English coast in the autumn of 1533, Henry 
 had been able to get hold of a prominent young man of 
 the violently Protestant town of Liibeck, by name Mark 
 Meyer. At London he was treated with the greatest courtesy 
 by the King and Cromwell, and returned to his native city 
 invested with the honour of knighthood ^. Such bounty was 
 seldom showered on anybody by Henry VHI without some 
 ulterior purpose, and Meyer's case was no exception to the 
 general rule. It soon transpired that proposals had been 
 made for a close alliance between England and Liibeck^. 
 Ever since the peace of Stralsund in 1370, the cities of the 
 Hanseatic League had claimed a decisive voice in the affairs 
 of the neighbouring realm of Denmark ^ : the death of the' 
 king of that country in April, 1533, had left the throne vacant, 
 and Liibeck was at this moment bent on obtaining the dis- 
 posal of it. Henry signified his willingness to aid the 
 Liibeckers in this enterprise, on condition that they would 
 promise that if they were successful they would be guided by 
 him in the final bestowal of the Danish crown. In May, 
 1534, the Liibeckers sent an embassy to England ^ and the 
 proposals of the previous year were accepted. 
 
 The new alliance had a very important bearing on the 
 larger issues of Henry's foreign policy. The social and 
 political revolution which had been in progress in Liibeck 
 since 1530 had placed the power in the hands of a party 
 whose anti-papal tendencies were fully as violent as those of 
 the Wittenberg theologians, and whose conscientious scruples 
 were of less weight, when thrown into the scales of political 
 
 ^ Cal. vi. 15 10. ' Schafer, p. 512. 
 
 ' B. M. Nero B. iii, 105. * Rymer, vol. xiv. p. 539. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 231 
 
 expediency *. The treaty concluded with England contained 
 certain doctrinal statements which lay suspiciously close 
 to the needs of Henry's immediate position^, and the 
 King must have been at least temporarily convinced that 
 he had obtained a valuable ally against the See of Rome. 
 The treaty with Liibeck was also a very distinct move against 
 the Emperor, for an Imperial candidate had been proposed 
 for the vacant throne of Denmark, and by supporting the 
 Lubeckers Henry necessarily opposed Charles. But the new 
 alliance failed to accomplish what was expected of it : in 
 fact it actually worked to England's disadvantage. Before 
 its conclusion, George Wullenwever, the demagogue whom 
 the recent upheaval had rendered temporarily supreme in 
 Liibeck, had offered to support the claims of the Lutheran 
 Duke of Holstein to the Danish throne ; but when Holstein, 
 unwilling to gain his ends by force, prudently refused the 
 proffered aid, the friendship of the Liibeckers was converted 
 into bitter enmity. They soon invaded his lands, but were 
 repulsed and besieged in turn in their own city: a peace 
 of a most extraordinary nature finally resulted, by which an 
 agreement was reached in regard to the affairs of Holstein, 
 though both parties reserved the right of continuing the war 
 for the disposal of the crown of Denmark. That country 
 in the meantime, seeing that its sole chance of safety lay 
 in obtaining a strong and capable leader, elected the Duke 
 of Holstein to the vacant throne, under the title of Christian III 
 — a severe blow to the pretensions of the Liibeckers, who 
 were now robbed of their best excuse for interference in 
 Danish affairs, namely their professed desire to introduce 
 pure religion there ^. Liibeck, however, had now gone too 
 far to draw back, and prepared to attack the new King in 
 
 ^ Waitz, vol. i. p. 83. dispensatio.' Entwurf eines Ver- 
 
 ^ One of the provisions of tiie trags zwischen Konig Heinrich 
 
 proposed agreement was : 'Ducere und Liibeck; Sommer, 1534. Tran- 
 
 uxorem fratris mortui sine liberis est scribed from tlie original in the 
 
 jure divino et naturali prohibitum. Archives at Weimar ; Waitz, vol. 
 
 Contra prohibitiones divinas inva- ii. pp. 319-25. 
 
 lida ac prorsus nulla est Roman! ' Ranke, vol. iii. pp. 406-425. 
 pontificis vel cujuscumque alterius 
 
222 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 connexion with England. Henry must have been much 
 annoyed at the complication into which his new alliance had 
 led him — it seemed doubly foolish, in view of his attempts to 
 conciliate the German Protestants, that he should get himself 
 entangled with the enemies of those whom he wished to 
 make his friends. But though the King was advised by 
 Dr. Barnes, the English ambassador at Hamburg, to drop 
 Liibeck and conciliate Christian^, he was as usual too proud 
 to acknowledge that he had made a mistake. He soon 
 reaped the reward of his obstinacy, as the Liibeckers, in their 
 new attempt to overthrow Christian, were again completely 
 defeated. Henry had aided them with the services of two 
 skilled engineers, and the Danish King sent an embassy to 
 demand an explanation of his conduct ^ Christian's envoy 
 was treated with scant courtesy by the King and Cromwell, 
 the latter vainly attempting to conceal his master's anxiety 
 by several preposterous lies ^. But still the King was un- 
 willing to consent to a complete reversal of his Liibeck 
 policy, and finally sent the ambassador home with an answer 
 which Chapuys characterizes as ' obscure and ambiguous.' 
 Several subsequent victories of Christian, in which certain 
 English ships which had been sent to aid the Liibeckers were 
 captured, were sufficient however to convince Henry that he 
 had unduly despised the power of the new Danish King; 
 and though his relations with Liibeck continued to be 
 friendly, he carefully abstained from any further active 
 measures on her behalf. But he had already done enough at 
 least temporarily to alienate his Lutheran friends, who were 
 shocked at the way in which the King of England attached 
 himself to people whose religious principles were as extreme 
 as those of the Liibeckers, and who had dared to attack one 
 of their own number. 
 
 Thus each of the two alliances with which Henry had 
 sought to fortify himself against France and Spain had 
 rendered the other worthless. The King probably bitterly 
 regretted that his matrimonial difficulties had led him to stray 
 so far from the policy which he originally intended to pursue. 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 970. ^ Cal. viii. 72, 327. ' Cal. viii. 556, I178. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 223 
 
 Had he been able to secure his desired position as neutral 
 and pretended mediator between France and Spain, he could 
 have relied on this eminently advantageous situation alone to 
 secure safety for England abroad, without troubling himself 
 about any outside alliance. But to attain this position was 
 impossible, as we have seen, until he became reconciled to 
 Charles, and reconciliation with Charles was out of the 
 question as long as Katherine remained subjected to such 
 indignity. Here lay the key to the whole situation. The 
 treatment of the divorced Queen was the sole hindrance to 
 a cordial relation between Spain and England, and con- 
 sequently to the final application of the policy which Henry 
 so ardently desired. But there could be no hope of an 
 alleviation of her sufferings, for the King and Cromwell were 
 by this time irrevocably committed to a brutal attitude 
 towards Katherine and her daughter by the course of events 
 since the first trial of the divorce. The inference was obvious. 
 As long as Katherine lived, a reconciliation with Charles, with 
 all its attendant benefits, was impossible : her death alone could 
 pave the way for it. That these thoughts had already taken 
 shape at least in Cromwell's mind is proved by a hint which 
 the King's minister dropped in Chapuys' presence in August, 
 1534, to the effect that the death of the Queen and Princess 
 would remove all occasion for a quarrel between their masters ^. 
 But the autumn of 1534 saw several events which served to 
 encourage the King and his minister, and seemed temporarily 
 to postpone the necessity of coming to terms with the 
 Emperor. The first of these events was the death of the 
 Pope in September, an occurrence which, according to 
 Chapuys, caused Henry and Cromwell such joy that the 
 latter was 'unable to refrain from saying several times in 
 public that this great devil was dead, and it seemed as if he 
 was very sorry that he could find no worse name for him 
 than devil 2.' Francis moreover, solely on account of his very 
 strained relations with Charles, had slowly begun to recover 
 from the effects of Henry's discourtesy at Marseilles, and had 
 made fresh efforts to come to terms with England again ; 
 
 ^ Cal. vii. 1095. "^ Cal. vii. 1257. 
 
224 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 while Henry, unwilling as yet to proceed to extremities in 
 order to gain the friendship of Charles, welcomed the prospect 
 of a renewal of amity with France. But the satisfaction 
 which the King derived from the attitude of Francis was 
 rudely dispelled in a few months. Several interviews which 
 had been arranged between the two sovereigns had failed, for 
 various reasons, to take place, but the Emperor meantime 
 had not been idle. Imbued with the idea of vindicating the 
 rights of the Princess Mary by some decisive stroke, he had 
 actually sent the Count of Nassau to the French Court to 
 suggest that Francis should ask Henry to give her to the 
 Duke of Angoul^me^ Francis considered the Emperor's 
 plan worth a trial, and in October sent over an embassy under 
 Admiral de Brion to propose it to the King of England. 
 Henry had little idea of the unpleasant surprise that was in 
 store for him, and made great preparations for the reception 
 of the Frenchmen, and Cromwell sent for a number of beautiful 
 young ladies to come to the Court to entertain them^. There 
 seems to be some doubt whether de Brion first proposed that 
 Mary should be given to the Duke of Angoulfime or to the 
 Dauphin ^, but both suggestions were equally disagreeable to 
 Henry. An acceptance of either proposal would of course 
 involve retracting his declaration that Mary was illegitimate, 
 and annulling his hard-earned invalidation of his first marriage, 
 and yet he dared not insult Francis a second time. His first 
 reply, according to Chapuys, was that hfe would agree to give 
 Mary to Angoul^me if both would make a solemn renuncia- 
 tion of all claims that they could bring forward to the English 
 throne*. But the Spanish ambassador seemed to think that 
 this proposal would not prove satisfactory, and we gather 
 from the official report of Henry's answer that the suggestion 
 was dropped. Instead, however, the King finally replied that 
 if Francis could obtain from the new Pope a decision that the 
 sentence of Clement was void, he might be induced to renounce 
 his claim to the French throne in exchange for certain lands 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1060, and Baumgarten, ' Cal. vii. 1483, 1554. 
 
 vol. iii. pp. 145-6. * Cal. vii. 1554. 
 
 ''■ Cal. vii. 1437. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 225 
 
 and titles in the Netherlands, and further hinted that it might 
 be possible to arrange a match between Elizabeth and the 
 Duke of Angouleme ^. But this proposal amounted to little 
 more than a diplomatic refusal of Francis' request. De Brion 
 went away disappointed, and forgetting his usual caution, and 
 the fact that England was still in a stronger position than 
 France, determined to avenge himself for the failure of his 
 mission by parading before the eyes of Cromwell and his 
 master the probability of the dreaded alliance of France and 
 Spain, in much the same way that Chapuys had done in the 
 previous year. When Cromwell appeared in the great hall 
 to make the farewell present, the Admiral disengaged himself 
 from the crowd, and came to the Imperial ambassador with 
 the greatest civility, expressing his regret at not having seen 
 the Princess Mary, ' the principal gem of the kingdom,' and 
 finally declaring that if he and Chapuys could only bring their 
 masters to accord, all would go well -. 
 
 In spite of Cromwell's boasting, we may well believe that 
 de Brion had succeeded in making Henry feel very uncomfort- 
 able. The inferences which the King must have drawn from 
 the conduct of the ambassador at his departure were further 
 confirmed by the ominous silence from France which followed 
 the Admiral's return. But Francis himself was in too pre- 
 carious a position to afford to throw away any chances, so 
 after a couple of months' delay, he pocketed his pride and sent 
 over another embassy'under Palamedes Gontier, Treasurer of 
 Brittany, to continue negotiations on the basis of a marriage 
 between Elizabeth and the Duke of Angouleme. Henry was all 
 the more annoyed that Francis should take him at his word, 
 and entertain seriously the somewhat chimerical proposal 
 with which he had dismissed de Brion ; and the mission of 
 Gontier. failed as signally as its predecessor had done, in 
 coming to any definite conclusion ^. But Henry had chosen 
 a very poor moment to administer this final rebuff ; for the 
 Emperor had departed on an expedition against Tunis, and 
 thus left Francis a comparatively free hand on the Continent. 
 The advantage of position had hitherto lain with England, 
 
 ' Cal. vii. 1483. " Cal. vii. 1507. ' Cal. viii. 174, 557. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I Q 
 
226 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 but the absence of Charles totally altered the aspect of affairs. 
 The French King felt himself once more master of the situa- 
 tion, and was not slow to inform Henry that he did not 
 propose to be dallied with any longer. The reconquest of 
 Milan was at this moment his heart's desire ; to accomplish it 
 he needed English aid. So he commissioned the Bailly of 
 Troyes to convey to Henry a Papal brief which had been 
 sent to the French Court, and which required all Christian 
 princes to cease to hold intercourse with the heretical King 
 of England ; he further instructed his ambassador to make it 
 clear that the sole consideration which would induce the King 
 of France to disregard the brief, would be a liberal contribu.i 
 tion of English gold, whenever he saw fit to make war on the 
 Emperor. This announcement, which was practically an 
 ultimatum, took Henry completely by surprise : angry words 
 passed between him and the French envoy, but there was no 
 use disguising the fact that Francis had the upper hand h 
 The King finally sent Gardiner to Paris to answer the French 
 claims ; the instructions which the ambassador received reveal 
 a much more conciliatory attitude than Henry had yet adopted 
 towards France^. The gravity of the situation was further 
 confirmed by the seizure and detention at Bordeaux of several 
 English ships, for the recovery of which Cromwell kept writing 
 urgent letters to the Bishop of Winchester ^. It was at this 
 juncture that the King and his minister made a feeble effort 
 to reap some reward from the mission of Heath and Mont to 
 the Lutherans in the preceding year. Attempts were made 
 to bring the reformer Melancthon to England, or at least to 
 prevent his going to Francis, who had sent for him in order 
 to obtain the support of his followers against Charles *. The 
 latter effort was superfluous ; the former failed. Melancthon 
 had no intention of going to France, but the King and 
 Cromwell could not persuade him to come to England either. 
 Henry's agent. Dr. Barnes, however, informed the Lutherans 
 that the King would not refuse to join in an alliance with 
 them for the defence of the Gospel, provided they would 
 
 ^ Cal. ix. 148, 205, 594, 595. ^ Letters, 126, 128, 135. 
 
 ' Cal. ix. 443. * Letters, 113. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 227 
 
 support him against the Pope, and he promised them that 
 another ambassador, the Bishop of Hereford, would come and 
 talk further with them ^. At the close of the year the envoy 
 was received in Germany. Long negotiations followed, at 
 first with some hope of success. A request by the English 
 ambassador that the Germans would unite with his master in 
 a refusal to recognize a General Council convoked by the 
 Pope, was favourably received ; and the plenipotentiaries of 
 the Lutherans drew up a response in which they expressed 
 themselves as entirely in accord with Henry in regard to the 
 See of Rome, and offered the King of England the proud 
 title of Defender and Protector of their league. As long as 
 the Bishop of Hereford restricted himself to theological dis- 
 cussion and abuse of the Pope all went well, but when he 
 made the more practical demand for aid to his master in 
 money and ships in case of an invasion, the Germans drew 
 back : they were not prepared to go as far as this until a more 
 complete agreement had been reached in matters of religion. 
 Trouble arose also over the question of the King's divorce : 
 the Lutherans acknowledged that marriage with a brother's 
 widow was wrong, but they refused to admit, if such a union 
 had taken place, that it was right to break it ^. The news of 
 the executions of More and Fisher, moreover, had caused 
 great consternation in Germany, where every effort was being 
 made to introduce the new doctrines without bloodshed ; and 
 the Bishop of Hereford was finally sent away empty-handed, 
 the negotiations having resulted in a failure which plainly 
 foreshadowed the events of 1538 and 1539. Taken as a whole, 
 the year 1535 had simply been occupied in playing over again 
 the game of 1534. Twice had the French alliance been 
 tested, and it had failed. Twice had Henry and Cromwell 
 sought security in a league with the Lutherans — without 
 success. Two proofs had been afforded that a reconciliation 
 with Charles was the surest road to England's safety ; and 
 this time the alternative of a closer alliance with France, 
 which, in 1534, had offered the King and his minister 
 
 ^ Cal. ix. 390, 1016. Reformatorum,vol.ii.pp.l028ff.; iii. 
 
 * Cal. X. 771. Cf. also Corpus pp. 46-50. 
 
 Q2 
 
228 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 a temporary escape from an ultimately inevitable conclusion, 
 was out of the question. But a reconciliation with the 
 Emperor, as we have already seen, was impossible during the 
 lifetime of Katherine. 
 
 Under these circumstances then, we can scarcely wonder 
 that the Imperial ambassador reported to his master that the 
 death of the Queen, which occurred on January 7, 1536, was 
 due to foul play^. Chapuys also possessed other evidence, 
 which tended to strengthen him in this conclusion. He had 
 not forgotten the sinister hint which Cromwell had let fall 
 in his presence in August, 1534 ; and he had apparently 
 discovered that in November, 1535, the King had plainly told 
 his most trusted counsellors that he must be rid of the Queen 
 and Princess at the next Parliament^. Nor did Henry's 
 unseemly conduct when he received the news of the death 
 of his first wife escape the notice of the Imperial ambassador. 
 Chapuys wrote to Charles how the King clothed himself in 
 yellow from head to foot, and spent the day in mirth and 
 revelry. ' God be praised,' had Henry exclaimed, ' that we 
 are free from all suspicion of war ^.' The ambassador also 
 dwelt at length on the suspicious secrecy and almost indecent 
 haste with which the body of the Queen was opened, 
 embalmed, and enclosed in lead ; on the very significant 
 testimony extracted from the chandler of the house who 
 did the work, and on the statements of the doctor and of 
 the Queen's confessor. The verdict of the best modern 
 medical authorities on the post-mortem examination as 
 reported by the chandler strongly favours the conclusion 
 that Katherine was not poisoned*, but died of a disease 
 called melanotic sarcoma, or, more popularly, cancer of the 
 heart : the testimony of a sixteenth-century artisan, however, 
 is but a poor basis for a modern scientific investigation. If 
 the Queen was murdered, there is every reason to think that 
 Cromwell was chiefly responsible for the crime. To a man 
 
 ' Cal. X. 59. * Cf. Dr. Norman Moore, on the 
 
 " Cal. ix. 776, and Friedmann, Death of Katherine of Aragon, in 
 
 vo]. ii. pp. 169-73. the Athenaeum for Jan. 31 and 
 
 Cal. X. 141. Cf. also Fried- Feb. 28, 1885. 
 
 mann, vol. ii. p. 176. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 229 
 
 of his character and training such a step would have been far 
 less repugnant than to Henry, had he once assured himself 
 that it was indispensable to his purposes. He had had 
 sufficient experience of the Italy of Alexander VI and 
 Caesar Borgia to render him quite callous to the ordinary 
 sentiments of humanity in such matters. He had never fully 
 realized the innate strength of England's isolated position ; 
 he was always alarmed by the danger of foreign invasion far 
 more than his master, and consequently was more ready to 
 adopt desperate measures to avert it. It does not seem 
 likely that the more experienced Henry would have originated 
 the plan of murdering his wife, until the crisis in foreign 
 affairs had become far more acute. Though he fully com- 
 prehended the many advantages of a closer alliance with 
 Charles, he must have been reasonably certain that he had 
 little cause to fear a direct attack in the immediate future, 
 especially as the death of the Duke of Milan in the end of 
 October had opened glorious possibilities for a renewal of the 
 quarrel between Francis and Charles. Of course it is mere 
 folly to suppose that Cromwell would have attempted to 
 murder the Queen without the King's full consent. It is 
 more than probable however that — if poison it was — it was 
 he who put the idea into Henry's mind, and took the 
 responsibility for its execution upon himself. 
 
 In any event the death of Katherine, whether due to 
 natural causes or 'advance sinistrement ' as Chapuys ex- 
 pressed it, was the means by which Henry was at last 
 enabled to attain the position in foreign affairs that he had 
 aimed at since the fall of Wolsey, and to put in practice 
 a policy which, combined with a fortunate turn of events 
 abroad, was destined, for two years, to lead to the most 
 glorious results. It removed the chief cause of jealousy 
 between England and the Emperor ^, and enabled Henry to 
 point out to Francis, who as we have seen had of late been 
 taking a very haughty tone with him, that the situation of 
 the two countries had again been reversed, and that France 
 was no longer in a position to dictate. This task Cromwell 
 
 ' Robertson, vol. ii. pp. 40-1. 
 
230 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 performed for him three days after the Queen's death, with 
 his usual directness and efficiency. The King's minister 
 wrote to Gardiner and Wallop on January 8, indicating that 
 the death of Katherine had removed 'the onelie matier of 
 the vnkyndenes ' between his master and the Emperor, and 
 instructing the ambassadors in their ' conferenc,?^ and pro- 
 cedyng^j w^ith the frensh kjmg and his counsaile ' to keep 
 themselves ' the more aloof and be the more Froyt and colde 
 in relentyng to any their o\xer\.\xres or requests ^.' A com- 
 parison of this letter with one which Cromwell had written 
 to the Bishop of Winchester two months earlier^ reveals 
 a very striking change of tone, which nothing else than the 
 death of Katherine could have rendered possible. 
 
 The King's secretary was no less prompt in pointing out to 
 the Imperial ambassador the bearing of the decease of the 
 divorced Queen on England's relations with Spain. He was 
 not ashamed to remark to one of Chapuys' men that the 
 Emperor had the greatest cause to be thankful for the death 
 of Katherine, which in his judgement was the very best 
 thing that could have happened for the preservation of the 
 amity between Henry and Charles, as it completely removed 
 the sole cause of jealousy between them ''. The Emperor 
 was too hard-headed a politician not to see the force of 
 Cromwell's words. We cannot doubt that he was exceedingly 
 angry at the death of his aunt, which he certainly believed 
 was due to foul play ; but his situation was such that revenge 
 was impossible, and with characteristic calmness and self- 
 control he determined to conceal his resentment and conciliate 
 Henry. It was doubtless with his full sanction that Chapuys 
 welcomed all Cromwell's proposals, which looked towards 
 a more cordial relation between England and Spain. Mean- 
 time Francis had not been slow to take the hint which 
 Gardiner, at Cromwell's command, had given him, and was 
 again using every effort to regain Henry's favour. The 
 breach between the two continental sovereigns was, to the 
 King's intense joy, becoming wider every day, with the result 
 that each was making frantic attempts to outbid the other for 
 
 ^ Letters, 136. ^ Letters, 126. ^ Cal. x. 141. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 231 
 
 England's friendship. Henry's position was for the moment 
 almost ideal. All he heeded to do was to keep the two 
 rivals just evenly balanced. But precisely at this critical 
 juncture^ Cromwell for the first time in his ministry made 
 a move without the King's leave, which, had it not been 
 instantly forestalled, would have completely upset the 
 beautiful equilibrium which Henry had laboured so hard to 
 establish. The King had doubtless ordered him to be cordial 
 to Chapuys, in order to counterbalance the effects of the 
 warmth of Francis ; but he had not the least idea of entering 
 into any definite agreement, which might lose him his precious 
 position of neutrality. But Cromwell did not see this. He 
 exceeded his instructions, was voluble in his disparagement of 
 the French in Chapuys' presence, and finally brought matters 
 to such a point that he went with Chapuys to the King to 
 propose an Imperial alliance ^. It was the most open avowal 
 he had yet made of a leaning towards Spain, that he had 
 doubtless cherished for a long time. Born among the 
 common people, Cromwell's early life had been spent in 
 that atmosphere of bitter hatred of France, which for genera- 
 tions had been one of the most predominant characteristics 
 of the lower classes in England. In the first half of the 
 sixteenth century, hatred of France meant friendship with 
 Spain, and from the first years of the reign of Henry VIII one 
 encounters at every turn evidences of the devotion of the 
 common people to the Imperial cause. Wolsey's policy of 
 peace with France had won him almost as many enemies 
 among the lower classes as his reputation as originator of 
 oppressive financial measures. Cromwell had determined 
 not to make the same mistake that his predecessor had, but 
 he was foolish enough to err on the opposite side. During 
 the year 1535 he had given hints that he was no friend of 
 France ^. His rudeness to the French ambassadors on more 
 than one occasion had convinced Chapuys that he favoured 
 the Emperor, but as yet he had not gone far enough to bring 
 himself into collision with the King. But this time he had 
 forgotten his previous caution, and his rashness resulted in 
 
 ' Cal. X* 351. " Cal. viii. 948, 1018. 
 
233 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 his first serious quarrel with his master. Henry may well have 
 been furious that his minister's recklessness had threatened 
 to destroy the whole fabric of a policy which he had been at 
 such pains to put in operation. The Imperial ambassador 
 gives us an amusing account of a scene which ensued in the 
 Privy Chamber when he came with Cromwell to propose an 
 alliance between England and Spain. After Chapuys had 
 propounded the terms of a possible treaty, Henry called 
 Cromwell and Audeley to him and retired to another part of 
 the room. ' They talked together,' writes Chapuys, who kept 
 a vigilant eye upon the gestures of the King and those with him. 
 ' There seemed to be some dispute and considerable anger, as 
 I thought, between the King and Cromwell ; and after a 
 considerable time Cromwell grumbling left the conference 
 in the window where the King was, excusing himself that 
 he was so very thirsty that he was quite exhausted, as he 
 really was with pure vexation, and sat down upon a coffer 
 out of sight of the King, where he sent for something to 
 drink.' Henry soon came to Chapuys, and after being as 
 rude as possible, reproaching the Emperor with past in- 
 gratitude, and asserting that Milan rightfully belonged to the 
 French, waived the point at issue entirely, and was with 
 difficulty persuaded to look over the treaties at a later time. 
 ' At this slender and provoking answer,' writes Chapuys, 
 ' I left the Court, and went to wait on Cromwell,' whose 
 regret was so great 'that he was hardly able to speak for 
 sorrow, and had never been more mortified in his life, than 
 with the said reply ^' 
 
 ' Cal. X. 699. Mr. Friedmann of the possibility of a renewal of 
 
 points out that this quarrel of Henry cordial relations with England, he 
 
 and Cromwell about the Spanish wrote back on March 28, 1536, 
 
 alliance was intimately connected a most diplomatic reply, in which 
 
 with the fate of Anne Boleyn. The he pointed out that it would be 
 
 Emperor, too cautious to express certainly for the interest of the 
 
 any indignation at the news of his Princess that Anne Boleyn should 
 
 aunt's death, was still planning for continue to be Henry's wife ; for 
 
 the safety and, if possible, the sue- should the King marry again, he 
 
 cession of his cousin the Princess might have male issue, which would 
 
 Mary. On hearing from Chapuys succeed to the prejudice of Mary : 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 233 
 
 Ample justification was soon afforded for Henry's strict 
 adherence to the policy of neutrality, for events on the Con- 
 tinent had moved rapidly forward, and Charles and Francis 
 were at last at open war. By restraining Cromwell from 
 making the mistake of cementing an alliance with the Emperor, 
 and by guarding himself against a too close intimacy with 
 Francis, the King had succeeded in placing England in such 
 a position that the two great continental powers were forced 
 to grovel at her feet. From the beginning of 1536 until the 
 autumn of 1537, when the truce between France and Flanders 
 (forerunner of the peace of Nice in the summer of 1538) was 
 concluded, the history of the foreign policy of England is as 
 simple as it is glorious and triumphant. Henry, constantly 
 pretending to be desirous of arbitrating between France and 
 Spain, ' for the peax and weale of Christendome,' as he 
 elegantly put it, was in reality solely occupied with the 
 endeavour to embroil them the more. Alternately encourag- 
 ing and repelling advances from both sovereigns, by judiciously 
 proposing and then retreating from alliances with each of 
 them, he succeeded admirably in keeping Charles and Francis 
 in a constant state of anxiety, as regarded his true position. 
 Cromwell's letters tell the story of the time very clearly. ' An 
 answer soo general that it doth neither refuse their alliance, 
 ne moche encorage them, to co«ceyue that they maye withont 
 difficultie pbteyn their desire ' was the reply which the 
 
 there was, on the other hand, httle opened his eyes to the fact that he 
 
 probabihty that Anne would bear had been working in the interests 
 
 Henry another child, and the ofone whose ruin had been certainly 
 
 Emperor knew well that in the eyes resolved on by this time. 'Retook 
 
 of the nation his cousin's right was to his bed out of pure sorrow ' for 
 
 far superior to that of Elizabeth. a few days as we are told ; and 
 
 So, by a very extraordinary turn of when he returned to the Court, it 
 
 affairs, the interests of Charles and was to labour with all his might for 
 
 of Anne had at least temporarily be- the ruin of Anne, which he saw was 
 
 come identical. Cromwell probably necessary to save his own credit 
 
 had not perceived that this was the with the King. Friedmann, Anne 
 
 true state of affairs when he had Boleyn, chapter xvi; Cal. x. 575, 
 
 his conversation with Chapuys ; but 700 ; also W. H. Dixon, History 
 
 the failure of his attempts to bring of Two Queens, vol. iv. pp. 362, 
 
 about a Spanish alliance must have 263. 
 
234 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 English ambassadors were ordered to give at the French and 
 Spanish Courts ^. So secure did Henry feel himself abroad 
 that he dared to issue a manifesto in contempt of the General 
 Council ^, which the Pope had summoned to meet at Mantua, 
 and to publish the Ten Articles of 1536, which, while primarily- 
 intended to serve another purpose, were politically useful as 
 a formal refusal to respect it. It was very fortunate for England 
 that her affairs abroad were so prosperous at this juncture, as 
 the end of 1536 and the beginning of 1537 were full of anxiety 
 at home, owing to the outbreak of the rebellion in the North. 
 This happy state of affairs however was not destined to 
 endure, for Francis and Charles soon tired of their strife, and 
 in the autumn of 1537 there were signs of a reconciliation. 
 Francis, moreover, had strengthened his position by a league 
 with the Turk, and began to feel powerful enough to make 
 a move without Henry's leave. The first intimation of this 
 unpleasant fact came to Henry in the shape of a refusal of 
 a matrimonial offer. The death of Queen Jane had left him 
 free to marry again, and so gave him an excellent opportunity 
 once more to mix in continental affairs, which he did not 
 permit to escape him. Cromwell wrote a letter for him to 
 Lord William Howard and Gardiner, artfully instructing them 
 to feel the way for a possible alliance with Mme. de Longue- 
 ville, who had just been affianced to James of Scotland. It 
 was too much of a favour to ask Francis to put aside the 
 claims of a sovereign who had always been his true friend, to 
 make way for those of the more powerful but perfidious King 
 of England, and Henry's offers were, after some negotiations, 
 politely but firmly declined, to the latter's intense chagrin^. 
 An almost equally ominous note of warning came from Spain 
 at the same time. Sir John Dudley, ambassador to announce 
 the death of the Queen at the Spanish Court, had expressed 
 to the Emperor the King's sorrow that his repeated offers of 
 mediation with France had been set aside, whereupon Charles 
 turned on him, and informed him that negotiations with 
 France were already set on foot, though he relieved Henry's 
 anxiety a little by assuring him that no actual treaty should 
 
 ^ Letters, 170. » Cal. xii. (i) 1310. ' Cal. xii. (ii) 1201. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 235 
 
 be made without the King of England's being included as 
 a ' premier contrahent,' a promise which Cromwell was con- 
 tinually harping upon a year later, when the situation had 
 entirely changed ^. 
 
 Thus the year 1538 opened rather darkly for England. 
 The dread with which Henry watched the increasing signs 
 of good-feeling between Charles and Francis led him into 
 ridiculous and undignified action. As soon as it was settled 
 that Mary of Guise was to become James' wife, Henry literally 
 scoured the continent of Europe in search of an alliance for 
 himself or his daughters, which would strengthen his position 
 and avert the impending crisis. A somewhat confusing set 
 of double instructions from Cromwell to his friend Philip 
 Hoby, instructing him to negotiate for possible marriages 
 with the younger sister of James' wife, with the daughter 
 of the Duke of Lorraine, and also with the Duchess of 
 Milan, and to obtain their portraits, is not without interest 
 as revealing Henry's state of mind ^. The first two of these 
 unions, if accomplished, would of course have rendered him 
 safe from France ; the other would have put him on friendly 
 terms with Spain ; but none of them was destined to succeed. 
 The King even went so far as to permit Sir Francis Brian, 
 his agent at the French Court, to suggest that various suitable 
 ladies should be brought to Calais for his inspection, that he 
 might be sure that he made no mistake. Henry's proceedings 
 evoked such ridicule and derision in continental Europe, 
 that Castillon, the French ambassador, contrived to convey 
 to him the general feeling with such directness and force 
 that he actually drew a blush from the King himself^. 
 Finding that his endeavours to obtain a suitable wife 
 for himself were abortive, Henry looked about for an 
 advantageous marriage for his daughter Mary. By altern- 
 ately holding out to the Emperor a prospect of a match 
 for her with the Infant of Portugal, and pretending to accept 
 a proposition of the French representative, Castillon, that she 
 
 ' Cal. xii. (ii) 1053, 1285. 
 
 ' Letters, 243. Cf. also Preface to vol. xiii. pt. i. of the Calendar, pp. 37-8. 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (i) 1355, 1405, 1451, 1496 ; xiii. (ii) 77, 232, 277. 
 
236 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 should marry the Duke of Orleans, he contrived to lay the 
 basis for a continental quarrel. But his success in this scheme 
 was very short-lived. The only person that he could 
 deceive at all was Castillon. It seems that Cromwell, who 
 again at this crisis took the opportunity to show his decided 
 leaning towards Spain, had openly disapproved of the pro- 
 posed French alliance, and when Castillon complained of this, 
 Henry turned fiercely upon his minister and reprimanded 
 him, saying that he was a good manager, but not fit to inter- 
 meddle in the affairs of kings, and finally Norfolk was sent 
 for. Cromwell's ' great Spanish passion,' as Castillon called 
 it, had got him into trouble again, and the French ambassador 
 was delighted, thinking that he had at last obtained the upper 
 hand. But Castillon's delusions were rudely dispelled three 
 weeks later, when he learned that the King and Council were 
 resolved ' to withdraw from the French match,' on account of 
 offers which the Emperor had made, and when Francis wrote 
 that the King's proceedings only proved that he was jealous 
 of the negotiations for peace ^. It is needless to state that 
 neither of the proposed unions ever took place, and Henry's 
 frantic endeavours to frustrate the steadily increasing amity of 
 France and Spain were entirely unavailing. 
 
 Matrimonial agitations being found useless to serve his 
 purpose, Henry had recourse to other methods to stir up 
 suspicions between Charles and Francis, and to prevent the 
 dreaded peace. Whatever malicious tale-bearing and false 
 representations could accomphsh was used to the full by the 
 King and his minister. Cromwell wrote to Sir Thomas Wyatt 
 at the Spanish Court, directing him to 'declare how the 
 frenche men show themself,?^ so ernest to put al in the king^^ 
 hand that they ofier vpon any significac?on tha\. themperour 
 
 woU make to condescende to the same,' and 
 
 telling how the French ambassador had promised that Henry 
 ' shuld for the French king^j parte haue the hole and entier 
 manyeng of the Peax betwen him and Themperor'^.' If Henry 
 could not obtain the ' hole and entier manyeng of the Peax,' 
 he did his best to convince Charles and Francis separately 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (i) 995, 1147, 1355. 2 Letters, 244. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 237 
 
 that his own friendship was more valuable to each of them 
 than that of the other. Furthermore he took pains to assure 
 each one of the two rivals apart, that the other prized England's 
 amity so much that great concessions would be necessary to 
 regain it. 
 
 But in spite of all Henry's efforts to avert it, the news of 
 the truce between Charles and Francis and of their subsequent 
 interview at Aigues Mortes reached England in July, 1538 \ 
 Still so confident was the King in the wisdom of his original 
 policy of strengthening England solely by attempts to embroil 
 these two powerful sovereigns under cover of offers of mediation, 
 that he refused definitely to abandon it, in spite of the threaten- 
 ing outlook on the Continent. He remembered that the 
 situation there had often changed before, and saw that it 
 would probably do so again. He encouraged himself with 
 hopes that in spite of the failure of his attempts to contract 
 a marriage in France, he might still gain the hand of the 
 Duchess of Milan, and with the reflection that the inroads 
 of the Turk into the Emperor's dominions would be a serious 
 hindrance to any direct attack upon England. He was un- 
 willing to seek security in an outside alliance, for fear of 
 imperilling his hard-won position as a neutral between France 
 and Spain. He wished still to rely solely on judicious inter- 
 ference in the affairs of Charles and Francis for England's 
 safety. 
 
 But with Cromwell the case was very different. The 
 closing months of the year 1538 were the turning-point in 
 his career, for they saw him take a step which was destined 
 to bring him into collision with the King, and later to lead 
 him to his death. The original difference of opinion between 
 King and minister, which first came to the fore in the quarrel 
 of 1536, now broke forth again under a slightly altered form, 
 which it was destined to maintain till the end. At first we 
 saw that Cromwell vented his distrust of the policy of 
 neutrality in favouring a definite alliance with Spain. The 
 changed situation on the Continent rendered a league with 
 Charles impossible now, so that the only refuge that remained 
 
 ' Cal. xiii. (i) i486. 
 
238 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 for England, if the policy which had been so successful in 1536 
 and 1537 really broke down, was to court an alliance with 
 some power outside the two great continental rivals. And 
 Cromwell, inexperienced, and overestimating the danger of 
 foreign invasion, certainly believed that Henry's efforts to 
 maintain his old position between France and Spain were 
 now doomed to inevitable failure. He did not see, as the 
 King did, that the friendship of Charles and Francis was 
 but temporary, and that the old quarrels were ultimately 
 certain to break forth afresh. He looked the situation as it 
 was squarely in the face, abandoned once and for all the 
 policy of seeking safety by playing on the mutual jealousies of 
 Charles and Francis ; he frankly recognized the probability 
 of war, and deliberately courted an outside league for England's 
 defence. As he had always considered the friendship of the 
 Emperor more valuable than that of Francis, so he considered 
 his enmity, which he now regarded as inevitable, as more to 
 be feared. Consequently, in looking about for an alliance to 
 fortify England, he sought one which could be most effectively 
 directed against Charles. 
 
 It will be remembered that in order to guard against the 
 danger of a possible coalition of the Emperor and the King 
 of France in 1533 and 1534, some proposals had been made 
 for a league with the Protestant princes of Germany ; but that 
 owing to theological differences, the Liibeck affair, and the 
 death of Katherine and its results, the scheme had 
 been abandoned as useless. As long as the interests of 
 France and Spain were separated, the value of the German 
 alliance as a defensive measure was of course lost, and England 
 thought no more of it. But now that the news of the inter- 
 view of Aigues Mortes had persuaded Cromwell that mere 
 meddling in the affairs of France and Spain was not sufficient 
 to prevent a coalition against England, he turned to his 
 forsaken friends in Germany once more. Cromwell must 
 have had great difficulty in bringing Henry to sanction 
 a move to seek friendship with the Lutherans, but so hopeless 
 did the King's efforts to prevent a cordial relation between 
 Charles and Francis appear, that he was at last induced to 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 239 
 
 consent to the experiment, though^ as we shall soon see, his 
 acquiescence was only temporary. The opportunity for an 
 alliance with the Germans was in many respects most favour- 
 able. The proclamation which Henry had put forth to show his 
 contempt of the Papal authority to convoke a General Council, 
 coupled with the Ten Articles of 1536, had called forth the 
 most hearty approbation of the Lutheran princes. An elaborate 
 set of instructions in the hand of one of the King's secretaries 
 directed Christopher Mont to go to the Germans again, and tell 
 them how nearly Henry's theological views coincided with their 
 own, and to request them to send representatives to discuss 
 with him points of faith ^. The fact that the proposals for the 
 German alliance ostensibly emanated from the King, is no 
 sign that Cromwell was not the real originator of it. An 
 invitation to send ambassadors could scarcely proceed from 
 any other source than the Crown^ so that the evidence 
 afforded by the authorship of the instructions to Mont is of 
 small weight ; whereas the course of events in 1539 and 1540 
 leaves little doubt that the guiding hand throughout was that 
 of the King's minister. Henry's name really appeared as 
 little as possible in connexion with the Lutheran alliance 
 from first to last, and only in the most formal manner. 
 Cromwell's was the moving spirit in it throughout, and Henry 
 really never cordially supported him, but regarded the 
 measure in the light of a disagreeable necessity, temporarily 
 forced upon him by the apparent failure of his own plans. 
 
 But the outside world of course knew nothing of the 
 difference of opinion between King and minister, and had no 
 suspicion that the foundations were being laid here for the 
 quarrel which was later to bring Cromwell to disaster. The 
 Lutherans were greatly flattered by the proposals that had 
 been made to them, and in May an embassy, headed by 
 Franz Burckhard, Vice-Chancellor of Saxony-^ arrived in 
 England. But in spite of all the trouble that had been 
 taken, the plans of the King's minister were not destined 
 to bear fruit, for the only result of the Lutheran embassy 
 was procrastination which seemed little better than failure. 
 
 ^ Cal. xiii. (i) 367. 
 
240 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Theological differences were the ostensible reason for inability 
 to conclude an agreement, but not the real one. The 
 Protestantism of the Lutherans differed from that of Henry 
 and Cromwell in much the same way as that of Tyndale, 
 years before : they cared for their theology for its own sake, 
 and not, like Henry, as a means to an end, as a stepping-stone 
 to political greatness. A theological entente, however, would 
 have been possible, had Cromwell and Henry united to bring it 
 about ; but they did not. The true reason for the failure to 
 conclude an agreement was the obstinacy of the King, which 
 asserted itself at the very moment that his minister had hoped 
 to gain his complete consent to the proposed alliance. In 
 the midst of the negotiations with the Lutherans, Henry's 
 faith in his old policy had been suddenly revived by 
 the news that the extensive preparations of the Emperor, 
 which he at first had feared were to be aimed at England, 
 were in reality directed against the Turk ^ : the King was at 
 least persuaded that he had no cause to fear an attack in the 
 immediate future. Gardiner in Paris, moreover, had been 
 steadily working to defeat the plans of Cromwell ^, and at the 
 crucial moment his efforts appear to have borne fruit. The 
 King refused to commit himself any further to the policy to 
 which he had given his temporary sanction, but which, if 
 definitely adopted, would have seriously hampered his own 
 schemes. The most that Cromwell could do was to persuade 
 the King to keep up the appearance of amity, and not to cut 
 himself off from all chances of returning to his Lutheran 
 friends at a later date. So the envoys were sent home in 
 October, with a letter to the Elector of Saxony, telling him 
 that his representatives had given assurance of such sound 
 erudition and Christian piety, as would certainly lead to the 
 best results ; but as the matter of the negotiations concerned 
 the glory of Christ and the discipline of religion, it required 
 much more mature deliberation, and that a second embassy 
 would have to be sent over before matters could be concluded^. 
 For Cromwell, the dismissal of the Lutherans amounted to 
 
 ^ Baumgarten, vol. iii. pp. 343 ff. ''■ Burnet, vol. i. pp. 316, 409, 435. 
 ' Cal. xiii. (ii) 165, 298, 497. 
 
THE FOREIGN POLICY 241 
 
 a second rebuke from the King, for meddling in foreign 
 affairs ; but this time the minister did not humbly accept the 
 rebuff as he had done before, but continued to oppose his 
 schemes to those of his master. 
 
 Thus at the close of the year 1538, England was trembling 
 at the prospect of a coalition of France and Spain against her. 
 The outlook was certainly alarming, and demanded united 
 action at home. But at this very moment the King and his 
 minister could not agree on the best method of averting the 
 peril which was threatening. Each adopted his own way 
 of meeting it, and the history of the year 1539 is the story of 
 the varying success of the two methods when brought into 
 conflict. We shall see that fortune twice inclined to favour 
 Cromwell, only to desert him, after he had become so hope- 
 lessly committed to the policy which he had adopted in face 
 of the opposition of the King, that there was no drawing back, 
 and he paid the penalty for his rashness with his life. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CATHOLIC REACTION AND THE ALLIANCE 
 WITH CLEVES 
 
 The first few months of the new year brought no improve- 
 ment in the state of England's foreign affairs. Having 
 postponed the Lutheran alliance which Cromwell had so 
 strongly advocated in the end of 1538, for fear of losing his 
 position of neutrality between France and Spain, Henry was 
 driven back on his ov^n policy of seeking safety for England 
 in direct negotiations with Charles and Francis. Matrimonial 
 agitations had failed — malicious tale-bearing had not borne 
 fruit, so the King took the more straightforward course of 
 making direct complaints that he was spoken of with too 
 little respect in foreign parts. He sent grumbling letters 
 to his neighbours, accusing them of permitting evil reports to 
 be circulated about him. He caused the President of the 
 Council of the North to request James of Scotland to suppress 
 and punish the authors of several ' spyttfull ballades,' which 
 had been published about the wrongfully flsurped authority 
 of the King of England, and also wrote to Wyatt in Spain, 
 commanding him to protest against the malicious and un- 
 reasonable lies of the ' barking prechers ther ' who slandered 
 him behind his back ^. But these petty remonstrances had no 
 effect in diminishing the growing cordiality of Francis and 
 Charles, or their hatred of England : in fact the two continental 
 sovereigns seemed better friends than ever. On January 12, 
 representatives of both monarchs met at Toledo and concluded 
 an agreement not to make any new alliances, either political 
 or matrimonial, with the King of England, without each 
 other's consent^. The news of this treaty was a deathblow 
 to Henry's hopes ; and the King was reluctantly forced to 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 92, 147. ^ Cal, xiv. (i) 62. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 243 
 
 admit that his minister's scheme of a German alliance offered 
 better chances of safety for England than any other. So he 
 again gave his consent to a renewal of negotiations for an 
 outside league, though, as we shall soon see, it was on a basis 
 somewhat different from that of the previous ones. 
 
 Disappointed by the King's refusal definitely to accept the 
 alliance for which he had laboured so hard, Cromwell had 
 meantime been amusing himself with a very feeble plan for 
 gaining friends against the Pope, the chimerical nature of 
 which was quite at variance with the direct and practical 
 character of most of his schemes. He had proposed a league 
 of England with the Dukes of Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino 
 against his Holiness, who had just challenged the title of 
 the latter to the dukedom of Camerino. An interesting 
 set of instructions to Cromwell's friend Edmund Harvell at 
 Venice tells the story of this negotiation very vividly K But 
 the princes of northern Italy were too weak and the scheme 
 itself was too remote and far-fetched to promise any real 
 advantage, and Cromwell doubtless lost all interest in it as 
 soon as the King again consented to approach the Germans. 
 The fact that three months had been suffered to elapse since 
 the return of the envoys in 1538, without an acceptance of 
 the King's invitation to send other representatives to discuss 
 theological points, simply proves that Henry's treatment of 
 the first embassy had not been such as to encourage the 
 Lutherans to persevere ^. But now that the King had again 
 veered round to Cromwell's policy, he ' mervayled not a litel ' 
 at the slowness of the Germans, and sent Christopher Mont 
 over to the Court of the Elector of Saxony on January 25 
 to discover the feelings of John Frederic and the Land- 
 grave of Hesse, the leaders of the Schmalkaldic League, 
 towards the Emperor, to inquire further into their attitude on 
 the tenets about which they had so fruitlessly disputed with 
 
 ^ Letters, 286. almost identical with those of the 
 
 2 John Lambert, moreover, had King at this time, but the Germans 
 
 been tried and burnt, for denying certainlydisapproved of the violence 
 
 the Real Presence, in November, of Henry's measures for enforcing 
 
 1538. The doctrines of the Luther- them. 
 
 ans in this matter were probably 
 
 R a 
 
244 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 the English bishops in the preceding summer, and finally to 
 learn whether the Duke of Cleves and his son were of the 
 'old popisshe fasshyon' or no^. Appended to these very 
 non-committal injunctions are certain others from Cromwell 
 himself of quite a different nature I Completely dodging the 
 theological issue, which he wisely left entirely in the King's 
 hands, Cromwell took up the question of the German alliance 
 from a new and far more practical side, the matrimonial. He 
 instructed Mont to suggest to the Vice-Chancellor Burckhard 
 the possibility of two marriages ; one between the young 
 Duke of Cleves and the Princess Mary, and the other between 
 Anne, the elder of the two unmarried daughters of the old 
 Duke, and the King himself^. It appears that Cromwell had 
 already discussed the feasibility of the first of these two 
 matches with the Vice-Chancellor, when the latter had been 
 in England in the previous summer, and John Frederic had 
 subsequently written to the King's minister that the plan met 
 with his entire approval. The proposal for Henry's marriage, 
 on the contrary, was now brought forward for the first time. 
 We shall soon see why it was that Mont was sent to the 
 Elector of Saxony, rather than to the Duke of Cleves himself, 
 to feel the way for these two alliances. 
 
 In order to understand the precise bearing on the foreign 
 affairs of England of the two marriages which Cromwell 
 proposed, and of the political league which would naturally 
 go with them, we must make a slight digression here and 
 examine the very peculiar position in which the Duke of 
 Cleves found , himself at this juncture. Various political 
 
 ' Cal. xiv. (i) 103. Cleves, ' not as demaunding her, 
 
 ^ Letters, 287. but as geving them a prick to stirr 
 
 ' Throughout the negotiations them to offre her, as the noblest 
 
 for the Cleves marriages Cromvi'ell andhighest honour that could come 
 
 made desperate efforts to assert into that noble house of Cleves, if 
 
 the dignity of the King, which he they could bring it to passe.' Of 
 
 could not help feeling was a little course nothing could induce the 
 
 lowered by approaching vassals of mighty King of England to demean 
 
 the Emperor with matrimonial himself by asking any favours of 
 
 offers. Mont was especially di- the petty princes of Germany; it 
 
 rected to confer with Burckhard was their place, not his, to be the 
 
 about the sister of the Duke of suitor, 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 245 
 
 considerations, above all an increasing jealousy of the power 
 of the House of Saxony, had led the Emperor Maximilian 
 in 1496 to declare Maria, the only child of the Duke of 
 Juliers and Berg, to be the lawful heiress of these two 
 provinces ; a step which was in direct contravention of a 
 grant which Maximilian, at his election as King of the 
 Romans, had made to Frederic the Wise of the reversion of 
 Juliers and Berg in case of failure of male heirs in the ducal 
 line there. This grant was definitely revoked in various 
 documents of the years 1508 and 1509 ; and Duke John of 
 Cleves, who in the meantime had married the heiress Maria 
 of Juliers and Berg, was permitted to unite these three rich 
 provinces in his own hand, and to establish a strong power 
 on the Lower Rhine which prevented undue preponderance 
 of the House of Wettin, and furnished a useful support for 
 the Hapsburgs in the western part of the Empire^. The 
 peace-loving Duke John lived and died in friendship with 
 Maximilian and his grandson, although his desire to see 
 a reform in the Church had prevented his definite acceptance 
 of the Imperial invitation to join a Catholic League against 
 the Schmalkaldner in 1537. Instead he devoted himself to 
 strengthening his power in his own possessions by a series 
 of wise and prudent measures, through which he welded the 
 three component parts of his dominions into one^. But 
 during the last year of his life (which ended on February 6, 
 1539, while Mont was on his way to the Saxon Court) 
 affairs took a turn which was destined to bring his son and 
 heir William into direct conflict with the Empire. In June, 
 1538, the warlike Duke Charles of Gelderland, whose posses- 
 sions lay next to the province of Cleves on the north, died 
 leaving no children. His life had been spent in a struggle 
 against the pretensions to his hereditary dominions brought 
 forward by the Emperor as heir of Charles the Bold, and 
 in order to prevent the substantiation of the Imperial claims 
 at his death he had planned to leave his lands to the King 
 
 ' Cf. Ulmann,vol. i. pp. 579, 580; in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bio- 
 Ranke, vol. i. pp. 226-9. graphie, vol. xiv. p. 214. 
 
 * Life of Duke John of Cleves 
 
246 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 of France^. This scheme however had encountered strong 
 opposition from the estates of Gelderland, who regarded 
 with little favour a proposal so threatening to their com- 
 paratively independent position, and Duke Charles was 
 finally forced, much against his will, to designate young 
 William of Cleves as his successor. The latter, though by 
 nature weak and irresolute, was not in a position to refuse 
 the chance which fortune had thrown in his way : he accepted 
 the proffered inheritance, and the death of his father soon 
 after left him in full possession of the four rich provinces ^. 
 
 The result was that he immediately became involved in 
 a serious quarrel with the Emperor, who realizing how 
 dangerous a rival to his own power had been created by the 
 events just recounted, reasserted his claims to Gelderland 
 even more strongly than before. In looking for allies against 
 Charles, Duke William naturally turned to the Elector of 
 Saxony, whose rights to Juliers and Berg, once rudely 
 revoked by Maximilian, had not been forgotten, but who 
 seems to have preserved sufficiently friendly relations with 
 the family in favour of which his claims had been set aside, 
 to marry Sibylla, one of the sisters of the Duke ^. Common 
 enmity to Charles V now drew them very close together, and 
 at the Imperial Court it was actually thought that Cleves had 
 been formally admitted to the Schmalkaldic League*. This 
 however was a mistake. Though Duke William was certainly 
 not opposed to the Lutheran doctrines, he had not as yet made 
 open confession of the Protestant faith ; and for that reason the 
 Elector and the Landgrave had steadily refused to make a 
 political alliance with him^. Still he was on very intimate 
 
 ' Ranke, vol. iv. p. 128 ; Held- aid from his brother-in-law against 
 
 rich, I, 2. the Emperor. But the offer came 
 
 ^ Heidrich, 21. too late. The political situation had 
 
 ' Heidrich, 4. changed once more, and the over- 
 
 ■* Ranke, vol. iv. p. 129. cautious Elector now definitely and 
 
 ^ Heidrich, 34, 35. Driven by unconditionally refused the aid 
 
 political necessity, William in 1543 which he had before made de- 
 
 finally took the decisive step, pendent on William's acceptance 
 
 and declared himself ready to in- of Lutheranism. The lands of the 
 
 troduce the new religion into his Duke were invaded by the Imperial 
 
 dominions, in the hope of gaining forces,and William was forced,atthe 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 247 
 
 terms with John Frederic, who had promised, when he wedded 
 Sibylla of Cleves, to advance money for the marriage of her 
 sisters, and thus had a certain right to be consulted when 
 husbands were to be chosen for them. Henry was doubtless 
 well aware of all this, and it was consequently at the Saxon 
 Court that Mont was instructed to obtain information about 
 the Duke of Cleves, and if possible to pave the way for the two 
 matrimonial alliances from which Cromwell hoped so much. 
 
 Having completed this preliminary survey of the position 
 of the Duke of Cleves, we are enabled to make some interest- 
 ing observations on the instructions to the English ambassador. 
 It is very significant that the inquiries which Mont was 
 ordered to make concerning the religious tendencies of Duke 
 William were concerned only with his attitude towards the 
 Pope. Of course the King could not consistently ally himself 
 with firm adherents of the Holy See after the events of the 
 past ten years ; but it is also of the utmost importance to 
 notice that he apparently preferred a league with powers 
 which he knew had not definitely committed themselves to 
 the New Faith to an aUiance with the Schmalkaldner. Else 
 why did he rather seek to unite with Cleves than with 
 Saxony? Both were politically valuable, as enemies of the 
 Emperor ; the only difference was that Cleves was not as 
 yet avowedly Protestant, and Saxony was. It is possible 
 that the idea which bore fruit five months later in the Six 
 Articles had already taken shape in Henry's mind ; at least 
 it seems certain that he was determined to keep a perfectly 
 free hand in religious affairs, so as not to be hampered in 
 his political relations with France and Spain. Thus when 
 
 treaty of Venio, Sept. 7, 1543, to re- two faiths in his own possessions, 
 
 nounce all claims to Gelderland and and to establish there a purified 
 
 Zutphen, to return to the Church of and enlightened Catholic Church, 
 
 Rome, and to permit no religious ' Erasmian ' in its tendencies, and 
 
 innovations in Juliers and Berg, in many respects approaching very 
 
 Subsequently, however, encouraged closely to the tenets of the Augs- 
 
 by the milder attitude of the Emperor burg Confession. Cf. Heidrich, 
 
 Ferdinand towards the Reformers, 91-4, and the Life of William of 
 
 he devoted himself with partial Cleves in the AUgemeine Deutsche 
 
 success to an attempt to effect a Biographie, vol. xliii. pp. 107-13. 
 sort of compromise between the 
 
248 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Cromwell at last succeeded in persuading him reluctantly to 
 return to a German alliance, it was really only half a victory 
 for the minister. There was this great difference between 
 the league with the Lutherans which Cromwell had proposed 
 and which never succeeded, and the Cleves alliance which was 
 now sought. The one would have been necessarily both 
 political and religious (for we have seen that the Lutherans 
 had always refused to join with England until a satisfactory 
 theological agreement could be made), while the other was 
 solely political. It was simply another expression of the old 
 disagreement between Henry and Cromwell. The King, 
 always looking for a chance of reconciliation with Charles 
 and Francis, refused to enter an alliance the religious con- 
 ditions of which would greatly enhance the difficulty of 
 a return to his favourite scheme. He was only induced to 
 enter a purely political league, which he doubtless felt he 
 could throw over at any moment if he wished to do so ; an 
 agreement both political and religious he might have found 
 it more difficult to escape from. Cromwell on the other 
 hand, having definitely given up all ideas of direct negotiations 
 with France and Spain, wished to plunge headlong into the 
 Lutheran alliance, caring little what he was committed to 
 provided he gained solid support. But, as we have seen, the 
 King would not agree to this, and the alliance with Cleves 
 can thus only be regarded as a compromise between the 
 royal and Cromwellian policies, which the King could abandon 
 whenever affairs in France and Spain took a more favourable 
 turn. Later events in the same year furnish further proofs of 
 this most important fact. 
 
 Furthermore the King had contrived that the responsibility 
 for the proposed league with Cleves should fall almost 
 entirely on his minister's shoulders, in order that he himself 
 might the more easily renounce it if occasion served. The 
 fact that the new alliance, if accomplished, would from its 
 very nature commit him to far less than the Lutheran league 
 which he had put off in 1538, was not enough for Henry ; he 
 must needs have other safeguards, and determined to make 
 Cromwell his scapegoat. All the practical and important 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 249 
 
 parts of the instructions to Mont were given by the King's 
 minister. The conciliatory expressions with which Henry 
 had directed the ambassador to sound the Elector of Saxony 
 and the Landgrave of Hesse on the question of theology 
 were merely empty words, as is proved by the utter failure 
 of an attempted agreement four months later. Their sole 
 object was to induce John Frederic more favourably to 
 receive the practical proposals which followed. But the 
 King purposely left to Cromwell the task of framing the 
 vital part of the message, and it is evident that he gave his 
 consent to the proposals it contained only in the most 
 guarded and non-committal manner. We are merely told 
 that as regards the match proposed for the Princess Mary, 
 Cromwell perceived ' the king^i' hieghnes ... by his grac^J 
 countenaance and exterior Visage ... to be of good In- 
 clinac/on ^.' On the more vital question of the King's attitude 
 concerning his own marriage, the instructions of Cromwell to 
 Mont give us even vaguer information. The fact was that 
 the King was willing definitely to bind Cromwell, but not 
 himself, to a plan which he had resolved to abandon the 
 moment that any favourable alteration should take place in his 
 relations with France and Spain. From the day that Mont 
 departed on his mission, the fate of the alliance with Cleves 
 and the fate of Thomas Cromwell were joined together be- 
 yond the possibility of separation. 
 
 We unfortunately do not possess the letter in which Mont 
 and his companion, a certain Thomas Paynell, reported their 
 first reception at the Saxon Court, but the reply of Cromwell 
 on March lo gives us considerable information about the 
 success of the ambassadors ^. John Frederic had apparently 
 welcomed the prospect of the two marriages by which Henry 
 proposed to bind himself to Cleves, and had promised, through 
 Burckhard, to do his best to bring them about. Cromwell's 
 letter goes on to direct Mont to follow up the advantage 
 already gained by telling bad stories about Charles, and to 
 ' inculcate and persuade vnto the said duke and landisgrave 
 the moment & i^^portawce of that grudge, which the;/«pero?i!r 
 
 ' Letters, 287. " Letters, 295. 
 
250 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 doth beire, for the Bishop of Rom^i' plesLSure against them 
 and oth^r of the avangelik sorte, which they may nowe easely 
 perceive by that he worketh and goeth aboute.' At the same 
 time, another embassy, headed by a certain Dr. Nicholas 
 Wotton, was sent to Cleves to obtain confirmation of the 
 promises of Burckhard, and further to carry on negotiations 
 for a supply of gunners and artillerymen to be furnished to 
 Henry in case he should need them ; and finally to signify the 
 King's willingness to make an offensive and defensive league 
 with Duke William^. The latter was at first less eager to 
 accept the alliance which England offered than his brother- 
 in-law was to promote it : he wanted to postpone a definite 
 answer in the hope that he might yet come to a peaceful 
 solution of his difficulty with the Emperor^. But as this 
 prospect daily grew more and more remote, he became 
 correspondingly willing to entertain Henry's proposals, and 
 the outlook for the accomplishment of the practical part of 
 Cromwell's plan seemed very favourable. The comparatively 
 unimportant overtures for theological reconciliation with the 
 Elector and the Landgrave were apparently at first received 
 with less enthusiasm by the Lutherans, who had already had 
 some experience of the King's vacillating policy and evidently 
 thought it a little suspicious that Henry had suddenly become 
 so very urgent. We have seen that the King's proposals for 
 a religious agreement were chiefly intended as a blind to 
 cover the more practical matrimonial proposals which had 
 followed, but Cromwell evidently thought it worth while to 
 keep up the deception as a precaution. A second letter from 
 the King's minister directs Mont and Paynell to continue to 
 urge on the Elector and Landgrave the importance of theo- 
 logical unity, and to ' conduce to haue them somw[hat 
 reproved for] ou^rsight & slakenes, in shewing [so little] 
 gratuite, and by that for to pryk th[em to] redubb the same 
 and give you more f[avourable] answer.' ' 
 
 And at first Cromwell's eagerness for the alliance with 
 Cleves seemed to have every justification, for Henry's policy 
 in other parts of Europe appeared to have failed even more 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 489. 2 Heidrich, 32. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 251 
 
 completely than before. Ominous letters were received from 
 Wriothesley, the ambassador in the Netherlands, who did not 
 hesitate to express his fear that war would soon come and that 
 his retreat to England would be cut off ^ At the same time 
 Chapuys received orders to return to the Court of the Queen 
 Regent, and Cromwell consequently instructed Wriothesley 
 to demand leave to depart^. The exchange was finally 
 effected, but that there was deep distrust on both sides is proved 
 by Cromwell's orders for the detention of Chapuys at Calais, 
 until the safety of Wriothesley was assured, and by the instruc- 
 tions of the Queen Regent to the Provost of Mons to follow 
 the English ambassador to Gravelines *. But fortunately these 
 precautions were unnecessary ; no open act of hostility took 
 place, and the crisis seemed at least temporarily tided over 
 by the arrival of the Dean of Cambray in London to replace 
 Chapuys, and by the reception of Stephen Vaughan at 
 Brussels in Wriothesley's stead*. But the attitude of France 
 was more disquieting. On February 5 Castillon was recalled, 
 and though he made a vague promise at his departure that 
 another should be sent in his place, the anxiety at the Court 
 was but little relieved thereby. The most that Cromwell 
 could do, was to take care that the French ambassador should 
 carry back to his master full accounts of the excellence of 
 England's defences, and her readiness for war. So he took 
 him, as he later wrote to the King, to his armoury, showing 
 
 him a ' store of barneys and wepens the whiche he 
 
 semed to esteme moche,' and telling him that there were 
 twenty more armouries in the realm as well or better equipped ; 
 ' wherat he woundred and sayd that he thought your grace 
 the prince best furnished thereof in Chrwfcndom s.' 
 
 But though Cromwell may have exaggerated the security 
 of England's fortifications, his words to Castillon were by 
 no means empty. Though the King and his minister may 
 have had differences of opinion in regard to the conduct of 
 foreign affairs, in the internal management of the kingdom 
 
 1 Cal. xiv. (i) 433, 440. '^ Letters, 291, 301. 
 
 = Letters, 297 ; and Cal. xiv. (i) 584. * Cal. xiv. (i) 570. 
 
 ^ Letters, 288. 
 
253 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 they were, as always, united. Here Henry suffered himself 
 to be guided at all points by Cromwell. And at no time 
 is the masterfulness of the latter's domestic administration 
 better exhibited, than by his action at home the moment 
 the first rumours of an invasion reached England. Countless 
 memoranda, lists of men fit for military service, arms, ammu- 
 nition, provisions, and other necessaries of warfare, all in his 
 hand, or in that of one of his clerks, attest his industry and 
 ability in preparing the country to repel the dreaded invasion. 
 All reports of the state of the coast defences at various places 
 were sent to him. General musters were ordered through- 
 out the realm ; every precaution was taken to fortify all 
 vulnerable points. Beacons were placed upon all the hills, 
 and no detail that could add to the strength and efficiency 
 of the defences was left out ^. 
 
 But just at this very moment, when everything seemed to 
 point to an open rupture with Charles and Francis, when the 
 schemes which Cromwell had opposed to those of the King 
 seemed to have every justification, an event occurred which 
 totally changed the aspect of affairs, and restored Henry's 
 badly shaken confidence in his own ability to stave off the 
 threatened crisis without the aid of outside alliances or an 
 appeal to arms. This event was the arrival in England on 
 March a8 of a new French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, 
 who had come to replace Castillon. So long a time had 
 elapsed since the departure of the latter that Henry had 
 probably given up all hope of the fulfilment of the vague 
 prospects that had been held out that a successor might be 
 appointed. But the unexpected appearance of Marillac at 
 once revived the King's drooping spirits. The letters in 
 which the ambassador reported his reception at the English 
 Court to Francis and Montmorency give us a vivid picture of 
 the universal joy with which this apparent reassurance of 
 friendship with France was hailed ^. Henry was delighted, 
 and his satisfaction was increased when Marillac, at his 
 master's command, followed up the advantage already gained 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 398-400, 529, 564, 615, 652-5. 
 » Cal. xiv. (i) 669-70. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 253 
 
 by renewed assertions of the cordiality of France. The whole 
 Court seemed 'to wear a new aspect and to be quite de- 
 lighted ^.' Had Henry seen the letter of instructions which 
 Marillac received from the French Court, he would have 
 realized that Francis was only endeavouring ' to keep him 
 in good humour V while making a little more certain of his 
 own relations with Charles ; and he might have been less 
 encouraged. But Marillac's cordiality seems to have put him 
 off his guard, and he was led, in his exultation, to welcome 
 the apparent friendship of Francis in ways which very nearly 
 resulted in the permanent stultification of all the laborious 
 efforts of Cromwell to maintain amicable relations in Germany. 
 The events which took place in England in the three months 
 following the arrival of the French ambassador furnish ample 
 proof of this new departure in the royal policy. 
 
 On April a8 Parliament had met, its assembling being 
 indispensable to carrying on the ' Kinges busynes.' Cromwell 
 had practically appointed every member, in order that Henry 
 might have a ' tractable ' House. His usual methods of ' order- 
 ing ' the elections of members have already been described ; 
 suffice it to say that in this case he had completely outdone 
 himself; the Parliament of 1539 was undoubtedly his master- 
 pieced It will be remembered that it was in this session 
 that he first succeeded in forcing the Lords and Commons to 
 sanction the statute by which royal proclamations were given 
 the force of laws. Cromwell's ' remembrance' for other Acts to 
 be passed in the Parliament of 1539 is also noteworthy. It 
 makes casual mention of the attainders of Exeter, Salisbury, 
 and Pole, of plans for the fortification of the coast, and then 
 designates the scheme out of which the Six Articles were 
 later evolved as ' A devise in the parliament for the vnitie in 
 religion*.' It is very improbable that Cromwell had any 
 really accurate information concerning the King's real inten- 
 tions in connexion with this last item. Henry had purposely 
 concealed them under a very non-committal statement. 
 Doubtless the King had long cherished the idea of making 
 
 1 Cal. xiv. (i) 908. ' Cal. xiv. (i) 520, 573. 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 804. * Cal. xiv. (i) 655. 
 
254 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 use of a declaration that in matters of doctrine England 
 still adhered to the Old Faith, to facilitate a reconciliation 
 with Charles and Francis ; for such a statement would re- 
 move the main pretext of the Emperor and the French King 
 for an attack on him, namely that they were undertaking 
 a crusade to suppress heresy. But so hopeless had been 
 the outlook in the early part of the year, that Henry had 
 not had the courage to try this experiment. He was 
 rather led to shun all moves which would imperil his friendly 
 relations with Germany, so that he had scrupulously avoided 
 any direct statement which could lead to the belief that a 
 Catholic reaction was possible. But the assurances of Marillac 
 had revived all his enthusiasm for his old policy. He now 
 abandoned all caution, and promptly proceeded to disclose 
 his real ideas in regard to the 'vnitie in religion.' When 
 Cromwell discovered the true state of affairs he must have 
 been dismayed ; he probably already felt how deeply he had 
 become involved in the German alliance, and saw that the 
 new trend which things had taken boded no good to him. 
 His position was now a very uncomfortable one, and the 
 fact that a committee of bishops under his superintendence 
 was utterly unable to cope with the difficulties of the newly 
 presented religious problem, is very significant. Henry was 
 not to be balked however. He quickly took the matter 
 out of the hands of the incompetent bishops, and placed it 
 before the . Lords ; finally, to make assurance doubly sure, 
 he came to them in person, ' and confounded them all with 
 Goddes Lerning^.' Henry's theology was of course as un- 
 impeachable as it was confounding, and his energy was re- 
 warded before the middle of June by the definite passage 
 in Parliament of the Statute of the Six Articles. The 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation was confirmed, communion in 
 both kinds was pronounced unnecessary, the marriage of priests 
 was forbidden, all vows of chastity were to be strictly 
 observed, and private masses and auricular confession were 
 adjudged meet and expedient ^. 
 
 In spite of the radically Catholic nature of the doctrines 
 
 ' Burnet, vol. iv. p. 499. ^ 31 Hen. VIII, c. 14. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 255 
 
 proclaimed in this Act, however, Henry took good care that 
 there should be no mistake about his attitude towards the 
 Pope. He was committed to hostility to the See of Rome 
 beyond the possibility of escape, and he knew it. Though 
 political expediency, internal and foreign, had led him to 
 proclaim the catholicity of the Church of England in matters 
 of doctrine, no consideration whatever could induce him to 
 make the least concession to the Papacy. In fact he took 
 measures to show, simultaneously with the passage of the 
 Six Articles, that his contempt of the See of Rome was 
 stronger than ever. Marillac wrote that on June 15 there 
 was played on the river in the King's presence ' a game of 
 poor grace, much less invention, of two galleys, one carrying 
 the King's arms, the other the Pope's, with several Cardinals' 
 hats (so he was told, for he would have deemed it contrary to 
 duty to be a spectator). The galleys fought a long time, and 
 ultimately those of the King were victorious, and threw the 
 Pope and Cardinals and their arms into the water, to show 
 people that this King will entirely confound and abolish the 
 power of the Holy Father ^.' Demqpstrations like this were 
 of course mainly intended to impress people at home. Let 
 us now examine the effect of the Six Articles abroad, first in 
 Germany, and then in France and Spain. 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 1 137. The mar- up by the ' bearward,' who per- 
 tyrologist Foxe tells an amusing ceiving what it was, and being him- 
 and characteristic story of Crom- self a violent papist, gave it to a 
 well's saving Cranmer from punish- priest of his religion, who told the 
 ment for a book which he had bearward that -whosoever wrote it 
 written against the Six Articles, would be hanged if the King should 
 There appears to have been a bear- see it. The bearward endeavoured 
 baiting on the Thames before the to give it to some influential Catholic 
 King, which Mr. Ralph Morice, at the Court, utterly refusing to hsten 
 Cranmer's secretary, was watching to Morice's entreaties that he should 
 from a small boat : and the secre- return it to Cranmer. At this junc- 
 tary, it seems, had the Arch- ture Cromwell appeared upon the 
 bishop's book in his girdle for safe- soene, and so ' shaked up the bear- 
 keeping. The bear broke loose ward for his over-much malapert- 
 from the dogs and upset the wherry ness ' that the latter was glad to 
 in which Morice was ; in the tumult return the book to the secretary, and 
 which ensued he lost the precious so escape without further punish- 
 book. It was subsequently picked ment. Foxe, vol. ii. p. 428. 
 
256 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 The rather large hopes of a religious agreement which 
 Henry had held out to the leaders of the Schmalkaldic 
 League early in the year, merely as a bait to induce them 
 to favour the political alliance with Cleves, had finally, owing 
 to Cromwell's representations, been accepted in all seriousness 
 by John Frederic of Saxony and Philip of Hesse. They 
 soon sent over another embassy under the leadership of 
 Burckhard and Ludwig von Baumbach, a councillor of the 
 Landgrave, which arrived in London on April 23. Henry 
 was not yet quite sure of his ground with Marillac, and 
 had not fully decided what note should be struck in the 
 ' devise in the parliament for the vnitie in religion,' so at 
 first he received the Germans cordially ^. On April 29 
 they were granted an audience, in which Henry, though he 
 carefully avoided committing himself to any definite promises 
 of an alliance, spoke in the warmest terms of the Elector and 
 Landgrave, cautioned the Lutherans against the treachery of 
 the Emperor, and boasted long and loud because of the recent 
 collapse of an expedition against England which, according 
 to Wriothesley's report, had been preparing in Flanders since 
 the previous February ^. A subsequent interview of the am^ 
 bassadors with Cromwell and other members of the Privy 
 Council was equally satisfactory, and Burckhard and Baum- 
 bach were convinced that their mission would ultimately be 
 crowned with success. Had they understood the meaning of 
 the many excuses which were offered for the failure to 
 begin definite negotiations at once, the opening of Parliament 
 and the difficulty of gaining access to the King, they 
 might have been less encouraged. Henry merely wished to 
 detain them until he had made perfectly sure that they could 
 be of no more use to him. His relations with France were 
 improving every day, but he had not yet made sure of 
 the state of affairs in the dominions of the Emperor. On 
 February 24, at Frankfort, the Electors of Brandenburg and 
 the Palatinate had opened negotiations with the Imperial 
 plenipotentiary, the Archbishop of Lund, in the hope of 
 piediating between Charles and the princes of the SchmaU 
 
 ' Appendix I at the end of this chapter. ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 208, 440. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 257 
 
 kaldic League ^ ; Henry had determined to learn the result 
 of this meeting before giving the ambassadors a definite 
 answer. The news of the truce concluded between the Em- 
 peror and the Lutherans on the 19th of April was finally 
 announced in London towards the middle of May : it at once 
 decided the King to send the envoys home empty-handed 
 again, for it was obviously useless to continue negotiations 
 for an alliance, which was primarily to have been directed 
 against the very power with which the Schmalkaldner had 
 just made a temporary peace. So much had Henry been 
 encouraged by the favourable signs of the past few weeks, 
 that he would probably have succeeded in finding an excuse 
 for dismissing Burckhard and Baumbach, even if the result 
 of the negotiations between the Emperor and the Schmal- 
 kaldner had been reversed ; as it was he was spared the 
 trouble of exercising much ingenuity, for, most unfortunately 
 for the ambassadors, one of the clauses in the Frankfort 
 agreement contained a provision which in itself was quite 
 sufficient to stultify all their efforts. In the seventh article 
 of their treaty with the Emperor, the Schmalkaldner had 
 agreed not to admit any new members into their league 
 during the period of the truce. There is every reason to 
 think that this provision was especially directed against the 
 English negotiations, for both Brandenburg and the Count 
 Palatine had always looked with disfavour on the attempts 
 of Saxony and Hesse to gain the alliance of Henry, and 
 doubtless availed themselves of this opportunity to persuade 
 the Schmalkaldner to put an end to them. In any case the 
 King lost no time in acting upon the intelligence he had 
 received, and at once complained to Burckhard and Baum- 
 bach, whose excuses and explanations were of no avail. 
 Wearisome disputes and attempts at a compromise ensued : 
 the question of reciprocity was discussed at length ; the 
 envoys insisting that England was sure to derive quite as 
 much benefit from the proposed alliance as the Lutherans, 
 the King and his ministers in turn demanding concessions 
 which they knew that the ambassadors were not authorized 
 
 ' Bezold, p. 686. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I S 
 
258 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 to grant. So reluctant were the latter to return without 
 having accomplished anything however, that it was only 
 with the utmost difficulty that Henry finally succeeded in 
 getting rid of them. To a blunt request that they depart 
 the envoys only replied with continued petitions for a more 
 favourable answer to their demands : finally, with pleasing 
 frankness, they begged that His Majesty would let himself 
 be guided by the truth alone in directing the religious con- 
 troversies then in progress in Parliament. Henry made no 
 effort to conceal from Burckhard and Baumbach the anger 
 which this ill-timed and incautious request aroused in him, 
 for he probably realized . that his best chance of hastening the 
 departure of the Lutherans lay in involving himself in some 
 sort of an altercation with them. We are not surprised to 
 read that both parties immediately became engaged in a 
 violent discussion concerning the celibacy of the clergy — in 
 the midst of which the ambassadors apparently beat a some- 
 what precipitate retreat : they seem at last to have had the 
 wit to realize that they had to do with a theologian, with 
 whom it was extremely dangerous to disagree. A fruitless 
 interview with Cromwell followed, and on May 31 the envoys 
 finally departed^. In the meantime the Elector and the 
 Landgrave had continued to show touching but unwarranted 
 confidence in the sincerity of Henry's professions, and had 
 remained in utter ignorance of the true state of affairs in 
 England. Their hopes of a speedy settlement of religious 
 differences had doubtless received considerable encourage- 
 ment through the efforts of Dr. Barnes, who had been ear- 
 nestly labouring to remove the disagreeable impression which 
 Henry had made on Christian HI by his blundering Liibeck 
 policy in 1534. Barnes had been sent to Hamburg for this 
 purpose early in the year. He was himself an ardent Pro- 
 testant who never once suspected the possibility of a Catholic 
 reaction in England ; and as his zeal more than supplied the 
 lack of diplomatic skill, his efforts seem to have met with 
 great success^. The King of Denmark was now in close 
 
 ' Cf.AppendixIattheendofthis ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 441, 442, 955- 
 
 chapter. 958. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 259i 
 
 alliance with John Frederic, and Barnes was soon enabled 
 to persuade them to arrange to send a joint embassy to the 
 King of England to treat of the political league which was 
 to follow a theological agreement '^. But at this juncture 
 Burckhard and Baumbach returned with a very discouraging 
 report, which obtained full confirmation by the news which 
 arrived a week later, that the Six Articles had actually been 
 passed ^. The enthusiasm of the Lutherans was of course 
 considerably dampened, and they wrote to Henry that if 
 a league was to be treated of at all, he would have to be the 
 one to send ambassadors ; they could not themselves venture 
 to visit England because of the machinations against the 
 Evangelical cause there ^. Even in Cleves, where Henry and 
 Cromwell had sought an alliance of a purely political nature, 
 unhampered by religious restrictions, the news of the passage 
 of the Six Articles created profound distrust, and we may 
 well believe that John Frederic discouraged his brother-in- 
 law from continuing negotiations with England, after the 
 proof of Henry's perfidy that he had just received. We are 
 not surprised to find that the matrimonial projects which 
 formed the basis of the alliance with Cleves came to a com- 
 plete standstill during the month of July. The proposals for 
 a match between Duke William and the Princess Mary had 
 apparently never been very popular : they were now definitely 
 abandoned and never revived. To the other plan, for a mar- 
 riage of Henry and the Duchess Anne, an unexpected objection 
 had arisen. It appears that ever since 1527 a plan for a 
 marriage between the King's intended bride and the son of 
 Duke Anthony of Lorraine had been under discussion. For 
 twelve years the form of continuing the negotiations for this 
 union had been kept up on both sides, with the idea of bring- 
 ing pressure on the Emperor, though all hope of an actual 
 completion of the match must have been abandoned long 
 before this time. But now that the union with England 
 seemed less desirable, the Duke of Cleves of course made the 
 most of the opportunity of evading the requests of Henry 
 that was afforded by the Lorraine affair. The claims of 
 
 J Cal. xiv. (i) 1273. ^ Cal. xiv. (i) 1278. ' CaJ. xiv. (ii) 59. 
 
 s a 
 
260 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Duke Anthony and his son would have to be satisfied, he 
 said, before his sister could be offered to Henry ^. 
 
 Altogether it looked as if the German alliance would be 
 abandoned, and Cromwell, who of all people was most deeply 
 involved in it, must have been roused to a sense of his danger. 
 But the threatened reversal of his policy was destined to be 
 postponed once more. For it soon appeared that the exulta- 
 tion of the King at the apparent success of his own plans was 
 premature. We have seen that it was largely in the hope of 
 conciliating Francis and Charles by removing their main pretext 
 for an attack on England that Henry had caused the Six 
 Articles to be passed. But the Act did not accomplish what 
 was expected of it. The courtesy of Marillac had given Henry 
 a very exaggerated idea of the cordiality of France. He did 
 not see that Francis was merely dallying with him, and had 
 no idea of a permanent friendship. The fact that Charles 
 had refused to listen to the proposals of Cardinal Pole had 
 also been regarded as a good omen ^. But when it appeared 
 that dread of the Turks, who had advanced up the Adriatic, 
 was the sole cause of the Emperor's apparent unwillingness 
 to offend England, and it was rumoured that there was imme- 
 diate prospect of another interview between him and Francis, 
 Henry discovered his mistake ^. All the fair hopes he had 
 entertained of preventing the dreaded coalition against Eng- 
 land were apparently blasted. The doctrinal statement from 
 which he had expected so much had proved but a feeble 
 weapon with which to arrest the current of continental politics. 
 He could consider himself fortunate if the Six Articles and 
 his own personal rudeness to the German ambassadors had 
 not been sufficient to preclude all hope of a return to the 
 alliance, which a few months before he had abandoned as 
 useless, but which now seemed to offer the one chance for 
 England's safety. Once more the policy of Cromwell seemed 
 justified, and Henry was forced to acknowledge it. 
 
 Fortunately for England, the situation, alarming as it was, 
 had even more terrors for the Duke of Cleves than for Henry. 
 
 '■ Cal. xiv. (i) 920 ; Heidrich, '^ Cal. xiv. (i) 603. 
 
 pp. 17, 18. ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 218, 300, 545. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 261 
 
 Charles' refusal to ratify the treaty of Frankfort had once 
 more blighted the hopes of a peaceful solution of the diffi- 
 culties in Germany ^ ; in May the outbreak of a serious 
 rebellion in Ghent made it imperative for the Emperor to 
 appear in person in the Netherlands, and in early August 
 Francis sent him an invitation to pass through France on 
 his way to the Low Countries. The prospect that Charles, 
 in close alliance with his former rival, would soon be brought 
 within striking distance of Gelderland, was by no means 
 agreeable to Duke William. It was fairly obvious that 
 Charles would bend his energies to punishing the Duke of 
 Cleves for his contempt of the Imperial authority, before 
 attempting to chastise the King of England for the general 
 weal of Christendom. The Duke of Cleves was much more 
 practical than his brother-in-law: like Henry he never let 
 religious considerations or conscientious scruples weigh against 
 the dictates of political expediency. As soon as the news of 
 the Emperor's invitation from Francis was confirmed, Duke 
 William's doubts concerning the pre-contract of his sister 
 Anne and the son of the Duke of Lorraine were cleared up 
 with gratifying celerity. He probably had some difficulty 
 in obtaining the consent of the more scrupulous John Frederic 
 to a renewal of the negotiations with England, but his urgency 
 was such that he triumphed over every obstacle. A mes- 
 senger from Burckhard to Cromwell in the end of August 
 was followed in early September by four ambassadors from 
 Cleves and Saxony who were authorized to conclude the 
 match ^. The King must have been greatly relieved at the 
 arrival of the envoys. Since May 3 he had heard nothing 
 from his friends in Cleves except for the famous description 
 of his intended bride, which his ambassador Wotton had sent 
 him, for lack of other news. Anne appears to have been of 
 
 very ' lowly and gentle conditions She occupieth her 
 
 time most with the needle, wherwithall she .... She canne 
 reede and wryte her [own tongue but of] Frenche Latyn or 
 other langaige she [knows no]ne, nor yet she canne not synge 
 nor pleye enye instrument, for they take it heere in 
 
 Bezold, p. 686. "^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 63, 127, 128. 
 
562 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Germanye for a rebuke and an occasion of lightenesse, that 
 great ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of 
 musike .... your Graces servant Hanze Albein hathe taken 
 thefifigies of my lady Anne and the ladye Amelye and hath 
 expressyd theyr imaiges verye lyvelye ^.' In the end it proved 
 unfortunate for Cromwell that this letter, and the portrait 
 which Holbein made^ were not sufficient to turn the King 
 against her, without the need of further confirmation. But 
 even if Wotton's description had been far less flattering, it 
 is doubtful if he could have persuaded Henry to abandon 
 the Cleves marriage at this crisis. The King was now as 
 reckless in accepting the alliance as he had been a few 
 months before in refusing it. He perhaps forgot that 
 though his zeal for the national welfare had never been 
 hampered by religion or conscience, he had not yet put his 
 patriotism to the more practical test of a sacrifice of matri- 
 monial bliss. So the preliminaries of the match were hurried 
 through with a speed quite as remarkable as the delays in the 
 previous negotiations with the Lutherans. The ambassadors 
 departed on October 6 to return to Cleves and conduct Anne 
 to Calais, where a noble company assembled to welcome her, 
 Gregory Cromwell being among the number ^. Such were 
 the delays of travelling in those times (Wotton wrote to 
 Cromwell that the lady's party could only make five miles 
 a day *) that Anne of Cleves did not arrive at Calais until 
 December ii, and there she waited till the 27th, for weather 
 sufficiently favourable for her crossing ^^ 
 
 Having landed, she proceeded to Canterbury, where 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 33. Minute in- Cleves was certainly considered 
 
 quiries and sometimes indelicately beautiful in Germany. Sleidan, 
 
 full replies concerning the appear- vol. ii. p. 150, refers to her as 'ele- 
 
 ance and bearing of intended brides ganti forma virginem.' 
 
 seem to have been authorized by ^ Now in the Louvre, 
 
 all Tudor traditions. The report ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 664. Cf. also the 
 
 of Wotton is but meagre in details Chronicle of Calais, pp. 167-179. 
 
 when compared to that of the In the latter, Gregory Cromwell's 
 
 ambassadors of Henry VII con- name is erroneously written 'George 
 
 ceming Joanna of Naples, whom Crombwell.' 
 
 the English King had once thought * Cal. xiv. (ii) 634, 677. 
 
 of marrying in 1505. Anne of ^ Cal. xv. 14. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 263 
 
 Cranmer welcomed her with due pomp and ceremony. He 
 had received from Cromwell fifty sovereigns to be presented 
 to her on her arrival, and promised to do his best to induce 
 the townspeople to give her fifty angels more ^. From Can- 
 terbury Anne journeyed on to Sittingbourne and Rochester, 
 where she was received on December 31 by the Duke of 
 Norfolk, with a great company of nobles^. When Henry 
 heard of her arrival there he determined to visit her in 
 disguise, and, accompanied by eight persons of his Privy 
 Chamber, he rode down to Rochester on New Year's Day and 
 saw for the first time his intended bride ^. It is unfortunate 
 that we possess no trustworthy information concerning the 
 impression which Anne made on Henry at this first meeting. 
 A letter which Cromwell wrote to the King, six months later, 
 from the Tower states that when Henry, on his return from 
 Rochester, was asked how he liked the Queen, he had 
 answered ' hevelye And not plesantlye " nothing so well as She 
 was spokyn of ",' and had added that had he known as much 
 as he then knew ' she shold not haue Commen W2t^in this 
 Realme *.' It will be seen in a later chapter, however, that 
 Cromwell wrote this letter under circumstances which rendered 
 it very improbable that he told the exact truth : there is 
 every reason to think that he greatly exaggerated the aversion 
 which Henry first conceived for Anne of Cleves. In any case 
 if Henry felt any such disgust as Cromwell described, he 
 succeeded admirably in dissembling his feelings. Two days 
 after the meeting at Rochester, he rode in state to meet his 
 bride at Greenwich, and on January 6 he married her. ' The 
 sonday after,' Hall adds, ' there were kepte solempne Justes, 
 
 on whiche daie she was apparelled after the Englishe 
 
 fassion, with a Frenche whode, whiche so set furth her beautie 
 and good visage, that euery creature reioysed to behold her®.' 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 753. fellingofherwedding, the Chronicle 
 
 " Cal. XV. 14. of the Grey Friars of London (p. 43) 
 
 ' Hall, pp. 832 ff. informs us that ' thene beganne 
 
 * Letters, 349-50. alle the gentyl women of Yngland 
 
 ' Hall, p. 837. It appears that to were Frenche whooddes with 
 
 the fashion changed in England at bellementtes of golde.' 
 
 the time of the arrival of Anne. In 
 
264 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 It is important to notice that even in this hour of national 
 peril, Henry did not make any overtures to the Elector of 
 Saxony or the Landgrave of Hesse. Not even the imme- 
 diate prospect of war with France and Spain could induce 
 him to go as far as this and to bind himself by ties religious 
 as well as political. Even Cromwell had by this time dis- 
 covered the uselessness of endeavouring to persuade the 
 King to return to an alliance of which he had never really 
 approved ; more than this, he at last seemed to realize, that 
 as advocate of a policy which his master had definitely aban- 
 doned, he ran great danger of losing his influence if not his 
 life. It was rather late for him to attempt to break away 
 from a plan with which his name had become identified ; 
 but he saw that he must purchase safety at the cost of 
 consistency, and he took care in future to discourage all 
 efforts of the Lutherans to come to an agreement. The 
 reception accorded to an embassy which the firm but per- 
 sistent Schmalkaldner sent to England in January 1540, and 
 the words which Cromwell spoke to the ambassador on that 
 occasion give us a very clear insight into the attitude of the 
 King's minister ^. It was the last attempt which the Lutherans 
 made to treat with England during Cromwell's ministry, and 
 its failure marks the end of the negotiations which had begun 
 with the mission of Vaughan and Mont in 1533. Philip of 
 Hesse had sent his councillor, Ludwig von Baumbach, to 
 Henry's Court once more, with instructions to express to the 
 King his sorrow at the passage of the Six Articles, and his 
 hope that they would not lead to any action contrary to the 
 word of God and the truth of the Gospels. The Landgrave 
 also trusted that the King would not suffer the negotiations 
 with the Lutherans to drop, but the ambassador was to make 
 it clear that a political alliance would be conditional, as 
 always, on religious agreement ^. 
 
 Baumbach arrived early in January and immediately betook 
 himself to Cromwell, whom he evidently considered the best 
 friend the Lutherans had at the English Court. But this 
 
 ' Cf. Appendix II at the end of '^ Lenz, vol. i. pp. 409-10, 420- 
 this chapter. 21. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 265 
 
 time he met with a cold reception ^ The minister kept 
 asking him if he had power to conclude a political alliance 
 — a perfectly safe question, for no one knew better than 
 Cromwell that the Lutherans would insist on doctrinal re- 
 conciliation in the first place. Baumbach tried to give an 
 evasive answer, but was soon summoned to Henry, who 
 repeated his minister's demand with still greater directness. 
 The ambassador could only reply that he must consult with 
 Burckhard, who having returned with Anne of Cleves to 
 England, was still in London. On January 13 the two 
 Lutherans had a conversation with Cromwell, in which the 
 latter defined his position with absolute clearness. He told 
 the ambassadors that the King desired a political alliance 
 with them, but that this must come first ; the religious 
 question could be settled later. Baumbach and Burckhard 
 answered that this was impossible ; nothing could be done 
 until a theological agreement had been concluded. At this 
 Cromwell could contain himself no longer. With almost 
 pathetic frankness he turned to the Lutherans and told them 
 that he plainly saw what they wanted in regard to religion ; 
 but, as the world stood then, that he must hold to the same 
 belief as his master, even if it cost him his life ^ Such was 
 the faith of the man who six months later was brought to 
 
 ' Cf. Appendix II at the end of diserte dicitur, ilium de religione 
 
 this chapter. ita disseruisse ut se cum Evan- 
 
 " The truth of Baumbach's state- gelicis in Germania consentire non 
 
 ments is confirmed by Seckendorff, negaret, necessarium tamen sibi 
 
 who obtained his information from esse diceret ut Regis voluntati sese 
 
 the report of Burckhard on this conformaret, etiam cum vitae suae 
 
 same interview. Speaking of Crom- periculo, id quod eventus paulo 
 
 well Seckendorff says : — post comprobavit. Non est itaque, 
 
 ' Lutheranum fuisse Burnetus pro ut hunc pro martyre Evangelicae 
 
 certo habet, nee dissentiunt Saxoni- religionis habeamus, et ipse in loco 
 
 corum Legatorum de eo relationes. supplicii mori se professus est in 
 
 Ex iisdem tamen et historiarum religione Catholica. Hoc, etsi ex 
 
 documentis constat, hominem fuisse D. Burneti sententia de Romana 
 
 non saltern solida doctrina minime minime intellexerit, indicat tamen 
 
 imbutum sed eius ingenii ut Regis animum infirmum et aequivoca- 
 
 favorem omnibus rebus anteponeret. tiones sectantem.' Seckendorff, s. 
 
 Ultima sane Burcardi ex Anglia Ixxviii, p. 261 ; liber iii, sect. 21. 
 relatione de 11 Jan. scripta . . . 
 
266 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 the block on the charge of counter-working the King in 
 matters of religion ! There is little need to dwell on the 
 rest of Baumbach's stay in England. He had another inter- 
 view with Henry, who, angered at the firmness of the 
 Lutherans on the religious question, now took occasion to 
 throw contempt on their usefulness as political allies. He 
 told some preposterous lies to Baumbach, informing him 
 that he had heard nothing of the danger of the coalition of 
 Charles and Francis of which the envoy talked so much, 
 although he had faithful ambassadors at both Courts. Even 
 if he were attacked, he said, he was fully able to defend him- 
 self, owing to England's insular position and strong navy, 
 which was well manned by his own subjects. German 
 soldiers, on the contrary, would be of little use to him as 
 sailors, for they would certainly be always seasick. After 
 making a few counter-proposals which he knew would never 
 be accepted, he dismissed Baumbach with a polite but non- 
 committal message to the Landgrave, and Cromwell, who 
 bade the envoy farewell on January 21, followed suit. But 
 though the minister had used this last mission of the Luthe- 
 rans mainly as an opportunity to break away from the policy 
 which he had hitherto advocated, but which he now realized 
 the danger of being connected with, his efforts to save himself 
 were too late. We shall see in the next chapter that the 
 events of the previous years had so thoroughly identified him 
 with the Lutheran alliance in the minds of the people, that his 
 enemies were enabled to make use of his supposed adherence 
 to it, as a pretext for conspiring his ruin. 
 
 The Lutherans did not send another embassy to England 
 for a long time. Negotiations were not resumed until 
 more than four years later, when the situation had entirely 
 changed, and even then they failed as signally as before. 
 But though Henry had thus dealt the death blow to the 
 hopes of the Schmalkaldner, he did not suffer the 3'ear 1539 
 to close without attempting to form an alliance of a very 
 different sort with another prince of the Empire. As soon as 
 he had heard of the failure of the plan for the marriage of the 
 Princess Mary and the Duke of Cleves, Henry began to look 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 267 
 
 about for another German husband for his daughter. It was 
 doubtless with the royal authority that Christopher Mont had 
 let fall a casual hint in conversation with a certain Niirnberg 
 merchant named Gundelfynger, that Henry would gladly see 
 Mary wedded to a prince of the Empire. The merchant 
 responded by proposing Duke Philip of Bavaria as a suitable 
 candidate for her hand. This prince was a member of the 
 Palatinate branch of the Wittelsbach family, and a nephew of 
 the Elector Louis. He had been a faithful servant of the 
 Emperor and his brother Ferdinand in the first outbreaks of 
 the religious strife after the formation of the Schmalkaldic 
 League, and had been severely wounded in a brave attempt 
 to oppose the Hessian lanzknechts at the battle of Laufen '. 
 In spite of the fact that he belonged to a notoriously wavering 
 family, he appears to have been a firm adherent of the Old 
 P"aith, at least at the time of which we are speaking. But on 
 the other hand he was certainly loyal to every tradition of 
 Wittelsbach impecuniosity. He had sacrificed all his property 
 in the Emperor's service, and Charles had characteristically 
 refused to make good his losses, and had also insulted him 
 by opposing his suit for the hand of the Duchess of Milan. 
 A financially successful marriage seemed to offer Philip the 
 only chance of recovering his lost fortunes, and it was at this 
 juncture that the possibility of a match with the daughter of 
 the rich King of England was opened to him. The proposal 
 of Gundelfynger seems to have met with Henry's approval, 
 and he soon signified to Philip his desire that the latter 
 should visit him in England. The Duke jumped at the 
 chance to conclude a marriage which promised so many 
 pecuniary advantages, and his anger at the ingratitude of 
 Charles certainly did not make him any less anxious to hsten 
 to Henry's proposals. He arrived in London on December 8 ^, 
 and at first the negotiations for the match proceeded with 
 unexpected rapidity. Against two points on which Henry 
 insisted, however, Philip raised strong objections ^ : the first 
 
 '■ Von Freyberg, vol. iv. p. 264. ^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 657. 
 
 Cf. also Life of Philip of Bavaria ' Life of Philip of Bavaria in the 
 
 in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bio- Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 
 
 graphic, vol. xxvi. pp. 16 ff. vol. xxvi. p. 18. 
 
268 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 was that he should take Mary as a bastard, ' incapable by the 
 laws and statutes of the realm of claiming any succession or 
 title by right of inheritance.' The second was the King's 
 refusal to except the name of the Pope from the list of those 
 against whom the financial and political agreement which 
 was to accompany the marriage was to be concluded: Philip, 
 as a faithful Catholic, was apparently at first unwilling to 
 enter a league which might bring him into conflict with the 
 See of Rome. But the firmness of the King, coupled with 
 the great financial profits which the match promised to 
 Philip, finally triumphed over the religious scruples of the 
 Wittelsbacher, and on January 24 he signed a treaty in which 
 he accepted the marriage and the compact under the con- 
 ditions on which Henry insisted : the agreement, however, 
 was not to be considered binding unless Philip could get it 
 ratified by his relatives in Germany before Whitsuntide, 1540. 
 He left England, January 37, for this purpose, but his attempts 
 were unsuccessful, and the proposal came to nothing. It was 
 taken up a second time at a later date, and again abandoned. 
 But though the scheme finally fell through there are a few 
 interesting things to be noticed in connexion with the nego- 
 tiations for it, which serve to make clear the trend things 
 were taking at the time of Philip's visit in London. 
 
 The whole affair was carried on so secretly, and we have 
 so little documentary evidence, that it is very difficult to 
 form any certain conclusions concerning this attempted 
 compact. The name of Cromwell figures prominently in con- 
 nexion with it ; we find Duke Philip consulting with the 
 minister at his house, and visiting the Princess Mary in his 
 company ^ ; but it is pretty obvious that all the negotiations 
 were conducted throughout with the full approval of the King, 
 and not, as was the case with the Lutheran affair, partially in 
 opposition to the royal wishes. For the scheme was radically 
 different from the proposed Lutheran alliance which had 
 failed, and not exactly similar to the union with Cleves which 
 had just been completed. It was far more cautious and non- 
 committal than either of them, and it was for this reason that 
 
 ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 719; xv. 76. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 269 
 
 Henry liked it. In the first place, Philip was a Catholic, so 
 that an agreement with him involved no contradiction to the 
 doctrines proclaimed in the Six Articles. In the second 
 place, he was ostensibly a close ally of the Emperor's and 
 a member of the Imperial Order of the Golden Fleece ^, 
 though, as we have seen, the ingratitude of Charles after his 
 services in Germany must necessarily have tended to make 
 their relations less cordial. Henry was doubtless accurately 
 informed of all this, and saw in an agreement with a member 
 of this powerful though vacillating Wittelsbach family, an 
 opportunity to gain valuable aid in case he were really 
 attacked, without ostensibly committing himself to a policy 
 which would at any time prevent a return to cordial rela- 
 tions with France and Spain. In the next chapter we shall 
 see that it was precisely during Philip's visit at the English 
 Court that Henry's hopes of staving off the dreaded coalition 
 of Charles and Francis against him were once more revived 
 in a most unexpected way. The terms of the agreement 
 which he attempted to conclude with the Duke may thus be 
 regarded as the first intimation of the complete reversal of 
 England's foreign policy which was witnessed by the first 
 six months of the year 1540. According to the draft of a 
 treaty drawn up in England to be presented to Philip for his 
 approval, the Duke was to send to the King's assistance the 
 number of — horse and foot if Henry was attacked by any 
 prince or private person, and was further to aid the King if 
 he made war for the recovery of any right of which he was 
 defrauded^. We unfortunately do not possess the original 
 copy of the treaty signed on January 24, but in an account 
 of Philip's life by his brother Ottheinrich, it appears that the 
 final agreement was that the Duke should furnish the King 
 with TjOOO horsemen and 4,000 foot-soldiers against everyone 
 except the Roman Empire ^. The exception of the ' Roman 
 Empire,' which was probably introduced at Philip's request, 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 177. menigklich, ausgenommen wider 
 
 ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 733, 737. das Romisch Reich, 1000 wohl ge- 
 
 ' The words, as given in the riste Pferdt Und 4000 wohl geriste 
 
 life by Ottheinrich, are : ' Herzog fuesknecht zufiehren.' Von Frey- 
 
 Philipp soil dem khonig wider berg, vol. iv. p. 266. 
 
270 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 was a provision of so vague a nature that it could not bind 
 either party very strictly ; it certainly could not have applied 
 to a coalition of Charles and Francis, which was all that Henry 
 wanted, and it had the additional advantage that it made it 
 appear that the compact was not especially directed against 
 the Emperor, and so could not be resented by him. On the 
 subject of the Pope and the illegitimacy of Mary, the King, as 
 we have seen, had remained firm : to yield to Philip on these 
 two points would simply have been to stultify all the work of 
 the previous ten years, a step which Henry, even in the 
 gravest peril, was not prepared to take. But the other terms 
 of the agreement were precisely to his taste. The new treaty 
 could be very useful if the crisis came, and yet it was so 
 arranged that with his well-known ability for quibbling, the 
 King could easily throw it over, if his hopes of a change for 
 the better in his relations with France and Spain were actually 
 fulfilled. It thus stands out in sharp contrast to the Lutheran 
 alliance which Cromwell had advocated, and which, if it had 
 been accomplished, would have irrevocably committed England 
 to permanent hostility to Charles. The terms of the treaty 
 with Philip were cautious, carefully guarded, and strictly non- 
 committal ; the Lutheran alliance, had it been carried through, 
 would have been rash, definite, and irrevocable. The contrast 
 between the two schemes is the contrast between the policies 
 of Henry and Cromwell. Though the treaty with Philip was 
 never ratified and the agreement which it proposed was thus 
 never destined to succeed, the fact that so many efforts were 
 made to accomplish it at the very moment that the negotia- 
 tions with the Lutherans, of which Cromwell had been the 
 chief supporter, were finally abandoned, is very significant in 
 revealing the relative positions of King and minister at the 
 opening of the year 1540. 
 
 Briefly to review the state of affairs at this critical juncture. 
 The dread of an attack by the joint forces of France and 
 Spain, which had hung over England for more than a year, 
 seemed to call for a defensive league with some outside 
 power. But even in this hour of national peril the King 
 did not forget the lesson that he had learned at Wolsey's 
 
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 271 
 
 fall : he remembered that the situation on the Continent had 
 often changed before and was likely to do so again, and 
 therefore in his search for a foreign alliance he took the 
 greatest pains to keep his hand free. Cromwell, on the con- 
 trary, was now too far advanced in the policy he had followed 
 since the summer of 1538 to be able to retreat from it, though 
 the warning conveyed by the reaction of June, 1535) had 
 certainly opened his eyes to the dangers of the course he 
 pursued. But it was in vain that he attempted to persuade 
 his master to sanction an alliance with the Lutherans. Henry 
 refused to consent to any move which would bind him 
 as permanently as this. Instead the King directed his 
 efforts towards concluding an agreement of a very different 
 nature with Duke Philip of Bavaria, but his demands were so 
 great that this scheme also failed, owing to the unwillingness 
 of the other members of the Wittelsbach family to ratify the 
 treaty. The only alliance which did materialize was that 
 with Cleves. It was a sort of compromise between the 
 Lutheran and the Bavarian plans ; it committed England less 
 definitely than the one, though more so than the other. But 
 the responsibility for it had been made to rest entirely on 
 Cromwell's shoulders, and the minister must have realized 
 that his safety depended on its success. While it was under 
 negotiation, the danger from France and Spain seemed so 
 threatening that the policy of Cromwell was apparently justi- 
 fied. Almost at the moment of its completion, however, 
 events took place which totally changed the aspect of affairs, 
 called for the abandonment of the alliance with Cleves, and 
 led to the ruin of the man whose fortunes were identified with 
 it. What these events were will be seen in the succeeding 
 chapter. 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII 
 I 
 
 THE REPORT OF THE LUTHERAN AMBASSADORS TO 
 ENGLAND IN APRIL AND MAY, 1539, ENTITLED 
 
 ' Sufnmaue bericht vnd verzeichnisz der gepfloga^ handelu;^ge in 
 Engelant anno domini 1539 '.' 
 
 Nachdem die gesant«« desz churf. zu Saxsen etc vnd la«tgraue« 
 zu Hessew vnser g. vnd g. hern rethte den viij tag aprilisz zu Franck- 
 fort abgeraist sint sie den 23 deszselbig«« monatz zu Lond(7« 
 anko^zmera vnd nachdem die \ior\iglicke rsxayestat dazumal nicht 
 dess orczt sondern auff eynem schloisz Riczmu^zt genant nicht fast 
 verne von Lunden gewest haben sie sich nichtsz destowinger biem 
 hern Crumello, Voniglichen msLyestdt zu engelant obersten vnd ge- 
 heywzbsten raidt anczaig^;^ lassen. Als hat derselbige ob er wol 
 etwas die cziet myt schwachait beladew solchsz Yomglichen mayw^'at 
 von stond«;^ an zu erke«nen geben hat auch den gesante« von 
 wegen Vavdgliclien may«/at eyn« herberge vorordent vnd inen 
 Vamglichen mayesfcit forderHche zukunff vorraelden lassen mit 
 anczaigu«ge« dasz sie Yomglichen mnyesidt gancz wilckuwzme^z werei^ 
 vnd dasz die konig&Zie mayestat auff den nest^ra sontag wilcher der 
 25 aprilisz gewest der gesant«« werbu«ge genedicklich zu horen 
 erpottick. Esz ist auch der kom'g myt den 26 aprilisz obgemeltz 
 monatz gegt-'t London in hen pallast zu Westmo«ster kome^ und 
 nachdem eyn parlamerat beschriben gewest wilchesz auff den 
 28 aprilisz angefang*;^ hat sich die Vonigliche mayestat desz 
 vorczoigksz halben entschuldige^ lassen vnd den 29 tag aprilisz 
 der gesant«« werbuwge anzuhoren besty^^met wie dan geschehen. 
 Vnd hat die Vanigliche xaayestaX denselbig«« tag der gesant«« wer- 
 bu«ge gehort die sie vormoge irer entpfawen instrucion gethan. 
 Alsz hat sich die Yomgliche msyestaX genedicklich«« darauff vorne»z- 
 ra&n lassen mit f. ^ dangsagu«ge« gege« den churf. zu Saxsen vnd 
 lantgraue^ zu Hessen mit dem anhangk dasz he raayesiat hern 
 
 * Transcribed from the original document in the Archives at Marburg. 
 ^ sic, for ' freundlichei).' 
 
BURCKHARD'S REPORT 273 
 
 Crumello vnd eczlich anderew vnd vornewmisten vnd geheimstew 
 ir maiesiat rethte befelich thon vtolten mit den gesanten von eyner 
 erlichen trostlichen vorste^nisse zu handeln haben sich auch hoich 
 gegen vnsere g.g. hern erpotten vnd von der franckfordissen fridsz- 
 handellu^gew allerlii gefragk auch v.g.h. von Gulich vnd Geldern 
 gedacht, vnd in latinisser vnd franczosser sprach sich mit de;^ 
 gesanten in gespreche ingelassen darauff die gesanten siner maiesiat 
 allenthalben nach gelegenheit nottorfftige?z bericht gethan. Es hat 
 Vonigliche maiestdt in sondernhait erinneruwge gethan dasz sich 
 obgemelte vnsere g.g. hern mit gut«« worten nicht wolten vorfuere;^ 
 lassen dan sine m.aiestat wuste dasz man allerley wider ir ch. vnd 
 f. g. vnd der vorste« vorwanten vorhette allein dasz ines^ bys anhere 
 an forteil gemangeldt, darauff sie dan tag vnd nacht traichten vnd 
 bedorffte^z vlissigesz auffsehensz etc. 
 
 Es were auch gewisz dasz ma;^ sine raaiestiH hette mit den schiffen 
 in Selant vberfallen wollen aber Got lobp sine maiestdt hette ire prach- 
 ticke vornowmen vnd vreien durch gute frunde vorwarnnet warden 
 hatten sich auch alszo zur gegenwere gestellet vnd die vorsehu;2ge 
 in irer mayesiat kon<ig)rich thon lassen dasz sie vor inne;^ vner- 
 schrocken weren vnd wolte gerne dasz sie sich etwasz tetlichesz 
 vnderstandew dan sie alszo entpfanen wurde« dasz sie den schimp 
 gerucht solte haben etc. Item es hat sine \onigliche xaa\estaX angec- 
 zaigk dasz sie gewisz kunschafft hette wie dasz der kayser driemal- 
 hundert thusent gulden iczt oister;^ vorschienf?? in Duczlant etliche 
 krigsvolck domit anzunewzmen vorordent darumb solte ma» nicht 
 zu vil vortruen vnd die dinge in guter achtu«ge haben vnd nachdezw 
 here Crumello duezumall etwasz schwach gewest hat die Yonigliche 
 matesidt begerdt eyne kleynne cziet gedult zu tragen dan s. matesidt 
 ■wolten die saiche szo mogelich zu fordern beuelen vnd sindt alszo 
 daszmal die gesante« von \.oniglicher mayesfdt abgeschaidew. 
 
 Den andern tag desz monacz maij sindt die gesantera in hern 
 CruOTmello hausz zu 'London erfordert do dan Vonigliche raajestdt 
 rethte alsz ne^zmelich die bayde herczogen Norfoick vnd Soyffoick 
 desz richsz engelant cantzeller der oberste a^merall her Crumelki 
 vnd der bisschoff von Derm TunstaWius genant Wilche erstliches^ 
 desz ma«datetsz halben allerley disputacionesz inngefort darauff 
 innen vorlegunge vnd bericht darmit sie dozumall zufried«« gewest 
 von den gesant«« geschehen vnd zum andern haben sie sich mit 
 den gesantei^ der condiciow halben vnd wilcher gestaldt die con- 
 federacio;^ auffzuricht«« auch wasz konig/icAe mayesfdt vor gege«- 
 hulff zu gewarte« vntteredet denen die gesante« inhalcz irer in- 
 
274 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 struciow nach der lenge bericht vnd anczaigu^ge vorgewant dasz 
 dan die rethte mit flissz angehort vnd der ding allenthalben 
 Vonigluher mayestdt zu berichten auff sich gennowmen vnd ist ge- 
 betten die saichen so vil mogelich zu fordern domit kein vorczoigk 
 erfolge. 
 
 Nach disser vnderreduwge vnd handeluwge haben sich die dinge 
 etliche tage vorczug<;« ausz vrsach dasz \onigUcher ravjestaX rethte 
 obgemelt teglich insz parlament haben sin mossen vnd auff den 
 xvi tag maij sindt Vomglicher raxjestaX rethte vnd die gesant«« yn 
 \jamglicher xaxyestai pallast zu sent Jocop beim hern Cruwzmello 
 zuw anderw male bie eynnander gewest, vnd haben die konnigliche 
 rethte angeczaigk wie dasz der Yoniglichen may«/at vor gewissz 
 ausz Franckrich vnd Flanders geschriben dasz der churf. zu Saxsen 
 vnd lantgraue zu Hessen sampt irer chf. vnd f. g. relionszvorwant«« 
 sich in der gepfloge^ fridez handellu^zge zu Franckfort vorpflicht 
 forder in cziet desz anstansz nimancz in buntnissz zu newme^ wilchsz 
 der Voniglichen vas^estaX fast befromdhch vnd beschwerlich (wird) 
 vnd darauff bericht begerdt etc. Alsz haben die gesantten vormoge 
 irer bieinstrucion dissesz puncktsz halben vnd sonderlichen auch 
 auff dasz schriben szo inen vom churf. <zu) Saxsen irem g. h. desz 
 fordern tagesz zukoiwme^ war den bericht vorgewant dasz die 
 kon(ig)lich«;2 rethte daran gut«« genuge^ gehaipt vnd sich erpotten 
 der koniglichen mayestat solchsz zuw forderlicheste^ zu vormelden 
 auch die saichen irsz vormogensz zu fordern helffe^ wnd darbie esz 
 daszmalsz blieben vnd haben die gesantew angehalte« domit sie nicht 
 lenger auffgehalt^;^ mocht^i^ werdf«. 
 
 Den xviij tag maij sindt die koniklichen rethte vnd die gsanten 
 iwm dritten male in obgemelt«« \ioniglicher raayesiat pallast zu sent 
 Jocop zusame« kome« vnd haben die kongissen rethte nach lenge 
 erczelet dasz sie Yornglicher raa.yestat alle handelu«ge mit vlisz 
 bericht gethan esz wusten sich auch \.onigliche rcAyestaX der gesant«« 
 werbu«ge selbst zu erinner;? were« auch geneigk sich in eyn erlich 
 glichmessig vnd trostlich vorstentnissz mit ire;? her^ sampt dersel- 
 \)\%en relionszvorwant«« irem vorigen erbitten nach inzulassen 
 aber die \.onigliche may«/at kont nicht befinde;^ dasz sulchesz vor- 
 stentnisz der gege« hulff halben deren sich die chur vnd fursten 
 sampt iren relionszvorwantt«i^ erbiten theten die glichait oder reci- 
 procu»2 mit sich breichte derhalben were der Vaniglichen msyes^dt 
 genedigesz begere« ob die gesant«« nach ferner befelich hetten der 
 gegewhulff oder reciproci halben dasz sie sich desz wolten vnbe- 
 schwerdt woxnemmen lassen. 
 
BURCKHARD'S REPORT 275 
 
 Item die \onigliche mayesidt vormyrck dasz dasz mawdat sere enge 
 vnd restringirt were wilchsz auch allerlij nachdencken hette bie siner 
 'koniglichen Taa.yestdi vnd ob die gesante« vmb ferner befelich vnd 
 volkommener mandat schriben wolten. 
 
 Darauff ist den konigissen rethten geantwortt dasz esz die chur 
 vnd fursten dar aichten die Yonigliche may«/at alsz eyn vortrefflicher 
 berumpter richer konig wurde esz in solchen erlichen cristlichen 
 saichen wider desz romissen bisschoff prachticke vnd tiranni an 
 eyner tapffern suiwma geldesz zur defension nicht mangeln lassen 
 ob sich auch ire ch. vnd f. g. der gege^hulff halben nichtsz sonder- 
 hchesz erbiten tedten ynd aber nichtsz desto winger hetten sich ire 
 ch. vnd f.g. vorneOTmen lassen siner Yoniglichen xa&yestdt im fall der 
 nottorfft do solchsz sin^ Vonigliche Tanyestdt begeren worde eczliche 
 thuse^t zu fuessz vnd etliche hundert zu rosz e/c zu zu schicken 
 wilchsz kriegszvolck ire ch. vnd f. g. anne tappern vnkosten nicht 
 ■warden vorgadern vnd auff eynn monsterplacz hnngen lassen xaogen. 
 Ynd domit sulchsz do da;«nen forder s. raa.yestdX zugeschickt wurde 
 vnd im fall dasz esz die Vonigliche raz^estdX darvor aichte dasz 
 solchsz gegf« der suz«ma geldesz szo die "kanigUche xmcyestdt erleges^ 
 soke nicht szo gancz glich ader re«'procu»2 were szo hetten doch sine 
 \anigliche mayerfat zu bedenck«« dasz esz siner Yoniglichen mayw/at 
 selbst zuw besten gereichte allesz waisz ire Vonigliche rascyestdi den 
 chur. vnd f. sampt ire^z vorwanten gucz erczaigkt dan der romisz 
 bisschoff vbete sine prachtike nicht winger wider sine Vanigliche 
 xaayestdX. dan ire ch. vnd f. g. vnd ier ch. vnd f. g. mitvorwante« vnd 
 do innen etwasz widerwertigsz wilchsz der almechtige wend«« wolt 
 begegen soke worde darnach s. Vavdgliche rci.a.yestdX. solchsz auch zu 
 gewarte^ haben etc. Desz mandacz halbm ist innes^ die anczeige 
 geschehen dasz sie desz puncksz zufried«« gewest vnd die ding 
 Yoniglicher mayestdt zu berichten auff sich genowmen alsz ist 
 deszmalsz nicht witter gehandelt vnd auff den 26 tag maij haben 
 die Yonigliche m&yestdX. die gesant^ra wiedervmb erforder« lassen vnd 
 innew selbst angeczeigt desz ' sie allenthalben vornoi^men wasz sich 
 vor handeluwge czuissen siner matesidt rethten vnd den gesant«« 
 zugetrag£« vnd wiewole sine maies/dt gancz geneigk sich in buntnisse 
 mit den churf. zu Saxsen vnd lantgraue« zu Hessen sampt hen 
 relionszvorwante« ainzulassen szo vormirck doch ir^ VonigUcke 
 raaiestdX. dasz die vorgeschlagene condicion der geg^whulff nicht der- 
 gestaldt reciproce were wie sich ire \anigliche ma.yestdt vorsehen 
 hetten vnd esz auch billich in confederaci(7« sin solt dan seine 
 
 ' sic, for ' dasz.' 
 T 2, 
 
276 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 \ionigliche mayesfat begert eyn rumelich erlich vnd baidersicz 
 trostlich vorstentnisse vnd confederacio;^ myt iren chur vnd f. g. vnd 
 iren relionsz vorwanki^ auffzurichten vnd diewil die gesant«ra keine« 
 witters Oder fernerw befelich hetten dan wie sie hie zuvor angeczeigft] 
 Szo muste esz seine \onigliche maiesidt dasz malsz auch darbie 
 vrenden lassen vnd wusten witer darauff mit ine^ nicht zu handeln, 
 sondern wolten inen hiemit genedicklich wiedervmb erlaubt haben. 
 Auch wolte sine Yonigliche matesidt iren chur vnd f. g. schrifflich ire 
 gemut anczaigen vnd do sie iren chur und f. g. sunste« fruntlichen 
 willen erczaigen konte wolten ire \.onigliche mayM/at alleczeit willig 
 befonden werde« wie sie sich auch in glichnisse herwider vorsehen 
 theten. Alsz haben die gesante« irer Yoniglichen may«^'at hinwider 
 angeczaigk dasz sie sich von wege« irer g. vnd genedigen hern nicht 
 vorsehen hetten seine Yonigliche ma.yestdt worde sie nicht gancz vor- 
 gebehch abschaide?? lassen wil ire raajestdt wmb disse schickui^ge 
 bei iren g. vnd genedigera hern ansuchu«g auch trostlich erbitu^ge 
 gethan esz worden sich auch ire chur vnd f. g. vile winger solchsz 
 abschaidsz vorsehen vnd were disse kegenhulff nicht szo geringe wie 
 sie ire \.onigliche may«^/at achten etc Aber wie denn szo muster sie 
 esz darbie wendf« lassen vnd wolten ire g. vnd genedige hern aller 
 handelui^ge vim vnderthenigstm vnd truelicheste«! wilsz Got zu irer 
 widerkumpfft berichte« vnd worden sich demnach ire ch. vnd f. g. 
 gege« seiner konigHchen raa.yestdt irer nottorfft nach zu halter vnd zu 
 vorneiwme;^ lassen wissen vnd nachdem vil reden gewest dasz die 
 Vaniglicfie m3.yestdt etczliche artikel der relion im parlament handeln 
 lassen alsz ne»zmelich von dem hoichwurdig«« sacrame^zt desz liebesz 
 vnd bludez unsersz her« Cristi iUm von der prister ehe haben die 
 gesante« gebetten seine VonigUche mayw/at alsz die die warhait 
 liebte wolte in dissen groswichtigm saichen alleyne die warhait 
 forder« vnd hanthaben etc Darauff dan die Vonigliche ma.yestdt in 
 eyne hefftige disputacio« desz artikelsz die pristferehe hehngend mit 
 den gesant^;^ komen die seiner mnyestdt nottorfFtig^w bericht vnd 
 anczaige gethan vnd darnach irew abschaidt von irer ma.yestdt 
 genowmen etc. Vnd nachdem kanigliche xoAyestdt schriffte;^ an 
 hoichgemelte vnsere g. vnd g. hern vorfertiget vnd den gesant«« 
 durch hern Cruwzmello zugesteldt haben sie gebetten sich zu 
 berichten wesz doch Vanigliche mayestdt maynunge sie der con- 
 federacio^ halb«« vnd wesz seine konigliche mayej/at vor condicio« 
 ader gege«hulff oder reciprocu»2 begerte darauff der here Crura- 
 mellus angeczaigt dasz die konigliche mayw/at eyne tapffere su^zma 
 geldesz zu erlegen willig aber der gestalt dasz solche geldt bayd«« 
 
BAUMBACH'S EMBASSY 277 
 
 teilen alsz seyner \ioniglichen mayesiat vnd vnsern g. vnd g. hern vnd 
 iren relionszvorwantei^ zuglich zum besten kome vnd wilchsz tail 
 eher angriffen (wurde) dasz daszselbige solche geldt zu gebrauchen 
 haben solte etc. Vnd do iren ch. vnd f. g. sulchesz a^nemlich 
 {ware) woste eher^ dasz die Vanigliche xadiestat an eyner tapifern 
 su»?ma geldesz niederzuleg«w nicht erwind«« lassen etc. Alsz haben 
 die gesanteiv diewil sie dissesz artickelsz halben zu handeln ader zu 
 schlissen keine;? befelich gehaipt sich erbotten daszselbige iren chur. 
 vnd f. g. zu irer widerkunfift mit gotlicher hulff vnderthenichliche« 
 auch zu berichte^ vnd alszo irn abschaidt den leczten tag maij 
 geno»?men anno vt supra. 
 
 Franciscus Burchart 
 
 vicecanczler 
 
 subi,crip%it. 
 
 LudowicM^ de Baumbach 
 
 sub&crip^iX.. 
 Endd. ' Relation Ludwigs von Baumbach vnd Mgr. Frantz Burg- 
 hardi von wegm der sendung in Engellandt.' 
 
 II 
 
 ACCOUNT BY LUDWIG VON BAUMBACH OF HIS JOURNEY 
 TO ENGLAND. DECEMBER, 1539 TO JANUARY, 154O 2. 
 
 Auff donstag nach triuw regUOT byn ich myt gottesz holff zu 
 London ankomen vnd mich bye dem Hern Crumello ansagen 
 Lassen hat er mich auff den freitag morg«« frue alszo balde gefordert 
 vnd holen Lassen vnd mich allerleii gefraugk wie esz im thuczs^Iant 
 stehe vnd ab ich nicht macht ader befelich habe dasz buntnisz myt 
 ko. vaz.yestaX zu schlissen etc. 
 
 Dar auff ich geantwort ich habe eyn credencz an die ko. xa&yestdV 
 vnd eyne werbunge im geheym vnd vortruen syn«r mayw/at anzu- 
 sag«?? vnd derhalp dem h. crumello gebetten myr forderlich zu sin 
 dasz ich auff dasz erst szo mogelich von €vi\er may«5/at gehort moge 
 werd««. 
 
 Dar auff der H. Crumelluj geantwort er werde esz der ko. T(\2.yestdt 
 2U forderlichesten ken grunewicz zu wyssen thon vnd vorsehe sich 
 
 ' sic, for ' er.' 
 
 ^ Transcribed from the original document in the Archives at Marburg. 
 
278 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 ir msiyesiat werde mich zu forderlichesten hore;? diewil ir mayesfat 
 mich kewnen. 
 
 Auff den sonnobent byn ich von Cristoffel mont beschick vnd 
 bericht die ko. mayestat habe befolen ich solt auff den sonntag 
 morg«;^ frue zu ix vk« zu grunewicz sin do wolle ir mayesiat mich 
 ghoren vnd ir mayesfat sie my;^ner ankonfft wole znineAen. 
 
 Die ko. mayesiat hat mich auff den sontag durch den hern 
 Crumelluw in s. Tuayestdt innerst gemach fordern vnd fuere;? Lassen 
 vor der messe« da habe ich nach dem die ko. xa&yestat die credencz 
 erbrochen vnd vorlesen allesz waisz myr befolen ist gewest nach der 
 lenge myt besten flissze erczalet vnd bericht dar auff ir mayestdt 
 myt flisse gehort vnd alle wort zweygefraugk vnd alsz balde ich 
 auszgeredt Hat s. mayestat geantwort ich habe lange desz ko vom 
 franckrichsz gemudt gesport vnd vorno^me^ vnd er wolde eyne 
 botschaffe sich der dinge zu erko^nera thon vnd mich gefraugk ab 
 ich solchsz auch hed««! moge sonst wolle s. vaayestat niemancz 
 nicht meld«« dar auff ich s. mayestdt geantwort dasz moge ich wole 
 lied«^ szo verne niemancz genent von wem s. raa.yestdt disze dinge 
 vorstand«« vnd mich gefraugk ab ich keine befelich habe die buntnisz 
 myt s. raayestdt zu schlyssen habe ich geantwort nein sonder« s. 
 razyestdt zu ndden dasz sich ir mayestdt irsz gemucz entlichen vor- 
 newme;^ Lasse vnd znm forderlichesten die bontnisz schlisse ehe esz 
 zu kriege ko;»me dar auff ir mayesidt gesag m. h. habe im geschriben 
 ich solde eyn« zcitlangk bie s. mqyesfdt blieben dar auff ich geantwort 
 desz habe ich von m. g. h. keynen befelich. 
 
 Dar nach ir may^j-^at allerleii gemeine rede gehaipt vnd alsz balde 
 in di6 kirche« gangen vnd alsz balde ir mayesfdt in ir. kapellen 
 kome« vnd mich gesehen haben ir mayesidt myr gewinckt vnd 
 angesprochen vor alien here« vnd gsaugk er habe mynem g. g. hern 
 geschriben vnd sie haben im keyne antwort dar auff ggeben, vnd 
 alsz witter gefraugk ab ich keynen befelich habe witter myt s. 
 mayesidt der buntnisz halber zu rede« dar auff ich geantwort von 
 dem schriben habe ich keine wisse der bontnisz halber wolle ich 
 mich eyn kleinsz bedenckera vnd mych myt dem Sexsissen vice 
 canczeller vnderreden vnd sine mayesfdt beantworten. 
 
 Auff den dienstag darnach hat der H. Crumelluj den vice canczeler 
 vnd mich gefordert vnd allerleii myt vnsz bayden geredt vnd gesaugk 
 s. h. der ko;?nig sie geneigk sich myt vnsren h. zu vorbind«« vnd 
 darnach von der relionsz saiche« zu leden angefangsw dar auff myr ^ 
 baide der vice canczeller auff latin vnd ich auff franczossiscz 
 
 ^ sic, for 'wyr.' 
 
BAUMBACH'S EMBASSY 279 
 
 geantwort esz were gotelichen vnd erlichen dasz s. mayesiat sich zu 
 vor vnd ehe die pontnisz geschlossen myt vnsren g. h. desz gottlichen 
 worcz vorgliche dar nach worde got genade vorliehen dasz alle saichen 
 gudt v/oiden dar auff der. h. Crumelluj gesaugkt er siehe vnser 
 maynu^ge den glauben betreifen aber wie die weldt iczt stehet wesz 
 sich sin her der ko^nig halte desz woUe er sich auch halt«i^ vnd solte 
 er darumb sterben er rade aber dasz die pontnisz beschlossen vnd 
 dar nach von bayderseicz gelarten zusam^A! komen lasze vnd sich 
 der schrifft vnd gotlichesz worcz vorglichen lasse wilche teil dan 
 recht behalt dasz dem dan dasz ander teile folge vnd szo wyr myt 
 s. h. dem ko. der saichen halber zu reden kemen szo wolt er vnsz 
 gemiden haben dasz wyr sidick vnd nicht zu hart myt s. mayestat 
 reden vfolten etc. da myt s. mayestat nicht zue vngenadew vnd 
 vngeduldi?^ erregt werde. 
 
 Dar nach von stonde an ist der H. crumellu^ zu dem ko^nige 
 ganger vnd alsz balde mich allein zum konnige zu komen gefordert 
 vnd hat s. mayestat angefange« vnd gesaugk die dinge die ich 
 s. mayestat erczaldt habe nemen s. mayestat wonder dasz dasz 
 vorhande« sin solte vnd solte im szo lange vorschwig«« blieben sin 
 in ansehu«ge dasz er syne amwasatten an bayd«« orten habe, zu dem 
 szo ko^ne^ sie sich in ile szo starck nicht rusten er koncz in ile 
 erSkien vnd szo sie den kreigk myt ime anfahen szo sollen sie 
 entpfanen werden dan s. konrich sie nicht eyn lant wie die lande in 
 thuczlant dan esz sie myt wasser vmbethomwe beflossen vnd konnt 
 niemancz zu im kom«« dan zu schiff. 
 
 Da habe ich die sachen der massen myt ploichehausern vnd 
 polwercken auch myt schiffen bestaldt vnd vor wart dasz sie 
 entpfanen sollen werd«i^ szo habe ich gudte schuczei^ vnd habe 
 die von 'London hart bie myr vnd sonsten eyne stedt ist myr zu 
 nennen vorgessen da kan ich in ile eyn czemelich volck auffbring«« 
 auch szo habe ich die vorretter gemeinklichen richten vnd die 
 koppe abschlag^« Lassen dasz myr niemancz lichlich eynen aufifrure 
 wirdt anrichteri dasz magestu dyne»2 hern sagen aber ich bedanck 
 mich kegen dinen h. wie gehort vnd ich vorstehe die sache nicht 
 anderst dan dasz er die saichen trueliche vnd gudt myt myr 
 maynt. 
 
 Vnd szo vile den ko«nig von dennemarck betrifft da habe ich 
 nicht myt zu schaffen ich waiss auch kein bontnisz myt im zu 
 machen dan er hat den alten konig nach gefangen dasz isst wieder 
 den pfalzgrau«« vnd myt <welchem) byn ich in willensz eyn 
 fruntschaffe eynsz hiracz zu machen etc. 
 
280 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Auch szo dynen myr die lanczknecht nicht dan alsz balde sie 
 auff dasz mere komci^ szo \itrden sie krancg vnd sint desz mersz nicht 
 gewont wie myne luede sint aber dasz wil ich inAen dasz dyne hern 
 der chur f. zu saxsen myn brueder der herzoig von klefa vnd gelderln 
 vnd die andern fursten in der bontnisz sampt hanburgk vnd bremen 
 vnd nicht vile vberlendisse stedt eyn erlichs bontnisz in alien 
 gemeynen sachen beschlossew, were von den selbig«« vberzogew 
 worde dasz im die andern alle hol&n most«« vnd eynsz sachen 
 aller andern sachen sin most szo wil ich pfalcz auch dar zu bring^« 
 dasz sie vnsersz teilsz sin soUen. 
 
 Dan die Vberlendisse stedt haben sich nit witter dan wasz die 
 relion betrifft keigen eubere hern vorbond^;? vnd ab der kaiser eyn 
 ander vrsach zu eubern h. suchen (werde) szo worde« sie in keine« 
 biestandt thon. gedenck an mich vnd due magest dym h. solchesz 
 wolle sa%en dar auff ich s. raa.yestd\. geantwort ich habe die vorschri- 
 bu«ge der bontnisz wie weidt sie sich streckt nicht gelesen der halp 
 ich s. iaa.yestdt keyne^z bericht dar von thon konde dar auif ir 
 vci&yestdt gesaugk esz ist gudt vnd genugk darvonn geredt vnd myr 
 die hant gebotten vnd myi^ abschaidt ggeben vnd der bontnisz nach 
 malsz wie vor begerdt dar auff ich siner mayestiit geantwort Ich wolle 
 die dinge laynem g. f. vnd h. szo verne mich got gesunt frist zu 
 myner wieder ankonff myt fiissz berichten vnd zwifel nicht vnd 
 zwifel nicht ' s. f. g. werden sich gancz frundelich alsz siner mayestat 
 frundt vnd der s. mayesidt ere vnd gucz gunne von vor wisslichen 
 yomemraen Lassen vnd byn do myt von s. raayesfdt abgeschaiden. 
 
 Auff dinstag nach Sebastians vnd fabianes hat myr der H. 
 crumellui- rayne abschaidt der massen ggeben dasz im s. h. der 
 konnig befolen myr an zu ssigen roynem g. h. sonderliche;? dangk zu 
 sagen vnd sien ir mayesidt xaynem g. h. myt allem fruntliche^z willen 
 auch allesz dasz zu thon dasz raynem h. zu ere« vnd guttem kome zu 
 willefare« hoich geneigk vnd ir. may«/at habe die saichen nicht 
 anderst dan trueliche;^ von myr vorstand«;^ vnd ir. raayestdt sie myr 
 vor myne person myt alien genade« geneigk dar auff gancz myncw 
 abschaidt genowme;?. geschechen aufi' die tage wie ob stehet anno 
 etc. xl in vrkunt rayne hant 
 
 D 
 
 Luodewig von baumbach 
 zu bynsfort sst. 
 Endd. ' Relation Ludove. von baumbachs aus Engelland vff d. 
 gesheene verwarnung,' 
 
 ^ szc. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE FALL OF THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 While Henry and Cromwell had been occupied in negotia- 
 tions with various German princes, the Emperor and the 
 French King had not been idle. Every day seemed to bring 
 some fresh confirmation of the unwelcome news that the two 
 monarchs were again on the most friendly terms. By the 
 middle of December the anxiety of England reached the 
 highest pitch, for the report came that Francis and Charles 
 had actually met at Loches, and that their first- interview had 
 been marked by every demonstration of cordiality ^. The 
 French King accompanied the Emperor on his journey north- 
 ward, and on New Year's Day they entered Paris together 
 amid great rejoicing. For eight days the Louvre saw a suc- 
 cession of balls, feteSj and jousts. It is said that Jean 
 Cousin was ordered to make a bust of the Emperor ^. 
 
 But if the meeting of Charles and Francis and their 
 apparently perfect amity were the cause of profound alarm 
 in England, the proximity of the two rivals furnished at the 
 same time an admirable opportunity for a last attempt to stir 
 up jealousy between them. The King, who as we have seen 
 had never even in his most anxious moments abandoned the 
 hope of fomenting discord between the two sovereigns, was 
 not the man to permit this chance to escape him. Sir 
 Thomas Wyatt, who had been recalled from Spain a short 
 time before, was now sent back to Paris to co-operate with 
 Bonner, the ambassador to France, in the endeavour to make 
 use of the situation for Henry's purposes ^. His instructions 
 to express the King's joy at the prospect of a renewal of 
 amity between Francis and Charles were of course merely 
 
 ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 717. 
 
 " Martin, vol. viii. p. 260. Cf. also GuifFrey, pp. 276-318. 
 
 ^ Cal. xiv. (ii) 524. 
 
283 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 a blind to cover his real intentions. It was not long before 
 the character of the latter was made plainly evident. Wyatt 
 wrote a full account of his proceedings to Henry on January 7, 
 1540^. In his letter he did not say whether he paid any 
 attention to the written instructions which the King had 
 previously given him or not, but reported his endeavours 
 to obtain the arrest of one Brancetour, an Englishman in 
 the Emperor's train, whom the Act of Attainder of 1539 had 
 condemned. From Wyatt's account, however, it appears that 
 the actual taking of Brancetour was a matter of secondary 
 importance, compared to the possibility it opened of stirring 
 up a quarrel between Francis and Charles. The two am- 
 bassadors had waited upon the French King, and had readily 
 obtained his consent to the arrest. Brancetour was taken, 
 but insisted that he acknowledged no master except the 
 Emperor, and was consequently not amenable to English 
 law. He applied to Charles, who of course refused to give 
 his servant up ; the matter was again brought before the 
 French King, who, being far more anxious to secure the good 
 will of the Emperor than that of Henry, gave orders for the 
 prisoner's release. At first it seemed as if the efforts of the 
 two ambassadors had merely resulted in drawing Charles and 
 Francis closer together. Chagrined at the failure of his 
 efforts, Bonner had made matters worse by rudely remon- 
 strating with the French King for permitting Brancetour to 
 be restored to liberty. The chief result of this proceeding 
 was that the English ambassador became so generally hated 
 at the French Court on account of his bluntness and dis- 
 courtesy, that Henry felt obliged to recall him in favour of 
 Sir John Wallop ^. 
 
 With the ground cleared by the retirement of his unpopular 
 colleague. Sir Thomas Wyatt was able to display to far 
 greater advantage that wealth of tact and diplomatic talent, 
 which had rendered him such an invaluable servant to Henry 
 
 ^ Cal. XV. 38. possible for Henry to carry his 
 
 ^ Cal. XV. 186. Bonner and intrigues very far, as long as the 
 
 Wyatt moreover were on very bad two rivals remained together at the 
 
 terms at this time, owing to mutual French Court. Cf. Nott's Wyatt, 
 
 jealousy. It would have been im- vol. ii. pp. 44-52. 
 
HIS FALL 283 
 
 at the Emperor's Court. He immediately saw that it was 
 useless to blame Francis, as Bonner had done, for an act 
 which the situation had forced upon him, and he forbore to 
 mention the affair of Brancetour again in the presence of the 
 French King. Instead he addressed himself to Charles, and 
 in the most careful and guarded phrases insinuated that the 
 Emperor had shown ingratitude to Henry, in obtaining the 
 Englishman's release^. Wyatt's action throughout was 
 characterized by an external courtesy quite as remarkable 
 as the previous rudeness of Bonner, and his efforts were 
 finally rewarded in a manner which exceeded the King's 
 highest expectations. He had caught the Emperor ofT his 
 guard, and the first result of his representations was to cause 
 the usually imperturbable Charles completely to lose his 
 temper. The Emperor in his vexation let several words 
 escape him, of which Wyatt was prompt to take advantage. 
 When reproached with ingratitude, Charles had turned 
 sharply on the ambassador with a few angry wordSj which 
 implied that it was impossible for him to be ' ingrate ' to 
 Henry, on account of the superiority of his own Imperial 
 rank. The Emperor confessed that ' the inferyour ' might be 
 ' ingrate to the greter,' though the term was ' skant sufferable 
 bytwene lyke^,' but hinted that an accusation of ingratitude 
 from the petty King of England against himself, the acknow- 
 ledged head of Christendom, was entirely out of place. All 
 this was reported at the English Court in early February. 
 The use which Henry made of the information is remarkable. 
 As a result of Wyatt's communications, the Duke of Norfolk 
 was sent with a special message to Francis ^ He was ordered 
 to quote all the conversation between Charles and Wyatt, 
 but so to distort the meaning of the Emperor's angry words 
 as to make it appear that Charles was using Francis' friend- 
 ship merely as a stepping-stone to an ulterior purpose, and 
 perhaps to a plan for the domination of Europe. Charles' 
 unfortunate slip about superiors and inferiors lent itself well 
 to such an interpretation. On February 15 the Duke arrived 
 
 1 Cal. XV. 161. " State Papers, vol. viii. p. 241. 
 
 ' Cal. XV. I4S, 202. 
 
284 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 at the French Court, of which Charles had already takeil' 
 leave, and was immediately received by Francis^. From 
 Norfolk's own report it is evident that he had at last 
 succeeded in creating serious distrust of the Emperor in 
 the mind of the French King, and he reported to Henry 
 that by Francis' countenance he ' dyd conjecte He was not 
 content with thEmperours wordes ^.' 
 
 Of course the intrigues of Norfolk and Wyatt were only 
 one of a number of things which contributed to cause the 
 quarrel between Charles and Francis to break out afresh. 
 The ground had been pretty well prepared for it by a series 
 of petty but annoying occurrences, which had taken place 
 during the Emperor's visit % and the efforts of the English 
 ambassadors were substantially aided by Charles' flat refusal 
 to fulfil his promises to Francis about the Low Countries 
 and Milan, after the subjugation of the revolt in Ghent had 
 once more left him a free hand. But the part which England 
 played in accelerating the rupture was in itself by no means 
 inconsiderable, and it is of the most vital importance for 
 our purposes here, to notice that the name of Cromwell 
 scarcely appears once in connexion with it. It is true that 
 after Norfolk had succeeded in driving in the first wedge 
 which started the breach between Charles and Francis, the 
 King's minister wrote two letters to Wallop *, directing him 
 to follow up the advantage already gained, but they were 
 evidently dictated by Henry, and seem to have been a 
 necessity forced upon Cromwell by the action of his rival. 
 The fact was that Cromwell's identification with the German 
 alliance had cut him off from bearing a hand in any other 
 part of the foreign policy, and that his place as a negotiator 
 with France and Spain had been usurped by his bitterest 
 enemy, the Duke of Norfolk. The latter's success at the 
 French Court had proved that the policy to which the King 
 had always pinned his faith, in opposition to Cromwell's 
 advocacy of an outside alliance, had not lost all its efficacy, 
 and the rapidly widening breach between Charles and Francis 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 222. s Cf. Gaillard, vol. iii. pp. 77, 78. 
 
 " State Papers, vol. viii. p. 257. * Letters, 338, 340, 
 
HIS FALL 285 
 
 showed that the league with Cleves was not indispensable 
 for England's safety. More than this, it now looked as if 
 the treaty with Duke William, far from being an advantage, 
 would become a positive burden. Cromwell had sought the 
 alliance in the hope of gaining valuable aid in case England 
 was attacked : it had not occurred to him that some day the 
 positions might be reversed, and that England might be 
 expected to give aid, rather than to receive it. The fact that 
 Charles, instead of planning an invasion of England with 
 Francis, had gone straight from Paris to the Low Countries ^ 
 and did not disguise his intention of regaining Gelderland, 
 rendered this disagreeable turn of affairs distinctly probable. 
 Worst of all, the King's disgust for Anne of Cleves had 
 increased so rapidly, that it was useless to attempt to conceal 
 it. Henry might pardon a political blunder alone, but when 
 combined with a matrimonial misfortune, it was more difficult 
 to forgive. Everything seemed to unite to call for a reversal 
 of the Cromwellian policy. The King's minister had aban- 
 doned as hopeless a scheme which his rival had been able 
 to show was still feasible ; he had sought a cure before he 
 was certain that prevention was impossible : the cure he had 
 prescribed, besides being unnecessary, had actually proved 
 dangerous, and lastly, the matrimonial alliance which formed 
 the basis of it had turned out a complete failure. 
 
 It was certainly the most favourable opportunity that had 
 yet presented itself for Cromwell's enemies to compass his 
 ruin, and Norfolk and Gardiner, the most inveterate of his 
 foes, were not slow to realize it. The latter, ever since 
 his recall from France in 1538, had used every effort to 
 undermine the influence of the man who had stepped into 
 the place which he had coveted for himself at Wolsey's fall. 
 In alliance with Norfolk, who returned from his errand to 
 the French King in March, 1540, he now succeeded in gather- 
 ing to himself all the influential persons at the English Court 
 who desired the downfall of their plebeian rival. It did 
 not take very long to discover that Henry was ready to 
 abandon Cromwell, and as soon as his enemies were certain 
 
 1 Bradford, pp. 515 ff. 
 
286 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 of this fact, they saw that all that was necessary for the 
 accomplishment of their designs was to devise a pretext for 
 the minister's destruction, more plausible than an accusation 
 of advocating a useless alliance and an unfortunate marriage. 
 So faithfully had Cromwell served the King's interests, how- 
 ever, that at first it seemed almost impossible to find such 
 a pretext, but the astute Gardiner was soon able to discover 
 the one weak spot in his rival's armour. It is hardly 
 necessary to state what this was. The only occasions on 
 which Henry and Cromwell had been brought into collision 
 were disputes over questions of foreign policy, and the 
 Bishop of Winchester saw that the minister's reputation as 
 advocate of an alliance with the Lutherans in opposition 
 to the King's wishes, furnished the basis for a charge of 
 supporting their religious principles in defiance of the 
 doctrines proclaimed in the Six Articles. No accusation 
 against Cromwell could have been more unjust than this. 
 We have seen that the minister himself had abandoned the 
 Lutherans by this time ; moreover even in the days when 
 he had urged an alliance with them, he had never made the 
 least concession to their religious tendencies. We call to 
 mind at once the significant words that he had spoken to 
 Baumbach in the previous January, when he had declared 
 that his theological beliefs were identical with those of the 
 King. Cromwell's religion had always been dictated by 
 political expediency ; he certainly had no sympathy for 
 Protestant theology in itself, or indeed for theology of any 
 kind which did not lead to practical results. But un- 
 fortunately the mass of the people were totally unable to 
 see this fact, and he was commonly looked upon as the 
 greatest friend and helper that the Protestants had. As 
 opposition to the Pope had given him his political greatness, 
 the Reformers had flocked to him for protection when the 
 Six Articles were passed, and their trust in him was further 
 strengthened by the inferences which they drew from his 
 foreign policy. The Bishop of Winchester was perfectly well 
 aware of the actual state of affairs, and also of the gross 
 misconception of Cromwell's true theological position which 
 
HIS FALL 287 
 
 existed in the minds of the people. If he could only catch 
 bis rival in some definite act which would justify a distinct 
 accusation of opposing the King in matters of religion, he 
 saw that the ground was already well prepared for the 
 success of his plot. The opportunity which he sought was 
 soon to present itself. 
 
 It will be remembered that in the early part of the year 
 1539 Henry had sent Dr. Barnes to Germany to conciliate 
 the King of Denmark and the Elector of Saxony. At the 
 news of the passage of the Six Articles, which of course 
 stultified all his efforts, Barnes had come back to England, 
 profoundly disgusted at the King's vacillating policy. Henry 
 felt so certain of his ground at the time of his ambassador's 
 return, that in spite of the requests of Cromwell, he con- 
 temptuously refused to grant him a hearing^. The King's 
 minister was either unable or unwilling to take the hint, which 
 his master had given him, that Barnes was no longer in 
 favour, and he was rash enough to attempt to console the 
 envoy for the ill-success of his mission, by promoting him 
 to the prebend of Lanbedye^. Cromwell had thus played 
 into his enemy's hand by an action which lent itself to the 
 precise interpretation which Gardiner was seeking. It was 
 now an easy matter to hold the minister responsible for any 
 rash act which his prot^g^ might commit, and Barnes, who 
 was one of the very extreme Lutherans, did not take long 
 to fulfil the hopes which the Bishop of Winchester had 
 entertained of his recklessness. He was foolish enough to 
 take violent exception to a sermon which Gardiner had 
 preached at Paul's Cross, in which the latter had denounced 
 certain Protestant doctrines. Preaching in the same pulpit 
 two weeks later on the same text, Barnes denied all that 
 Gardiner had said, insulted him openly, and finally threw 
 down his glove to the people, as a defiance against the 
 Bishop*. Barnes had doubtless presumed on Cromwell's 
 protection to support him in this tirade, for it seems that the 
 year before, when his position had been much stronger, 
 the King's minister had successfully defended his friend 
 
 ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 400. » Cal. xiv. (ii) 688. " Cal. xv. 306. ' 
 
288 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 against a charge of heresy by Gardiner, and had actually 
 been able to remove the latter from the Privy Council in 
 revenge for his attack on the Lutheran^. But this time 
 Barnes had gone too far, and Cromwell, whose influence was 
 by no means what it had been, was unable to save him again. 
 The Bishop of Winchester complained to the King, who was 
 scandalized, and ordered Barnes to be examined before him ; 
 the Lutheran was utterly worsted in a theological discussion ; 
 he was forced to recant and beg Gardiner's pardon. This he 
 did with such ill grace and so many contradictions that he 
 was arrested and placed in the Tower with the others who 
 had supported him. 
 
 All this happened in the last week of March. It was 
 perfectly obvious to those who had any real knowledge of 
 the trend things were taking, that Gardiner had made his 
 complaint far more with the idea of harming Cromwell, than 
 of injuring Barnes himself, and the fact that the minister had 
 not been able to rescue his friend a second time led many 
 to predict his speedy downfall ^. But Cromwell managed to 
 stave off the ultimately inevitable catastrophe for two months 
 more, and to maintain his ascendancy until the end of May. 
 He certainly had no delusions as to the gravity of the 
 situation in which he found himself, and he fully realized that 
 his best chance of safety lay in making a humble acknow- 
 ledgement of his error in favouring the Lutheran preacher. 
 Though there is no actual record that he apologized to the 
 Bishop of Winchester, there is every internal evidence of it. 
 That at least a temporary reconciliation took place between 
 him and Gardiner is proved by a letter of Sir John Wallop 
 which informs us that on March 30 the Bishop of Winchester 
 dined at London with the Lord Privy Seal, and that they 
 ' were more than iiij hour^j and opened theyre hart« and so 
 concluded that and therbe truthe or honesty in them not only 
 all displeasures be forgotton, but also in thayre hert^j be 
 now perfight intier frend^j^.' It would have been hardly 
 possible to bring about even a temporary truce between these 
 two men without an apology on one side or the other, and 
 
 ' Cal. xiv. (ii) 750 (p. 279). ' Cal. xv. 486. ^ Cal. xv. 429. 
 
HIS FALL 289 
 
 it is not likely that Gardiner, backed as he was by the King, 
 would have been the one to make it. In order to maintain 
 his very precarious position, Cromwell had been forced to 
 grovel before a man, whom two years before he could have 
 ordered about to his heart's content. 
 
 But it had been one of the greatest secrets of Cromwell's 
 success that he had never been too proud to take any step, 
 however humiliating, which he deemed necessary for his 
 profit or safety. Nevertheless it is doubtful if his apology to 
 the Bishop of Winchester, unaided by any outside occurrence, 
 would have been sufficient to prevent his immediate over- 
 throw. The month of April, however, saw two events, one 
 at home and the other abroad, which further raised his hopes 
 and encouraged him to renewed efforts to regain his influence. 
 The first of these was the assemblage of Parliament, an 
 occasion on wljich Cromwell had always been able to make 
 himself particularly useful to the King. He was not slow 
 to realize the opportunity that was offered him, and he 
 laboured with all his might for the passage of the measures 
 which he knew his master desired. He made an opening 
 speech in the House of Lords, in which he said that the King 
 wished concord above all things and desired to suppress all 
 dissension concerning religious doctrines ; and he emphasized 
 his words by providing for the appointment of a commission 
 to correct all abuses and enforce respect for the Scriptures ^. 
 What was accomplished in this direct endeavour to extirpate 
 heresy is less important than a move of a more practical 
 nature, which bears every evidence of being planned by 
 Cromwell. The ancient military and religious order of the 
 Knights of St. John of Jerusalem was the sole remaining 
 stronghold of monasticism in England that had been suffered 
 to escape the onslaught of the King's minister. To complete 
 the work of destruction which he had begun their downfall 
 was essential, and an Act to abolish them and confiscate their 
 property finally passed both Houses after a prolonged 
 debate ^. A complicated Taxation Bill, which was carried 
 through at the same time, seemed also to bear the stamp 
 
 ^ Lords' Journal, vol. i. p. 129. ^ 32 Hen. VIII, c. 24. 
 
 MERRTMAN. I U 
 
290 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 of Cromwellian genius. Such services to the Crown had not 
 been suffered to go unrewarded, for on April 1 8 those who 
 had prophesied the ruin of the King's minister were amazed 
 by his being created Earl of Essex and Great Chamberlain 
 of England ^. The French ambassador, who only seven days 
 b'efore had reported to Francis that Cromwell was tottering to 
 his fall, now confessed that the new-made Earl ' 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.' 
 
 The other event which gave Cromwell a momentary ray of 
 hope was the arrival of a piece of news from France, which 
 at first looked like a vindication of his foreign policy as 
 against that of the King. Early in April it was rumoured 
 in London that the French were fortifying Ardres, and the 
 King's minister wrote a letter to Wallop on the twelfth 
 instructing him to demand an explanation from Francis^, 
 who (according to the ambassador's report) replied that 
 ' He knewe not but that He myght aswell buyld there or 
 fortefye uppon his borders as the Kinges Highnes dothe at 
 Callais, Guysnes, and other his fortresses ^.' These words, 
 though spoken ' very gently and nothing in collour,' appear 
 to have caused profound anxiety at the English Court, and 
 Henry's faith in the success of his plans of fomenting discord 
 between Charles and Francis received a rude shock. Every- 
 thing which tended to justify the alliance with Cleves 
 as a defensive measure was of course welcome news to 
 Cromwell, who privately must have been as much encouraged 
 by the messages from France as others were dismayed by 
 them. But the satisfaction which he derived from the 
 report of the fortifications at Ardres was only of short 
 duration. There were no further hostile developments for 
 the present, and an announcement was soon received from 
 the Netherlands which offered reasons for the abandonment 
 of the alliance with Cleves far more cogent than those 
 which the news from France furnished for its continu- 
 ance. It was reported that the Emperor, immediately after 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 540, 541. ^ Cal. xv. 543. 
 
 ^ State Papers, vol. viii. p. 323. 
 
HIS FALL 291 
 
 the subjugation of the revolt of Ghent, had repeated his 
 demands for the cession of Gelderland'^ by Dulce William, 
 and there seemed every probability that in case of refusal 
 he would enforce them by the sword. The bearing of this 
 move on the alliance of England with Cleves has been 
 already indicated. We have seen that when Charles first 
 turned his steps from Paris to the Low Countries, Cromwell 
 probably realized for the first time that the league on which 
 he had based all his hopes might actually work to England's 
 disadvantage, and that Cleves might be the sole gainer from 
 it. The news from the Netherlands was virtually a confirma- 
 tion of the minister's gravest fears. The prospect that he 
 would soon be called upon to defend an ally whom he had 
 expected to defend him, and for whom he had no real regard, 
 must have been intolerable to Henry, and the state of his 
 relations to Anne of Cleves at the time tended of course 
 to increase rather than to diminish his vexation. Add to this 
 the fact that tidings of a somewhat disquieting nature kept 
 coming in from Scotland and Ireland, the blame for which 
 could easily be made to fall on Cromwell, and one can well 
 believe that any gains the King's minister may have made in 
 the Parliament which had met in April were more than 
 counterbalanced by the losses he had sustained in the course 
 of affairs abroad. Norfolk and Gardiner probably siezed this 
 favourable opportunity to weave further plots against their 
 hated rival, and to devise fresh measures to poison the King's 
 ear against him^. But even had the enmity of these men 
 been turned into friendship, Cromwell's political blunders had 
 got him into a position from which nothing could extricate 
 him. He had incurred the enmity of a master who never 
 forgave, and his ultimate ruin could only be a question of 
 time. 
 
 The events of the month of May were but foreshadowings 
 of the end. On the ninth the King summoned Cromwell 
 
 ^ Heidrich, p. 43. House. Katherine Howard was 
 
 ^ Soames, vol. ii. p. 408, informs among the company assembled on 
 
 us that ' in order to fan the rising this occasion, and she then achieved 
 
 flame Gardiner invited the King the conquest of her amorous sove- 
 
 to an entertainment at Winchester reign's heart.' 
 
 U 2 
 
V 
 
 292 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 to a council, at which the definite abandonment of the 
 minister's policy must have been openly discussed^. Records 
 of the conference are not preserved to us, but the result of it 
 was that two days later Cromwell was forced much against 
 his will to write a letter to Pate, the new ambassador to 
 the Emperor, directing him to take steps to conciliate Charles 
 and hinting that the alliance with Cleves might be thrown 
 over at any moment ^. The latter part of the month brought 
 with it further confirmation of the minister's impending fate. 
 Duke William had sent ambassadors to the English Court, 
 to ask the advice of his powerful ally in regard to the answer 
 he should give to the Emperor's demands for the cession of 
 Gelderland. Henry treated the envoys with marked coldness, 
 and replied to their requests in the most non-committal 
 manner : he could do nothing for the Duke of Cleves, he said, 
 until he had more explicit information concerning the rights 
 and wrongs of the case ^. The ground on which Cromwell's 
 feet rested was being cut away on all sides, and yet Marillac, 
 in a letter of the first of June, seemed to think that the arrest 
 of Dr. Wilson for having 'Popish leanings' was an indication 
 that the minister and his few remaining adherents still retained 
 some influence. He acknowledged, however, that things 
 changed so rapidly that no person could tell what was going 
 to happen, only he was certain that one party or the other 
 must presently succumb *. 
 
 The catastrophe came like a thunderbolt, less than two 
 weeks after Marillac had written this letter. An entry in the 
 Journal of the House of Lords on June lo reads : ' Hodie 
 Vicegerens Regius .... Comes Essex in hora pomeridiana 
 per Dominum Cancellarium et alios Dominos in Arcano 
 Domini Nostri Regis Consilio, ex Palatio Regio Domini 
 Regis Westm. hora tertia pomeridiana super Accusationem 
 Criminis lese Majestatis missus est in Arcem Loitdmens.^' 
 This bald statement is confirmed by letters from Marillac to 
 Francis and Montmorency at the time ", but a much more 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 658. * Cal. xv. 736, 737. 
 
 - Letters, 345. ° Lords' Journal, voL i. p. 143. 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 735. * Cal. xv. 766, 767. 
 
HIS FALL 293 
 
 striking account of the arrest is contained in another letter 
 from the French ambassador to the Constable, written two 
 weeks later. It tells us that ' as soon as the Captain of the 
 Guard declared his charge to make him prisoner, Cromwell 
 in a rage 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, and that 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. Thereupon some said he was 
 a traitor, others that he should be judged according to the 
 laws he had made, which were so sanguinary that often words 
 spoken inadvertently with good intention had been constituted 
 high ti-eason. The Duke of Norfolk, having reproached him 
 with some " villennyes " done by him, snatched off the order of 
 St. George, which he bore on his neck, and the Admiral, to 
 show himself as great an enemy in adversity as he had been 
 thought a friend in prosperity, untied the Garter. Then by 
 a door which opens upon the water, he was put in a boat and 
 taken to the Tower, without the people of this town suspect- 
 ing it, until they saw all the King's archers under Mr. Cheyney 
 at the door of the suspected prisoner's house, where they 
 made an inventory of his goods which were not of such 
 value as people thought, although too much for a "com- 
 paignon de telle estoffe." The money was ;£'7,ooo, equal to 
 28,000 crs., and the silver plate, including crosses, chalices, 
 and other spoils of the Church, might be as much more. 
 These moveables were before night taken to the King's 
 treasury, a sign that they will not be restored '.' 
 
 On the day of the arrest, a royal messenger was sent to the 
 French ambassador, to tell him that he must not be amazed 
 at what had happened, for though common ignorant people 
 spoke of it 'variously,' the King said that he was deter- 
 mined that Marillac should know the truth. Henry stated 
 that while he was trying 'by all possible means to lead 
 back religion to the way of truth, Cromwell, as attached to the 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 804, and Kaulek, pp. 193, 194. 
 
294 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 German Lutherans, had always favoured the doctors who 
 preached such erroneous opinions, and hindered those who 
 preached the contrary, and that recently warned by some of 
 his principal servants to reflect that he was working against 
 the intention of the King and of the Acts of Parliament, he 
 had betrayed himself and said he hoped to suppress the old 
 preachers and have only the new, adding that the affair would 
 soon be brought to such a pass 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^.' 
 From this and from another letter written by the council to 
 Wallop at the same time ^ it appears that the King had been 
 able to devise no more plausible pretext for the destruction of 
 his minister than that which had been suggested by the 
 Bishop of Winchester, a pretext which as we have seen was 
 false and unjust in every respect, but convenient in many 
 ways, especially as it was sure to win the approval of the mass 
 of the people, who looked upon Cromwell as a true Protestant 
 and hated him as such, not being able to see that it was 
 solely owing to political motives, that he had been connected 
 with the Reformers ^. But the fact that the charge on which 
 
 1 Cal. XV. 766, and Kaulek, p. his face by good wittenes, that, if 
 
 189. the King and all his Realme wold 
 
 ^ This letter stated that Crom- tume and vary from his opinions, 
 
 well being put in great trust by he wold fight in the feld in his 
 
 the King in matters of religion oune personne, with his sworde in 
 
 had 'not only of his sensual his hande against Him and all 
 
 appetite, wrought clene contrary to other ; adding that if he lyved a 
 
 this His Graces most godly entent, yere or two, he trusted to bring 
 
 secretly and indirectly advauncing thinges to that frame, that it shuld 
 
 thone of thextremes and leaving the not lye in the Kinges power to 
 
 meane indifferent true and vertuous resist or let it, if He wold ; bynding 
 
 waye, which His Majestie sought his wordes with such othes, and 
 
 and soo entierly desired ; but also making suche gesture and demon- 
 
 hathe shewed himself soo fervently stration with his armes, that it 
 
 bent to the mayntenaunce of that might wel appere that he had no 
 
 his oultrage, that he hath not lesse fyxed in his harte, thenne 
 
 spared most prively, most traitor- was uttered with his mouth.' State 
 
 ously, to divise howe to contynue Papers, vol. viii. pp. 349, 350. 
 the same and plainly in termes to " Henry, however, used every 
 
 saye, as it hathe been justified to means in his power to support the 
 
HIS FALL - 295 
 
 he was convicted was totally unjustifiable does not in any- 
 way imply that Cromwell was wrongly condemned. There 
 were other perfectly valid reasons for his punishment, which, 
 however, it was quite impossible to bring forward against him, 
 simply because the King had shared his guilt. If the number 
 of innocent persons, whom the minister's influence had brought 
 to the block, be not a sufficient warrant for his conviction and 
 execution, it would be difficult to find a character in English 
 history who merited the death penalty. But all these crimes 
 could not be laid to his charge because the King had 
 supported him in them, and he was arrested instead on the 
 false accusation of opposition to the master to whose service 
 he had devoted his life. 
 
 Cranmer was the only man who dared to say a word to the 
 King on Cromwell's behalf. He wrote a pathetic letter to 
 Henry the day after the arrest, expressing his wonder and 
 distress that one whom he had deemed so good and so faithful, 
 should be accused of treason, but in vain^. The fallen 
 minister was not even permitted a trial in which he could be 
 heard in his own defence. That terrible engine of extra- 
 legal destruction, the attainder, by which so many of his own 
 enemies had been annihilated, was used as a swifter and surer 
 means to bring him to the block. The Act of Parliament 
 which attainted him was read in the House of Lords just one 
 week after his arrest ^ : it simply enumerated various acts and 
 speeches which had been laid to his charge, as indicating that 
 he had plotted to make himself more powerful than the King 
 in matters both religious and poUtical, and stated that he had 
 thus incurred the charge of high treason, for which he was 
 condemned to die. He was to suffer as a heretic or a traitor 
 at the King's pleasure, and forfeit all property held since 
 
 main accusation, with other charges two years before, and probably as 
 
 of a different nature, which if pos- a result of the letters of Chapuys) 
 
 sible were even more unjustifiable. that Cromwell had intended to 
 
 The King was not ashamed to marry the Princess Mary and to 
 
 write to Wallop in France to try make himself King. Cal. xv. 792, 
 
 and get confirmation of the old 801, 842. 
 
 rumour (circulated on the Continent ' Cal. xv. 770. 
 
 by a certain Portuguese ambassador ^ Lords" Journal, vol. i. p. 145. 
 
296 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 March 31, 1538. That Cromwell was deprived of all titles 
 and prerogatives on the day of his arrest, and was 
 called only ' Thomas Cromwell, shearman,' and that his 
 servants were forbidden to wear his livery, led Marillac to 
 think that he would not be beheaded, as befitted a lord, 
 but would be ' dragged • up as an ignoble person, and 
 afterwards hanged and quartered '.' This impression was 
 current two weeks later, for Norfolk told Marillac on July 6, 
 that Cromwell's end would be ' the most ignominious in use 
 in the country ^.' It was not until the day of his execution 
 that ' grace was made to him upon the method of his death,' 
 and beheading was substituted for a more painful and igno- 
 minious penalty ^ For though his arrest had been imme- 
 diately followed by his attainder, execution was delayed for 
 six weeks more, in order that the King might make use of him 
 for a last time, to gain an end which Cromwell had successfully 
 secured for him once before, namely a divorce from a hated 
 Queen. 
 
 From the day of his arrest, his execution had been a fore- 
 gone conclusion ; there was no chance of ultimate salvation 
 for the fallen minister. But as a drowning man clutches at 
 a straw to save himself from death, so Cromwell, at Henry's 
 request, wrote a letter, which he must have known would 
 be useless, to say what he could on his own behalf*. 
 The letter speaks for itself: its denials of the charges are not 
 as frequent as the acknowledgements of guilt and pleas for 
 mercy, but it produced no effect on the angry King. What 
 the injudicious words spoken before Throgmorton and Riche 
 were, it is impossible to tell ; they were probably simply 
 sentences into which a treasonable intent was read, as into 
 those mentioned in the attainder ; the ' secrete matier ' which 
 Cromwell was accused of revealing without leave may well 
 have been a project of Henry's to get rid of Anne, which for 
 many reasons it was expedient for him to keep secret, until he 
 was certain that he could free himself by one blow from the 
 marriage which by this time had become intolerable to him. 
 
 • Cal. XV. 804. "^ Cal. xv. 847. ' Cal. xv. 926. 
 
 * Letters, 348. 
 
HIS FALL 297 
 
 To this purpose all the King's energies were now bent, and 
 conscious that his fallen minister had known more of his 
 relations with Anne than any other, he sent him in the end 
 of June a list of questions on the subject, couched in 
 such judicious language, that if Cromwell gave the replies he 
 confidently looked for, they would supply cogent reasons for 
 his divorce ^ He was sure, he said, that now that Cromwell 
 was condemned to die, he would tell the truth and not damn 
 his soul also, by bearing false witness at the last ^. Whether 
 Henry's assumption here was correct or not, it is impossible 
 to tell. Cromwell knew of course that his chance of pardon 
 was almost nothing, but he was not so foolish as to throw it 
 away absolutely ; he also knew that the King's heart's desire 
 was a divorce from Anne, and he saw that his only hope lay 
 in aiding Henry to his utmost to free himself from her. Nor 
 was Cromwell the sort of man to whom dying with a lie on 
 his lips would mean very much ; his whole interest was 
 absorbed in the endeavour to make the most of the one very 
 faint chance of escape that was offered to him. Hence it is 
 possible that the testimony he bore in this case may not have 
 been strictly true. He appears to have written two letters in 
 answer to the King's interrogatories ; one of them is in the 
 library of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield House ; the 
 other, badly mutilated, in the British Museum "\ Both of 
 them are filled with abject pleas for mercy, and one of them, 
 which was carried to the King by Cromwell's faithful Ralph 
 Sadler, moved Henry so much, that it is said that he com- 
 manded it to be read to him thrice *. The two letters tell the 
 same story in slightly different words : they give a full account 
 of everything that Cromwell had seen of Henry's relation to 
 Anne, since they first met at Rochester. They dilate on the 
 
 ' Cal. XV. 822. than by his sympathy for his fallen 
 
 ^ Cal. XV. 825. minister. Certainly there is no 
 
 ' Letters, 349, 350. reason to think the closing scene 
 
 * Foxe, vol. ii. p. 433. If this of the ' Life and Death of Thomas 
 
 story be true, the interest which the Lord Cromwell,' in which a reprieve 
 
 King evinced in Cromwell's letter is brought from the King by Ralph 
 
 is to be explained rather by his Sadler after Cromwell's head had 
 
 anxiety concerning his divorce, fallen, has any foundation in fact. 
 
298 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 King's disgust at the first sight of the ' great Flanders mare/ 
 tell how he endeavoui-ed to put off the wedding, alleging as 
 his excuse the previous engagement of Anne and the Duke of 
 Lorraine's son, and finally quote a conversation of Henry and 
 Cromwell, the day after the marriage, in which the King 
 appears to have informed his minister that consummation had 
 not followed. The truth of this last statement is apparently 
 corroborated by a letter which Anne sent to her brother 
 a few days later ^. Experience of the very unscrupulous 
 methods of Henry VIH, especially when matrimonial issues 
 were at stake, leads the reader, however, at least to recognize 
 the possibility that Anne may have written this letter under 
 compulsion and the threat of death if she refused. The testi- 
 mony with which the King had armed himself for the struggle 
 he anticipated over gaining a divorce from his fourth wife, 
 was thus all of it obtained under circumstances that certainly 
 cast grave suspicions on its veracity ; and the modern 
 student may well be excused for refusing to accept it with 
 that pleasingly implicit faith which the Convocations and 
 Parliaments of this period almost invariably placed in the 
 statements of the sovereign ^. 
 
 Certainly there was little cause for Henry to doubt his own 
 ability to wrest a decision of the nullity of his marriage from 
 clergy. Lords, and Commons. Ten years of Cromwell's 
 masterfulness had been enough to convince thejm of the 
 absolute futility of opposing the King in any matter on 
 which he had set his heart. The evidence wrung from 
 the fallen minister almost under the shadow of the scaffold, 
 and the confirmatory letter elicited from Anne, coupled 
 with a ' breve trew and parfaict declaraczon ' from the King 
 himself ^ were quite sufficient to cause Convocation after 
 
 ^ Cal. XV. 898. accept as such at the time of the 
 
 ^ It is somewhat significant to trial of his first divorce. This is 
 
 note that in this case Henry merely one of those suspiciously 
 
 had practically acknowledged facts convenient changes of opinion one 
 
 considered by the canonists as encounters so often in dealing with 
 
 ' sufficient proof of consummation the personal history of Henry VIII. 
 
 in the case of Arthur and Katherine, Cf. Burnet, vol. i. pp. 163-4. 
 
 and that the King had been glad to •' Cal. xv. 825. 
 
HIS FALL 299 
 
 three days of debate finally to agree on the judgement that 
 the union was unlawful, and to send their decision to Par- 
 liament on July 12. An Act to proclaim the marriage null 
 and void from the beginning was hurried through the Houses 
 with all possible speed, and on the 14th it was passed ^. From 
 that time onward the ' lady Anne was treated as a sister by 
 the King ' ; she was suffered to live in retirement, adequate 
 lands and money were apportioned to her, and she remained 
 in England, contented and happy that execution had not been 
 substituted for divorce -. The Duke of Cleves was naturally 
 enraged at the treatment of his sister, and resolutely refused 
 to acknowledge that she had been honourably dealt with ; but 
 he knew that he was too weak to avenge the insult, and 
 coldly promised that the nullification of the marriage would 
 not cause him to ' departe from his devotion leage and 
 amytie ' with the King of England ^. 
 
 The story of Cromwell's arrest, followed by the report of 
 the divorce of Anne of Cleves, was also immediately com- 
 municated to France and Spain. Francis appears to have 
 received the news of the first with unfeigned joy, and was 
 not slow to signify to Henry his satisfaction at the unex- 
 pected turn of affairs *. He wrote again to the King a little 
 later, asserting that Cromwell had adjusted a dispute over 
 some prizes taken by the ships of the governor of Picardy, 
 the Sieur de Rochepot, in such a way that he had derived per- 
 sonal gain from the transaction ; this complaint was sent to 
 Cromwell in the Tower, and drew from him the reply con- 
 tained in the last existing letter which he wrote ^. Francis' 
 enthusiasm at the ruin of a minister whom he had such reason 
 to hate, seems to have been somewhat diijiinished when he 
 learned that Anne's marriage had been dissolved, as he naturally 
 saw that this step would immediately put England and Spain 
 on a better footing. An interesting account of the ambassador 
 Carne's breaking the news to Francis, is given in a letter of 
 
 ' Lords' Journal, pp. 154, 155. attainder confiscated to the use of 
 
 "^ Cal. XV. 899, 901, 953. Part of the Crown. Rymer, vol. xiv. p. 713. 
 
 Anne's income was derived from ° State Papers, vol. viii. p. 421. 
 
 the manor of Canbery, previously * Cal. xv. 765, 792, 794, 841. 
 
 owned by Cromwell, and at his '■' Letters, 351. 
 
300 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Wallop's to Henry of July lo. Francis, as it appears, ' fett 
 a gret sighte,' as if reflecting on the vacillating methods of his 
 ' nere and dere brother,' but finally assented that Henry's 
 ' owne conscience shuld be judge therein ^.' The French 
 King, though he greatly rejoiced in Cromwell's fall, was 
 evidently somewhat taken aback by the first result of the 
 consummation of his hopes. Charles showed none of the 
 same outward enthusiasm, when Pate declared to him the news 
 of Cromwell's arrest ; he did not even send a message, but 
 left the ambassador in a later letter to the King to supple- 
 ment his silence with his own approval. His replies to the 
 news of the divorce of Anne were likewise calm, but he cer- 
 tainly was much relieved by what he had heard ^. The 
 common opinion which the sudden reversal of Cromwell's 
 policy had caused on the Continent seems to have been, as 
 Fate wrote to Norfolk on July 31, that Henry had 'lost the 
 hartes of the Electors of thEmpire ' but had ' contravailed 
 thEmprour or the Frenche King in there places ^.' 
 
 On July 37 the Parliament closed, having finished the 
 work that the King had mapped out for it. Since Crom- 
 well's arrest it had practically undone all that his foreign 
 policy of the two past years had accomplished, by nullifying 
 the marriage of Henry and Anne. The rest of its proceed- 
 ings are unimportant, except perhaps' the attainder of Barnes, 
 Garret, and Jerome, the Lutheran preachers, who were 
 convicted of heresy and sentenced to die at the stake*. 
 With the divorce from Anne secured, and those whom the 
 minister had favoured at home condemned, there was now no 
 longer any impediment to the completion of the final act of 
 the tragedy, and on July 28 ' Thomas Cromwell, shearman,' 
 was led forth to execution. In a letter to Francis, Marillac 
 simply mentions the fact of his death ', but a more complete 
 account of the end of the great minister is fortunately pre- 
 served to us in the chronicles of Holinshed and Hall, and the 
 history of Foxe ". 
 
 ^ State Papers, vol. viii. p. 392. " Cal. xv. 926. 
 
 = Cal. XV. 794, 811. ' Holinshed, p. 817; Hall,p.839; 
 
 " State Papers, vol. viii. p. 412. Foxe, p. 433. 
 
 * Cal. XV. 498, p. 217. 
 
HIS FALL 301 
 
 From the stories of all these chroniclers it appears that 
 Cromwell on the scafifold made an address to the people, 
 declaring the faith in which he died. That his speech was 
 printed and publicly circulated is attested by Pole ; and the 
 fact that Holinshed, Hall, and Foxe give it in almost exactly 
 the same words corroborates the truth of the Cardinal's 
 statement. Pole, however, goes on to say that though at first 
 he accepted the printed speech as a true version of Cromwell's 
 words, he later learned from trustworthy persons that what 
 Cromwell had actually said was something very different'. 
 The words of the speech certainly have the appearance of 
 being composed beforehand and forced upon Cromwell's 
 dying lips. He confessed that he had done wrong, aslted 
 forgiveness of his King, and finally asserted that he died in 
 the Catholic Faith, not doubting in any article of his faith, 
 ' no nor doubting in any Sacrament of the Churcli ^.' This 
 last statement was certainly untrue ; nor would it have been 
 in any way less false, if Cromwell had said that he died a true 
 Protestant ^. His religious beliefs were, as far as can be dis- 
 covered, absolutely nothing when disconnected from practical 
 ends, and he probably made his last speech at the King's 
 command, either to save himself from a more shameful death 
 than beheading, or else, as is quite probable, to avert the ruin 
 of his son Gregory, who he perhaps feared would fall with 
 him. On this point, however, he need not have had any 
 apprehension ; Gregory Cromwell, perhaps on account of 
 his fortunate marriage with the aunt of Prince Edward, 
 appeared to be in as high favour as ever *, and the title of 
 Baron Cromwell, which his father forfeited at his attainder, 
 was regranted to the young man by patent, Dec. i8, 1540 ^. 
 
 ' Cal. xvi. 40. ' Cal. xvi. 379 (34). Gregory 
 
 ^ Cf. Appendix at the end of this Cromwell died in 1557, and was 
 
 chapter. succeeded by his eldest son Henry. 
 
 ' Cf. Collier, vol. ii. p. 181. The latter's grandson Thomas, 
 ' I readily grant Cromwell was no fourth Baron Cromwell, was created 
 Papist at his Death. But then, it Earl Ardglass in the Irish peer- 
 is pretty plain he was no Protestant age, April ij, 1645. The earldom 
 neither.' of Ardglass expired in 1687, and 
 
 * Cal. XV. 940. the barony of Cromwell became 
 
302 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 Besides this speech, which has given historians so much 
 trouble, Hall makes mention of the fact that Cromwell ' made 
 his praier, which was long, but not so long as both Godly 
 and learned ^.' This prayer is given in full in Foxe, and, as 
 it reads there, it certainly justifies the use of the epithets that 
 Hall applied to it ^. Whether Foxe's words were Cromwell's 
 words, or whether Cromwell's words were his own, and not 
 those of the King which were given him to speak, is however 
 entirely another matter. It is unfortunate that we have 
 no more credible authority than the martyrologist on this 
 point. Cromwell's prayer, as he gives it, was certainly 
 that of a man who humbly acknowledged his faults, and threw 
 himself solely on the mercy of God ; but the words which he 
 spoke are suspiciously devout, for those of a man to whom 
 religion mattered so little. 
 
 'And thus,' says Foxe, 'his Prayer made, after he had 
 godly and lovingly exhorted them that were about him on 
 the Scaffold, he quietly committed his Soul into the hands 
 of God, and so patiently suffered the stroke of the Ax, by 
 a ragged and butcherly Miser, which very ungodly performed 
 his Office V 
 
 dormant in 1709. Life of Thomas spuso a morir, pidiendo al verdugo, 
 
 Cromwell, in the Dictionary of Uamado Gurrea, para no sentir di- 
 
 National Biography, vol. xiii. p. 202. latada pena, le cortasse la cabega 
 
 ^ Hall, p. 839. de vn golpe. Tendiose, pues sobre 
 
 ^ Cf. Appendix at the end of this el madero, y recibiole terrible, mu- 
 
 chapter. riendo aquel que nu«ca deuiera 
 
 ^ Foxe, vol. ii. p. 434. Cf. Mendes nacer, por quien Inglaterra desde 
 
 Silva, pp. 34, 35: 'Acabadas de entonces se abrasa en infernal 
 
 pronunciar estas palabras, se di- incendio de heregias.' 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 PASSAGES FROM FOXE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 
 Vol. ii. p. 433. 
 
 ' A true Christian confession of the L. Cromwel at his death.' 
 
 ' I am come hither to die, and not to purge my self, as some think 
 peradventure that I will. For if I should so do, I were a very 
 wretch and a Miser. I am by the Law condemned to die, and thank 
 my Lord God, that hath appointed me this death for mine Offence. 
 For sithence the time that I have had years of discretion, I have 
 lived a sinner, and offended my Lord God, for the which I ask him 
 heartily forgiveness. And it is not unknown to many of you, that 
 I have been a great Traveller in this AVorld, and being but of a base 
 degree, was called to high estate, and sithence the time I came 
 thereunto I have offended my Prince, for the which I ask him 
 heartily forgiveness, and beseech you all to pray to God with me, 
 that he will forgive me. And now I pray you that be here, to bear 
 me record, I die in the Catholick Faith, not doubting in any Article 
 of my Faith, no nor doubting in any Sacrament of the Church. 
 Many have slandered me and reported that I have been a bearer 
 of such as have maintained evil Opinions, which is untrue. But 
 I confess, that like as God by his holy Spirit doth instruct us in 
 the Truth, so the Devil is ready to seduce us, and I have been 
 seduced ; but bear me witness that I die in the Catholick Faith of 
 the holy Church ; and I heartily desire you to pray for the Kings 
 Grace, that he may long live with you in health and prosperity; 
 and that after him his Son Prince Edward that goodly Impe may 
 long Reign over you. And once again I desire you to pray for 
 me, that so long as Hfe remaineth in this flesh, I waver nothing in my 
 Faith.' 
 
 ' The Prayer of the Lord Cromwel at his Death.' 
 
 ' O Lord Jesus, which art the only health of all men living, and 
 the everlasting life of them which die in thee ; I wretched sinner 
 do submit my self wholly unto thy most blessed will, and being 
 sure that the thing cannot Perish which is committed unto thy 
 
304 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 mercy, willingly now I leave this frail and wicked flesh, in sure hope 
 that thou wilt in better wise restore it to me again at the last day in 
 the resurrection of the just. I beseech thee most merciful Lord 
 Jesus Christ, that thou wilt by thy grace make strong my Soul against 
 all temptations, and defend me with the Buckler of thy mercy against 
 all the assaults of the Devil. I see and knowledge that there is in 
 my self no hope of Salvation, but all my confidence, hope and trust 
 is in thy most merciful goodness. I have no merits nor good works 
 which I may alledge before thee. Of sins and evil works (alas) 
 I see a great heap ; but yet through thy mercy I trust to be in th.e 
 number of them to whom thou wilt not impute their sins ; but wilt 
 take and accept me for righteous and just, and to be the inheritor 
 of everlasting life. Thou merciful Lord wert born for my sake, thou 
 didst suffer both hunger and thirst for my sake ; thou didst teach, 
 pray, and fast for my sake ; all thy holy Actions and Works thou 
 wroughtest for my sake; thou sufferedst most grievous Pains and 
 , Torments for my sake ; finally, thou gavest thy most precious Body 
 
 'W- wfOW^Y g^jjjj (]-jy Blood to be shed on the Cross for my sake. Now most 
 merciful Saviour, let all these things profit me, which hast given 
 thy self also for me. Let thy Blood cleanse and wash away the 
 spots and fulness of my sins. Let thy ri ghteousness hide and cover 
 my_unriglil;eousness. Let the merit of thy Passion and blood 
 shedding be satisfaction for my sins. Give me. Lord, thy grace, 
 that the Faith of my salvation in thy Blood waver not in me, but 
 may ever be firm and constant. That the hope of thy mercy and 
 life everlasting never decay in me, that love wax not cold in me. 
 Finally, that the weakness of my flesh be not overcome with the fear 
 of death. Grant me, merciful Saviour, that when death hath shut up 
 the eyes of my Body, yet the eyes of my Soul may still behold and 
 look upon thee, and when death hath taken away the use of my 
 Tongue, yet my heart may cry and say unto thee, Lord into thy 
 hands I commend my Soul, Lord Jesus receive my spirit, Amen.' 
 
 xs QtJp*»»-^ 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE SVORK OF THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 It is inevitable that there should be the widest divergence 
 of opinion concerning every great figure in Reformation his- 
 tory, and it is idle to attempt to form an estimate, of the 
 character and work of Thomas Cromwell that will satisfy 
 those who take different views of the great struggle during 
 which his life was lived. But Catholics and Protestants must 
 agree on the fundamental and permanent nature of the changes 
 which he wrought : whether his work was good or bad, no one 
 can deny his success in fulfilling his life's aim as declared 
 to Cavendish on the All Hallows Day when he rode forth to 
 London 'to make or to marre.' He was the first chief 
 minister that England had ever had, who was base-born and 
 yet not a cleric. He stood completely outside the great 
 religious movement of his time, and only made use of it to 
 further his own political ends. He came at a time when 
 things were in an unsettled state and ready for a change : 
 his personality, emotionless, practical, stern, impressed itself 
 on every phase of the national life. It was not alone in' 
 Parliament, Convocation, or Privy Council that he reigned 
 supreme ; on every department of the government service 
 the stamp of his individual genius remains indelibly fixed. 
 The permanence of his work was largely due to the way in 
 which he clinched every reform which he introduced. He 
 followed up the separation from Rome by attacking in turn 
 the bishops, clergy, and friars, and by suppressing the monas- 
 teries. He obtained the support of the King in almost every 
 measure which he invented, and then forced Parliament formally 
 to legalize it. His action was in no case inefi"ective ; the im- 
 mediate result of it was almost always the attainment of the 
 goal at which he aimed. 
 
 74ERR1MAN. I X 
 
306 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 To the student of the present day, however, who is enabled 
 to survey the decade of Cromwell's rule after a lapse of more 
 than three and a half centuries^ the immediate effects of his 
 measures fade into the background and lose their importance, 
 in the face of later and far greater developments. The latter 
 were not always the results Cromwell wished to attain ; in 
 many cases they were ends which, if he could have foreseen, 
 Cromwell would have been the last person to promote. 
 They came years later, indirectly, as it were, and were rendered 
 possible only by the lapse of time, the influence of other 
 statesmen, and the growth and progress of civil and religious 
 liberty, but none the less were they due to the impulse of 
 Thomas Cromwell. By following out the effect of a few of 
 the more important steps of his policy, it will not be difficult 
 to see what some of these later developments were. 
 
 Let us take in the first place his action in rejecting the 
 authority of the See of Rome. Cromwell advised the King 
 to shake off his allegiance to the Pope, solely because he saw 
 that a divorce from Katherine of Aragon could never be ob- 
 tained from Clement VII, as long as the latter was in the 
 power of Charles V. His aim was to please the King by 
 enabling him to divorce Katherine, so that he might marry 
 Anne Boleyn ; he realized that his desire could not be accom- 
 plished while the country remained true to the Old Faith ; he 
 cut the bonds that held England to Rome, and gained what 
 Henry wished. The direct result, the only thing he cared about, 
 was accomplished ; but far more important than that, it was 
 by Cromwell's means that Protestantism gained a footing in 
 England, which even the Six Articles and the terrible perse- 
 cution under Mary could not shake. To guard against the 
 return of the Papal power, and the annulling of the divorce, 
 Cromwell attacked and subdued the clergy, and negotiated 
 with the Protestants on the Continent. His immediate object 
 was solely political safety ; the ultimate result was the loosen- 
 ing of some of the strongest bonds of Romanism, and the 
 opening of the road for the incoming of the new religion. 
 Thus out of moves first made to attain and ensure a question- 
 able end, grew consequences so great and so far-reaching 
 
HIS WORK 307 
 
 that it is only with difficulty that one can trace their 
 origin. 
 
 The same remark will be found to hold true of the 
 results of the suppression of the monasteries^. The main 
 object of the King's Vicegerent in destroying them was 
 undoubtedly to fill the royal treasury with the spoils of the 
 Church, and to clinch the advantages gained by the separa- 
 tion from Rome. But the later result of his measures was 
 actually to undo much of the work which they were first 
 intended to perform. For though they had weakened reli- 
 gious apposition to the Crown, they strengthened the secular 
 element in its later struggle against the royal autocracy which 
 Cromwell had laboured to establish. We have seen that the 
 lands of the suppressed houses had been either given away, 
 or else sold at exceedingly low prices to the impoverished 
 nobles by Cromwell's advice, in order to ward off the oppo- 
 sition aroused by their destruction. This measure certainly 
 attained its immediate purpose, but it also laid the foundation 
 for the growth of an extremely powerful territorial aristocracy, 
 that later on was to use its influence to oppose the royal pre- 
 rogative and pave the way for modern constitutionalism. 
 While Cromwell, in his attacks on the older nobility, thought 
 that he was removing the last impediments to absolute 
 monarchy, he really, by enriching and strengthening this new 
 aristocracy, was rearing an infinitely more potent enemy to 
 the kingship for which he had sacrificed everything. It is well 
 known that such families as the Russells, Seymours, and 
 Cavendishes, who later figured most prominently in opposition 
 to the Crown, owed their power to gifts out of the revenues of 
 the suppressed monasteries. The smaller gentry also claimed 
 a share in the general advancement to wealth and prosperity 
 among the landed proprietors, and a sudden burst of political 
 activity in the Lords and Commons bore witness to the fact 
 that the Houses had once more asserted their right to govern. 
 
 This brings us to Cromwell's relations with Parliament. It 
 is here that we find the most striking instance of the con- 
 tradiction between the immediate and the permanent eflfects 
 
 ^ Cf. for this and the following pages. Green, vol. ii. pp. 197-202, 
 
308 THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 of the changes he wrought. We have seen how his attitude 
 towards Parliament differed from that of his predecessor. 
 We have seen how Wolsey had looked upon the national 
 assembly as a great force which continually hampered his 
 schemes, so that his dislike of it led him to summon it as 
 infrequently as possible, and only when it was absolutely 
 necessary. We have seen how Cromwell was destined to go 
 one step further, and how by packed elections, fraud, and 
 violence, he succeeded in converting it into an utterly 
 subservient instrument of the royal will. It was now 
 no longer a power to be feared, but one to be relied on ; 
 a firm ally that consistently obeyed the slightest hint of 
 the wishes of the Crown. Consequently instead of rarely 
 assembling as under Wolsey, it was being constantly sum- 
 moned, as a necessary means to accorc^Bhi the designs of 
 Henry and his minister. While the Idfter lived, everything 
 worked exactly as he' had intended, and the Parliament re- 
 mained 'tractable.' But when after his death the idea of 
 autocracy had passed away, and England had begun to 
 recover from the terror Cromwell's ministry had inspired, 
 Parliament suddenly realized that it had a power of its own. 
 Its frequent assemblings which of course had helped the 
 Crown, as long as under Cromwell the Houses had re- 
 mained subservient, now began to work just the other way, 
 and aided it in shaking off the fetters that, bound it to the 
 King. It had been Cromwell's plan that it should keep up the 
 forms of constitutional liberty, as a sort of sop to the popular 
 feeling, while in reality all its legislative vigour was lost. Now 
 that the pressure of his hand was removed, the animating spirit 
 revived, and finding all the old traditionary customs still intact 
 began to infuse itself into Lords and Commons. The earlier 
 independence of the Houses returned and increased, so that 
 the final result of the work of Cromwell was on the one hand 
 to thwart all efforts to compass the omnipotence of the 
 Crown, and on the other to lay the basis for a constitutional 
 government. 
 
 Had the English character been one that could per- 
 manently suffer any form of tyranny or absolute monarchy; 
 
HIS WORK 309 
 
 had the ends the great minister aimed at been such that when 
 the temporary madness and terror inspired by his own per- 
 sonality had passed by, they could have aroused one spark 
 of enthusiasm in the English heart, Cromwell's would have 
 been the grandest figure in his country's history. But it 
 was not destined to be so. The national drift was through- 
 out bitterly opposed to him and to the ideas for which he 
 stood, so that much of his policy was reversed in the years 
 that followed his death. There can be, it seems to me, no 
 doubt that Cromwell was perfectly sincere in his attempt to 
 establish an all-powerful kingship under the forms of ostensible 
 constitutionalism. He did it not from selfish motives, but 
 because he believed it to be the only sure road to national 
 greatness. The crimes that marred his career cannot be 
 excused, but may be palliated by this consideration, and by 
 his dauntless courage in resolutely destroying the Curial control 
 of the English courts and English Church ; on this side of his 
 work he was the true successor of Wyclif, the true predecessor 
 of his own great kinsman. Cromwell lived in an age when 
 a wave of monarchical enthusiasm swept over the entire west 
 of Europe : a belief in the absolute power of kings was the 
 most salient characteristic of the political atmosphere of his 
 day. He was essentially a man of his time in his faults and 
 in his virtues, and could scarcely have anticipated modern con- 
 stitutionalism. Thus his policy perished with him, but his 
 work remained and was permitted by change and reaction 
 finally to attain results far more glorious and lasting than 
 he had hoped for. The despotism of the Tudors fell with 
 their dynasty, the liberties of the nation survived. 
 
LETTERS OF THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Here follow a complete collection of the letters of Thomas 
 Cromwell arranged as nearly as possible in chronological 
 order, an itinerary, and a list of his minor preferments. The 
 letters have been copied from the original manuscripts, save 
 in a few cases duly noted, when transcripts have been made 
 from the official copies at the Public Record Office, from 
 Strype and Ribier, or from the collections of Sir Henry Ellis, 
 The spelling follows the original, all contractions are extended 
 but italicized : the original punctuation, paragraphing, and 
 use of capitals are preserved. 
 
 But (i) I have disregarded ' unintelligent ' or faulty marks 
 of contraction, occurring in words in which no letter is omitted. 
 (2) I have not italicized uncontracted letters inserted above 
 the line. For example: the name 'Thomas' is almost 
 always written ' Thomas ' in the original : I have transcribed it 
 ' Thomas ' and not ' Thomas.' On the other hand, the word 
 ' your ' is usually written 'yo""' in the manuscript : in this case 
 I have taken the superior ' r ' as a contracted form of ' ur,' and 
 so have transcribed it ' yotir.' (3) In the originals the same 
 script form is used for T and 'J' ; I have followed the modern 
 use. (4) The bracket [ ] signifies that the words or letters 
 enclosed would have been in the manuscript had it not been 
 injured. The bracket { ) signifies that the word or words 
 enclosed have been inserted by me to complete the sense. 
 The parenthesis ( ) signifies that the enclosure is bracketed 
 in the original. (5) Sentences and words crossed out or 
 underlined in the manuscript have been set below, except 
 when evident mistakes of the writer. The letters ' c. 0.' signify 
 
313 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 that the passage against which they are written was crossed 
 out or underlined in the original. 
 
 In dating letters, I have followed the modern use, and have 
 taken the first of January and not the twenty-fifth of March 
 as the beginning of the year. I have used the bracket ( ) 
 in the headings to indicate that the name or date enclosed has 
 not been given in the letter itself, but has been found from 
 external or internal evidence. Letters which bear no indica- 
 tion of the day and month in which they were written are 
 placed at the end of the year to which they apparently belong. 
 The abbreviations «R. O.' and 'B.M.' refer to the Public 
 Record Office and British Museum respectively throughout 
 the collection. 
 
LETTERS 
 
 1. Cromwell to John Creke. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iii. 3249. Aug. 17 (1523). 
 
 A letter of friendship, containing an account of the proceedings of the 
 Parliament of 1523, in which Cromwell sat. News concerning 
 Creke's friends in England. 
 
 Maister Creke as hertelye as I can I co»2mende me and 
 in the same wise thanke yow [for your] gentill and louyng 
 letteres to me at sundrye tymys Sent and wiier as I ac- 
 cordinglye haue not in lyke wise remembrid and rescribid 
 it hath bene for that I haue not hade anything to wryt of 
 to your adua?/ncement. Whom I assure yow yf it were in 
 my lytyll power I coulde be well contentyd to pr^ferre as 
 ferre as any on^ man lyuyng. But at this present I being 
 at Sum layser entending to remembre and also remunerate 
 the olde acquayntaunc^i- and to renew oztr not forgoten 
 Sundrye co^^munycacions Supposing ye desyre to know the 
 new^j curraunt in thes partyes for it is said that new^5 
 refresshith the spy[rit] of lyffe, wherfor ye shall vnderstonde 
 that by long tyme I amongist other haue Indured a parlya- 
 ment which contenwid by the space of xvij hole wek^j wher 
 we cowmunyd of warre pease Stryffe contencyon debatte 
 murmure grudge Riches pouerte penurye trowth falshode 
 Justyce equyte discayte opprescyon Magnanymyte actyuyte 
 force attempraunce Treason murder Felonye consyli . . . 
 and also how a co»«mune welth myght be ediffyed and a[lso] 
 contenewid w/t^in our Realme. Howbeyt in conclusyon we 
 haue d[one] as our pr^d^c^'ssors haue been wont to doo that 
 ys to say, as well as we myght and lefte wher we begann. 
 ye shall also vnderstond the Duke of Suthfifolke Furnysshyd 
 witk a gret armye goyth ouer in all goodlye hast [whitjher 
 I know not, when I know I shall aduertyse yow. Whe haue 
 in our parlyament grauntyd vnto the Kinges highnes a right 
 large Subsydye, the lyke wherof was neuer grauntyd in this 
 realme. all yoztr frend^j to my knowlage be in good helth 
 and specially thay that ye wott of: ye know what I meane. 
 I thinke it best to wryt in parables becaus[e] I am In dowt. 
 Maister Vawhan Fareth well and so doth Maister Munkcaste[r]. 
 
 UERRIMAN. 1 
 
314 LETTERS OF [1533 
 
 Maister Woodall is merye w/t^owt a wyffe and co;;?mendyth 
 hym to yow : and so ys also Nych^/as longmede which hath 
 payd William Wilfforde. And thus as well f[are] ye as 
 I woolde do my Self At london the xvij daye of August by 
 your Frende to all his possible power 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To his [espjecial and entyrelye belouyd Frende 
 John Creke be this youyn Bylbowe in Biscaye. 
 
 2. Cromwell to Elizabeth his Wife. 
 
 Ellis' Letters, 2nd Ser. ii. 135 ; Cal. iv, App. 57. Nov. 29 (1525). 
 
 Sends her a doe. Desires that Richard Swift resort to him at Beghani 
 or Tonbridge. Asks for news. 
 
 Elyzabeth I commend me unto you and have sente you 
 by this berer a fatt doo, the one half whereof I pray you may 
 be delyvered unto my gossyp mastres Smyth, and with the 
 rest to use your pleasure. And further yf Richard Swifte 
 be cum home or fortune to cum shortly, I will that he resorte 
 to me at Begham or Tonbridge with all dylygence. Such 
 news as ye have in those partyes I pray you sende me parte 
 by this berer. At Begham the xxix* day of November. 
 And farther I pray you sende me word in wryting who hathe 
 resorted unto you syns my departuer from you to speke 
 with me. 
 
 Per your husbend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my well beloved wyf Elyzabeth Crumwell 
 agenst the Freyers Augustines in London be this given. 
 
 3. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. CaL iv. 955 (3). (1524 or 1525.) 
 
 Desires that the lands of John Fleming, who has broken covenant with 
 Cromwell, be put in execution. 
 
 Syr in my most herty mann^;' I co;«mend me vnto yow 
 aduertesing yow that after knowlege hade of your depa^ure 
 In to the north partyes was veray sorye that my chaunce was 
 not so happye to haue spokyn wit/z yow befor wheruppon 
 I was constrayned for the Singuler trust and confFydence 
 which by long co«tenuaunce hath Succedyd & ben approuyd 
 
1524 or 5] THOMAS CROMWELL 315 
 
 In yow toward^j your Frend^j and louers to wryt vnto yow^ 
 Syr So hyt is that on^ John Flemyng of Crofton in the 
 Countye of Yo«rke in the moneth of may last passid Solde 
 vnto Rob^^t Bolt Certayn land^j Tenementt^^ & heredyta- 
 mentt^^ to the Clare yerlye valew of Nyntene pound^J and 
 xvi d. of good and lawffull monaye of Ingland to myn^ vse 
 to the S«m of ccclxxxj" vj' viij'* wheroff the sayd John 
 Flemyng resayuyd In partye of payment on^ hundereth 
 fortye eight povvnd« nyne sheling^j & Syx pence and the rest 
 of the sayd Sz/m which amountyth vnto ccxxxij^' xvij' ii* was 
 put in the Saffe custodye and keping of your Frend Maister 
 Butrye ther to remayn vntyll Suche tyme the sayd John 
 Flemyng sholde haue p^rformyd all his couen««mtt^j according 
 vnto a payre of Indentures For the which SuMmys of 
 Monaye and for the non p^^formazcnce of the sayd Coue- 
 x\au'!\\Xes the sayd John Flemyng standyth bounden, to the 
 sayd Robert Bolt In a statute of the Staple of Westm2«^/^r 
 in on^ thousand mark^j payable in the Fest of Saynt Ber- 
 tholomew the appostill last past the date wherof is the xx*'* 
 daye. of Maii in the xv*'' yere of our souerayng lord kyng 
 henrye the viii"*, and forasmoche as the said Flemyng hath 
 brokyn Couena«ntt w?t/i me In eu^rye poynt I am Com- 
 pellyd to take the execucyon vppon my statute which by this 
 bringer I haue sent vnto yow desyring and her[tely] praying 
 yow that ye will be so Frendlye vnto me yf it be possyble 
 beffore your retorn hetherward^j to make Suche Instaunce vnto 
 the Sherefife of Yorkeshyre that the sayd execucyon may be 
 taken ^ and that all suche landi?j as the sayd John Flemyng 
 hathe within Yorkshyre maye be put in execucyon and 
 extendyd befor your retorne owte of Yo«;'kshyre and that 
 the wryt of execucyon may be reto?/!myd and what so t.\xer 
 charge shalbe For the Furnysshyng of the same I promyse 
 yow and bynde me by this my \ettex& to Satysfye and Ferther 
 to reco^Mpence your paynys in suche wyse I trust that ye 
 shalbe contentyd. Syr I hertelye desyre and praye yow to 
 haue me excusyd that I sholde be so bolde to requere yow 
 to take Suche payn for me howbeit the experyence which 
 I haue in your good and gentyll approuyd humanyte makyth 
 me the more bolde v^ith yow hauyng no dowbt but that ye 
 will accept & take vppon yow as moche payne For yo?i!^ 
 Frend as any man lyuyng Ferther Syr ye shall vnderstonde 
 
 ' c. o. trustyng entyerlye In yow wzt/zin my lytyll power 
 that ye will witsaffe as I may e.\xer ^ c. o. before your Retorn to 
 herafter ow vnto yow my Symple London 
 Sifruyce or any pleasure that shalbe 
 
 Y 2 
 
316 LETTERS OF [1527 
 
 On the dorse 
 
 A fragment of a document containing indentures and agreements con- 
 cerning the manor of Kexby. 
 
 The manor of Kexby — ■ 
 her after shall Inswe the abredgment of certayn Indentures 
 evydence charters ded« esc[nptes] and Mynument^j con- 
 cernyng the mannour of Kexbye witA the appertenawces witMa 
 the Countye of Yorke De]yuery[d] . . by lohn Aleyn Cytizen 
 and Altherman of London to the hand^j of Sundrye Right 
 worsshypfful and discret persons Councello^rs vnto the most 
 reue[rent] Father in god Thomas lorde Cardenall legate de 
 latere archbusshop of Yourke pry . . . and chaunceler of 
 Inglonde to the vse of the sayd most Reuerend Father in god 
 the datt^j of the whiche Indentures evydenc^j charters dedes 
 escript^j & Mynimentt^j cons^rnyng the sayd Manno^r wtt/i 
 p<7rte of the effect^j conteynyd [in] the same mor playnlye 
 herafter shall appere 
 
 4. (Cromwell) to Lady (Dorset). 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 3053 (ii). April (1527). 
 
 Reports a letter received from ' my lorde ' and addressed to her lady- 
 ship, and encloses the copy of another from ' my lord George.' 
 
 Pleasyth it your good ladyship my specyall dewtes fyrst 
 remembred that as vppon Wensdaye being the xvij"" daye of 
 Aprell I resayuyd from my lorde a k^/^re directyd vnto your 
 good ladyship witk also all his honourable aduenture In to 
 Scotland ^ theffect wherof yo«r ladyship shall resayue in 
 your letteves Ferther I resayuyd the same daye a letters from 
 my lord George the t&nour and Copye wherof I haue sent 
 yow herin Inclosyd Madame as ye shall Thinke by your good 
 and vertuese discresyon it may please to adu^rtyse my good 
 lord which I thinke shalbe well takyn when he shall parsayue 
 that ye doo and shall contenually studye for the aduansment 
 of his honeur. 
 
 5. (Cromwell) to (Viscount Rochford). 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 3741. (December, 1527.) 
 
 Legal information and advice concerning a suit in which Cromwell has 
 been retained as counsel by the wife of Sir Robert Clere, the sister 
 of Rochford. 
 
 Pleasyth it your good lordship to be adu^rtysed howe that 
 it hath pleasyd my ladye your sust^r wyff to Sir Rob^rte 
 Clere Knyght to requyre and desyre me to be of counsayll 
 
 ' c.o.l am ascertaynyd that your ladyship shall resayue 
 
1537] THOMAS CROMWELL 317 
 
 ■with the sayd Sir Robert her husbande in a certayn ^ Matyer 
 in varyaunce betwene the lady Feneux late the wyfif of sir 
 John Feneux Knyght cheffe Justyce^ desseasyd of and For 
 the deffence of a wrytt of extent of late passyd out of the 
 Kyng^j hygh courte of the Chauncery dyrected vnto the 
 Sheryff of Norffolke and Suffolke aswell for the extendyng of 
 the land^j of the sayd sir Rob^rte ■within the sayd countyes 
 as alsoo For the puttyng in execution the bodye of the sayd 
 sir Robert Clere for the satysfactyon and payment of Foure 
 hundreth pound^j- supposyd to be due to the sayd late cheff 
 Justice disceasyd And For asmoche as by the reporte of my 
 sayd lady your sust^r and alsoo by the syght of certayn 
 Indentures of Con&naunties & deffauntt^ made aswell bytwene 
 sir John Paston Knyght disceasyd and the sayd Sir Rob^rte 
 Clere as alsoo bytwene the sayd late cheff Justice and the 
 sayd sir Robert yt maye appere that the sayd Statute of the 
 Staple of cccc^' was made and delyu^red to none other intente 
 but onlye For the p^i^fformaunce of certayn conenauntes of 
 Maryage For the assuraunce and onlye aduaunseme«t of 
 a Joynter to be made to one Elyzabeth late the wyff off one 
 Willz'ijm Clere disceasyd sowne and heyre at that tyme to the 
 sayd sir Rob^rte whiche Elyzabeth ys nowe wydowe and was 
 lately the wyffe of the sayd late lorde Feneux cheff Justice 
 all whiche covienaunies of Maryage the sayd sir Robert Clere 
 hathe always as I am Informyd bene redye and yet ys to p^r- 
 fourme notwzt/zstandyng ^ that the sayd Sir John Paston in 
 hys lyffe nor sir Wilh«m Paston nowe lyuyng so«ne and heyre 
 of the sayd sir John wolde ne wyll not accordyng to suche 
 couenauntes ''' as the (same) be boundyn vnto paye vnto the 
 sayd sir Roberte Clere cc" Resydue of foure hundreth Mark^j 
 for the sayd * assuraunce of the sayd Couenauntt^j of Maryage * 
 yet dewe and vnpayd the none payment wherof ys A greate 
 matyer and it were gret pytye and also ayenst bothe reson 
 & Conscyens that the sayd sir Roberte shulde haue his land(?j 
 extendyd and be co;^pellyd to paye the sayd so;«me of foure 
 hundreth pound^i- consyderyng the sayd bounde was made 
 but for the p^rformaunce of the coMenaurxtes of Maryage 
 whiche ' the sayd Syr Robert was and ys Redye to performe 
 
 ^ CO. case Clere in full co^tentaczon & pay- 
 
 '' c. o. vnto the kyng^j highnes ment of cccc Mark^j whiche cc^' ys 
 
 of hys benche yet vnpayd 
 
 " c. o. yff yt soo had ben ' c. o. was and shulde haue ben 
 
 * CO. as was bytwene the sayd accomplyshyd in eufry poynte 
 
 sir John and the sayd &ir Roberte yff the sayd sir John Paston had 
 
 payd accordyng to hys couenaz^ntw payd 
 
 ' c o. aduaunsement the so»zmes of money whiche he 
 
 " c. 0. one to the sayd szV Roberte was bonde to paye by hys Inden- 
 
318 LETTERS OF [1527 
 
 and good Reason it were that the Couenauntt^j on the partie 
 of the sayd Sir John Paston also sholde be p^rformyd and 
 the sayd cc" payde. Neuertheles the sayd Syr Robert Clere 
 ys vtterlye wzt/zout Remedye by course of the common lawe ^ 
 to defende the execucyon of the sayd wrytt^j of extent so 
 that the sayd cccc" shalbe recou^ryd of hys land^J and bodye 
 onles yt may please your good lordeshyp to moue my lorde 
 hys grace in Conscyens to graunt a wryt of Iniu/zctyon^ to 
 be dyrectyd {to) the sayd lady Elyzabeth Feneux Com- 
 mandyng her by the same no ferther to prosecute thexecuczOT 
 of the sayd wrytt^j of extent vppon the sayd statute of cccc". 
 And alsoo ayenst the sayd Sir Roberte as my sayde lord^J 
 grace may gyue cowzmaundement ^ that no wryttirj of liberata 
 goo out of the sayd courte of Chauncerye vntyll suche tyme 
 <as) the hole matyer tochyng the pr^mysses may dulye and 
 accordyng to conscyence be harde and examyned And yotir 
 lordshype thus doing shall .do the thing in my poore opynyon 
 which shall (stand) witk reason and good Conscyens as 
 knowyth the holye Trynyte whom I most hertelye beseche 
 to pr^serue your lordshyp in long lyffe good helth and moche 
 honour 
 
 6. Cromwell to Wolsey. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 4135. April 2, 1528. 
 
 Reports his proceedings in connexion with the monastery of Wallingford. 
 Description of the progress of the Cardinal's colleges. Desires the 
 benefice of St. Florence for Mr. Birton. 
 
 Please it your grace to be aduertised how that I according 
 to your most gracyous cowmaundement haue repayred vnto 
 the late monasterye of Wallingforde Where I founde aswell 
 all the ornamentt^.f of the churche as all other ymplementt^.f 
 of houseolde clerely conueyed awaye and nothing remayning. 
 Sauyng only the euydences Which I sorted and conueyed vnto 
 your colledge at Oxforde And the same delyvered vnto your 
 Dean there. And afterward^j Mr. Croke and I surueyed 
 amended and refourmed aswell the \etieres patent^j graunted 
 by the king his highnes vnto your grace as also your gyftes 
 and grauntt^j made vnto your said colledge in suche wise 
 I trust that no defaulte or omyssyon at this tyme is lefte 
 vnrefourmed. 
 
 ture for the aduaz^ncement of hys hundrethpoundes shalbe Reco«i?red 
 
 sayd doughter. Neuertheles yt may of hys landes 
 please your lordeshypp to knowe ^ c. o. to Inyoine 
 
 the sayd %ir Roberte Clere ' c, 
 
 ^ c. o. but that the sayd foure eery 
 
1528] THOMAS CROMWELL 319 
 
 I haue also founde offyces aswell of the saide late monas- 
 terye of Wallingforde and of all the lond^j and tenementt^i- 
 belonging to the same w?t/^in the Counties of Oxforde and 
 Berk as also of suche omyssions as were omytted within the 
 saide counties belonging to Frediswid^i- and Lytlemore. And 
 now I do repayre into the Counties of Buck and Bedforde 
 for offyces to be founde there aswell of suche lond^J' as apper- 
 teyne to the saide late monasterye of Wallingforde as also to 
 the late monasterye of Praye besid^j saincte Albons. 
 
 The buyldingfj of your noble coUedge most prosperouslye 
 and magnyfycently dothe arryse in suche wise that to euery 
 mannes iudgement the lyke thereof was neuer sene ne 
 ymagened hauing consideracyon to the largeness beautee 
 sumptuous Curyous and most substauncyall buylding of the 
 same. 
 
 Your chapell wztMn the saide colledge most deuoutely and 
 vertuously ordered And the mynistres W2t.^in the same not 
 onely dyligent in the s^ruyce of god but also the seruice 
 daylie doon W2t,^in the same so deuoute solempne and full 
 of Armonye that in myne opynyon it hathe fewe peres. 
 
 There is a benefyce voyde w«t//in the dyoces of saincte 
 dauyes in Wales which is of yotir gracyous gyfte by meane 
 of the chauncelorship of Englonde. Yf it may please your 
 grace to gyue the same to Mr. Byrton he shoulde be the 
 more able to do your grace seruyce. The name of the saide 
 benefyce is called sayncte Florence. I assure your grace the 
 saide Mr. Byrton is a right honest man And by somme reporte 
 right well lerned and shall do your grace good seruyce. 
 
 My besyness accomplisshed I shall according to my duetie 
 repayre vnto yo«;' grace. Most humblye beseching the holie 
 trynytee contynuallye to preserue the prosperous astate of the 
 same in long lif and good helth. At Oxforde the Seconde 
 day of Aprell. 
 
 Your most humble seruaunt 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 Add. To my 1 . . . 
 Endd. M"" Cromewel ii^^ Aprzlis 1538 
 
 7. Cromwell to Thomas Arondell. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 4441. June 30 (1528). 
 
 Requests him to send information concerning Wolsey's wishes about 
 various matters in connexion with the Colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. 
 
 Right woorshipfull sir in my right hartie maner I commende 
 me vnto youe, Aduertising the same, that I have receyued my 
 
320 LETTERS OF [1528 
 
 lorde his gracious htterts, wherin his grace commaundethe to 
 be diligent in thexpediczon of suche busynes as Do concerne 
 the perfeccion of his coUedge in Gypswiche, whiche I do 
 intende (god willing) to put in execucion withe all spede, 
 howbeit certeyne thing^j am first to be knowen of my saide 
 lorde his gracious pleasure, or euer the same can be perfected 
 accordingly. Wherof one is, that it may please his grace to 
 name the person that shalbe his Dean of his saide Colledge, 
 And also to send to me ayen the Bille assigned of the licence 
 graunted to his grace by the kyng his highnes to erect the 
 saide colledge in Gipswiche, so that the signet and pryuye 
 Scale may be made out vpon the same, And that we maye 
 examyn the boke of erection which nowe must passe by my 
 lorde his grace with the same bille signed in euery poynt. 
 His gracious pleasure must also be knowen whether that (the 
 Dean of his saide saide ^ colledge being Decessed, or by any 
 other mean Depryued or amoued from the saide Deanrie) his 
 grace then wille that thellection of a new Dean shalbe cmonges 
 them of the colledge or whether his grace will remytt the 
 same to be ordred by his Statutt^j by hym to be made 
 accordingly. It maye please youe also to moue his grace 
 whether he wille absolutelie haue a guyfte made to his 
 colledge in Oxforde of the late Monasterie of Wallyngforde 
 the parsonage of Rudbye, and suche other lond^j as his grace 
 hathe purchased of sir Antonye and sir Roberte Ughtred 
 in the Counties of Yorke and Lyncoln, or that he will haue 
 the same Monaston and other the premisses geuyn vpon 
 condicion to his saide Colledge in Oxforde, to thyntent that 
 they shall make a lyke guyfte of the lond^j apperteynyng to 
 the late Mor\astor\s of Snape, Dodneshe, Wyk^ and Horkisley 
 to his saide colledge in Gipswiche, whiche condicion in myn 
 opynyon shulde well serue for all casualties, and compelle 
 them of the colledge in Oxforde to make a guyfte of the 
 same accordingly. One speciall thing ther is that ye must 
 moue his grace in which is, that he maye not in any wise 
 prticede to therrection of his saide colledge in Gipswiche, 
 before the xxj. daye of Julye next comyng, for asmuche as 
 thoffices in the Chauncerie shall not expire, vnto the full 
 accomplishment of iij Monethes vntill the saide xxj Daye, nor 
 his grace cannot haue the Syte and circuyte of the late 
 M-onaston of Saynct Peter suppressed, vpon the whiche the 
 saide colledge muste be erected by thordres of the lawe of 
 thie londe before the saide xxi Daye. His gracious pleasure 
 knowen in the premisses I trust by thassistence of my lorde 
 
I5a8] THOMAS CROMWELL 321 
 
 chief Baron vnto whome I wille resorte from tyme to tyme for 
 his good counsaile to perfo«^me fulfille and accomplisshe 
 euery thing according to his said gracious pleasure, in suche 
 wise that he shall therwithe be right well contented. Hartely 
 Desiring youe to moue his grace for the signature of the 
 \ettere for the poore man of Arragosco who lyeth here to his 
 great and importunate cost^j and charg^j in maner to his 
 vtter vndoyng, And also for the signature of one other letiere 
 in Frenche Directed to the gouernours of the Towne of Depe 
 for the Delyuerie of certeyn Englisshe mennys good^^f beyng 
 marchauntt^j of London of late taken vpon the See by men 
 of warr of the saide toune of Diepe. It maye also please 
 youe to shew my lorde his grace this le(Ure and that I maye 
 haue answer of his gracious pleasure withe all spede, whiche 
 shalbe a great furtheraunce to his busynes. The mynute of 
 his erexion is all redye Drawen and shalbe p^Hected vpon 
 his answer And thus our lorde preserue youe At London 
 the XXX Daye of June. 
 
 At your co?«maundement 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right woorshipfull maister Thomas Arondell 
 be this youen. 
 
 Endd. From Mr. Cromwell the xxx day of Junii about 
 the p^rfectinge of the Cardynalls ij Colleg^i' of Oxford and 
 Ipswich. 
 
 8. Cromwell to Wolsey. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 4697. (Sept 3, 1528.) ' 
 
 Details concerning the colleges at Oxford and Ipswich, and the revenues 
 from the lands and monasteries appropriated for their use. 
 
 Please it your grace to haue in remembraunce your 
 Fynours of Duresme whose contynuaunce here is not onely 
 to their greate cost and losse of tyme but also to the greate 
 hinderaunce of your werk&r ther, and also they be veray poore, 
 your gracious pleasure therfore wold be knowen whether 
 they shall resorte to your presence, or howe otherwise your 
 grace will they shalbe ordred 
 
 I haue according to your moste gracious cowmaundement 
 sent herein inclosed the clere yerely valeurs of all suche 
 lond^j' as ye haue purchased in the Counties of Yorke and 
 Buckingham, and also the clere yerely value of the late 
 monasterie of Wallingforde 
 
 If it may stonde with your pleasure to appoynte in whose 
 name yoi!^^ grace intendithe to dedicate your colledge in 
 
322 LETTERS OF [1538 
 
 Gipswiche, and by what name the maister and fellowes shalbe 
 called, the lycence of erexion, the \ettexes patentt^j, pryuate 
 Seales and other thing^j necessarie for the same myght be 
 put in a redynes so that no tyme shulde be loste 
 
 I haue caused suche hiWes as be allredie signed to passe the 
 pryuy signet and pryuate Seale, and shall nowe put to wryting 
 the leiUres patentt^^- for the brode Seale, so that after the 
 iii monethes expired yozir grace may geue the lond^j con- 
 teyned within the same according to youre moste gracious 
 pleasure. It shalbe well done that your grace haue in remem- 
 braunce tha.pproprza.don of the benefices to your colledge in 
 Oxford, and that an ende maye be takyn withe all ordynaries 
 which I thinke is not yet done 
 
 I haue spoken with maister Babington nowe lorde of 
 Kylmayne for the exchaunge to be made bitwene your 
 colledge in Oxforde and his religion for Saundforde, It 
 may therfore please your grace that your pleasure may be 
 knowen whether this vacacion your counsaile shall farther 
 co/«mune withe hym and other whiche haue auctoritie in that 
 behalf, or not, whiche in myn opynyon shulde be well done, 
 and will sett yotir purpose in a great forwardnes 
 
 It may also please your grace that these instruccions herein 
 inclosed may be sent to maister Holgill for thordering of 
 hymself in taking possession lyueraye and season at Rudby, 
 whiche Instruccions were deuysed by the Judges, and it shalbe 
 necessarie that he haue them withe spede. 
 
 Yotir gracious pleasure knowen touching the pr^miss^j 
 I shall most humblie indeuoir myself according to my duetie 
 to accomplisshe your most gracious co;«maundement, As 
 knowithe the holly trynytie vnto whome I shall daily during 
 my lyfe praye for the prt^sperous conseruacion of your good 
 grace , 
 
 Your most humble servaunt 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my lorde his grace. 
 
 Endd. From Mr Cromwell touching rudby 
 
 Instruccions for Maister Willyam Holgill for possesion 
 lyueraye and season to be taken in the parsonage of 
 Rudby in Clevelonde 
 
 First to cause my lorde Conyers to serche his euydence 
 towching thaduowson of the patronage of Rudby, and to 
 se whether it be aduowson appendaunte, that is to saye, 
 apperteyning to a manor or to an Acre of londe, or that it be 
 
1529] THOMAS CROMWELL 323 
 
 aduowson in grosse, that is to saye, aduowsonage onely 
 appending to no manor ne yet to none Acre of loiide, And 
 to receyue the saide Euydence of the saide lorde Conyers 
 concernyng the said aduowson 
 
 Itm to knowe whether the saide aduowson be intailed, and 
 whether it be intailed to theires males, or to theires generall, 
 and to receyue the dead^j of Intaile, or Fynes if any suche be, 
 of the saide lorde Conyers 
 
 Itm that thattourneis named in the deade of Feoffement 
 made to the saide Willyam Holgill and other, do enter into 
 thacre of londe named in the saide deade of Feoffement, and 
 delyuer season by a turfe, to the saide maister Holgill, and 
 also to delyuer possession and season by the ryng of the 
 churche dore 
 
 Itm after possession, lyueraye and season taken in the saide 
 Acre of londe, and by the ryng of the churche doore as is 
 aforsaide, that then the saide Attoui-neis do enter into the 
 saide parsonage and also to delyuer possession lyueraye, and 
 season in the parsonage vnto the saide maister Holgill, and 
 that the deade of Feoffement be redd in all thre^ "• places, 
 and to take at the leste xxx or xl witnesses, calling therto 
 asmany yonge children as ye may 
 
 9. Cromwell to Gardiner. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. S186. Jan. 18 (1529). 
 
 Has been unable to repair to the Cardinal, on account of the press of work 
 in connexion with his colleges. Description of the damage done by 
 the overflowing of the Thames. 
 
 Worshipfull Sir, after most hartie comendacyons it may 
 please you to aduertise my lorde his grace that the cause 
 Why I do not repayre thither at this present ys for that 
 I haue certen hdkes to be don and accomplisshed concerning 
 his coUedge in Gipswich That is to say a deade of gyfte 
 from his grace to his saide colledge of the late monasteryes 
 of Felixstowe Rumburgh and Bromehill The King his 
 \etteves patent^i- of assent to the Suppression of the same late 
 monasteryes, The King his \etteres patent^j of assent to the pope 
 his bull of exempcyon of the saide colledge The King his 
 lettetts paten t^j of lycence for thimpropryac?on of the benefyces 
 belongyng to the saide late monasteryes A deade of gyft 
 from the Duke of Norff. to my lord his grace of the saide 
 late monastery e of Felixstowe A relesse from the prior 
 
 * sic, for ' these.' 
 
324 LETTERS OF [1539 
 
 and conuent of Rochester of all theyr right tytle and 
 patronage of In or to the same late pryory of Felixstowe 
 A relesse from the abbot and conuent of Saynct Maryes in 
 Yorke of all their right and tytle in or to the late pryory of 
 Rumburgh A relesse from my lorde of Oxforde of all his 
 right and tytle in the late pryory of Bromehill And a 
 relesse from the Frenssh quene and the duke of Suffolk of 
 all theyr right and tytle in the manours of Sayes courte and 
 Byckeling and in the late pryorye of Snape. All which 
 hokes be not yet in a redynes ne parfyted vnto my mynde 
 Intending assone as the same shalbe fynysshed and made 
 parfyte, whiche I trust shalbe to morow at nyght or wenesday 
 by none at the Ferthest to repayre vnto my lorde his grace, 
 vppon his gracyous pleasure knowen for thinsealing of the 
 same accordingly. It may also please you to aduertise 
 my lorde his grace that Sythen his repayree to Rychmond 
 I have ben at Lyesnes Where I saw one of the most 
 pyteous and greuous sight^j that ever I saw which to me 
 before the Sight of the same was incredyble concernyng the 
 breche out of the Thamyse into the marsshes of Lyesnes which 
 be all ouerflowen and drowned And that at the last chaunge 
 the tyde was so high that there happened a new breche which 
 hathe fordone asmoche worke there as will cost ccc^' the 
 new making of the same In so moche that if my being 
 .there had not ben to haue incouraged the workemen and 
 labourers I assure you all the labour and money that 
 hathe ben ther spent heretofore had ben clerely lost and 
 cast away. And the workemen and labourers wolde haue 
 departed and left all at chaunce whiche shoulde haue ben 
 the gretest yuell that eu^r happened to the countrey ther. 
 Nev^rtheles I wzt,^ thaduyse of suche wyse men as ben in the 
 countrey there haue set suche dyrectyon in the same that 
 I trust all shalbe well and the work^j there ended v/ttk good 
 spede god willing. For the furnyture and accomplisshment 
 whereof there is a new assesse made and my lorde his 
 colledge for theyr parte ben assessed at ccxx li which money 
 of necessyte must be had out of hande Prayeng you so 
 to solycyte my lord^j grace that the same money may be 
 had incontynent Assuring you that his grace shall do as 
 merytoryous a deade in the delyu^ring of the saide money 
 for his colledge at this tyme as though he gaue so moche 
 money for goddes sake Considering the grete hurte myschief 
 losses and inconuenyenc^i- that is lyke to insue to the countrey 
 there and to the King his streme and also the hurte that may 
 insue to his colledge in the losse of suche grounde and land 
 as they haue there Whereunto for the quantytee thereof ys 
 
1529] THOMAS CROMWELL 325 
 
 none lyke to the same in that countrey ne few in any other 
 countrey. Yf the saide breche be not shortly amended and 
 spedely prouyded for I assure you suche inconuenyenc^i' may 
 insue that yt were to grete pytee. And to thintent that ye 
 may be the more assured of the trewth in the pr^mysses 
 I haue sent you a leiiere here inclosed which I receyued 
 from one of the maisters of the said work^j ymedyatly after 
 the wrytyng of this k//re Intending to repayre vnto Lyesnes, 
 Vfitk all spede for the redresse and fortheraunce of the pre- 
 misses asmoche as in me shalbe possible. Hertely beseching 
 you to procure that I may haue answer of my lord^i- pleasure 
 in euery thing concerning the contented forsaid by this berer 
 my seru^wnte. And thus oter lorde preserue your long lyf 
 At London the xviii day of Januarye. 
 
 Yours most bounden 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right worshipfull Maister doctoz^r Gardyner 
 be this yeuen W2t^ spede. 
 
 Eiidd. Letters from M. Cru?«wel of the xviij dale of 
 Januarij 
 
 10. (Cromwell) to 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 5757 (ii). July (1529). 
 
 Has written in favour of the chaplain. Requests the recipient to desire 
 his wife to take the daughter of Cromwell's sister, and bring her up. 
 Promises to recompense him and his wife. 
 
 . . . C . . . ert as hertelye as I can I co;/2mende me vnto 
 you and me;'vayle gretlye that ye haue made no better spede 
 for yo2/r chaplayn In whos Fauours I haue wryten vnto 
 Mr. Chaunceler of Wynchester trustyng that he wylbe good 
 maister vnto hym For my sake I wooldbe veray lothe that ye 
 sholde mysse your purpose Syr I praye you be so good 
 vnto me as to lett me send my systers daughter vnto the 
 Jentylwoman your wyff and that ye wyll on my behalf desyre 
 her to take her and to bryng her vpp for the which her 
 goodnes yf she wylbe content so to doo I shold rekyn my self 
 moste bounden both to you and here and besydej the pay- 
 ment For her borde I wyll so content your wyffe as I trust she 
 shalbe woll pleasyd that I may know your answer herin I 
 hertelye praye yow and thus hartelye Fare ye well. 
 
 At london the daye of July. 
 
326 LETTERS OF [1529 
 
 11. Cromwell to Mr. Claybrook. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 5812. (July, 1529.) 
 
 Desires him to seek out all registers, and the bulls of the Cardinal's 
 legation, so that the same may be shown to the King's attorney. 
 
 Maister Cleybroke this to adu^rtise yow as ever ye intewd 
 to doo my lord pleasure or s^ruyce that ye w?tA all dylygens, 
 seke owt the register of Maister Tonneys and also all other 
 registers vjith also the bullys of my lord^j legacye to thentent 
 the same may be shewyd this nyght to the Kyng^i- attorney 
 for suche Causes as I declaryd vnto yow at my last spekyng 
 \iiX.h yow of answer by thys berer I praye yow that I may 
 haue knowlege and fare ye woll. 
 
 Your Frend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 12. Cromwell to William Brabazon. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 6099. Dec. 19 (1529). 
 
 Desires him to ride with Mr. Copeland to the north, and assist him with 
 advice in his affairs there. 
 
 Willyam Brabazon I comende me vnto you And wolde if 
 ye be at conuenyent leysour that ye do Ryde w?t^ Maister 
 Cowplonde this berer into the North part^i' and to assiste him 
 w«t/i! your counsaill in suche matiers as he hathe there to do 
 according to suche instruxions as I haue drawen and delyuered 
 to the same Mr. Cowplande Not doubting but he will con- 
 sider your paynes accordinglye And thus fare ye well. At 
 London the xix* day of December. 
 
 Your louyng maister 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 13. Summaries of Cromwell's Letters. 
 
 MSB. Jesus Coll. in Bibl. Bodl. Oxon. c. 74, pp. 262 ff. ; Cal. iv. 6076. 
 
 (i530-> 
 
 Various items concerning the relations of Cromwell and Wolsey after the 
 latter fell into disgrace. Cf. Letters, 18, 19. 
 
 'Crumwell to the Cardinal, July 12, (1530). 
 
 ' As touching the prccesse aga/;?jt your Grace out of the 
 Exchequer and all other matters and suites brought ^^ainst 
 
1530J THOMAS CROMWELL 327 
 
 yow I haue pleaded your pardon, w^zch is allowed in all the. 
 King's Courted and by the same your Grace discharged of all 
 man«er Causes at the K° suite. 
 
 Cromwell tells the Card^ this solliciting his Cause hath 
 bin very chargeable to him and he can«ot susteine it any 
 Longer without oth^r Respect then he hath had hertofore. 
 I am 1000 1. worse than I was when your troubles began. 
 
 As touching yotir Colleges, the King is determined to 
 dissolve them, and that new offipes shall be found of all the. 
 Lands belonging to them newly to intitle his Highnes w^z'ch 
 be allready drawn^ for this purpose. But whether his Highnes, 
 after the dissolution of them meane to revive therxi againe 
 and founde the»« in his owne name, I know not. Wherefore 
 I entreat your Grace to be content, and let your Prince 
 execute his pleasure.' 
 
 ' Cromwell to the Cardinal, May 17, 1530. 
 
 ' That the King hath received his Letters and is very sorry 
 th2it he is in such necessity, yet that for Releefe his Ma'^ hath 
 differed it till he speak w«th his Counsail. The D. of Norfolk 
 pr(?miseth you his best ayd but he willeth you for the present 
 to be content and not much to molest the King (concerning 
 payment of your Debts etc) for, as he supposeth, the time is 
 not meet for it. His Grace (i. e. the. King) shewed me how 
 it is come to his knowlege that yotir Grace should haue 
 certain words of him and other Noblemen vnto my L"* of 
 Norfolk since the time of your adversityes w^z'ch words 
 should sound to make sedition betwixt him and my Lord of 
 Norfolk. 
 
 Mr. Page received your Letters directed vnto my Lady Anne, 
 and delivered the same, there is yet no answer, she gaue 
 kind words, but will not premise to speake to the K. for you, 
 
 Certein Doctors of both the Vniversityes are here for the 
 suppression of the Lutheran opinions. The Kings H"'^' hath 
 caused the sayd doctors at divers times to assemble, and hath 
 com»2oned W2th them. The fame is that Luther is departed 
 this Life. I would he had never bin borne.' 
 
 ' Cromwel writes to Card' Wolsey, August, (1530). 
 
 ' Intreating him to haue patience etc. that there shall be some 
 offices sent into York and Nottinghamsh. to be found of yo?/r 
 Lands, belonging to your ArchBw,^^prick. This will be very 
 displeasant to you, but it is best to suffer it. for if they 
 should not be found you could not howld your Bw^^prick 
 quiet, notwithstanding your pardon : for your Restitution 
 made by your Pardon is cleerly Voyd, for that the King did 
 
328 LETTERS OF [1530 
 
 restitute your Grace before He was intitled by matter of 
 Record. When these offices shall be found, your p«;-don 
 shall be good and stand in parfait effect. 
 
 He tells him that his modest behavio2/r and humility hath 
 gayned him the Love and good report of the Country where 
 he now Lives and allso in the Court, yet his Enemyes 
 depraue all. SzV, some there be that do allege that your 
 Grace doth keep too great a Howse and family and that you 
 are continually a-Building — for the Love of God therefore 
 haue a respect and refraine etc' 
 
 'Crumwell writes to the. Cardinal, Octob(er, 1530). 
 
 ' I am informed your Grace hath in me some diffidence as 
 if I did dissemble wzth you or pwcure anything contrary to 
 your pr(7fit and \\oviOur I much muse that your Grace should 
 so think or report it secretly considering the paines I haue 
 taken etc. Wherfor I beseech you to speak w?thout faining 
 if you haue such conceit, that I may cleere myself. I reckoned 
 that your Grace would haue written plainly vnto me of such 
 thing, rather than secretly to haue misreported me etc. But 
 I shall beare your Grace no Lesse good will etc. Let God 
 judge between Vs. Trewly yotir Grace in some things over- 
 shooteth your self ; there is reg[ard] to be given what things 
 ye vtter and to whom etc' 
 
 ' I find by these Lettr^s that Cramwel kept certein scholers 
 in Cambrige, for he entreats the. Card', to preserve them to 
 Benefices wAich should fall in his ArchBw^^prick.' ^ 
 
 14. (Cromwell) to (Wolsey). 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 6368. May 5 (1530). 
 
 Information concerning the progress of the Cardinal's affairs at Court. 
 Advises him to comply with the King's requests. 
 
 After my right hartie CoMmendac?ons to your grace accord- 
 ing to yottr desire specified in your 'LetUrzs of answer to the 
 request made vnto youe by the King^.? maiestie for the 
 Treasourership of York I haue so solicited the matier bothe 
 to his hieghnes and to doctour Leighton that bothe be content 
 that your gift shall stande so as your grace do accomplishe 
 the tenour of his hieghnes 'hetteves nowe eftsones directed vnto 
 youe, whiche myn advise and counsail is that youe shall in 
 any wise ensue, and that your chauncelo«^r shall do the sembla- 
 
 ^ This last sentence was added were transcribed, and who calls 
 by the seventeenth-century scholar himself ' Thomas Masters, Coll. 
 by whom the foregoing passages Nov.' 
 
i53o] THOMAS CROMWELL 329 
 
 ble in another request made by his Maiestie vnto him w/t/iout 
 staye tract or further stycking. And in any thing eWes wherin 
 I maye do vnto your grace stede or pleasure I shalbe as glad 
 to doo thoffice of a frend^ as you shalbe to require the same of 
 me. Thus moost hartely Fare youe well. From St. James 
 besid^j Westminster the v"" of Maye. 
 
 15. Cromwell to Wolsey. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 6431. June 3 (1530). 
 
 Promises to send a full answer to his letters by Ralph Sadler. Recom- 
 mends the bearer. 
 
 Please it your grace to be aduertised that I haue receyued 
 your \ettexes by Thomas Rawlyns and haue perceyued the 
 content^j thereof and will make answer to the same parti- 
 culerly by my seruaunt Rafe Sadleyr, who our lorde willing 
 shalbe vfith your grace vfith all spede. Your grace I assure 
 you is moche bounde to the gentilman this berer for his good 
 reporte in eu^ry place who I assure your grace hathe not lefte 
 in eu^ry presence to say of you as by lykelohod ye haue 
 gyuen him cause. I assure your grace he and such other 
 haue don your grace moche good, it shalbe in myn opynion 
 therefore right well don to give him thank?^ accordingly, 
 for by my faith he is right worthye. And thus the holie 
 trynitee preserue your grace in long lyf good helth and moche 
 honour. At london the iii'* daye of June. 
 
 Your most humble seraaunt 
 
 Thomas Crumwell, 
 
 Add. my lorde Cardinall(s) grace. 
 
 16. (Cromwell) to < Wolsey). 
 
 B. M. Cott. App. L. 7 ; Cal. iv. 6482. June 30 (1530). 
 
 Fragment of a letter, in answer to several minor requests of the Cardinal. 
 Various details. 
 
 ... as to send your grace any quayles it ys not possybyll 
 For ther ys non that will Carye them as For Sedes I wyll 
 Send yow by the next maister Stubbis Sayth he will pr^uyde 
 baudekyn for your grace I am sorye for hym he ys Swed in 
 a primineri by burges which was ons ellect pr^sydent of 
 Maudlen CoUedge I thinke it wyll cost hym money or he 
 get owt ^, my lord chaunselo«r hath pr^mysyd that Masteres 
 
 ' c, 0. For our lordys loue what 
 
 HERRIHAN. I Z 
 
830 LETTERS OF [1530 
 
 lacye shall here the Cost^J of them that shall bryng vp John 
 lawrans and Robert Turner. I beseche your grace to be so 
 good lorde as to send me A gelding and I trust shortlye after 
 to se your grace by the assistens of our lorde whom I most 
 hertelye beseche to pr^serue your grace in long lyffe good 
 helth and moche honour at london the last daye of June 
 
 17. Cromwell to Wolsey. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 6530. July 24 (1530). 
 
 In favour of his kinsman Dr. Carbot ; requests Wolsey to take him into 
 his household and service. 
 
 After my most humble Recommendarz'ons wA/i my dailie 
 s^ruice and contynuall praier May it pleas your grace to call 
 to your good and most graceous remembraunce how that 
 I being wttk your grace in your gallerie at the Chartrehouse 
 at Shene most humblie supplied^ vnto the same for the 
 acceptac/on of this berer Mr. doctour Carbot my kynsman 
 vnto your s^ruice At which tyme it pleased your grace 
 beninglie to graunt me to accept hym promising both vnto 
 him and me that ye wolde be his good and graceous Lorde vpon 
 the which he hath tarried here in these parties Contynuallye 
 to his great cost Supposing that I sholde haue repared vfitk 
 him vnto your grace by meane wherof he thought the better 
 to be esteemed But forasmoch as he now p^rceyueth that for 
 dyuers causes I maye not he hath desired me to write vnto 
 your grace in his (siuoitrs Most humblie and effectuallye 
 beseching your grace to receyue him into your house and 
 s^ruice Whome I trust your grace shall finde apte mete 
 discrete dilligent and honest And suchon that Willinglie 
 Louinglie and obedientlie shall and wilbe gladde to serae your 
 grace in any thing that your pleaser shalbe to commaunde 
 him Trusting fermlie that bye experience ye shall right well 
 lyke him Eftsones most humblie and effectuallie beseching 
 your grace to be his good and graceous Lorde for my sake 
 and at this my poure and most humble sute and contem- 
 plac«on to take him w/tAowt reiection And thus the holie 
 trenitie pr^s^rue yotir grace in long lyf and good helth. At 
 Londe(n) the xxiiii"" daye of July. 
 
 Your most humble s^ru«unt and bedysman 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. my lord^j grace 
 
 ^ sic, for ' applied.' 
 
i53o] THOMAS CROMWELL 331 
 
 18. (Cromwell) to Wolsey. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 6571. August 18 (1530). 
 
 Information concerning the progress of the Cardinal's affairs at Court and 
 elsewhere. Begs him to cease building for a time, in order that his 
 enemies may have no chance to accuse him of extravagance. News 
 from England and the Continent. Cf. Letter 13. 
 
 Please it your grace to be adu^rtised ''■ that after the Receipt 
 of your \etteres dated at Southwell on saynt Laurence Day 
 I p^rceyued how that your grace remayned in som displeasure 
 and anxietie of mynde for that I by my leiieres had before 
 c^rtefied you of the fynding certen offic^j concerning your 
 busshopriche of Yorke The Fynding whereof as I p^rceyue 
 by your letteres ye do suppose should be moche to your 
 dishoTiozir & detriment For the which intent that your grace 
 may put yourself in repose & quietaczbn of mynde I haue 
 sent vnto you this berer who shall at length declare vnto you 
 beside the demonstracion of the copies of suche offic^.r as be 
 drawen for that purpose that the Fynding of the said offic^j 
 savyng onelie that in the preamble of the same there is 
 touched the conuiction of your grace in the premwmve which 
 all the Viourld alredie knoweth shalbe for yottr good onelie 
 proffit and availe And yet your pardon and restitucion stand 
 in good & p^rfite effecte So that your grace shal haue no 
 nede nether to be in fere of losse of any your sp?WAiall or 
 temporall good^j or to be troubeled for the same ne also to be 
 put to any new Sute in the obteyning of any other pardon or 
 restitucion. And if in case yotir said pardon and restitucion 
 were in any parte insufficient I assure yozir grace I know that 
 the king^j highnes wold it should be made as good as by any 
 counsaill it could be Devised And doubt ye not but his 
 highnes is your gracyous and benigne Sou^reigne lorde and 
 wold in no wise that ye should be greued molested or 
 troubeled. Wherfore it may please yoztr grace to quiet 
 yourself and to take the fynding of these of^ces pacientlie 
 and vppon the xetoume. of the same there shalbe such orders 
 taken that your grace shall not be interrupted in the receyuing 
 of your reuenues ne otherwise be molested in any ma.ner case 
 for any new sute As touching your colledges the offic^.s- shalbe 
 founde houbeit the Deane and suche other as haue sued to 
 the k'mges highnes haue had veray good answer wherof 
 I think they haue certefied yoz^r grace or this tyme. As 
 touching the m' mark^'j of the reuenues of Wynchester 
 I doubt not but it shalbe obteyned at the audite And 
 
 ' c. <?. that perceyuing by 
 Z a 
 
332 LETTERS OF [1530 
 
 concerning Batyrsey it may please your grace that such 
 thingfj as ye haue sent me the copies of may be sent hither 
 vnder scale for they woU trust no scrowes and also that 
 Serche may be made for Busshop Bothes will concerning the 
 same. Strangwissh continually cryeth and maketh exclama- 
 c/on in the courte of you insomoch that the lordej of the 
 counsaill haue determyned to wryte vnto you in that behalf 
 wold to our lorde your grace were rid of that man. As 
 concerning the prebends of Witwang doubt ye not but in that 
 all thing is and shalbe ordered to your good contentac/on. 
 Sir I assure your grace that ye be moch bounde to our lorde 
 god that in suche wise hath suffered you so to behaue and 
 order yoz/rself in thes parties to atteyne the good myndes 
 and hertej of the people ^ there the reporte whereof in the 
 courte and elkjwhere in these parties is & hathe ben ^ to the 
 aquyryng & augmentyng the good oppynyons of many 
 persons towardej your grace beseching your grace therfore 
 to contynue ^ in the same after Suche a Sorte and Fashyon 
 as ye may daylye increase not onlye in the Fauours of the 
 pepull ther but also here and ellejwhere to the pleasure of 
 god & the prynce And notwithstonding yo«r good vertuous 
 and charitable demeaning and vsing yourself* in thes parties 
 ys not by your enemies ^ interpretyd after the best Fashyon 
 yet always Folow and perseuer ye attemperatelye in suche 
 thingej as your woorldlye affeccyons Sett apart Shall serue 
 to stand best w/t/? the pleasure of god and the kyng S/r som 
 ther be that doth alledge in that your grace doth kepe to 
 grete a house & famylie and that ye are contynually buylding 
 for the loue of god therefore I eftesones as I often tymys haue 
 done most hertelye beseche your grace to haue respecte to 
 euery thing and consyderyng the tyme to refrangne your Self 
 for a Season from all manner byldinggej more than mere 
 necessite requireth which I assure yo«r grace ^ shall sease and 
 putto Sylence Som persons that moche spekyth of the same. 
 For the geldingej which your grace Dyd send me I do most 
 humblie & hertelie thank you beseching your grace to gyue 
 Further Credens to this berer, who shall declare vnto your 
 grace other thingej not wryttyn'^ I do Relys your grace 
 
 ' c. o. in the hole cuntrey ' c. 0. which do & will not let 
 
 ' c. 0. your grete good to interprete all your doings not in 
 
 ' c. o. after such sorte by your the best parte AUedging that your 
 
 approuued high wisedom as ye lose oneUe desire 
 
 not the wele & benefite of the same * c. o. shalbe grete good vnto 
 
 lor yourself 
 
 ■* c. o. there I assure your grace ' c. o. Fynallie beseching al- 
 
 you haue mightie god to preserue your grace 
 
153°] THOMAS CROMWELL 833 
 
 right happye that ye be now at libertye to seme god and 
 to lern to experyment how ye shall banyshe and exyle the 
 vayn desyrys of this vnstabyll warld, which vndowtydlye 
 dothe nothing elles but allure eu^ry person therin And 
 specyally such as oter lorde hath most endewyd W2t/^ his 
 gyftes to desyre^ the affeccyons of theyr mynd to be 
 satysfyed In Finding and Sekyng wherof most persons 
 besyd the gret trauaylk^ and afflyccyons that men Suffer 
 daylye bene dryuyn to extreme Repentance and Serching for 
 plesure and Felycyte Fynd nothing but So trowbyll Sorow 
 anxyete and adu^rsyte Wherfor in myn oppynyon your grace 
 being as ye ar I suppose ye woolde not be as ye werre to 
 wyn a hundreth tymys as moche as ye were possessyd off 
 the Busshop of Bayonw^ ys daylye lokyd For and my lord of 
 Wyltshyre ys cu;«myn home the Saying here is that the 
 emperoure hathe good obbedyence of his Subiect^j in all 
 thing sauyng that they wyll not discent from the lutheran 
 sekt it ys also sayd that emprozir doth mak musters for 
 a gret army to be pr^paryd agenst the turke to passe into 
 Hungarye for the recou^rey of that Regyon And that the 
 seconde Son of the emperour ys dep^rtyd this present lyffe 
 the news here ys that the Germayns wyll medlye haue 
 a gen^rall Consaylle for the reformacyon of many thinges 
 the Florentynys doth styll contenew and defende the power of 
 the pope and it ys Supposyd that they shall vynce by meane 
 that ther ys a gret pestylence Fallen amongst them being in 
 the Felde of the popis partye ther ys also a gret Carystye 
 in Italye of all manner of grayn in so moche A quarter of 
 whet ys worth generallye Fortye shelyngg^j. they loke daylye 
 for an ambassadour from the pope who at the Ferthest wilbe 
 here wzt^ xiij dayes the kynges highnes is this nyght at 
 amptell and ther wyll Contenew this xiiij dayes. it may 
 please your grace to pardon me that I do not repayre vnto 
 yow at this tyme for vndowtydlye it ys not possyble as 
 this berer shall Ferther Declare vnto your grace o^^r lord 
 knowyth my wyll and mynde. and I trust verelye that your 
 grace doth perffytlye think that I woolde be glade to see yow 
 and vnfaynydlye I woolde haue sene your grace long er this 
 yf I hadde not bene lettyd by Importune busynes wherfor 
 I eftsones most humblye besech yo«r grace of pardon and 
 though I am not witk yow in person yet be ye assured I am 
 and duryng my lyff shalbe wttk your grace in hert spyryt 
 
 in long lif & good helth wM the of August 
 
 full accomplisshment of your hertes ^ c. o. and enter into blynde to 
 
 desire From london the xviii day satysfye 
 
334 LETTERS OF [1530 
 
 prayer & s^ruyce to the vttrest of my poore and symple 
 power as knowyth otir lorde whom I most hertelye besech 
 to pr^serue your grace in long lyff good helth w«t/« thincreace 
 of your hertys desyre. at london the xviij* daye of August. 
 I beseche your grace to depeche this berer whom I mygh(t) 
 evyll haue forbern at this tyme but onlye that I p^'rsayuyd by 
 your \etteres that ye moche desyryd to be put in quyetacyon 
 and that besyd myself I Coulde not send any that Coulde 
 certefye yo^^r grace of the efifect^J of such thing^j as ye desyre 
 to be answeryd in But onlye he eftsonys beseching your 
 grace spedlye to send hym home for my busynes ys such that 
 I cannot lake hym. 
 
 Endd. my lorde Cardenall. 
 
 19. (Cromwell) to (Wolsey). 
 
 B. M. Cott. App. L. 81 ; Cal. iv. 6699. Oct. 21 (1530). 
 
 Begs the Cardinal's favour for Doctor Carbot, Nicholas Gifford, and 
 Cromwell's scholars at Cambridge. News of the Emperor's move- 
 ments. Information concerning the Praemunire. Cf. Letter 13. 
 
 . . . eyen three monethis in Chaunserye, howbeit your grace 
 shalbe so prouydyd for that ye shalbe owt of all dowtt^i' for 
 all the kyng^j offycers in the meane Season. I most humblye 
 beseche your grace to be good lorde vnto my poore kynsman 
 Doctowr Karbott and let hym haue SMm lytyll offyce vnder 
 your grace. I dowt not thoughe he be Sumwhat Symple in 
 Aparence yet he shall discharge hymself yf ye put hym in 
 trust and A lityll auctoryte. I beseche your grace [a]lso to be 
 good lorde vnto your Seru«2^nt Y^y&^olas Gyfforde . . . when 
 Anything shall happen to Fall which may do (him) good to 
 Remembre hym for my sake your grace shall [finjde hym in 
 myn oppynyon thoughe he be yong and [some]what wylde ^, 
 on disspossyd bothe to trewthe [honejste and hardynes, and 
 he (is one) that wyll loue yow [with] all his harte. yf any 
 thing Falle I beseche your grace [to rejmembre my scolers 
 in Cambryge and bothe they [and I shajll pray to our lord 
 Jh^-ju Crist to preserue [you] in long lyff good helth w?t^ 
 Increase of [honour. Thjemperour wyl be at Colayn In the 
 Feaste of . . . w?t,^owt Faylle the PaHyment ys prorogyd 
 vntil the] vi daye of January. The prelatt^j shalnot appere 
 in the] premunire. Ther ys Another way deuysyd in [place 
 thereof] as your grace shall Ferther know, the prync^i' of 
 [Almayne] Can ne wyllnot Agree to emperowr and [I bese]che 
 the holy trynyte preserue yotir grace . . . [in] quyetnes and 
 
 ^ c. o.2i you[th] 
 
X53i] THOMAS CROMWELL 335 
 
 Contentacyon I beseche your ... for this \ettere . . . Wrytyn 
 for lake of . . . [in] hast the xxi of octobre 
 
 20. Cromwell to Mr. Borough. 
 
 R. O. Cal. iv. 6800 (i). (Dec. 1530.) 
 
 Desires to know if Borough wishes to buy a friend's horse, which certain 
 Frenchmen are anxious to purchase. 
 
 Mr. Borough in my most hartie wise I cowmende me vnto 
 you And so yt ys that my frende Mr. So;^mer may at this 
 tyme sell his horse right well and proffutablye but foras- 
 moche as he before this hath promised you that ye shall 
 refuse him before any other he hathe desyred me to know 
 yot^r mynde So that yf ye will not medell he may do his 
 best. for there be certeyn Frensshe men which moche 
 desyreth to haue the saide horse Wherefore I hartely pray 
 you that I may know your mynde by this berer in wrytyng 
 what ye will do And this ^ hartely fare ye well At London 
 this present Saterdaye. 
 
 Assurydlye your frende. 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right worshipfull Mr. Henry Borough be this 
 yeuen. 
 
 21. (Cromwell) to Stephen Vaughan. 
 
 B. M. Galba B. x, 338 ; Cal. v. 248. (May, 1531.) 
 
 An account of the reception of WiUiam Tyndale's book, Tfie Answer, by 
 Henry VIII, and of his anger at the opinions it advanced. Cromwell 
 urges Vaughan to cease advocating Tyndale's cause, and to request 
 Frith to abandon him ^. 
 
 Stephen Vaughan I cow/mende me vnto you And haue 
 receyued your k//^res dated at Andwerpe the xviii"" day 
 of Aprell -with also that parte of Tyndalkj boke Sewed and 
 inclosed in lether which ye w?'t^ your \etter&^ directed to the 
 king^j highnes After the recept whereof I dyd repayre vnto 
 the courte and there presented the same vnto his royall 
 maiestee who after the recept thereof made me answer for 
 that tyme that his highnes at oportun leysozir wolde vysite 
 ouersee and rede the content^j aswell of you[r] letteres as also 
 the saide boke And at my next repayre thither it pleased his 
 
 ' su, for ' thus.' cisely. Words enclosed thus {. . . } 
 
 " The number of erasures and are inserted above the line in the 
 
 corrections in this letter is such that original. Words printed in italics 
 
 the use of an additional bracket is are crossed out. 
 
 necessary, in order to render it pre- 
 
336 LETTERS OF [1531 
 
 highnes to call for me declaring vnto me aswell the contents 
 of your Xettexts as also moche of the matier conteyned in the 
 saide boke of Tyndalkj. And albeit that I might well 
 perceyue that his maiestee was right well pleased and right 
 acceptablie considered your diligence and payn[es] taken 
 in the wryting and sending of the saide boke as also in the 
 p^^'swading and exhorting of Tyndall to repayre int[o] this 
 realme in the accomplisshement of his high pleasure and 
 comaundement yet I might coniecture by the ferther declaracyon 
 of his high pleasure Which sayed vnto me that by your wryting 
 it manyfestlie appered how moche {yet his highnes nothyng 
 lyked the sayd boke being fyllyd w/t^ Scedycyous Slaunderous 
 lyes and Fantastycall oppynyon(s> Shewing therin nether 
 lernyng nor trewthe and ferther Co/;2munyng viith his grace 
 I mygh{t) well coniect that he though(t) that ye bare moche} 
 affection and zele ye bere toward^J the saide Tyndall whom 
 in his maners modes tie and Symplycytee {& knowlage in 
 woordlye thing^j} ye vndoubtedlie {in your letteres} do 
 moche more allowe and co^zmende then his {whos} v/orkes 
 being so replete with lyes and most {then the warke of hit Self 
 is able to deserue) {being replete w/t^ so} abhomynable 
 Sclaunders {& lyes} Imagened and {onlye} fayned to infecte 
 and intoxicate {as it semythe] the peopull may to indyfferent 
 Judgement declarethe him, for the which your fauours Supposed 
 to be born to the saide Tyndall [who assuredlie sheweth himself 
 in m.yn opynyon rather to be replete with venymous envye 
 rancour and malice then with any good lerning vertue knowlage 
 or discression) hathe put the kinges highnes in suspectyon 
 of you considering {dothe declare hym bothe to lake grace 
 vertue lernyng discrecyon and all other good qualytes 
 [n]othing [ejlkj prrtending in all his work^j but [to] seduce 
 [and djyssayve} that ye should {ye} in such wise {by your 
 letteres] lene vnto and fauowc the evill doctryne of so peruerse 
 and malycyous a person and so moche prayse him {prayse 
 Setforth and avaunse hym} {bothe to lake lernytig] {to be 
 envyous and to lake lernyng gra[ce]} {vertue and all good 
 discrecyon } who nothing { whiche nothing elles } { pretendyth ' } 
 goeth about or pr&tendeth but ^ onelie to Seduce deceyue and 
 disquiet the people and comenwelth of this realme Whose 
 {Repayre theiher ys to be estuyd] cummyng into Englonde the 
 kinges highnes can right well for bere and {and sowe sedycyon 
 among the peopull of this realme. The king^j highnes 
 therfor} hathe co»?maunded me expressely to wryte vnto you 
 {to adu^rtyse you that is plesure ys} that ye should desiste 
 
 ■^ These words doubtless ought to have been crossed out in the MS. 
 
i53i] THOMAS CROMWELL 337 
 
 and leve any ferther to persuade or attempte him thereunto 
 {the sayd tyndalle to Com into this realme} alledging that 
 his maieste so euydentlie {he} p^rceyuing the malycyous 
 perverse vncharytable {and Indurate} mynde and disposicyon 
 of the saide Tyndall is rather veray glad that he is out of his 
 Realme then^ {Joyous to haue his realme destytute} ... {of 
 the sayd Tyndalle ys in maner withowt hope of reconsylyacyon 
 in hym and ys veray Joyous to haue his Realme destytute 
 of Such a person for hys highnes right prudentlye consyderyth} 
 if he were present by all lykelohod he wold shortelie (which 
 god defende) do as moche as in him were to infecte and 
 corrup[t] the hole realme {which now ys so Indurate] to the 
 grete inquietacyon and hurte of the co^wmenwelth of the 
 same. Wherfore {Stephen} I hertelie pray you that from- 
 hensfourth in all your Aoinges and procedings'j- and wryting 
 to the king^j highnes ye do iustely trewlie and vnfaynedlie 
 shew your self to be no Fautour vnto the saide {w?t>%out 
 dyssymulacyon Shew your self his trew louyng and obedyent 
 Subiect beryng no ms.nner Fauo«r loue or affeccyon to the 
 sayd} Tyndale ne to his -wourkes in any maner of wise but 
 rather vtterlie to contempne and abhorre the same assuring 
 you that {in so} doing the contrary ye shall not oneli[e] 
 cause the king« highnes royall Maieste whose highnes 
 goodnes at this tyme is so benignelie and gracyouslie mynded 
 towards you (^ as by ^ your good dyligence and industrie to b[e 
 vsed to serue his highnes and extewing and avoyding \to 
 favour and allow the saide Tyndale his erronyous workea and 
 opynyons) ye are like shortelie to atteyne (^ So to prouyde for 
 you So to aduise you So to Sett you forwardes as all your 
 louers & frend^j shall haue gret consolacyon in you of the 
 same \p\oth welth honestie and promocyon at his gracyous 
 handes to the singuler toy pleasure and comforte of all your 
 Frendts) and by the contrarie to {doing ye shall} acquire the 
 indignacyon of god and displeasure of your Sou^reigne lorde 
 and by the same compell {cause} your good Frend^j which 
 haue ben euer glad prone and redie to aduz.unce {bryng} you 
 vnto the {into his gracyous} favours of your prynce to lamente 
 and sorow that their sute in that behalf should {be frustrate 
 and} not {to} take effecte according to their good intent and 
 
 ^ Here occur the following words bok«j craftie and false persuasions) 
 
 underlined, not crossed out : 'that he hathe partelie don all redie' 
 
 [he] should retourne into the same ^ ( • • • ) underlined, not crossed 
 
 there to manyfest his errours and out. 
 
 sedycyous opynyons, which (being ^ ( • • • ) this passage is put in the 
 
 out of the Realme by his most vn- margin, 
 charytable venemous and pestilent 
 
338 LETTERS OF [1531 
 
 purpose, hauing therefore firme trust that for the {Feare ye 
 haiie in god obedyens to your souerayn lord} loue ye owe to 
 your self me and other your Frend^j ye wilbe will beware 
 from hensfourth {and estew} to enter into any stick opynyons 
 {or to the pray se of any suck person} whereby any sclaunder 
 dishonestie ^^r daungier {or Susspycyon} might insue toward^j 
 you whereof I promyse you I wold be as sorie as your good 
 {natural} father. 
 
 As touching Frith mencyoned in your saide letteres the 
 king^j highnes heryng tell of his towardenes in good letteres 
 and lernyng doth Regrete and {moche} lament that he should 
 in such wise as he doth Set fourth Shew and applye his 
 lerning and doctrine in the semynacyon and sowing such euill 
 seed^j of dampnable and detestable heresies mayntening 
 bolstring and adu««ncyng the venemous and pestyferous 
 •woitrVes erronyous and sedycyous opynyons of the saide 
 Tyndale and other Wherein his highnes as {lyke} a most 
 vertuous and benigne pr[ince] and gouernozir hauing charge 
 conimytted vnto kim of his people and Subiect^j {&} being « 
 {veraye} sorie to here tell that any of the same should 
 in suche wise Ronne hedling and digresse from th[e] lawes 
 and preceptes {and kolsom doctryns} of almightie god {and 
 holye Fathers} {and most holsom} into suche dampnable {and 
 most holsom doctryne of holye Fathers into suche dampnable} 
 heresies and sedycyous opynyons and being eu^r inclyned 
 willi[ng] and gretelie desirous to forse and prouyde for the 
 same {& moche desyryng the reconsylyacyon of the sayd 
 Fryth} and also fermelie trusting that the said Frith {he} be 
 not so far as yet inrouted in the evill doctryne of the saide 
 Tind[all] {& oder} but that by the grace of god louyng 
 charitable and frend[lie] exhortac2ons and adu^rtisement^j 
 of good people he may be revoked and called agayne to the 
 ryght way wylleth {hath therefore} and desireth you {wyllyd} 
 {and Commaundyd} {metowryte vnto yow that ye} accordyng 
 to his trust and expectacyon {will} witk your frendelie 
 persuasions admonycyons and holsome exhortacrons to 
 counsaill and aduyse the said Fryth if ye may conuenientlie 
 speke vfitk the same to lev[e] his wilfuU opynyons and like 
 a good Christien to r&tourne vnto onr Saueour Christe and 
 also into his natif cuntrey So that by his procediitges as ke 
 begynnetk there be no m\ore'\ [seldycyous infections and heresies 
 sowed amongst the king&s peopull {wher he assurydly shall 
 Fynde the kyng^j highnes most m^rcyffull and benygnlye 
 vppon his conversyon disposyd towardcs hym to accept hym 
 to his grace & m^rcye} Wherefore eftesoones I her telle 
 pray you and {exhort you} for the loue of god do not onelie 
 
i53i] THOMAS CROMWELL 339 
 
 exhorteyou vtterlie to forsake leve and wz't^draw your affectyon 
 from the saide Tyndale and all his secte but also as moch as 
 ye can poletiquelie and charytablie to allure all {the said 
 Fryth and other} suche p^^sons as ben {being in thes p«rtyes 
 which in any wyse ye shall know or suppose to be} Fautours 
 and assistent^J to the same from all their erronyous mynd^j 
 and opynyons. In which doing ye shall not onelie highlie 
 merite ^ {in} Almightie god but also deserue high thank^j of 
 the king^j royall maiestee who will not forgett yotir deuoyrs 
 and labours in that behalf So that his maiestee may {evy- 
 dentlye} p^rceyue that ye efifectuallie {do} intende the same. 
 And as touching your diligent adu^rtisement vnto the 
 king^j highnes of the nombre of Shippes arryued w?t^ come 
 and grayn in those parties he hathe co»«maunded me on his 
 behalf to gyue vnto you condigne thank^j for the same And 
 being moche desirous to know and atteyne the trewth of that 
 matier his grace hathe co»2maunded me to wryte vnto you 
 that by all good dexteritee polycie and meanes ye should 
 indeuoyr yowrself to atteyne to the knowlege of the Maisters, 
 serwauvAes owners or other that made sale of the saide grayn 
 brought thither to thintent that by thexamynacyon of som 
 his highnes might haue knowlege of the rest and that ye shall 
 viith all diligence aduertise h[is] highnes of their names, and 
 in likewise of such other newes concerning themperours 
 affayreses the discending of the turke into Germanye the 
 preparacyons ayenst him the gifte of money in the low 
 countreys to themperoMr the abyding of themperour in the 
 low parties the agremen[t] bytwen him and the prynces of 
 Germanye as ye sha[ll] here by m^rchaunt^i' or otherwise 
 most certeynlie to acertey[n] his grace by yoztr let teres 
 ■witk as moch dyligence as ye can. Prayeng you therefore 
 substauncyallie and circumspect[lye] to indeuowr yo2^rself 
 to serue the Ismges highnes herein effectuallie So that your 
 towardenes good mynde duet[ie] of allegiaunce and seruice 
 toward^j his royall maiest[ie] may be apparaunt and notoryous 
 vnto the same. Which I doubt not shalbe to your singuler 
 proffite and aduauncement. 
 
 22. (Cromwell) to Mr. Strete. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 277. (May, 1531.) 
 
 Encloses a commission to survey the lands of the bishopric of Coventry 
 and Lichfield, and to receive the rents for the King, and orders to 
 cease collecting rents in Chester. Cf. Letter 43. 
 
 Mr. Strete after most hertie cowmendacz'ons these shalbe to 
 aduertise you that by the berers hereof ye shall receyue the 
 
340 LETTERS OF [1531 
 
 king^j comission and warraunte yeuyng you auctoryte to 
 Suruey the londi?j of the bisshopriche of Couentre and Lich- 
 feld and to receyue the rentes and pr^fites of the same to the 
 king^j vse. And also ye shall receyue his gra«ous leiieres 
 directed to the Eschetor of the Countie palentyne of Chester 
 vppon the sight whereof I doubte not but he will not onelie 
 Surcease to medle any Ferther w?'t/^ the receipt of any rentes 
 there but also in case he haue receyued any, will repay the 
 same vnto yotcr hand^j accordinglie. Not dowbting but ye 
 will diligentlie effectuallie and trewly put in execuc?bn the 
 teanour and effecte of your saide Cowzmyssion in suche wise 
 as shalbe most for your honestie & to the Kinges most pwfite 
 and aduauntage. And for your paynes and diligence alredy 
 taken and susteyned aboute his affayres there his highnes 
 hathe cowmaunded me to yeve vnto you his most hertie 
 thankes. And trustith that ye will so indeuowr yozir self in the 
 receipt of the said rent^j and reuenues as before the feaste of 
 the Natyuyte of Saynt John Baptist next ye will bryng or 
 send vp the hole half-yeres rent or the most parte of the same 
 and that ye will have good awayte and regarde to his hauk^j 
 in the Cauke there wherein ye shall do and admynister vnto 
 his highnes right good and acceptable s^ruyce. 
 
 And as touching the Catell at the pryorie of CalHche the 
 king^j gracz'ous pleasure is that ye shall suffer the berers 
 hereof named Fyndern and Curson to haue the pr^ferrement 
 in the byeng of the same vppon suche reasonable prises as 
 they may conuenyently lyve on taking of them som money in 
 hande and such sufficient bonde and suertie for the residue as 
 the king may be trewly answered of the same. And so Fare 
 ye well &c. 
 
 Your mastership. 
 
 23. Cromwell to (Gardiner). 
 
 B. M. Vesp. F. jciii, f. 154 ; Cal. v. 302. June 18 (1531). 
 
 Requests him to examine and correct the enclosed ' Mynewte ' before 
 presenting it to the King. Excuses himself for not coming in person. 
 
 Right honerable after due reco/«mendac2ons may it please 
 the same to be adu^rtysed that I haue sent herein Inclosed 
 the Mynewte with your Instruccions Besechingyou to Survey 
 the same and if ye shall fynde any erroure to order and 
 correcte hit according to your wysdo;«me and goodnes 
 or eu,?r ye shall pr^sente the sight thereof vnto the Kingw 
 highnes which ons do«ne and his highe pleasure knowne 
 I shall w^'t^ dylygence cause it to be engrossed and sent I wold 
 
i53i] THOMAS CROMWELL 341 
 
 myself haue commyn therewzt^ if other of the King^j Busines 
 had not Lettid me, Beseching you to make myne excuse and 
 to depeche this Berar And this the holy trenyte pr^serue you 
 in Long lief & good helth vfit/i thencrease of muche honour 
 at London this xviij day of June. 
 
 Yours most bounden 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 24, (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 4S8 (i). Oct. I (1531). 
 
 Kequests, on the King's behalf, the preferment of Thomas Beryer, 
 warden of the Grey Friars of Blois, to be warden of the Grey Friars 
 of Paris. 
 
 Right worshypfifull after most hertye co»2mendacyons this 
 shalbe to adu^^tyse you that the kiages plesure ys that ye on 
 his gracyous behalf shall efifectuallye move the Frenche kynge 
 for-' the prefferment of on Frere Thomas Beryer which ys 
 now gardyen of the grey Freers of Bloyse so that he at the 
 cowtemplacyon of his highnes may be now elect to be gardyen 
 of the grey Freers in parys for assurydlye his highnes desyrethe 
 moche the adu^uncement of the sayd Freer and wooll that 
 ye in most effectuous wyse do solycyt the same vnto (the) 
 Frenche king^j ^ requyryng- the same on the his ^ graces behalf 
 to move the gen^rall of the sayd relygyon now being at parys 
 in the effectuall prefferment of the aboue sayde Freer and that 
 ye Fayle not therof the kynges highnes requirythe yow. His 
 Highnes also woll that ye shall moue the gret maister in that 
 behalf For I assure you his maiestye moche tenderyth the 
 adu«unc^ment & prefferment of this Freer and thus hertelye 
 Fare ye well. 
 
 At london the Fyrst daye of octobre. 
 
 25. (Cromwell) to Mr. Heron. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 458 (ii). Oct. 3 (1531). 
 
 Advises him to permit the bearer, Richard Johnson, to retain the farm 
 granted him by Heron's parents, as Heron's interest in it comes from 
 the King. 
 
 Maister Heron in my right * hertye wyse I cow/mende ( me) 
 vnto youe and so it is that this berer whos name is Rychard 
 Johnson hathe Supplyed ^ vnto the kyng^J highnes alledgyng 
 
 ^ c. o. on the behalf of * c. o. most 
 
 '^ c. 0. highnes ^ sic. ^ sic, for ' applied.' 
 
342 LETTERS OF [153.1 
 
 that he being possessyd of a certayn Ferme being parcel! of 
 the mannowr of Highe Hall ^ of the dymyse and graunte 
 aswell of yo«r Father as also of ^ your mother late disceasyd 
 whose sowlys our lord pardon owt of the which as he affer- 
 myth ye wooll expel hym Syr my aduyse shalbe that ye 
 according to Justyce do Suffr the sayd Johnson to occupye 
 his Ferme, consyderyng that your Interest In the same Cum- 
 myth of the kyng^j graunt for assurydlye his grace wyll 
 thinke straunge yf ye sholde expell his seruaunt hauyng a 
 lawfful grante aswell of your Father as mother ^ as he affer- 
 myth. Wherffor methinkyth ye shall dO well to let hym 
 occupye his Ferme witko-wt your Interrupcyon, he paying For 
 the same as to right appartaynyth For I woolde ye sholde not 
 be notyd extreme in your pr^ceeding^j and specyallye agaynst 
 your Felowes the Kyng^j s^ru«unttes and thus hertelye Fare 
 ye well at london the thyrde daye of Octobre 
 
 26. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 458 (ii). (Oct. 1531.) 
 
 Advises him not to receive any of the King's ' courser men ' in his 
 monastery. 
 
 My lord aftr right hertye reco»2mendacyons this shalbe to 
 Certiffye yow of the receipt of your leiterQ and being veray 
 Sorye of molestacyon doo aduyse yow not to suffr anye of the 
 'kynges Courser men to lye w/ith yow. For your monasterye 
 vndowtydlye ys moche to small to Resayue the king^j 
 Coursers. 
 
 27. (Cromwell) to (Sir Ralph Ellercar). 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 671. (1531.) 
 
 Thanks him for advice concerning a bargain that Cromwell is about to 
 make for the manor of Belthrop in Yorkshire. 
 
 WoorshipfuU Sir in my most hertye manner I coMmend 
 me vnto yow and In the same wise thanke yow for your 
 good and kynd chere made vnto my sernaunt which that 
 of late was with yow * my Sayd Seruaunt Informyd yow how 
 
 ' c. 0. which he helde For terme bargayn betwene me and John 
 
 of yeres of his highnes and hauyng Ardren of and for the manoar of 
 
 good and Suffycyent graunt In the Belthrop wztA the apportenazmces 
 
 same which, as I am Informyd ye wer in 
 
 ^ c. o. my ladye mynde to haue bought Szr I woold 
 
 ' c. o. and hauing no Just Cause I hadde bene made preuey to your 
 
 so to do mynd at whych tyme 
 
 * c. o. and as concernyng the 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 343 
 
 that I hadde concludyd a bargayn with John Ardren of and 
 For the Manoz/r of Belthrop and ye then aduysyd my said 
 Seruflunt to Adu^rtyse me Substancyallye to loke vppon the 
 sayd bargayn which aduertysment hath Sumwhat put me in 
 dowt wherfor Syr I hertelye desyre and also pray yow that 
 yff ye know anye manner dowt ambygwyte or Any acte done 
 by the sayd John Ardren or anye other Wherby I myght 
 Sustayn Any manner displeasure danger or losse conc^rnyng 
 the sayd Manno«r or the purchasing of the same that I may 
 be certeffye^d) by this berer in evere poynt concernyng the 
 same as my specyall trust is in yow and ye so doing shall 
 bynd me 
 
 The letter ends abruptly here, the bottom of the sheet being 
 cut off. 
 
 On the dorse is the draft of part of a letter from the King concerning an 
 intended invasion from Scotland by the Duke of Albany, aided by 
 the King of France. 
 
 28. (Cromwell) to (Gardiner). 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 723. (Jan. 1532.) 
 
 Sends news of the first reading of the Bill of Annates in the Lords. Has 
 asked for money for Gardiner from the King, who grieves at Gardiner's 
 absence. 
 
 My lorde after myn humble and most hertie reco;;2men- 
 dac/ons these shalbe to adu^rtise your lordeship how that 
 I haue receyued your gentill Xettexe. to me dely2^i?red by 
 thandes of Mr. Wrythesley And whereas I do p^rceyue 
 by my kynnesman this berer that ye moche desire to here 
 newes from hens I assure you that here be non but such as 
 vndoubtedlie by a multytude of your Frend^j (which are 
 Farre more secret and nerer the knowlege of the same then 
 I am) be to your lordeship all redie related and knowen but 
 yet to adu^rtise of som parte that I know, as thys day was 
 Redd in the higher house a bill touching the Annates of 
 busshopriches for what ende or effecte it will succede suerlie 
 I know not. And as yesterday because I knew your lorde- 
 ship not to be Furnisshed of all thing^j necessarie for your 
 being there I moued the King^j highnes aswell for money 
 to be defrayed in and about^j the furnyture of your purpose 
 and affayres as also for your Reto?/rne hither sayeng that 
 vppon myn owne coniecture your lordeship was wery of 
 
344 LETTERS OF [153^ 
 
 being there whereunto his highness answered me that you 
 were not so wery of your being there but he was as sorie 
 Sayeng by these word^j expr^sselie. (His absence is the lacke 
 of my right hand for I am now so moche pestred witk 
 busynes and haue nobodie to rydde ne depeche the same) 
 So that your lordeship may well know that your absence is 
 not to you so moche paynefull and greuous as your presence 
 here should be pleasaunt and comfortable to the King^j 
 highnes and all other yotir poure FrendfJ beseching therefore 
 your lordeship to Fynde som meanes on your parte as 
 moche as in you is that your Ketourne hither may be 
 shortelie which is long loked and wisshed for As our lord? 
 knoweth etc. 
 
 Endd. A mynute of my mr.'s le//re. 
 
 29. (Cromwell) to Henry VIH. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1055. (May, 1532.) 
 
 Has had the news from Ratisbon translated into English. The English 
 ambassadors are going to meet those of the Emperor at Dunkirk. 
 
 May hit please yo?^r most r^yall magestye to be adu^r- 
 tysyd that of suche news as hathe Cum from Ratyspone 
 I haue causyd the same to be translatyd owt of Italyon into 
 Inglysshe and according to your high cowmawndment to me 
 youyn yesterdaye haue Inclosyd them in this my Xette'ce, 
 wherby your highnes shall and may woll p^rsayue of what 
 Importaunce they be of. I haue also resayuyd a Xettete 
 from Stephyn Vawhan which ys of no gret weight but that 
 he wrytythe that your gracyous ambasadours do now repayre 
 to the emperours ambassadours to Dunkyrke affermyng them 
 to be Suffycyentlye Furnysshyd to answer all thing^j layd by 
 the cowtrarye parte and nothing dowtyth but that they shall 
 haue veray gud Successe in all your gracyous affayres and 
 thys our lord Jesu Crist preserue and continew the most 
 Royall estate of your most Ryoyall magestye in long lyffe 
 & good helthe 
 
 30. (Cromwell) to Henry VHI. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1092. June 13 (1532). 
 
 Sends the book that the Friar Carmelite brought him. Cannot yet inform 
 the King of the conclusion of Ap Howell's matter. News from 
 Rome that the Turk is to invade Italy with a great army. 
 
 Pleasythit youx most Royall mageste to be adu^rtysyd 
 how the Freer carmelyte browght vnto me this mornyng a 
 
1532] THOMAS CROMWELL 345 
 
 boke willing me on your gracyous behalf W2t/^ all spede to send 
 the same vnto your highnes. Which I haue done accord- 
 inglye I cannot yet certeffye yoz^r grace touching the Con- 
 clusyon of Jamys Gyrffyth ap Howell^j matyer for asmoche 
 as yet 1 haue not spokyn yNhh mayster Thesaurer of your 
 most honorable howshold who vndowtydly this daye wilbe 
 at Westm. Strange news haue arryuyd here aswell from 
 Rome as Venyse of the turk^j Repayre vnto and toward^j 
 Italye wz't^ a mifrvelous puisauntt Armye what shalbe the 
 Successe thereof our lorde knoweth it ys Suppossyd that gret 
 afflyccyon will Insew not onelye to the pope & the See of 
 Rome but also to the emprour and his conffederatt^j wherfor 
 it may please the holye trynytie in whos Inffinyte goodnes 
 power & wyll Restyth the the ^ order and traunquylyte of all 
 thing^j to bryng peax good oppynyon and quyetacyow 
 amongyst Cristen pryncys and eu^r conserue preserue & kepe 
 your highnes in long lyff good helthe viith quyetacyoa of 
 your most vertuous most noble and most charytable mynde 
 At london the xiii"' of June 
 
 31. {Cromwell) to the Mayor of Haverford West. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. iio6. June 19, 1532. 
 
 Notifies him that Sir William Wolff is discharged of his appearance before 
 the council. 
 
 Master Maier I hartely recommende me vnto you And 
 where for Certaine causes ye toke bounde of Sir Wilh'am 
 Wolff clerke somtyme chapplaine vnto Rice app Griff. Esquier 
 disceased and of other suert[ies] with him by recognisaunce 
 that the saide SzV Willwm shoulde k[epe] his personall 
 apparaunce here in the Sterre chamber before the king^'.y 
 most hono2<rable counsaiell there for certayne causes to him 
 to be obiecte on the king^j behaulf in this present Terme as 
 in the Condicion of the same Recognisaunce is comprisid. 
 I doo you to vnderstonde that the saide SzV Wilkam Wolff 
 is clearly dischargyd of his saide apparaunce byfore the saide 
 counsaill wherefore I praie you to cause the saide Recog- 
 nisaunce withe the condicion [to be] made frustrate and 
 Void. And thus Jhu kepe you writen the xix* dale of June 
 at London in the xxiiii yere of the Reigne of oure Sou^raien 
 Lorde the Kinge Henry the Eight. 
 
 Add. To Maister maier of Harfford Weste this be 
 deliuifred. 
 
 ^ sic. 
 
 MERRIMAN. I A a 
 
346 LETTERS OF [1532 
 
 32. <Cromwell> to Mr. Rowland. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1185 (i). July 19 (1532). 
 
 The King desires him to pay the bearer ^5, to the use of the dean 
 and canons of his college at Oxford, for the annual portion of his 
 parsonage of Garsington, due to the late suppressed monastery of 
 Wallingford. 
 
 Maister Rowland after my herty co»2mendac«ons this 
 shalbe to adu^rtyse you that hitt is the kinges graces 
 pleissuire and co»?maundeme«t that ye shall paye i^^zmediately 
 after the sight off theis my letters to the handifj off Maister 
 Herry Williams beyrrer heiroff Fyve pownd^i' off good and 
 lawfull money off Englonde to the behoiffe off the deanne 
 and Canons off his grac^i' Colledge in oxford now lately 
 erected. The whiche saide suMme off Fyve pownd^j was 
 deue to haue byn payed by yow att the Feiste off sayntte 
 Michell tharchangell laste paste For thannuall porciow goyng 
 owtt off yo«r parsonage off Garsintow vnto the late sup- 
 pressed priore off Wallingford. And theis my letters shalbe 
 vnto yow a suffici^^t warrauntt & acquyttaunce For the 
 paym^«t off the Forsaide Fyve pownd^i-. Faill you nott thys 
 to doo as ye tendre the king^j pleissuire and thus Faire ye 
 well. In haist From london the xix* daye off July. 
 
 33. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1184. July 19(1532). 
 
 Recommends Robert Hogan, the King's chief cook. 
 
 Right worshipfull after moost hartie Reco»«mendacions 
 thiese shalbe to aduertise you that my louynge felowe and 
 freende Robert Hogan Maister Coke to our sou^raigne 
 Lorde the King^j grace hathe obteyned lycence of his grace 
 to repaire into your paries for suche his Affaires and busynes 
 as he hath there to do. Whom I hartelie desire you to 
 entreteigne and accepte in makinge and showinge vnto hym 
 suche freendlie and louynge Chere and other pleasures for 
 my sake, as ye wolde to me, yf I were there with you 
 presente And in so doynge ye shall mynystre unto me a right 
 singler good pleasure, not to be forgoten in tyme co;;2mynge 
 in suche your Requestes and Affayres as ye shall haue here 
 to do by the grace of god who euer kepe you. Att London 
 the xix*'' Daie of July. 
 
1532] THOMAS CROMWELL 347 
 
 34. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. Ii8s (ii). July 20 < 1532). 
 
 Requests him to grant the farm of Myxberye in Oxfordshire to John 
 Welsbome, one of the gentlemen of the King's privy chamber. 
 
 My lorde after most hertye reco»«mendacyons this shalbe 
 to desyre and hertelye praye (you) to be so good at my 
 poore Instaunce and request to graunte the Ferme of 
 Myxberye vnto my veraye Frend and Felow Mr. John 
 Welsborne on^ of the gentylmen of the Kynges preueye 
 chaumbre in doing wherof besyd^j the good wyll ye shall 
 obteyn of hym ye shalbynde me to (do) yow suche poore 
 pleasures as shall lye in my lytyll power as knowyth our 
 lorde who G\ier pr^serue your lordship wrytyn at londen the 
 xx**" daye of July 
 
 35. (Cromwell) to the Lord (Chief Justice 
 Fitz-James). 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1340. Sept. 24 (1532). 
 
 The King has directed his letters for the election to the abbacy of Bruton 
 in Somersetshire of that person whom Lord Lisle and Fitz-James 
 have recommended. Fitz-James may postpone the election for the 
 trial of the King's title if he sees fit. 
 
 My lorde after most hertie cow«mendac?ons these shalbe to 
 aduif^tise your lordeship how that I haue receyued your 
 letteres and according to the contents of the same moued 
 the YiAnges highnes concerning thelection of the Abbote of 
 Bruton And like as I wrote vnto your lordeship in my last 
 \etter&s that ye should stay the saide election vntill the 
 King^j title might be tryed So his high pleasure is that 
 ye shall do if ye see good matier to bere it. Neu^rtheles 
 his highnes at the sute of my lorde Lisle Supposing that he 
 and you do both sue for the aduauncement of one person to 
 be Abbot of Bruton forsaid as my lorde playnlye affermyd 
 to his grace hathe theruppon directed his grac/ous letteres. 
 for that purpose whiche notw?'t/^standing his high pleasure 
 is yf ye se cause that ye shall stay thelection vppon the 
 tryall of his title, as is aforsaide And in case yo^^r lordeship 
 will haue that person promoted for whom he hathe written 
 his grace is therewith right well contented So that his highnes 
 may (haue) me remembryd Sumwhat, lyke as yoz^r \ordeshyp 
 wrot vnto me in your last whyche he onelye Remyttythe to 
 your wisedom and discrecyon for his highnes p^rfectlye 
 trustith that ye will substauncyallie loke thervnto, who woold, 
 
 A a 2 
 
348 LETTERS OF [153a 
 
 as Fayne that ye were well neyhboryd as ye woold yourself, 
 my lord in this and all other that shall lye in my Lytill power 
 I shall allway^j do as I haue prcmysyd and thus most hertelye 
 Fare ye well at london the xxiiii"' daye off Septembre 
 
 36. (Cromwell) to Henry VIII. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1298. (September, 1532.) 
 
 Reports the making of patterns for the King's collar, and the accounts of 
 the King's jewels. Edmund Knightley has been committed to the 
 Fleet for contempt of the King and his laws. 
 
 Please it your highnes to be adu^rtised that according to 
 your graczous co;«maundement I haue caused patrons to be 
 drawen after your graces Deuyse albeit I haue wyllyd your 
 goldsmyth not to precede to the making of any thing In 
 p^'rffeccyon vntill your graczous pleasure shalbe Farther 
 knowen for the which purpose both he and I shall repayre 
 vnto yot(r highnes on Saterday night or Sondaye in the 
 morning and to the Intent your grace may determyn your 
 pleasure I haue Sent by this berer the patron of yoi(r Coller 
 of balasys and Dyamond^j drawn according to your graces 
 fyrst deuyse touching a certen matier in varyaunce betwixt 
 thexecutours of Sir ^ Wilb'am Spencer disceasyd and ^ my 
 ladye spencer whereas informacion was made vnto your 
 highnes that grete Spoyle of the gobdes of the saide Sir^ 
 Will/am Spencer was made by the saide executours and 
 how that the executours wold haue put owt my ladye late 
 the wyff of the sayd Wilh'am from the execucyon of the 
 testament the matier hath ben harde here before my lorde 
 the keper of yottr grete scale Sir Willya^w Poulet and me*. 
 And as it appereth by thexamynacion as well of the executors 
 as by Edmond Knyghtley and Rychard his brother the hole 
 spoyle and eloyning* of the sayd goods 8z plate was made 
 onely by the sayd Edmond Knyghtley his brother Rychard 
 and the sayd ladye spencer thayr suster notwA^standw^ that 
 ther was Agrement made betwene the executors and the 
 ladye spencer that she sholde entyr into bargayn w2t/« your 
 highnes and also into the execucyon of the testament wz't^ 
 them as an executrix which vndowtydly she hadde done yf 
 Edmond Knyghtle hadde not bene Which Edmonde Knightley 
 
 ' c. o. Thomas ofifenc^j as haue ben co?;zmytted 
 
 " c. o. Mr. Edmonde Knightley in that behalf haue ben onelie 
 
 ' c. o. viiHt other of yo«r graces done and executed by the saide 
 
 counsaill Edmonde Knightley his Syster and 
 
 * c. 0. as hathe ben had & made suche other of that "parte and none 
 
 of the saide goodw and also such otherwise 
 
1532] THOMAS CROMWELL 349 
 
 liathe not onelie trauayled asmoche as in him is to sett pyke 
 betwene the sayd ladye and the executors and to defeate 
 your grace of yoiir title to the heire of the saide Spencer 
 but also JusteiTyed the same befor, my sayd lorde keper of 
 tke gret Seale wher on the other partye it was openlye 
 prouyd that your grace hade good tytyll and all his 
 allegacyon vntrew yet neuertheles for the reducing of the 
 same his vntrew pz^rpose to effecte and to the Intent to 
 slaunder your gracys tytill and others he hathe caused to be 
 made certen proclamacions in yottr Countyes of Warwyke 
 leycest^r & Northampton in dyu^rs of your highnes Towns 
 there to the high contempte of yoz^r grace and your lawes 
 For it hathe not ben seen nor herd that any Subiecte wzt^in 
 this Realme sholde presume to make prcclamacion w/t/zin this 
 your realme but onelie in your graces Name Wherefore for 
 his offenc^j and other contempt^j ayenst your highnes in that 
 behalf my lorde the ke.per of your grete (seal) takyng that 
 rriatyer to be a greuous ofifens ayenst your Crown & Imperyall 
 magestye hathe coMmytted the sayd Edmond Knyghtley to 
 your pryson of the Flete where he now remayneth vntyll 
 your high plesure shalbe Ferther knowen in that behalf. As 
 touching the Cup of golde & Corporas Case I sent your 
 highnes woorde by Thomas Alvard the treuthe whereof this 
 berer Stevyn Vawhan can Informe your grace who hathe 
 made periyXXe bokes aswell of the sayd Cuppe & Corporas 
 Case as also of all other your highnes Jewelkj now being in 
 the hand^j of Cornelys to be orderyd according to your 
 grac^j plesure and thys the holye trynyte pr^serue your most 
 royall estate of your most excellent magestye 
 
 37. (Cromwell) to the Abbot of St. Edmunds 
 Bury. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1573. Nov, 24 (1532). 
 
 Desires the farm of Harlowberry, in Essex, near Honysdon. Will do all 
 he can for the monastery. 
 
 My lorde after my hartie man^r I commende. me vnto you. 
 Adu^rtising you that for dyu^rse considerac/ons I am verray 
 desirouse To haue some house in essex nere vnto Honysdon. 
 And forasmoche as yotcr parsonage of Harlowebery shall 
 shortly be in your Handes and Letting, By Reason that the 
 lease whiche Malery and. his Wyff hathe is nowe all moost 
 expired, I shall desire and instantly pray you to lett your 
 said Farme of Harlowebury vnto me by lease for terme of Ix 
 yeres for the same stokke Rent and Ferme that haithe byn 
 
350 LETTERS OE [1532 
 
 of Olde tyme accustumyd paid and p^rceyuyd for the same. 
 In doing whereof ye shall bynde me to do you and that your 
 monastary suche pleasure as may ly in my Lytell power, in 
 tyme to com. And what shalbe your towarde mynde herin 
 I pray you to Adui?rtise me in wrytyng by this berer my 
 servaunt. And as for the yeres that malery and his wyff haithe 
 yitt to com ye shall vnderstaund that I haue Agred with 
 theym for his lease Thus fare ye hartely well from Elth«m, 
 the xxiiii day of Nouembre. 
 
 Add. To my Lord Thabbot of Seynt Edmound^j Bury 
 geve this. 
 
 38. (Cromwell) to (the Earl of Northumberland). 
 
 R. O. ; not in Cal. (Dec. 1532.) 
 
 Congratulates him on the success of his last raid against the Scots, and 
 assures him of the King's favour. Urges him to keep on his guard 
 against a surprise. 
 
 After myn humble co»«mendacions please it your lordeship 
 to be adu^rtised that I haue receyued yotir \eiUres the con- 
 tent^.y wherof I haue right well p^rceyued And touching your 
 prosperous fortune and victorie in your last rode agenst your 
 enemyes Shewing therby your valiaunt courage glad hert 
 and mynde to serue the K.mges highnes and annoye his 
 enemyes, I assure your lordeship there is no man lyuyng 
 gladder to here thereof then I am your poure Frende, 
 Wisshing to god that your lordeship did knowe and here 
 as I do how louynglie and acceptablie the Kinges highnes 
 doth Regarde and take the same, which vndoubtedlie 
 wold double the hardynes and courage of any man lyuyng 
 to do his grace s^ruice. And because it is to be thought that 
 after this rode yozir enemyes the scottes will invente & studie 
 to be reuenged to your like annoyance or more if they can, 
 my poure aduise shalbe that by all the wayes meanes and 
 polycies ye can, your lordeship do circumspectlie and wit/i 
 vigilant eye make such espialles and watches and so in most 
 poletique and warlyke Facion will forsee studye and prepare 
 as in no wise by your saide enemyes ye be preuented But 
 rather that your lordeship as ye alredy haue begon will so 
 contynue endeuouring your self to greue and annoye your 
 enemyes by doing of such valiant acti?^ and exploytt^Jj to 
 thincrease of your high merite and worthie praise So as the 
 Fame renovvne and noble victorie which your lordeship hathe 
 now won and obteyned be in no wise hurte blemisshed or 
 defaced by any acte or exployte to be don hereafter for 
 
1532] THOMAS CROMWELL 351 
 
 lacke of good forsight or pr^uencyon Thus I am bolde to 
 gyue your lordeship my poure frendely aduise beseching the 
 same to excuse my boldenes and to thinke I do it onelie for 
 that I bere unto your lordeship my hertie good mynde and 
 will And no man more gladder then I to here tell of any 
 thing which should sounde to yo2^r lordeshippes good Fame 
 and hono«<r, the increase and augmentacion whereof I doubt 
 not but your lordeship will contynew to pr<?cure viith no lesse 
 diligent propence glad hert and mynde to serue the king 
 in his affairees there then as ye haue begon to the vtter grief 
 displeasure and annoyaunce of your enemyes wherein I 
 beseche our lorde to sende you as prosperous fortune and 
 good successe as your noble and valyaunt herte could wisshe 
 or desire At london etc 
 
 Endd. mynute of a k//^re 
 
 39. <Cromwell> to the Abbot of Bury. 
 
 R. O. Cal. V. 1719. (1532.) 
 
 Regrets to hear that he has detained several workmen in his district, in 
 spite of the King's need of them in London. Urges him to send 
 them up at once. 
 
 My lorde after all dew reco;«mendacyons this shalbe to 
 adu^rtise your lordshyp how that I and other hauyng charge 
 aswell of the Kyng^j Bulding^i' at his Towre of london as 
 also at Westm. haue bene for lakke of masons Carpenters and 
 other woorkmen compellyd to sende in to all the plases of this 
 Realme For prisuysyon of the same by the king^j co;«myssyon 
 and albeit that the king« mesenger by the auctoryte of his 
 Co^i^myssyon hathe repayryd into dyuers p«rtyes of Suffolke 
 ther to execute the same and also to Burrye Saynt Edmond^j 
 and therabowtt For to haue taken and prestyd masons For the 
 accomplyshment of the kyng^j sayd woork^j ye lytell Regarding 
 the kyng^j auctoryte and Co»«myssyon have stayed dyuers 
 masons and woorkmen abowte yow wherof I do moche xaer- 
 vayle my lorde I woolde be loth and also veraye sorye the 
 the^ kyng^j highnes sholde be Informyd of your demeanure in 
 that behalf For I dowt not though p^raduenture his highnes 
 woolde esteme yow to be Abbot of his Monasterye of Burye, 
 yet he woolde not forget that he ys yo«r kyng and sou^rayng 
 lorde, who pi?rcase might thinke sum vnkyndenes and also pr^- 
 sumpcyon in yow so to handell hym or his auctoryte w/t^in 
 his owne Realme Wherffor my lorde I thinke it shalbe well 
 done in aduoyding Further busynes to sende vpp those masons 
 and not to Contend w\.h your prynce ne viiih his auctoryte 
 
353 LETTERS OF [1532 
 
 I beseche youx lordshyp to pardon my playne wrytyng For 
 assurydlye I woolde be veray lothe that the king^j highnes 
 sholde haue Anye occasyon to thinke anye vnkyndnes or dis- 
 obedyence in yow and thus the holye trynyte pr^serue your 
 lordshyp in long lyffe and good helthe 
 
 40. (Cromwell) to (the Bishop of Ely). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 312. April 6 (1533). 
 
 The King desires his presence at the next session of the Council, if his 
 health will permit. Recommends the bearer Mr. Jones. 
 
 My specyall good lord after my most humble recowzmenda- 
 cyons (it) may please the same to be adu^rtysyd how that 
 the kyng^j highnes hatha Co?«maundyd me to gyue yow 
 knowlage that yf ye may by any possyble meanys your helth 
 and lyffe preseruyd Repayre hether this next terme yt sholde 
 be moche to his gracyous contentacyon and Comfort to haue 
 your presens and Cow«sayle in his affayres and his grace 
 dowtyth not but ye wyll yf it be possyble for yow to trauayle 
 accomplyshe all thing that maye be to the Satysfaccyon 
 of his pleasure. I assure your lordshyp his grace hathe not 
 a Few tymes lamentyd in the presens of youx ix&v^Aes not 
 onlye your absens but also youx Infyrmyte wherfor his grace 
 hathe bene veraye Sorye. And my lord bycause this berer 
 Maister Jonys dothe now repayre vnto your lordshyp for youx 
 Fauours and goodnes to hym so shewyd towards his preffex- 
 ment vnto whom yt may please you at my poore Sute & 
 medyacyon to be specyall good lorde Assuryng your lorde- 
 ship that he ys a p^rffect honest gentylman and such on^ as 
 ye shall neu^r Repent the thing that ye shall doo For hym as 
 knowyth the holye trynyte who euer pr^serue your lordshyp 
 in long lyffe and good helthe At londen the vi"' daye of 
 Aprell. 
 
 41. (Cromwell) to (Lord Scrope). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 383. April 25 (1533). 
 
 The King has received his letters, and is glad that he will let him have 
 the manor of Pyssow in Hertfordshire. The King will give him 
 good lands in exchange. 
 
 My specyall goode lorde after all dew Reco»«mendacyons 
 this shalbe to adu^rtyse the same that the kyngys highnes 
 right thankffullye dyd accept your k//^res to hym dyrected 
 & delyuered by mr. chasye and his grace ys m^rveylouslye 
 well contentyd that your lordshyp wooll let his grace haue 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 353 
 
 your ma.nour & parks of Pyssow in exchaunge. Wherfor his 
 Magestie hathe Co^^maundyd me to Inserche for land^j for your 
 Recompens which I shall doo wit/i all conuenyent spede and 
 as to the rede howsys with the other thing^j mouyd to me by 
 this barer your s^ruaunt I wyll vndowtydlye doo my best so 
 that yo«^r lordeshyp by the next shalbe certeffyed of the kyng^j 
 Full and determynate pleasure in all thing^j as knowethe our 
 lorde who eu^r pr^serue your lordshyp in long lyffe & good 
 helthe at london the xxv"" daye of Aprell. 
 
 42. <Cromwell) to (the Duke of Suffolk). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 415. April (1533). 
 
 The King is pleased with his willingness to surrender his patent of Earl 
 Marshal, which has been granted to the Duke of Norfolk. Suffolk 
 is to have the Justiceship of the Forests on this side of the Trent for 
 life, in exchange. Advises him to come to Court at once. 
 
 After my most humble Recowmendacions it maye please 
 your grace to Vnderstande that the Kinges highnes hath been 
 assuredlie aduertised howe that your grace is contente to 
 surrendre your patente of the office of Therle Marshall into 
 his hand« Whervpon his Magestie hath graunted the same 
 vnto my lorde of Norffol^ his grace Whose Auncestors of longe 
 tyme hadd thesame vntill nowe of late. And his highnes is 
 contente that your grace in the lewe and place therof shall 
 haue his leUeres patent^j' of the Justiceshipp of his Forest^j on 
 thisside Trente for terme of your lyfe. Assurynge your 
 grace his highnes doth not onlie repute moche honour in yo«r 
 grace for that ye soo kyndlie will departe w?t^ the saide office 
 of marshalshipp vnto my saide lorde of Norf(oIk but also his 
 magestie supposeth and p^rfectlie pi?rcevith that yoier grace 
 hath moche more estimacion and zele to Norisshe kyndenes 
 and love bytwene my saide lorde of Norffo/^ and you then ye 
 haue to thatt or any other office whiche vndubtelie is highlie 
 to his gracious contentacion to see and percetue so grate and 
 honorhable parsonages his subiect^jso lovynglie and Frendlie 
 the on to love thother. Wherfore as he that always rekonith 
 hymselfe [bou]nden vnto yoz^r grace and beyng also ver[ayly] 
 Joyouse to p^rsayve howe pleasauntlie the kmges highnes 
 taketh in gude parte and repute your honorhable and moost 
 gentill demeanours in this and all other yo2/r procedyng^j 
 thought I coulde no lesse doo then to adu^rtise you 
 therof to thintente that ye knowynge thesame myght and 
 may determyn your self therafter. And amongest other 
 things as I can p^rceyue it shulde not be vnthankfullie taken 
 toward^j the king^j highnes and your grace yf it were yo«r 
 
354 LETTERS OF [1533 
 
 ease and pleasure to repayre to the Courte vii\.h Resonable 
 spede consyderyng that shortlye my lorde of Norfolke de- 
 partyth toward^j his gret Jorney in Ambassade. Beseching 
 your grace to pardon my bolde & Rude wryting whiche I am 
 movyd vnto For the poore good wyll I b[ear] [yo«r] 
 grace as knowyth the holye trynyte who preserue yotir grace 
 in longue lyfife good helth wztA thincrease of moche hono«/r 
 at London the daye of Aprell. 
 
 43. (Cromwell) to Mr. Strete. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 645. June 14 (1533). 
 
 Recommends various persons to receive the land, cattle, and com of the 
 late priory of Calwich in Staffordshire. Gives directions for the 
 administration of Strete's ofHce. Cf. Letter 22. 
 
 Maister Strete as hertelye as I Can I co;^zmend me vnto 
 yow and wher as by my last \ettexcs I wrott vnto yow in the 
 Fauors of Curson and Fyndern to be pr^fferryd vnto the Catell 
 and Corn of late belongyng to the pryorye of Colwyche and 
 Sythyn that tyme I wrotte vnto yow on the behalf of 
 Mr. longford for his pr^fferment vnto the demaynes of the 
 sayd late pryorye so hit ys that now the sayd maister long- 
 ford by his Father in law Mr. Fyzherbert moche desyryth to 
 haue the Tythys and also suche Corn as at this tyme ys Sown 
 vppon the demaynes of the sayd late pryorye for this yere whych 
 tythe and Corn Sown vppon the demaynes I require yow 
 that he may haffe at suche prysys as ye shall thinke convenyent 
 and in such wyse as the kyng^i- highnes may be Substaun- 
 cyallye answeryd of the proffyttes growing of the same without 
 any Fauour to be born to anye othre partye and wher as 
 I wrott in myn other letter that Curson and Fyndern shold haue 
 the pr^ffermentt of the Catell and Corn I dyd not wrytt for 
 anye Come growing on the grownde ne yet for any tythys 
 which in no wyse ye shall Suffer them to haue but to order hyt 
 as ys afforsayd most to the kynges pr^^ffytte &. aduawntage. 
 I well persayue who grauntyth suchemen an Inche they wyll 
 take an ell. I am Infformyd they avaunte them selfs to haue 
 Co»zmyssyons and grauntt^j of the kyng which ys vntrew 
 I praye yew aduyse them to vse no suche Facyons. Syr the 
 kynges highnes trustyth that ye w?t^ all spede will bryng up 
 the half yeres Ferme and Rcntt^j of the Busshopryche which 
 I praye yow may be here before his gracyous departyng in 
 pr^gresse. and as to the Chanon off Colwyche ye may trans- 
 late hym vnto Sum good howse of that relygyon being nere 
 vnto yow and to gyue hym sumthing after your discrecyow 
 suche as may stand y/itk the kyng^j honour and also to his 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 855 
 
 honest Contentacyon and thus trustyng in your approuyd 
 wysdom and experyence Co;«mytt all the pr^mysses vnto your 
 discrecyon trustyng eu^r that ye wyll haue respect to your 
 dew[tie] and charge and also that I may haue short answer 
 of thes and other my leiteres and so Fare ye well at london 
 the xiiii"' daye of June 
 
 44. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 706. June 26 (1533). 
 
 Desires him to admit Bartholomew Peters as surgeon of Calais. Will do 
 his best to obtain Lisle's requests for the town. 
 
 My lorde after my right hertie reco;«mendacions these 
 shalbe to aduifrtise \y\our lordeship that where it hathe 
 pleased the \dx\ges highnes to gyve and [gjraunte to Bartholo- 
 mew Petres the rowme of Surgeon in his grace . . . w?t^in the 
 towne of Calays, as by a bill signed for that purpose ... ye 
 shall receyue of the saide Bartholomew more playnelie shall . . ^ 
 [ajppere I shall therefore requyre yotcr lordeship that insuing 
 the teanowr purport and effecte of the king« saide graunte 
 ye do see the saide Bartholomew admytted into the saide 
 rowme when tyme shall requyre accordingly. And concerning 
 suche matiers as ye latelie haue written in for the towne of 
 Calays, I do not ne shall not cesse to do my best to reduce 
 and bryng the same to suche good passe and effecte as shalbe 
 thought most requysite and expedient. I trust to yo^;' good 
 contentacion. And so our lorde pr^serue your lordeship in 
 long lif and good helth -with thincrease of honour. At London 
 the xxvi day of June 
 
 Your lordshyppis assuryd 
 
 Thomas C[rumwell] 
 
 I wrytt to your lordeshyp For this berer by the King^j 
 expresse Cowzmandmentt. 
 
 Add. To the right honourable and his singuler good 
 lorde my Lorde Lisle deputie to the King^.f highnes of his 
 town and marches of Calays be this youen. 
 
 45. Cromwell to (Thomas Beeston). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 776. (June-July, l533-> 
 
 Ordering him to repair to the Emperor's Court and deliver the King's 
 letters to Dr. Hawkins there, with directions to turn them over to the 
 Emperor. He is to return with the Emperor's answer. 
 
 First the king^j highnes pleasure is that ye hauing receyued 
 your packet of \eiteres and instructions directed vnto Mr. 
 
356 LETTERS OF [1533 
 
 docto«r Hawkyns, shall ymediatelie put yourself in aredynes 
 to departe toward^^ the parties of beioynde the See, inserch- 
 ing by your polycie the nerest wayes to suche place where 
 it shall happen the Emperour to lye. 
 
 Itm when ye shall repayre to thempro«^rs Courte ym- 
 mediatly to delyu^r the saide packet vnto the saide Mr. Haw- 
 kyns -witk hertie greting^j and salutacions from the king^j 
 highnes adu^rtesing him ferther that the king« pleasure is 
 that when tyme shall Requyre, he shall not onelie intymate 
 declare and communycate the effect^j of suche k/Z^res and in- 
 structions conteyned in the saide packet, w?t^ themprour, 
 alwayes insuing the teanour purpose and meanyng of the 
 same, But also after his accustomed wisedom dexterite and 
 good polycie shall indeuour himself so to propone handle and 
 set fourth all thing^j as he by his good discression shall se 
 tyme place and occasion So as the same may take effecte 
 according to the King^j high trust and expectacion in that 
 behalf. 
 
 Itm that after declaracion of the pr^rmisses and co;«muny- 
 cac2on had at length wz't^ themperour in the same, the saide 
 Mr. Haukyns shall then if he so thinke good, devise determyn^ 
 and conclude witA you for your depeche and retoume hither 
 v/it/z letteres and instructions purporting suche answeres ar- 
 ticles and allegacions as by themperour shalbe answered 
 leyed and obiected to those thing,?.? which the saide Mr. Haw- 
 kyns shall intymate and declare as is aforsaide on the kyng^J 
 behalf, which being don*? and accomplisshed the kyng« 
 gracious pleasure is that ye shall make all conuenyent haste 
 spede and diligence to repayre hither to his grace wit/z the 
 same accordingly. 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Endd. mynute. 
 
 46. (Cromwell) to (the Merchant Tailors). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 698. (June, 1533.) 
 
 Requests them to continue and increase the annuity granted to Nicholas 
 Glossop, servant of the late Archbishop Warham. 
 
 Right wellbeloued Frendes I recomend me hartly vnto yowe 
 And where I am enfourmed that at the request of my late 
 lorde of Caunterbury, whose sowle god pardon, ye graunted 
 to his seruaunt Nicholas Glossop, an olde Auncient of youre 
 Felisship of m^rchaunt Taillours a certeyn Annuytie of 
 xxvi s. viii d. toward the SustentaCion of his lyvyng for terme 
 of his Naturall life. Wherof by his report, he hath be(n) well 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 357 
 
 and truly Answered of a long tyme. Howe be it nowe upon 
 the deceas of his said maister, as it ys said, that ye entende 
 to withdrawe From hym youre saide Benyuolence and 
 graunte, which shulde be to his great Discomfort and 
 Hyndraunce. And forasmoche as I here good Mynde and 
 ¥a.vour towardes hym And it were more charitie rather to 
 Augemente his lyving than to dymynysshe it or withdrawe 
 the same, specially nowe in his great Age, whan he hath most 
 nede of help and Socoure. I hertly desire yowe that for my 
 sake ye wille not only contynue the payment of the said 
 Annuytie to hym for terme of his life according to your said 
 graunte. But also of youre larger Benyvolence and charitie 
 to encreas the same xiii s. iiii d. more by yere. Wherby in 
 myne opynyon, ye shall not only do the thyng whiche may 
 be right meritorious to yowe, but also right honorable for 
 youre said Felisship, and to me right great pleasure, and 
 for the same doing He may hereafter do yowe pleasure And 
 I shalbe glad to doo yowe pleasure or any good that I can 
 for your Felowship at alle tymes As knoweth god who 
 pr^serue yowe. And Further I desire yowe of your good 
 Answere in this behalf the morowe Folowing your next 
 Courte Day by yowe to be holden at your halle 
 
 Endd. A \ettx^ for Nicholas glossop. 
 
 47. Cromwell to Mr. Thomas Alen. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 791. July 9 <I533>. 
 
 For failing to pay his debts to Cromwell, and to give sureties for the 
 money his brother owes the King, Alen has forfeited 1000 marks to 
 the Crown. Requests an answer by the bearer. 
 
 Maister Alen after right hertie co»«mendac2ons these shalbe 
 to aduertise you that long or this tyme I loked to haue harde 
 from you and trusted not onelie to haue had and receyued 
 from you now at Midsomer last passed my Hundreth pound^j 
 which of gentilnes I lent you but also sufficient bondes and 
 suertie for your brother tharchebisshop of Duntlyn concern- 
 ing the payment of vii" ^ mark^.y which he oweth to the king^j 
 highnes according to suche bonde as you and other v^iXh you 
 stonde bounde in for the complement of the same. For lacke 
 and defaulte whereof ye haue forfaited to the king^j highnes 
 the So^^me of one thousande mark^j which me thinketh ye 
 ought substaunciallye to loke vppon for the king is no person 
 
358 LETTERS OF [i533 
 
 to be deluded nor mocked -with all. And considering that 
 for your sake I so gentillie departed -with my money me 
 semeth that reason and good honestie requireth ye should 
 se me payed ayen. prayeng you that I may be adu^rtised by 
 this berer what ye mean and intende to do in the premisses. 
 And so hertelie Fare ye well. At London the ix"" day 
 of Julie. 
 
 Your louyng Frend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To his louyng Frende Mr. Thomas Alen be this 
 yeuen at Raylegh. 
 
 48. Cromwell and Audeley to Hawkins and 
 Randall, Bailiffs of Weymouth. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 858. July 18, 1533. 
 
 Warrant for the delivery into the nearest prison of six men taken in the 
 ship Trinity, of Hull. The goods and the ship are to be delivered 
 to William Gonson. 
 
 Wellbelouyd we grete you well, and Where as Willzam 
 Gonson of london hathe shewed vnto vs an Indenture datyd 
 the viii* daye of June last, made betwene Edward Waters 
 and you specyfyeng the deliu^rauns of a Ship namyd the 
 Trinite of Hull and Ixiiii Hoggyshedes of gascon wyne wftA 
 dyu^rs other thing^j therin conteynyd to your Handes. We 
 certefye yow that the Kyng his pleasure is that ye shall 
 incontynent deliu^r or cause to be deliu^red all things 
 conteanyd in the said Indentures to the said Wilh'am Gonson 
 or his assignes. and as towching the sixe pryson^rs taken in 
 the said Ship and lykewyse deliu^ryd into your kepyng that 
 ye deliu^r theim into the next pryson to you, ther to be 
 surely kepte till the king^j pleasure be to you Further 
 knowne wheche deliu^raunce of Ship and goodes & 
 prysoners shall be vnto you a sufficyent dyscharge at all 
 tymes herafter Wryton at London the xviii daye of July 
 the xxv"" yere of the Reigne of our sou^raigne lorde kyng 
 Harry the viii"". 
 
 Thomas Audeley Kt. chauncelo«r 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To our Welbelouyd Wilkam Hawkyns and WilU'i^m 
 Randall Baylyff« of the towne of Waymowthe. 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 359 
 
 49. Cromwell to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert and 
 Walter Luke. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 872. July 19 (1533). 
 
 Requires him to delay the trial of a case which may be prejudicial to 
 Cromwell, as the jury has been packed, and will be likely to give an 
 unjust verdict. 
 
 After my right hertie co»fmendacions Forasmoche as there 
 is a Nisipri?<j passed out to be tried before you at the next 
 assises to be holden at Lyncoln concerning the tryall of the 
 title of Anthony Stydolffe who is my warde Which Nisiprius 
 is secretlie sued out and passed without my knowlege so as 
 p^rcase the same may be moche pmudiciall vnto me in that 
 thing whereunto I haue good iust and lawfull title as ye shall 
 apperceyue by suche deades and writing^j as my Frend this 
 berer shall shew vnto you, I therefore considering your 
 worshippes and good indifferencies, trusting that ye will do 
 me none iniustice in this behalf Do most hertelie require and 
 pray you to staye the tryall of the saide Nisiprius, Vntill ye 
 shall haue Ferther knowlege of the matier, the rather for 
 that I am crediblie infourmed that the enquest is alredie so 
 parciallie impaneled that vndoubtedlie it is thought they will 
 passe directlie ayenst the trowth. Eftesones therefore most 
 hertelie requyring you to provyde and forsee myn indempnyte 
 in this parte, And for the good acquytall of your gentilnes 
 to be shewed vnto me herein if there be any thing wherein 
 my poure powers can extende to do yow pleasure I shall not 
 Faile godd willing to accomplisshe the same to the vtterest 
 of my lytill power. And so most hertelie Fare ye well. At 
 London the xix**" day of Julie. 
 
 It may please you to gyve firme credence vnto this berer 
 in such thing^j- as he shall declare vnto you on my behalf 
 
 Your assuryd Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right worshipfull Mr. Anthony Fitzherberte 
 knight one of the king^j iustic^.y of his comen benche and 
 to Mr. Walter Luke esquier and to either of them. 
 
 50. (Cromwell) to Mr. Mustiam. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 878 (ii). July 19 (1533). 
 
 Desires him to permit the bearer to enjoy a lease of the farm of Brokesley. 
 
 Master Mustiam I hartely co;«mende me vnto you. And 
 in the same wise beseching you at this my poure contemplaczbn 
 
360 LETTERS OF [i533 
 
 and request to be good master and Frende vnto . . . berar 
 hereof, in letting hym to opteyne, and peacably to occupie 
 and enyoye the hole effect of a lease of the ferme or parsonage 
 of Brokesley, in the paroche of Detford in the Countie of 
 Kent to hym demysed by one Mr. Otywell of Westminster 
 diseased wz't/iout any your further let grief or disturbauns. 
 Vntill suche tyme as ye shall knowe further of my will and 
 pleasure, and inso doyng ye shall mynyster vnto me right 
 singukr pleasar^. And this hartely fare ye well At London 
 this xix day of July 
 
 51. (Cromwell) to Mr. Mustiam. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 878 (ii). July 20 (1533 >. 
 
 The bearer complains ■ that Mustiam intends unjustly to take the tithe 
 corn of Brokesley from him. Advises Mustiam not to do this. 
 
 Maist^r Mvstyam I hertelye coMmende me vnto yow 
 adu^rtysing the same that the poore man berer herof hathe 
 shewyd me that ye do Intend to do hym wrong in takyng 
 From hym the tythe Corn of Brokleye, other wyse wyse '■ 
 Called west greenwyche whervnto I thinke ye haue no tytyll 
 nor Interest, wherfor I shall aduyse yow to stay to doo any 
 thing in the same vntyll suche tyme as ye shall be hable 
 honestlye to to ^ Clayme therin and thus Fare ye well at 
 lohdon this xx"" daye of July 
 
 52. Cromwell to Henry VIII. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 887. July 23 <IS33>- 
 
 Reports the examination of certain Friars Observants, who have been 
 taken by Cromwell's spies. Two of them would certainly confess 
 much if examined by torture. Desires instructions how to proceed. 
 Has inquired of Cranmer about the men, as the King desired. 
 
 Please it your highnes to be aduertised that vppon myn 
 arryuayle at London I receyued certen k^Z'^res out of the 
 North directed vnto your grace from the lorde Dacre. Which 
 I haue sent to your maiestee herein closed wztk also certen 
 leiieres and Newes sent vnto me from my Lorde Deputie 
 of Calays. And touching the Freres obseruant^J that were 
 wzt/4 the pryncff.r dowagier, being subtillie conueyed from thens 
 were first espied at Ware by suche espialles as I leyed for 
 that purpose, and hauyng good awayte leyed vppon them 
 were from thens dogged to London, and there (notwz't^- 
 stonding many wyles and cauteles by them invented to 
 escape) were taken and deteyned till my cuw«myng home. So 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 361 
 
 as vppon my arryuayle here I called them before me and 
 vppon examynacion of them coulde gather nothing of anye 
 momenta or grete importaunce, but entring into ferther 
 cowmunycac2o« founde the one of them a veray sedycious 
 person, and so cowzmytted them vnto warde where they now 
 do remayne till your gracious pleasure knowen. Ymmedy- 
 atelie afterward^j repayred vnto me the warden of the grey 
 Freres of Grenewich who semeth veray desirous to haue the 
 punycyon of the saide two Freres, being named Hugh Payne 
 and Cornelius, and made grete intercession vnto me to haue 
 them delyu^red vnto him, Shewing unto me ferther that the 
 mynyster and generall CoMmyssarie of this prouynce of 
 Englonde had made out certeyne cow«maundement^j vnto 
 the said Freers willing them by vertue of obedience to 
 repayre vnto him to Rychemont to thintent they wold 
 haue the correction of them accordinglie. Which com- 
 maundementw being conteyned in certen mynut^j of paper 
 I haue sent to your grace herein closed. It semeth assuredlie 
 that the saide mynyster is a right honest and discrete person 
 and Fayne wolde haue prevented and taken the saide Freers 
 if he had coulde by any meanes, Beseching your grace tha[t] 
 I may knowe your gracious pleasure Whether I shall kepe 
 and de[t]eyne them in warde and bring them -with me at my 
 repayree to the courte, or Whether your grace will haue them 
 sent y;«medyatelie to any other place or what other direction 
 to be taken therein as shall and may stonde -with your high 
 pleasure. It is vndoubted that they haue intended and wolde 
 confesse sum grete matier if they might be examyned as they 
 ought to be that is to sey by paynes, for I perceyue the saide 
 Hugh Payne to be a subtile Felowe and moche gyuen to 
 sedycyon. 
 
 I haue also eftesones sent vnto my lorde of Caunterbury 
 according to your graczous co»«maundement touching the 
 dissymuled holynes and supersticious demeanures of the 
 Ipocryte Nunne, And haue declared your gracious pleasure 
 vnto the Staple whom in manner I do Fynde agreable 
 to all thing^j according to your grac^j demaunde sauyng 
 onelie they as yet requyre lenger dayes for the payment 
 of the some of x m* pounds by them now graunted, and 
 also fermely requyre that your highnes will graunt them 
 their house for a reasonable somm& of money yerelie, which 
 I do stycke y/ith them in. and as to morowe they will gyv& 
 me a resolute answer in the hole. 
 
 And thus I shall daylie pray vnto almightie god for the 
 
 MERRIMAN. 1 J 
 
 Bb 
 
363 LETTERS OF [i533 
 
 prosperous conseruacion of your royall maiestee in long lif 
 and good helth felyciouslie to indure. at London the xxiii day 
 of Julie. Your highnes most humble subiectte and seruavicA 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 Add. To the king^j royall maiestee. 
 
 53. <Cromwell> to Audeley. 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 894. July 26 <I533>- 
 
 Desires him to permit the annuity of £20 which has just been granted to 
 Stephen Vaughan to bear date from a year ago this summer, as there 
 was already ^20 due to Vaughan for one year's service. 
 
 Right honourable syr after myn^ hartie commendac^bns. 
 So it is that the king^j hieghnes hathe lately graunted Vnto 
 a seruant of his named Stephen Vaughan a certeyne annuytie 
 of XX li by yere to be paide from the faste of the natyuytie of 
 saynt John Baptiste now last passed Vnto the whiche 
 Stephen by cause there is owyng by the kyng^j hieghnes 
 XX li for one yeres seruyce ended at iVIydsomer now laste 
 paste, therefore is it that by cause he hathe no waise to 
 demaunde it of maister Tuke by patent or other sufficient 
 warrant from his hieghnes. he hathe desyred me who vn- 
 doubtidly do know that his pleasure is that he shulde be 
 payde the sayde xx li. to Requyre yow that when his annuytie 
 co>;2mythe to the greate seale your pleasure maye be to suffer 
 it to bere date from Mydsomer Was a yere and that he maye 
 by force therof be payde the yere now passed. And doubte ye 
 not thus to do. for the king^j pleasure is he shulde be paide the 
 XX li due for the yere passed. And I shall alwayse warrant 
 yow to be sufficiently discharged and to be blameles for so 
 doyng. The saide Stephen had obteyned the king« warrant for 
 the same, oneles his highnes had now sent hym into Germany 
 for thexpedicion of certeyn his affayres there. And thus the 
 holy tryny tie pr^serue your lordeship in long lyfe goode healthe 
 and much honour, from London the xxvi daye of Julye. 
 
 Add. To the right honourable Sir Thomas Audley knyght 
 lord chancello2<r, 
 
 54. (Cromwell) to the Abbot of Woburn. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 778. (July, 1533.) 
 
 Requests him not to maltreat the Abbot of Vawdy in Lincolnshire ; has 
 heard he intends to depose him. Desires him to cause Davys Edward, 
 the monk of Vawdy, to amend his ways. 
 
 My lord aft^r my duetie remewzbred, soo it is that I. am 
 credibly enformed how that ye beryng inwarde grudge & 
 
^533] THOMAS CROMWELL 36a 
 
 displesure to my welbeloued Frend thAbbot of Vawdy entende 
 studie & goo about^j by sinistre meanes to depose hyme from 
 his abbacye for the pr^mocion therunto of oon of your awne 
 monk^j being the cellerer of your house. My lord I pray you 
 vse your selffe vnto my saide frende as accordeth to yo«r 
 religion, For I knowe certainly that he is a good religious man, 
 And that his house wiche was in gret debt at the tyme of his 
 prcmocion, is nowe by his good policie reduced to good 
 & welthy state and condicion aswell in catoU as in corne 
 furnisshed w?t^ other requisit^j & necessaries. Wherfor my 
 lord my trust ys that ye wol circu»?spectly loke therupon 
 baring your good & lawfull iauour unto hyme, like as good 
 charitie requireth. And the rather at my disire & request 
 ascertaynyng you that I haue at this tyme writen my sem- 
 blable \eiUres in the {a.uour of my said frend vnto thabbot 
 of fountayns not doubtyng but that he at my requisiCzbn wol 
 lovingly vse and intreate my said frend in all his busuynes. 
 And wher as ye haue vfitA you a monk of the said house 
 of Vawdy oon Dauys Edward Gierke, wiche ye knowe well 
 haith- gretely mysordred hymselff. I trust that ye woll 
 instructe hyme soo fruteffully that he shall not nede to be 
 further reconsiled to amend his lyvynge Wherby ye shall 
 doo averay good & charitable dede as knoeth god who kepe 
 yow 
 
 Add. To thabbot of Woborn 
 
 Endd. a k//^re for the abbot of Woborne 
 
 55. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1064. Sept. i (1533). 
 
 The King is displeased at Lisle's desire for new arrangements for ' the 
 restraynyng of Corne.' Lisle should not take every man's or his 
 own wife's advice concerning things pertaining to his office. 
 
 After my right harty reco»«mendation vnto your good 
 lordship This shalbe to adu^rtise the same that I have 
 resceyved your leiieres wherein ye and the Mayer of Calays 
 do desire to have newe provisions concernyng the restraynyng 
 of Corne otherwise then hathe byn vsyd yn tymes past, 
 I ensure your lordship the king« highnes is not a litle 
 displeased withe that your desire, but supposith your besynes 
 to be veray small that will in any wise ymportune his highnes 
 withe any soche matiers Sayeng that before this tyme the 
 Towne and marches of Calays hathe ben well maynteynyd 
 and prospered w^t^out any soche newe devises. And I assure 
 your lordship as your frynd to my power that I have great 
 
 B b a 
 
364 LETTERS OF [i533 
 
 m^rvayll that ye will so sone enclyne to eu^;'y man«ys devise 
 and .... specially in matiers of small ympor[t] ... ye and 
 . . . reportyd . . . nite me on . . . causes as me semythe . . . 
 nothyng . . . ne gentilwymen, for although my lady be right 
 hono?<rable and wise yet yn soche causes as longithe to 
 your auctoritie her advise and discresion can litle prevayle. 
 Wherfore I pray yo^^r lordship to consider the same, and 
 to ymportune the king^j highnes vfitk none other matiers 
 then of necessite ye ought to do. And thus the blessed 
 Trynyte preserue you. At london the first day of 
 September. 
 
 Your lordshyppis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my veray good lord my lord Vicount Lisley the 
 \d\iges deputie at Calays be thus youen. 
 
 56. Cromwell to the French Ambassador. 
 
 Huth Library; Cal. vi. 1128. Sept. 15 (1533). 
 
 Reports the arrival of Danish and Norwegian ambassadors at the Court 
 of the Queen Regent of the Netherlands to conclude an alliance. 
 
 yionsieur lambassade«<r Le Roy mon maistre a este aduerty 
 par son agent estant en Flandres. Que puisnagueres les 
 ambassadeurs de Danemarche Norwege & Hoist au nom du 
 conseil et Royaulme de Danemarche, sont arriuez a la court 
 de la Royne douagiere de hungzerye regent deflandres auec 
 le nombre de xxxii p^^'sonnes ou enuiron et comme son d«V 
 agent peult entendre avecques plain et suffisant pouuoir et 
 auctorite A conclure et affermer vne bonne allyance et paix 
 auecques I'empere?^^ et tons ses pais & dominions tant defen- 
 siue que offensiue, Aussy autant qu'il peult entendre LadzVi? 
 Royne & son conseil sont determynez a traiter et conclure 
 auecques lesdits ambassadewrs auecques telle condition que 
 quiconques sera eleu Roy par dela (I'election duquel est 
 encore prolongee & differee pour I'espace dung an) II Jurera 
 ratifiera & confermera la<fzte allyance & Traycte de Paix. 
 Desquelles choses le Roy mon dti Maistre ma co»«mande vous 
 aduertir affin que en C(?«uenient diHgence vous en vuelles 
 rescripre au Roy Tres ohrestievi vostre maistre et Ladviser 
 quil seroit bon de penser sur cest affaire et essayer sil Luy 
 semble expedient a estoupper leurs propoz et aultremewt y 
 pourveoir ainsi quil Luy semblera conuenable. A tant Mon- 
 sieur Lambassadew^ apres mestre affectueusemewt Recom- 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 365 
 
 mande a vous je prie nostre seigneur quil vous ait en sa 
 tressaincte & digne garde. Escript a Stepney le xv jour de 
 Septembre 
 
 Yostre entier et parfaict amy 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. a monsieur Lambassadewr du Roy Treschr^j/ien 
 a Londres 
 
 Endd. de M'. Craumeuelle 
 
 57. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1141. Sept. 21 (1533). 
 
 Requests him to permit the executors of Robert Baynham freely to 
 administer his testament, notwithstanding his former letters to the 
 contrary. 
 
 Aftre my right harty Commendac«'ons to your lordshipp 
 Whereas heretofore I addressed my Xetter^s vnto your lordshipp 
 at the sute of my s^ru«unt Bartholomew Bayneham concernyng 
 the steye of such good^j as lately apperteyned to his Father 
 Robert Baynam of Calaish vntil suche tyme as ye harde 
 Further of my mynde in that behaulf. These shalbe most 
 hertely to desyer and praye youe the rather at the contem- 
 placzon hereof to suffre thexecuto?<rs of his sayd Father Robert 
 Baynam to execute and mynistre according to the meanyng 
 of the Testament and last wyll of his sayd Father in as ample 
 wise as heretofore they haue doon my sayd former leiieres 
 notwA^standing. And being enformed of your goodnes and 
 also of my lad^j of late shewed vnto my sayd Si?ru«unt 
 partely as I take yt for my sake I thanke you most hertely 
 for the same and though my lady for her parte might haue 
 been better before yet I requyre you bothe for my sake ye 
 nowe to contynewe the goodnes which youe doo presently 
 extende Vnto him. Wherein ye shall admynystre Vnto me 
 Veray acceptable pleasur. And thus Fare you hertely well 
 From Stepney the xxi"^ day of Septembre 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my Veray good lorde my lorde the Viconte Lisle 
 Deputie of the king^j Towne of Calaysh and Marches of 
 the same. 
 
366 ^ LETTERS OF [i533 
 
 58. Cromwell to Richard and William Haybourne. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1332. Oct. 24 (lS33>- 
 The Lord Chancellor arrd Cromwell will sit on the dispute between them 
 and Elizabeth Colcoke the Friday after All Hallowday. 
 
 I co;«mend me vnto you. Adu^rtising you that it is fully 
 det^rmynyd betwixt my lord Chaunceler and me that we will 
 sitt vpon the mater in variaunce betwixt Elizabeth Colcoke 
 widowe and you the Friday after Alhallow day. Wherfore 
 I requyre you in any wise to be here the day before that 
 ye may be redy for that purpose and that ye in no wise faill 
 so to do vpon your peryll. And thus fare ye well. At 
 'london the xxiiii* day of October. 
 
 Your Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my kyndes Richard Haybourne and William 
 "Rayhourae be this youen. 
 
 59. (Cromwell) to the Abbots of Fountains and 
 
 Byland. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1408. Nov. 8 (lS33>. 
 
 Is surprised that they have not yet elected a new Abbot of Rievaulx as 
 the King wished. Advises them to delay no longer. 
 
 After my full hertie ma.ner I recommende me vnto you. 
 And where as it hathe pleased the king^.f highnes to directe 
 his moste gracz'ous leUeres vnto you nowe at this presents 
 tyme for the elecczon of a newe Abbote of Ryvaulx wherein 
 his grace hathe bene adu^rtised ye haue not heretofore inde- 
 vored youreselfi?j to thaccomplishemente of the same according 
 to his said leUeres and co^zmaundemente (whereof I merva.ile 
 not a little) that ye wold incurre his high displeasure for the 
 none executing of the same, therefore I hertely requyre you 
 and neu^rthelesse doo advise you in exchewing of further 
 Inconvenyenc^i' and displeasures that maye thereby ensue 
 (all affeccions sette ap«rte) ye doo accomplishe the said 
 elecc/on according to the tenour and purporte of his moste 
 grac?ous leUeies directyd vnto you and to the Convente of the 
 same monastary in that behalf. And thereby ye shall not 
 oonly des^rue the king^j moste grac20us thank^j, but alsoo 
 haue me to doo for you in all your good causes the beste I can. 
 As knowethe our Lorde who kepe you. Written at London 
 the viii* daye of Nouembre. 
 
 Add. To the right hono?^rable in god my Lorde Abbote 
 of Funtaunce and Bylande and to either of theym. 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 367 
 
 60. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1413. Nov. 1 1 (1533). 
 
 Has heard of the trouble that has arisen owing to the blow the knight 
 porter has given to a ' lewde Felowe.' Thinks that there is no cause 
 why the knight porter should be molested for his action. 
 
 My lorde after my right hertie co»«mendacions I haue 
 receyued your lordeshippes k/^^res And haue p^rceyued by 
 the same what contencion is arrysen there by meanes of 
 a lewde Felowe for a stroke yeven vnto him by Sir Cristofer 
 Garnysshe the knight porter, Which matier hath ben debated 
 here by the king« counsaile who pi?^ceyuing the saide stroke 
 was yeven but onelie for correction and for none entente to 
 breke any law statute or ordenaunce of that towne of Calays, 
 do thinke the same but a veray light matier to make any suche 
 busynes of and no cause why the saide Sir Cristofer should 
 be put to any molestacion for the same. Wherefore your 
 lordeship may let it passe and wey it as it is And so our 
 lorde pr^serue your lordeship in long lif and helth wz't^ moche 
 honour At London the xi day of Nouember. 
 
 [I] do also hertelie thanke your lordsship for your grete 
 chere made to my s^ruaunte [Willjyam Johnson and to this 
 gentilman straungier for whom I do wryte vnto your lordeship 
 at this tyme by myn other letter&s. And for all other yotir 
 lordshippes gentilnes I do most hertelie thanke you trusting 
 if I lyue to requyte the same if I can. 
 
 Your lordshyppis assuryd Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right honourable and his singuler good 
 lorde the lorde vicount Lisle deputie to the \dnges highnes 
 of his towne and marcheis of Calays. 
 
 Endd. M. Cro»«well the xi**" of nove;«br 
 
 61. Cromwell to the Abbot of Netley. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1502. Dec. 6 <I533>. 
 
 Desires him to grant his friend John Cooke a new lease for sixty years of 
 Roydon farm near Southampton, as it lies by the sea and is con- 
 venient for Cooke in his office of the Admiralty there. 
 
 In my right hartie maner I co;«mende me vnto your good 
 lordship. And where as my frynd John Cooke the king^j graces 
 seruaMnl berer herof hath and holdeth a Ferme of yours 
 callid Roydon by lesse wherof the yeres in the same be 
 almost expyred And forasmoche as your said ferme Heth 
 
368 LETTERS OF [i533 
 
 nygh the see syde necessaryly for my saide frynd to serue the 
 king^j highnes in his office of the admyraltie in those parties 
 I hartely desyre you at the contemplacion of thies my leiieres 
 that ye will graunte vnto the saide John Coke a newe lesse 
 of the saide ferme vnder your Conventuall Seale for terme of 
 Ix yeres paying vnto you and your Successours the accus- 
 tumable rent therof. And for your towardnes herin I shalbe 
 glad to requyte the same to your good contentacion And 
 farther I perceyve by the reporte of the same Cooke that ye 
 have shewed vnto hym and other that hathe byn vfitk hym to 
 do the hinges highnes s^ruice at the See muche Jentylnes and 
 lib^^-alitie, for the whiche ye have deserved the king^j right 
 harty thank^j. And therfore I for my parte hartylye thanke 
 you And of your conformable mynde herin I pray you to 
 adu^^tise me in wrytyng by this berer. And thus fare ye 
 hartylye welle. At london the vi* day of December. 
 
 Your lordshyppis Freend. 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the reu^rend father in god the Abbot of letley ^ 
 be this youen. 
 
 62. Cromwell to (the Officers of the Customs). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1625 (Hi). <IS33.> 
 
 The King wishes Robert Bonvell, merchant of Paris, to come to England 
 with certain jewels, of which he desires a special account to be kept, 
 for the payment of the duty. 
 
 In my Right harty manner I Co»«mend me vnto you 
 Adu^rtis[ing] the Same that the king^j pleasure is that 
 Robert Bonvell merchaunt of parys sholde Repayre into this 
 Royalme Toward^j his highnes w«tA certeyn Juelles wherfore 
 his speciall Co^zmaundnient is that ye seingthe same Jewelkj 
 do make Therof a Specyall note by byll^j Indentyd betwyxt 
 you and the Seid mi?rchaunt mensyonyng euery parceM therof 
 and what the Custom therof maye Amounte vnto, not chargyng 
 hym For any Custom or other Charge due vnto his highnes 
 For the same for hys gra.ces pleasure ys that if he do sell any 
 v/itMn this Royalm that he shall therfore paye Custom as 
 Reason is and for that he Cannot Sell here to carry A waye 
 witk hym A gayne w/t^oute payeng therfore any Custom or 
 other dutes Wherfore I requyre you takyng Surety in case 
 he do make Sale to paye the Custom accordyngly That ye do 
 p^rmytt & Suffer the same merchaunt \v/t^ the Same 
 
 ^ sic, see Notes. 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 369 
 
 Juelkj to discha>-ge And vnlade the Same Accordyng to the 
 Effect^j hereof 
 The coppy of Mr. Crumwelkj lettere Sygned w?[t^] hys hand. 
 
 63. Drafts of Portions of Cromwell's Letters. 
 
 R. O. Cal.vi. 1625 (i). <IS33.> 
 
 Thanks the recipient for sending news. Has presented his letters to the 
 Duke of Norfolk as he desired. 
 
 After most hertye Salutacyons this shalbe (to) thanke yow 
 of your exceding louyng kyndnes shewyd in the dylygent 
 wryting to me of your newse and according to yo«r request 
 I presentyd your leUeres vnto my lorde of Norffolk^j grace 
 who I assure yow ys singuler good lorde vnto yow and 
 wher ye wryt in your Fyrst k/^^res . . . 
 
 Memorandum concerning the resignation of the chantry of Barking 
 Church, in Essex. 
 
 M'* that maister Kendall Chauntrye preeste of the Chauntrye 
 Foundyd in Barkyng Churche may optayne my lorde of 
 londons Fauour <in) the resignacyon of the sayd Chauntrye 
 vnto Sir WilUam Cowplaunde my freind. 
 
 End of a letter, urging care and perseverance in reporting important 
 matters, and promising favour. 
 
 . . . thus Fare ye hertelye well trusting that ye will perscuere 
 as ye haue bego«n I meane so Freindlye and secretlye as thes 
 thing^j that shall passe betwene vs may be p;'d?ffytable to vs 
 bothe so that yo?^r wryting matyers of grauytie & Importaunce 
 wherin maye be persayued good will myxyd v/itk wisdom and 
 trowthe I then ^ may haue Corage as an entyre frende ^ to 
 prosecute For your forderaunce & aduauncement with recu- 
 peracyon of that which I am sure ye most desyre which as 
 I shall See opportunyte I will not undowtydlye forget and 
 ons agayn Fare well ^ daylye lokyng For answer 
 
 64. (Cromwell) to Christopher Mont. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1374. (l533-> 
 
 Encloses two letters from the King to the Dukes of Bavaria and Land- 
 grave of Hesse, with copies. Urges Mont to discover the state of 
 feeling in the Empire. Sends a bill of exchange for ^30. 
 
 Felowe Cristofer I co»«mende me vnto you And albeit 
 sythen your departure ye haue not receyued any k/Z'^res or 
 instructions from the king^j maiestee concerning the execucion 
 
 ' c. o. be the bolder, must ned« ^ c. 0. the more boldlye 
 
 be co»«pellyd ' c. 0, praying 
 
370 LETTERS OF [1533 
 
 of suche his gracious affayrees as his highnes incowmended 
 to you at your departure Yet thinke ye not that your Indus- 
 trie labour travayle and diligence Vsed aswell in the setting 
 fourth of his grac^j busynes, Whereof ye were sufficiently 
 instructed at your saide departure as also in your diligent 
 wrytyng often and Frequent aduertisement^j is put in any 
 oblyuyon or forgotten But for the same his maiestee hathe 
 co?«maunded me to gyve vnto you his graces right hertie 
 thank^j. And in this packet ye shall receyue two 'LeiUres 
 addressed from the king^j maiestee vnto the Dukes of Bauarie 
 and the Landegraue van Hesse, which his highnes willeth you 
 to delyuer accordingly, the copies of whiche k//^res (to 
 th'intent ye shalbe the more rype to answer if any thing 
 shalbe obiected to you by the saide prynce) I haue sent you 
 hereinclosed. Not doubting in your dexterytee good polycie 
 and wisedom to propone and set fourth the effect^i' of the 
 same, as shall apperteyne. And forasmoche as here hathe 
 ben the Secretarye of the duke of Bauarie who is named 
 Mr. Hubertus Thomas by whom the king^j highnes hathe 
 knowen and perceyued moche of the mynde and intent of the 
 same Duke, ye shall not moche nede to travayle or enbusie 
 yourself to procure answer other then of their owne mocyons 
 they shall declare vnto you, But contynuallie indeauo«r 
 your self ■witA all diligent Circumspection to explore enserche 
 and knowe the state of the hole countrey of Germany and of 
 their myndes intent^'j and inclynacions toward^j the king^j 
 highnes and this realme. And that also ye do by all the 
 good meanes and polycies that ye can explore and enserche 
 to knowe the myndes and intents of the prync^j of Germany 
 and of the Germaynes how they be inclyned aswell toward^j 
 thempero?/r as the king of Romaynes. Being contynuallie 
 vigilant and diligent in wryting to the kynges maiestee of 
 all thinges and occurraunt^j then according to his grac/ous 
 trust and expectacion And because I wolde not haue you 
 to lacke money ye shall receyue herewith a bill of exchaunge 
 for the some of xxxli. 
 
 Endd. A copy of a \ettex& to Cristofer Mount. 
 65. (Cromwell) to Henry VHI. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vi. 1369. <i533-> 
 
 Sends news about the Nun, and proposes to apprehend two friars who 
 have come into the realm with mischievous intent. Sends a receipt 
 for 24,000 cr., the residue of the Emperor's debt, for the King to sign. 
 
 Pleasythit your Royall magestye to be adui?rtysyd how 
 that reparyng homward^.^ oon^ of my lorde chauncelers 
 
1533] THOMAS CROMWELL 371 
 
 seruaunttes met with me and delyumd me your warrauntt^i' 
 Signyd with the hande of the prynces dowager which warrauntt 
 I do send to your grace herin Inclosyd what your plesure 
 shalbe to haue done therin being ons known I shall right 
 gladlye accowplyshe I haue also Sythyn my repayre to 
 london spokyn wzt^ Freer Lawraunce who hathe Sethens his 
 Repayre to london herde dyuers thinges touching the holye 
 mayde which he wyll declare to your hygnes and to non other 
 and he Shewyth me also that that^ therbe ij° strange Freers of 
 the order of obs^ruantt^j latelye repayryd into this Realme 
 which ij° Freers haue exploryd here For all suche hokes 
 centencys and determynacyons as hathe passyd touching 
 your hygnes Matrymonye, which they Intend witk other 
 pryvey practysys to Convey v/itk them, to Freer Petow who as 
 I am Credyblye Informyd Sent them into this your Realme ^ 
 the sayd ij° Freers as I am acertaynyd haue browght witk 
 them pryuy letteres to dyuers and now bene gone to the 
 sayd^ dowager, in my poore oppynyon it shalbe right well done 
 that thaye might be sent For by Som^ trustye person howbeit 
 yt were best that theye Fyrste sholde be sufferyd to speke 
 •witA her and suche other of hers as woolde p^raduenture 
 delyu^r to them anything wherby theyr Ferther practysys 
 myght be p^rsayuyd and so thayr Cankeryd Intentt^j- myght 
 be therbye dyscyfferyd. I am also Infformyd that there ys 
 A merchant of london whiche dothe practyse -witk them in 
 thes pr^myss^s' I shall goo veray nere to haue knowlage 
 therein yf it be trew he ys worthye to Suffer to make other 
 beware in tyme he ys of good Substaunce. I wooll thys daye 
 goo abowt to know the trowthe, thes thingi?j woold be met 
 witk all in tyme and the sonner the better. I trust your 
 highnes wyll by this berer adu^rtyse me in wrytyng what 
 shalbe your plesure touching as well the sayd Falls Freers 
 as also towching of the sayd dowager's warrantt«. I haue 
 also Sent to your grace on^ acquytance to be assigned for 
 the xxiiij*' thousande Crowns dew to your highnes for the 
 resedew of the emperowrs dett and also A warrant to your 
 chanceler For the Sealyng of the same which warrantt and 
 acquyt«2i!nce it may please your magestye to assigne and to 
 send the same by this berer to the Intent Robert Fowler may 
 be depechyd. The rest of the acquy t«wnces for your ordynarye 
 pencyon and Sale ben allredye Signed and Sealyd. and this 
 the Hollye trynyte to whom I shall contenewallye praye to 
 pr,?serue your highnes in long lyff and most prosperous helthe 
 
 * sic. 
 
 ^ c. o.l trust to get owt the Roote of his practyse 
 
 ^ c, o. prynces 
 
372 LETTERS OF [1534 
 
 and send the same the vyctorye ^iih honour over all your 
 Enemyes. 
 
 Endd. ij mynut^J of my M.astexs letters wi\.h my lord 
 chancelowrs. 
 
 66. Cromwell to (Cranmer). 
 
 B. M. Harl. MSS. 6148, f. 81 ; Cal. vii. 19. Jan. 5 (i534>- 
 
 The King desires Cranmer to send to him Mr. Heath, whom his highness 
 wishes to employ as ambassador to the German princes. 
 
 By master Crumwell 
 
 After my moste humble co;«mendac«ons yt may please 
 your grace to be aduertised that the kyng^j highnes hath 
 comanded me to write vnto your g>-«ce Requiryng the same 
 vii\.h all co^veniente celeritie to send vp hither Mr. heth, 
 whome for his Lerning, good gravitie and circu;«spect[i]on 
 the kyng^i- highnes entendeth to send into the parties of 
 Garmany in Ambassade to treate ther with the princ^j of 
 Germany, as well in the kyng^j great cause of Matrymony As 
 in other causes p^rteynyng to the Welth of this Realme And 
 forasmoche as your grace knoweth the grounde, veray iustnes, 
 and equitie of the kyng^i- said cause, his Highnes requereth 
 you to instructe the said Mr Hethe in the same as he may be 
 Ryppe and perfite in the knowlege of th& hoUe circumstaunc^j 
 of the same And that for lake of inst[r]uct/on when tyme shall 
 com to propone the matier it Appere not hym to be vnp^rfaite 
 and remysse to do suche s^ruice v;«to the kyng^j Maiestie in 
 that behalf as shalbe to his gracious truste and expectac^on 
 which his highnes nothyng at all doubtith. Howbeit your 
 graces adu^rtisement and good instructz'on arrected vnto the 
 said Maist^r Heth shall vndoubtedly make hym more rype 
 and perfite in the premisses to do that thing that may be 
 moche to your honour, his prayse and merite As knoweth o«r 
 Lorde, who send your grace Long Lyf and good helth at 
 London the v. daye of January. 
 
 The kyng^j highnes also intendeth to practise certeyn 
 thyngifj in the said parties of Germany, concernyng the 
 Auctoryte of the Bisshop of Rome. 
 
 Yotir gracys Bedisman 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 373 
 
 67. (Cromwell) to Henry VHL 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 73. January (1534). 
 Reports the passage in the Commons of the Act forbidding any man to 
 keep more than 2000 sheep, and requiring every farmer to put one- 
 eighth of his land in tillage. If the Bill passes the Lords also it will 
 be the most beneficial thing done ' sythyn Brewtyse tyme.' 
 
 Pleasythyt your most Royall Mageste to be adu^rtysyd 
 how that according to your most highe pleasure and com- 
 maundeme^t I haue made serche for suche patentt^j and 
 grauntys as your highnes and also the most Famous kyng 
 your father whos Sowle our lorde pardon haue grauntyd 
 vnto sir Rychard Weston knyght your vndertesawrer of 
 your exchequer and the same haue sent to your highnes herin 
 closyd yt may also please your most Royall Mageste to 
 knowe how that yesterdaye ther passyd your Co»2mons a byll 
 that no person wzt^in this your Realme shall herafter kepe 
 and Noryshe aboue the Nombre of twoo thousand shepe and 
 also that the eight parte of enerye mans lande being a Fer- 
 mour shall for ener herafter be put in tyllage yerlye which 
 byll yf by the gret wysdom vertuew goodnes and zerale"^ 
 that your highnes beryth towardi?j this your Realme might 
 haue good Successe and take good effect Amongyst yottr lord^j 
 aboue I doo Coniecture and Suppose in my pore Symple and 
 vnworthye Judgement that your highnes shall do the most 
 noble proffyttable and most benefycyall thing that euer was 
 done to the Co»«mone welthe of this your Realme and shall 
 therby Increase suche welthe in the same amongyst the gret 
 Nombre & multytude for your most louyng and obedye[nt] 
 Subiectys as neuer was Seane in this Realme Sythen Brewtyse 
 tyme most humblye prostrate at the Fete of your Magnify- 
 cence beseche your highnes to pardon my boldnes (in) this 
 wrytyng to your grace which onlye pr^cedy the for the trowthe 
 dewtye allegaunce and loue I doo here to your mageste and 
 the Co?;«mon welth of this your Realme as our lorde knowyth 
 vnto whom I shall as I am most bounden Incessantlye praye 
 for the contenewans & prosperous cons^ruacyon of your most 
 excellent most Royall and Imperyall estate long to Indure 
 
 68. (Cromwell) to (Fisher). 
 
 B. M. Cleop. E. iv, f. loi ; Cal. vii. 238. (Feb. 1534.) 
 Reproves him at length for his communications with the Nun of Kent, 
 and replies to seven reasons given by Fisher for not reporting her 
 revelations to the King. Advises him to lay aside excuses, and beg 
 the King's mercy. 
 
 My lorde in my right hertie wise I co»«mende me to yo;/r 
 lordship doing you to vnderstand that I haue receyued your 
 
374 LETTERS OF [1534 
 
 \etteres dated at Rochester the xviij"' of this moneth. In 
 whiche ye declare what craft and cimnyng ye haue to persuade 
 and to set a good countenaui^ce vpon an yl msLter. Drawing 
 som scriptur^j to your purpose whiche wel weyed acording 
 to the plac^j whereof they be taken, make not so muche for 
 yozir purpose as ye allege thaim for. And wher^ in the first 
 lefe of your letti?rs ye write that ye doubt nothing neither 
 before god, nor befor the worlde if nede shal that require : 
 so to declare yourself, whatsoeuer hath been said of you. 
 that ye haue not deserued suche hevy word^j or terrible 
 thret^j as hath been sent from me vnto you by your 
 brother ^. 
 
 How ye can declare your self afford god and the world 
 when nede shal require I can not tell, but I think verely that 
 your declaration made by thes letUres is far insufficie;«t to 
 prove that ye haue deserued no hevy word« in this behalf 
 and to sey playnly I sent you no hevy word^^ but word^j 
 of great comfort wylling yoitr brother to shewe you how 
 benigne and merciful the prince was. And that I thoug[ht] 
 it expedient for you to write vnto his highnes and to recognise 
 your offence and desire his pardon, whiche his grace wold not 
 denye you now in your aige' and sikkenes. Whiche my 
 counsel I wold ye had folowed, rather than to haue writen 
 thes leiteres to me excusing your self as thoughe there wer^ 
 no maner of defaute in you. But my lord if it wer^ in an 
 other mannys caas than your owne and out of the mater 
 whiche ye fauor I doubt not but that ye wold think him that 
 shuld haue doen as ye have doen non only worthy hevy 
 word^'j but also hevy dedys. For wher^ ye labor to excuse 
 your self of your hering believing and co«celing of the nu«nys 
 fals and faynid reuelations, and of your manyfold sending of 
 your chapley[n] vnto her, by a certeyw intent whiche ye 
 pretende yourself to haue had, to knowe by cowmonyng 
 v/itk her or by sending your chapellaine to her, whether her 
 reuelations wer^ of god or no. alleging diu^rse scriptures, that 
 ye wer^ bound to prove thaim, and not to reiecte thaim afford 
 they wer^ proued My Lord whether ye haue vsed a due 
 meane to trie her and her reuelations, or no. It appereth by 
 the pr^cesse of your owne leUeres. For wher^ ye write that ye 
 had co^ceyuid a greate opinion of the holines of the woman 
 for many considerations rehersed in your leUeres comprised in 
 vi articles, whereof the first is grownde vpon the brute and 
 fame of her, the secunde vpon her entreng into religion after 
 her trauns^j and disfiguration, the third vpon rehersall that 
 
 ' CO. a marginal comment as follows : I began to marke the notable 
 poinct^j of his lei/eres 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 375 
 
 her gostly father being lerned and religious shuld testifie that 
 she was a maide of greate holines. The fourth vpon the 
 report that diuerse other vertuose prest^j men of good lernyng 
 and reputation, shuld so testifie of her, witk whiche gostly 
 father and preest« ye never spake as ye confesse in your 
 letters. The fyveth vpon the prayse of my late lord of 
 Canterlwrj/, which shewed you (as ye write) that she had 
 many greate visions the sixt vpon this saing of the pr^phete 
 Amos, Noi^ faciet dommus deus verhum, nisi reuelau^rit 
 secretuOT suu;^ ad seruos suos prophetas by whiche con- 
 siderations ye wer^ induced to the desire to know the very 
 certente of this mater, whether the reuelations whiche wer^ 
 pretended to be shewed to her from god wer^ true reuelations 
 or nott? yotir lordship in al the sewgle^ of your letteres shewe 
 not that ye made no ferther trial vpo[n] the trueth of her and 
 her reuelation, but only in cowmonyng -with her and sending 
 your chapellaine to her, ynitk Idle questions as of the thre 
 mary magdalens. by whiche yo«r co»2mony[ng] and sending, 
 ye tried out nothing of her falshed, nouther (as it is credibly 
 supposed) entended to do, as ye myght haue doen many 
 weyes mor^ easely than with cowmonyng vfitk her or sending 
 to her ; for litel credens was to be gyven to her affirmyng her 
 owne fayned reuelations to be from god. 
 
 For if credence shuld be gyven to e^iery suche lewd person 
 as wold affirme himself to haue reuelations from god what 
 redyer wey wer^ ther^ to subuert al common we[l]thes and 
 good orders in the worlde. 
 
 Verily my lord if ye had entended to trie out the trueth of 
 her and of her reuelations ye wold haue taken an other wey 
 w/t>^ you, first ye wold not haue been contented -with the 
 vayne voyces of the peple making brut^j of her traunses 
 & disfiguratio;? But like a wise discrete and circumspect 
 prelate ye shuld haue examined (as other haue) suche sad 
 and credible persons as wer^ present att her traunses & 
 disfiguration^^, not one or two, but a good number by whoes 
 testimony ye shuld haue proued whether the brut^j of her 
 traunc^j and disfigurations wer^ true or not And likewise 
 ye shuld haue tried by what craft and persuasion she was 
 made a religious woman. And if ye had been so desirous as 
 ye prd;ende to enquire out the trueth or falshed of this woman 
 and of her reuelations, it is to be supposed ye wold haue 
 spoken witk her good religious and wel lerned gostly father 
 (as ye cal him) or this tyme : and also wzt^ the vertuose, and 
 wel lerned preestej (as they were estemed) of whoes reaporte.s 
 
376 LETTERS OF [i534 
 
 ye were informed by thaim whiche herd thaim speke^ ye 
 wold also haue been mynded to se the booke of her revelations 
 whiche was offerd you. of whiche ye myght haue had mor^ 
 trial of her and of her reuelations, than a hundred communi- 
 cations w«t^ her, or of as many sendings of your chapellen 
 vnto her. As for the late lord of Cauntreburys seying vnto 
 you that she had many greate visions, it ought to move you 
 never a deale to gyve credence vnto her or her reuelations, 
 For the said lord knew no mor^ certente of her or of her 
 reuelations than ye dyd by her owne reaport. And as 
 towching the saing of Amos the prophete, I thinke veryly 
 the same moved you but a litell to herkyn vnto her, for sythe 
 the cowsuwimation and thende of thold testament and sythens 
 the passion of Christ god hatha doen many greate and notable 
 thing^j in the worl[d]e, whereof he shewed no thing to his 
 p^i^phet^j that hath co»«men to the knowlege of men. My 
 lord all thes thinges moved you not to gyve credence vnto 
 her, but only the very mater whereupon she made her fals 
 pr<?ficyes to whiche mater ye were so affected (as ye be noted 
 to be on al mat^^'s whiche ye enter ons into) that nothing 
 could com amysse that made for that purpose 
 
 And her^ I appelle your conscience and instantly desire 
 you to aunswer. Whether if she had shewed you as many 
 reuelationsf or the confirmation of the king^j grac^j marriage 
 whiche he now enjoyeth as she did to the contrary, ye wold 
 haue gyven as muche credence to her as ye haue doen, and 
 wold haue let the trial of her and of her reuelations to ou^r- 
 passe thes many yer^j, wher^ ye dwelt not from her but 
 XX mylys, in the same shir^, wher^ her traunses and dis- 
 figuring^^ and pwphecyes in her traunses were surmised and 
 countrefeyd. And if percaas ye wol sey (as it {is) not 
 vnlike but ye wol sey mynded as ye were wont to be) that 
 the maters be not like, for the Law of god in your opinion 
 standeth wzt^ the one and not w«t^ thother. Suerly my lord 
 I suppose this had been no greate cause more to reiect the 
 one than thother for ye know by histories of the bible that 
 god may by his reuelation dispense w2t/% his owne Law, as 
 ■with the ^ Israelitej spoyling the egiptians and viiih Jacob to 
 haue iiij wifes, and suche other ^. 
 
 Think you my lord that any indifferent man considering 
 the qualite of the mater and your affeccion, and also the 
 negligent passing over of suche lawful triallej as ye myght 
 
 ' c. 0. -with whom ye never spake soever ye sey or write for yoarself, 
 
 as in your lettres [ye say] the begynning of your letters for 
 
 ^ c. o. Egiptians your . . . g 
 ' c. o. And suerly my lord what 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 377 
 
 haue had of the said nu«ne and her reuelations, is so dull, 
 that can not p^rceyue and discerne. that your coMmonyng 
 and often sending to the said nuw was rather to here and 
 know mor^ of her reuelations, than to trie out the trueth or 
 falshed of thes same And in this behalf I suppose it wol be 
 hard for you to purge yourseli bifor^ god or the worle, but 
 that ye haue been in greate defaut hering beleuyng and co«- 
 celing suche thing^j as tended to the destruction of the prince 
 And that her reuelations wer^ bent and purposed to that 
 ende . it hathe been duely prijued, affore as greate assembly 
 and counsel of the lord^j of this realme as hath been seen 
 many yeres heretofore out of a parliament. And what the 
 said lorAes demed thaim worthy to suffer, whiche had beleued 
 and conceled thees fals reuelations be more terrible than any 
 thretej spoken by me to yoz^r brother 
 
 And where ye go abought to defende that ye be not to be 
 blamed for co«celing her reuelations cowcernyng the kinge^ 
 grace, bicause ye thought it not necessary to reherse thaim 
 to his highnes, for vij causes folowing in your leUeres affore 
 I shewe you my mynde cowcernyng thees causes, I suppose 
 that albeit ye percaas thought it not necessary to be shewed 
 to the prince by you . yet that your thinking shal not be 
 your triall, but the Law must diffine whether ye owghted to 
 vtter it or not. 
 
 And as to the first of said vii causes. Albeit^ she told 
 youe that she had shewed her reuelations co?zcernyng the 
 king?.f grace to the king herself, yet her seyng or others dis- 
 charged not you but that ye were bound by your fidelite to 
 shewe to the kingej grace . that thing whiche semed to con- 
 cerne his grace and his reigne so nyghly . for how knew you 
 that she ^ shewed thes reuelations to the kingej grace but by her 
 owne seyng, to whiche ye shuld haue gyven no suche credence 
 as to forebere the utterance of so greate maters co«cernyng 
 a kinge.? welth And why shuld you so sinisterly iudge the 
 prince that if ye had shewed thees same vnto him, he wold 
 haue thought that ye had brought that tale vnto him more 
 for the strenghing and confirmation of yotir opinion then for 
 any other thing els. Veryly my lord what so euer your 
 iudgement bee . I se dayly suche benignite and excellent 
 humanite in his grace that I doubt not but his highnes . wold 
 haue accepted it in good part if ye had shewed the same reuela- 
 tions vnto him as ye were bounden to do by your fidelite. 
 
 To the secunde cause. Albeit she shewed you not that 
 any prince or other temporal lord shuld put the kingej grace 
 
 ^ c. o. it was told or els ' c. o. or any other 
 
 MERRIMAN. I C C 
 
378 LETTERS OF 1^534 
 
 in daing^r of his crowne yet there were weyes Inoughe, by 
 whiche her said reuelations myght haue put the king^J grace 
 in dainger, as the foresaid counsel of lord^j . haue substan- 
 cially and duely considered And therefor Albeit she shewed 
 you not the meanes whereby the dayng^r shuld ensue to the 
 king^i- [grace] yet . ye wer^ neverthelesse bounden to shewe 
 him of the dainger. 
 
 To the third. Think you my lord, that if any person wold 
 com vnto you and shewe youe that the king^j destruction 
 wer^ conspired against a certen tyme, and wold ferther shewe 
 you, that he wer^ sent from his msxster to shewe the same to 
 the king and wol sey ferther vnto [you] that he wold go 
 streyct to the king, wer^ it not yet your duety to certifie the 
 king^j grace of the relation, but also to inquire whether the said 
 person had doen his foresaid messaige or no, yes verely. And 
 so wer^ ye bound, thoughe the nunne shewed youe, it was her 
 messaige from god to be declared by her to the Viinges grace. 
 
 To the iiii"" her^ ye translate the temporal duety that ye 
 owe to yotir prince, to the spiritual duety of suche as be 
 bounde to declare the worde of god to the peple, and to shewe 
 vnto them the p^rill and punisshement of syn in an other 
 worlde, the concelemewt whereof p^rteyneth to the iudgeme«t 
 of god, but the concelement of this mater p^rteyneth to other 
 iudg^j of this realme. 
 
 To the v*** ther could no blame be arrested to you if ye had 
 shewed the nu«nys reuelations to the 'k.inges grace, albeit 
 they wer^ afterward found fals for no man owght to be blamed 
 doing his duety And if a man wold shewe you secretly that 
 there wer^ a greate mischief entended . against the prince, 
 wer^ ye to be blamed if ye shewed him of it, albeit it wer^ 
 a fayned tale, and the said mischief wer^ never Imagined. 
 
 To the sixt . cowcernyng an Imagination of master Pacy. 
 It was knowen that he was beside himself, and therefore they 
 wer^ not blamed that made no report thereof, but it was not 
 lik in this caas For ye toke not this nunne for a mad woman, 
 for if ye had ye wold not haue gyven vnto her so greate 
 credence as ye dyd. 
 
 To the final and vii"' cause wher^ ye lay ^ vnto the charge 
 of our sou«'aine, that he hath vnkyndly entreacted you . viith 
 grevous word^.f and terrible letters for shewing his grace 
 trowthe in his greate mater, whereby ye wer^ discomforted to 
 shewe vnto him the nu7«nys reuelations. I beleue that I know 
 the king^j goodnes and natural gentilnes so well, that his 
 grace wold not so vnkyndly handle you, as you vnkyndly 
 write of him, onles ye gave him other causes than be ex^ 
 
 1 c. o. muche 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 379 
 
 pressed in your letters. And what so euer the king^j grace 
 hath sayed or writen vnto you heretofore, yet that notwet^- 
 stonden, ye wer^ neverthelesse bounden to vtter to him thees 
 p^^nicious reuelations. 
 
 Finally Wher^ ye desire for the passion of christ that ye 
 be no mor^ quykkened in this mater for if ye be put to that 
 straite ye wyl not lose your soule, but ye wyl speke as your 
 conscience ledeth you wit/i many moo wordes of greate 
 curraige. My lord if ye had taken my counsel sent vnto 
 you by your brother and folowed the same, submitting 
 yourself by your letters to the king^J grace for yo^^r offenses 
 in this behalf, I wold haue trusted that ye shuld never be 
 quykkened in this mater mor^. But now wher^ ye take 
 vpon you to defe;«de the hole mater as ye wer^ in no default. 
 I cannot so far promise you ^. And suerly my lord if the 
 mater com to triall : your owne confession in thes k^^^res 
 besid^j' the wittnes whiche be against you wolbe sufficient to 
 co«demne you Wherrfor my lord I wol eftsones aduise you 
 that laying apart al suche excuses as ye haue alleged in 
 your letters whiche in myn opinion be of smal effect as 
 I haue declared ye beseche the king^j grace by your letters 
 to be your graciou[s] lord, and to remitte vnto you yoz^r 
 negligence ouersight and offence committed against his his^ 
 highnes in this behalf And I dar^ vndertake that his highenes 
 shal benignely accepte you into his gracious fauor, al mat^^s 
 of displeasir^ past afford this tyme forgoten and forgyven. 
 
 ^ As towching the speking of your conscience, it is thought 
 that ye haue writen and haue spoken as muche as ye can . 
 and . many thing^j (as som right probably beleaue) against 
 yo^^r owne conscience. And men report that at the Last 
 conuocation ye spake many thing^j whiche ye could not wel 
 defende. And therefor it is not greatly ferede what ye can 
 sey or write in that muter, howsoeu^r ye be quykkened or 
 strayted And if ye had taken etc. 
 
 69. (Cromwell) to (the Sheriff of Yorkshire). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 383. Mar. 28 (1534). 
 
 In order to prevent any infringement of the King's rights in the lands of 
 Sir John Dunham, lately deceased, the council considers it expedient 
 that those persons who dwell near the lands should be impanelled to 
 inquire for the King. 
 
 Maister Sheryff I co»«mend me vnto yow and being 
 Infformyd of the dethe of syr Jhon Dunham Knyghte 
 
 ^ c. o. albeit I wol speke for 
 
 ^ sic. 
 
 ' The last paragraph is written along the margin. 
 
 c c a 
 
380 LETTERS OF [1534 
 
 whyche in his lyffe helde of the kinges grace certayne land^j 
 and tenementeJ' in the County of Yorke In Capite. And by 
 cause that the kynges righte shall not be hydde ne cloked 
 It is therfor considered by the kyng^j most honorable 
 counsel! that suche persons who hath the most knowlege 
 sufficient of freeholde and dwellys next vnto the Land^j of 
 the saied syr John Donham be impanelled to inquyre for 
 the kyngi?j- grace the namys of whom herein enclosyd I do 
 send yow who are extemyd and reputed to be men of good 
 worship and conscience as I am credably enformed Aduer- 
 tysyng yow that vpon a precept to yow dyrected by the 
 kynges exchetour ye do retourne a suffycient Inquest of 
 the same persons to inquyre for the kynges grace of the 
 tenure of the saied \andes. And in your so doyng ye shall 
 do the kinges grace a righte acceptable seruyce to his 
 contentatyon And so fare ye well from London the xxviii'' 
 daye of march. 
 
 Endd. mynute of a let/ere. 
 
 70. Cromwell to Gardiner. 
 
 B.M. Add. MSS. 25,114, f. 348; Cal. vii. 535. Apr. 24 (1534). 
 
 Requests for a friend the advowson of the parsonage of St. John's of Sher- 
 borne, in Hampshire, the yearly value of which is 10 or 1 1 pounds. 
 
 My Lord in my right hertie wise I co»«mende me to you. 
 And as I haue been, and wolbe glad and redy, to do you 
 suche pleasir^ as I myght or may. so I desire you to graunt 
 vnto me to the behoue of a dere frende of myne. the 
 aduocation of the parsonaige of S. Jhons of [Shire]borne in 
 hampshir^ being of your gift . whiche is of the yerely value 
 of X or xj" and not aboue (as I am informed) by the gyft 
 whereof ye shal shewe vnto me a right acceptable pleasir^ . 
 whiche I wol not forgete when I may in reco;?«pense thereof . 
 do the thing that may be to your cowtentation. And of 
 your beniuolent mynd in this behalf, I desire you not only 
 to certifie me by your next wrz'ting but also to direct your 
 letters to your vicar gen^rall and to the prio«^r and co^uent 
 of your churche . for thexpedition thereof to be made in due 
 forme, and to be deliu^r^d vnto me witk suche spede as 
 shall pleace you to co^maunde thaim , the xxiiij*'' day of 
 April e. 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd freei«d 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my verey loving Lord my lord of wynchester. 
 
 Edd. the xxiiij of April Mr. Secretary 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 381 
 
 71. (Cromwell) to (Cranmer). 
 
 R. O. CaL vii. 500. (Apr. 1534.) 
 
 The King considers it expedient that More and Fisher be compelled to 
 swear to the preamble of the Act of Succession as well as to the Act 
 itself: otherwise it might be taken as a confirmation of the authority 
 of the Bishop of Rome. 
 
 My Lorde after myne humble co»2menda^/ons it may 
 please your grace to be adu«'tesed that I haue receyued 
 yotir \eitex&s and shewed the same to the king^j highnes who 
 p^rceyuing your mynde and opynyon is that it were good 
 that the bisshop of Rochester and Mr. More should be sworn 
 to the acte of the king^.f succession and not to the preamble 
 of the same, thinketh that if their othe should be so taken it 
 were an occasion to all men to refuse the hole or at the lest 
 the lyke. For in case they be sworn to the succession and not 
 to the p;'^amble it is to be thought that it might be taken 
 not onelie as a confirmacion of the Bisshop of Rome his 
 auctoryte but also as a reprobacion of the Vmges second mariage 
 wherefore to thintent that no such thing^j should be brought 
 into the hedd^j of the people by the ensample of the saide 
 Bisshop of Rochester and Mr. More the king^j highnes in 
 no wise willeth but that they shalbe sworn aswell to the 
 preamble as to the acte of Succession ^ in no man^r of wyse 
 Wherfore his grace specyallye trustyth that ye wyll in no 
 wyse Suppose attempt or move hym to the Contrarye For 
 as hys grace Suppossyth that that man^r of Sweryng yf yt 
 sholde be sufferyd myght be an vtter destruccyon to his hole 
 Cause and Also to the effecte of the law made For the same 
 
 Endd. mynute. 
 
 72. Cromwell to the Prior and Convent 
 OF Wenlock. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 593. May I (1534). 
 
 Desires them to grant to Thomas Lowley the lease of Okinbold farm, in 
 Shropshire, at the rent which his father paid. 
 
 In myn harty maner I co»«mende me unto youe And 
 wheras ye haue nowe in your handes and disposic^on again, 
 the ferme of Oxinbold belonging to that Monasterj/. These 
 shalbe to desire and hartely pray youe, for my sake to graunte 
 a sufficient lease therof to my Freende Thomas Lowleye 
 
 ^ c. o. For the conducing whereof your graces approved wisedom 
 to effecte the king^j highnes hath and dexteryte and thus the holie 
 specyall trust and expectacion in trynyte . . . 
 
382 LETTERS OF [i534 
 
 serwaunt to Mr. Norreys vnder your convent scale for the 
 terme of xl yeres yelding and payeng vnto yow suche rent for 
 the same, as his father whiche was krmour therof hertofore 
 paid vnto your monasUry ait that tyme that he had it in ferme. 
 Desiring you in noo wise to alienate it to any man but only to 
 this tyl ye shal knowe further, in case ye shal not condescende 
 to this my request, and to adu^rtise me by yoMr l.ettex&% with 
 spede of your proceding in this Behaulf And thus Fare you 
 hartely well From Stepnaye the first daye of Maye 
 
 Your Freend THOMAS Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my loving freendes the prior and Convent of 
 the Monastery of Wenlok. 
 
 73. Cromwell to Dr. Sampson. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 655. May 13 (1534). 
 
 Requires him to appoint a bishop to ' execute ' at the Court, as the Bishop 
 of Chester is unable to be present. 
 
 Mr. Deane, after my right hertie co;;«mendacions Foras- 
 moche as my lorde of Chester is not onelie destitute of Myter 
 Crosier and other thing^j necessarie but also shall to morowe be 
 enbusied and occupied about^.f other the king^j affaires I shall 
 therefore hertelie requyre you to appoynte som other Bisshop 
 to execute to morowe before the king^j highnes at the Courte, 
 till my saide Lorde of Chester shall be better Fumysshed as 
 app^rtyneth Wherein ye shall do him moche pleasure. And 
 so Fare ye well. At Stepney the xiii day of Maye. 
 
 Your assuryd Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right worshipfull Mr. Docto^^r Sampson dean 
 of the king^j chappell be this youen. 
 
 74 Cromwell to the Senate and Consuls 
 of lubeck ^ 
 
 B. M.Vit. B. xxi, f. 107 ; Cal. vii. 707. May 24, 1534. 
 
 On behalf of William Gilbank, whose ship was captured near Sandwich 
 and taken to Liibeck, with goods worth 53 pounds sterling. 
 
 {Henricus Dei gratia. Rex Angliae, et Franciae, fidei 
 defensor, ac Dominua Hiber[niae] . . . Consulibus, et} Senator- 
 
 ' This letter was evidently first in brackets {...} are scored through 
 written by the King, and later in the original, 
 altered by Cromwell. The passages 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 383 
 
 {ibusjes Ciuitatis Lubicenj?j etc. Amici{s} noj/n{s} Cam- 
 j/mi{s} {saXutem} p\unina.m Sahdein et Comvnen . . . 
 
 Nuper apud {nos} . . . humiliter conq[uestus est] . . . s, ac 
 fidelis {noster potentissimi nostr'i Regis} eius subditus Willel- 
 mus gylbanke quod quum superioribus mensibus nauis quae- 
 dam cui Hugo ship . . . [prae]erat, ex harmywe Zelandiae vico 
 hoc {nostrum] inclytum Regnum uersus nauigatura soluerat, 
 ac varij generis merces ad u[alorem] . . . quinquaginta tr'mm 
 lihramm sterlingorum in ea onerasset, commercij graiia. 
 hue aduecturus, accidit, ut dicta nauis iam . . . [njauiga- 
 tionis cursu {et nostrztm} in eiusdem seremssimi Ttontini 
 •n.ostr\}\ Regis ■poxtnm Sandwicensem ferme ingressa, a vesira. 
 Classe quae belli praetextu, quod aduersus hollandos . . . bat, 
 per hoc {nostrum} mare excurrebat capta, et una cum dicti 
 {nosiri subditi} Will^/mi bonis, ac mercibusin ciuitate?^ istam 
 vestram . . . abducta fuit; erit longe quidem praeter veterem 
 mutuamq?^^ {nos tram} amicitiam cum Seremssima hac Regia 
 Mazes tate, et ingenti {eiusdem subditi nostri Will^/mi eius sub- 
 di[ti]} prefati sui subditi detrimento, id q[u]od quum inscijs 
 vobis a v^j^rae classis praefectis {commissum fuerit, volui- 
 mus} eadem Regia Maiestas c6;;2missu;;? fuisse plane credat," 
 iussit ut suo nomine nostris his Utteris hanc causam vobis 
 impr^j^ntia commendaremus : Vos igitur quos pro intimis 
 amici[s] habet impense rogat, ut pro vest[ro] erga iustas quas- 
 que causas studio, pro mutuaq?^^ {nostra} secum coniunctione, 
 vestra authoritate efficere velitis quod praedicta bona sic 
 ablat[a] eidem {nostra subdito} Wilklmo uel eius procurator! 
 in integrum restitua«tur, id quod {ut nobis} ut [e]idem 
 Regie Mazestati maxima gratum, et iustitiae consentane[um] 
 erit, ita {nos} ipsam ad parem beneuolentiam erga subditos 
 vi?jtros, data occasione, exhibendam propensior ardentiorque 
 {efficiem[ur]} reddetur. Et bene valete. Ex Regia nostra. 
 Richemondiae Die xxiiij Maij MDXXXIIII. 
 
 De nobis vero possunt vestrates omnes in iustis suis hie 
 occurrentib?/j negocijs ap^^d ha«[c] Regiaw Matesiatem omne 
 humanitatis offidum sibi poUiceri quod suo loco et tempore 
 cumulate pr«^stabim[u]s 
 
 Vester bonus amicus 
 
 Thomas Crumwell 
 
 Add. Mag««/?cis Dominis Consulibus, et Senatoribus Ciui- 
 tatis Lubicen^zj etc. Amicis nostns Carissimis. 
 
384 LETTERS OF [i534 
 
 75. Cromwell to Mr. Sapcottes. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 790. June 4 <IS34>- 
 
 Desires him to repair to London as soon as possible, as he is executor 
 of Edw. Watson, deceased, who was in danger to the King. 
 
 Mr. Sapcott^j I coMmende me vnto you. And For as 
 moche as ye were executour and admynistrato^/' of the good^j 
 of Edwarde Watson decessed who was in daungier to the 
 kingi?j highnes, I shall therefore aduertise and require you 
 that vppon the sight of these my \eUeres for that matier witk 
 other thing^j that I haue to sey vnto you ye do put yoter self 
 in a redynes to repayre vnto me wztk all conuenie«t celeryte. 
 And at your co;«myng ye shall knowe Ferther of the king^j 
 pleasure. So Fare ye well From my house at Canbery the 
 iiii"" day of June 
 
 Your Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 AM To his louing frend Mr. Henry Sapcott^j be this 
 youen at Lyncoln. 
 
 76. Cromwell to the Earl of Shrewsbury. 
 
 Ellis Letters, and Ser. ii. 135 ; Cal. vii. 973. July 13 (1534). 
 
 Thanks him for his zeal in apprehending a hermit, who has been 
 examined, and is to be tried by the justices of assize, and punished 
 according to the law. 
 
 After my right herty commendacions to your Lordship, 
 I have by this bearer your servaunt, bailly of Chesterfeld, 
 receyved your Lettres and the byll therin enclosed concernyng 
 th' Ermyte, the whiche being by me examyned, answered that 
 he could not tell whither he spake ever the same trayterouse 
 words or not. I have caused an Inditement to be drawen 
 therupon whiche your Lordeship shal receyve herwith ; and 
 also I have thought convenient to retorn the said Hermite unto 
 you agayn, there befor the Justices of Assise to be tryed and 
 to th'exemple of all other to be punyshed according to right 
 and the King's lawes. I thank evermor your Lordeship for 
 your good zele, diligence, and dexterate in repressing and 
 apprehending suche perniciouse and detestable felons : and 
 therof shal I not faile to make true raport to his Highnes who 
 I am assure shal tak the sam in most thankfull part. Thus 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 385 
 
 I beseche our holy Creator to sende you prosperite and long 
 liffe. From Cheleshith this xiij"» of July. 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my very good Lord Therle of Shrewesbury 
 Lorde Stuarde to the Kings Ma*'". 
 
 It. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 990. July 20 (1534). 
 
 Orders him to arrest four murderers from Yorkshire, who first fled into 
 Scotland, but have now returned to Durham, where they ride about 
 at their pleasure. 
 
 In my Right harty man^r I co»«mend me vnto you and 
 where as I am enfourmed that one percyvall worme, wylkrtm 
 Corneforthe John bygott and v/ylUam dobson lately com- 
 mytted a detestable mourdo^r in the Countye of Yorke and 
 beyng Indyttyd ikerof thei ther vpon flede into Scottlond 
 where as ^,^ei t/ier Remayned as yt ys thought tyll now of late, 
 that thei lyttyll dreadyng god nor the lawes of this Realme 
 arne comme into the byschopryche of Durham wher as thei 
 doo Ryde in all placi?j therof at ther pleasures to the greate 
 boldnes and p^ryllous example of all other suche [ev]yll dys- 
 posed p^rsonnes. And therfor my mynd ys that ye witk 
 dylygence do attach or cause the said persons to be Attachyd, 
 And them to deteyne in pryson vntyll such tyme as thei 
 schalbe by the order of i/ie lawes acquyted or otherwyse 
 dyscharged as ye wyll aunswere to the kyng^j highnes at 
 your peryW. Wretyn at my house in london ^Ae xx**" day of 
 July. 
 
 78, (Cromwell) to the Abbot of (St. Austin's 
 IN Canterbury). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1007. July 25 (1533'). 
 
 Requests him to settle his differences with the bearer, whose father could 
 have had many offices of the abbot and his predecessor. As the 
 bearer has his brothers and sisters to support, the abbot ought to do 
 as much for him as he would have done for his father. 
 
 My Lorde Abbot I recowmende me vnto you etc. and 
 where as George Goldwyn the hrynger hereof hathe byn 
 A continuall sutour vnto me A great tyme to haue A Warde 
 made betwene you and hym ^ I shall hertelye desire & praye 
 you vppon the sight hereof to take some reasonable waye 
 
 ' stc, see Notes. 
 
 ^ c. o. which hath byn a great charge to the parties wherfore 
 
386 LETTERS OF [i534 
 
 with hym so that I be no longer molestyd by hym and his 
 co^tynuall Sute and whereas his Father myght haue had ^ of 
 your lordshyp & your predecessor^ dyuers offers who alwayes 
 refused them yet neu^rtheles me thinkyth your lordshyp now 
 can no lesse doo then to graunte hym so moche in con- 
 sciens ^ as ye woolde have yovyn his Father For he ys moche ^ 
 chargyd \^iXh the A&\Xes of his Father as he affirmyth and also 
 wM the Fyndyng of his Brethern and sisterne *. Whereffor 
 in myn oppynyon it shalbe well doon that ye take an ende 
 wi\.h hym Yow know his Father dyed in pryson at your Sute 
 and thus co;;«myttyng this matyer to god & your Conscyens 
 & thanking yow For my hawke & bydde yow hertelye Fare 
 well at london the xxv*' daye of July 
 
 Endd. mynute of a letteve. 
 
 79. Cromwell to Lord Cobham. 
 
 B. M. Harl. MSS. 283, f. 203 ; Cal. vii. App. 33. July 30 (i534>. 
 
 Directions about the administration of ' the farm of the parsonage.' 
 Promises to attend to the monks of which Cobham speaks, if he will 
 send them up. 
 
 I commend me vnto your good lordship yn my right harty 
 maner, Adu^/'tisyng you that I have receyvyd your \ettexQS and 
 the Inventory accordyng to your wrytyng. And touchyng 
 the ferme of the parsonage I desire your lordship to cause the 
 corne and other dutyes to be getherd together, and as for the 
 rent I will order your lordship therin at our metyng. And 
 your Monk^j of whome ye write if ye send theym hither 
 I wil be contentyd to common viith theym and to do 
 therin as the case shall requyre. I pray your lordshyp to 
 have me co»2mendyd vnto my good lady in my right harty 
 maner and so to geve hir thank^j for the foule that she hathe 
 sent vnto me. And thus our lord have you yn his kepyng. At 
 Stepenhey the xxx"^ day of Julye. 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell 
 
 Add. To my very good lord my lord Cobham this be 
 delyu^ryd. 
 
 ' c. o. and good chargyng of your consciens I ■pray 
 
 ' c. o. to consider the said oflfers you at my Desire to yeve vnto hym 
 
 vnto his sone a c^'. whiche youe toke of his Father 
 
 * c. o. he is greatly charged wz't^ And ferder to yeve vnto hym some 
 his Fathers Dett«s & also wzW his other Rewarde hereafter as you 
 
 * c. o. yihich ys a great charge shall thynke in consciens mete for 
 vnto hym wherfore my Lorde in dis- hym 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 387 
 
 80. Cromwell to the Mayors and Officers of 
 Southampton, Portsmouth, and Poole. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1132. Sept. 4 {1534). 
 
 Asks assistance for two men who are going into those parts on the King's 
 business. 
 
 I co;«mend me vnto you. (and) Adu^^'tise you that the 
 kinges highnes at this tyme dothe send George Whelpeley 
 and John Brawne about certayne besynes geven vnto theym 
 in charge to be done in those parties, witA soche spede and 
 diligence as they convenyently may requyryng you and eu^ry 
 of you to p^rmytt and suffer the same George and John to 
 execute and do in euery thyng, as the kynges grace hath 
 co»zmaundyd theym without any your ympedyment^j let or 
 interupcion in and about the same. And in case any ill 
 disposed p^rsone or p^rsones will disobey or gaynsay the 
 same, I farther requyre you yn the kynges behalf to assiste 
 ayde and counsaill theym in and about thexecucion of 
 their purpose. As ye will advoyde the king^j high dis- 
 pleasure. And thus fare ye well. At london the iiii* day 
 of September. 
 
 Your Freend Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the Mayres Sheriffi?j and Bayliffes Custumers 
 Comptrollers and Sercho«^rs w/t/zin the townes and partes of 
 Suthampton Portesmouthe and Pole and eu^ry of theym and 
 the Crek^j belongyng to theym and eu^ry of theym this be 
 youen. 
 
 Endd. My m'°. k^^^re for George Whelpeley 
 
 81. Cromwell to Sir Roger Reynolds, Robert Wolf, 
 AND John Kytch. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1134. Sept. 6 (1534). 
 
 The King desires them to repair to Cromwell to answer to the charges 
 made against them. 
 
 I comend me vnto you And these shalbe to adu^rtise you 
 that the king^.f pleasure is that ye y»2mediately vppon the 
 sight of these my 1^^/^res shall repayre hither to answer vnto 
 suche thing^j as then shalbe leyed and obiected to you on 
 the king our saide sou^reigne lord^j behalf. Fayle ye not 
 thus to do as ye will avoyde ferther perill and inconuenyence,. 
 
388 LETTERS OF [1534 
 
 So Fare ye well From my house at Canbery the vi''' day of 
 
 Septembre. 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To Sir Roger Reynold^j priest Master of the Hos- 
 pitall of Saynt Johns in Huntingdon Robert Wolf Baylif 
 there and John Kytche and to eu^ry of them be this youen. 
 
 83. Cromwell to Lord Lisle anb Lord Edmund 
 Howard. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1179. Sept. 21, 1534. 
 
 The King, hearing that the searchers of Calais are remiss, and permit 
 things to be conveyed out of the realm contrary to law, has appointed 
 Nicholas Caldwell and John Gough to aid them. 
 
 In my right herty maner I co^wmende me vnto your good 
 Lordshipp,?j. So it is that the King^j Highenes is certaynly 
 informyd that dyuers and many thing^J arne dayly conveyd 
 ouit of this realme into the partyes of beyond the sees con- 
 trary to the statut^j- and provisions in suche casse ordeinyd 
 and provided, and for as muche as the s^rchours in the towne 
 and Marchys of Calais arne remysse and negligent in thexa- 
 mynacion of their offic^j his highenes therfor well considering 
 the same, and also p^rceyving that his trusty s^rvaunt^j 
 Nicholas Caldwall and John Gowghe byn men of good cir- 
 cumspiccion meate to make s^rche and fynde owt the same, 
 hathe ordenyd and constitutyd them Joyntly and severallie to 
 be attendant and vigilant abouit the serching of the same 
 \\7't^in the saide toune and marchys and the havon Longing 
 to the same for this tyme. Wherfor adu^rtesing your Lord- 
 shippes of the king^j plesur therin I requyre you in the 
 king^i behalff to assist and ayde the same Nicholas & John 
 and eyther of them in execucyon of this the king^j plestir 
 and cowmaundement as often and as the casse shall requyre 
 as the king^j trust is in you. and thus the blyssed trinitie 
 presume your good Lordshipp^j at Candbery the xxi of 
 Septembre 
 
 thus subscribyd 
 Your Lordshipp^j assuryd Frynd 
 
 Thomas Cromwell. 
 
 The sup^rscripcio«. To the right hono«^able and my Veray 
 good Lord^j my Lord Lyssle depute of Calas and my Lorde 
 Edmonde Howard Comptroller ther and to eyther of them be 
 this yeven 
 
 Endd. Copia of Mr. Cromwelkj l^ttere for the serche to 
 John Gowghe and N. caldewall %% Septembre. 1534. 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 
 
 83. Cromwell to (the Lords of the Privy Council). 
 
 R. O. (Museum) Cal. vii. 1271. Oct. 17 (1534). 
 
 Asks them to give audience to the bearer, who can tell them much about 
 the evil-disposed person apprehended on Sunday last. Advises that 
 the said person be not put to death till he has made full confession. 
 
 My lordi?j after my most affectuouse recowmendacz'on, 
 This present berer my lord of York^j seruaunt is arryved 
 nowe to me w^'t^ k^^^res bothe to me and to the kinges 
 highnes. I haue remitted hym furthw«t/% to deliver his 
 maiestes letieres. And because he can fully Instructe yoztr 
 lordships and enfourme you of many thing^j I pray you to 
 heare hym fauourably and to geve hym full audience for ye 
 shal here of hym sundry notable thing^j and sp^fially ayenst 
 hym that was apprehended on Sondaye last whom I tak to 
 be an veray evill disposed p«'Sone and the which if he be 
 examyned according to the said berers relation ye shal knowe 
 things gretely to be marked & noted Therfor I beseche 
 you to have this mater recommended And that the said 
 person so apprehended be not put to deth tyll we may knowe 
 the hoole and profound bothom of his cancred hert. I pray 
 you to sende to me adu^rtissemewt howe ye shal fynde hym 
 and knowlege of the veray mater And also of any suche 
 thing^j As I can do here, any expcffwhon for the furthera?^«ce 
 of any the king^j maters For I shal spaer no diligence. 
 Thus our blessed creatozer have you in his tuition & keping 
 From the Rooles this xvii**" of Octobr^. 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 84. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1328. Oct. 29, 1534. 
 
 Requests him to examine and reform the ' anoysaunces ' made by Sir 
 Robert Wingfield in the Marches of Calais. 
 
 In my right harty maner I co;^mend me vnto yoz^r good 
 lordship. And wher as of late the kinges highnes hathe 
 directed his Co^^my-ssion vnto your lordship and other for 
 puUyng downe and reformacion of certayne anoysaunces made 
 and done by Sir Robart Wyngfeld w?t,^in the Marches of 
 Calays, the kinges pleasure is that ye and th other Cow^mys- 
 sion^rs shall circumspectly viewe and ou^rsee the same. And 
 that that of necessite ought to be refourmyd for the welthe 
 
390 LETTERS OF 
 
 strengthe and co;;^?modite of the sayd Towne and marches 
 accordyng as it was thought at my last beyng ther to be 
 amendyng, and the resydue that (neither) damagithe ne 
 hurtithe the same Towne to stand still as ye see reasonable 
 cause after yo2<r discresion. and as ye shall seme good. And 
 thus the blessed Trenyte pr^serue your lordship At london 
 the xxix day of October. 
 
 Your lordshyppis assuryd Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the hono?^rable and my veray good Lorde my 
 lord Vicount Lisle the kyng^j Depute of Calais be this 
 youen. 
 
 Endd. Maister Cromwell the xxix*'' of Octobre 1534- 
 
 85. Cromwell to Audeley. 
 
 B. M. Vesp. F. xiii, 105 b ; Cal. vii. 1415. Nov. 11 (1534)- 
 
 Desires him to send back by the bearer a true copy of the proclamation, 
 which is to be printed by Bartlett the printer to-night. 
 
 Aftre my right harty co;;«mendaci:'ons to your lordship 
 Forasmoche as it shalbe very necessary to haue some copies 
 of the proclamaczon also printed this night to thintent the 
 same maye be sent into sundry parties -with the bokes, of 
 answer, These shalbe to desire and pray your Lordship to 
 sende me by this berer a true copie of the same, and I shal 
 sende for bartelet the printer, and first swere him, and thenne 
 cause him to entende this night to the printing of the copies 
 therof accordingly. And thus most hartely Fare you wel. 
 From the Rulk^ the xi**" of Nouembr^ 
 
 I require your lordship to cause the proclamac/ons to be 
 writen and sealed -with suche expediczon as you may take the 
 payne to be here with them tomorowe by tenne of the clock 
 where my lord of Norffi?//^ and I -with others wil tary dyner 
 tyl your cu»«myng. 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my very good Lord my Lord Chauncellowr 
 delyu^r this with spede. 
 
 Endd. VD?. Lord my m'. to my lord Chauncello?/^, etc. 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 391 
 
 86. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1438. Nov. 17 (1534). 
 
 A letter of gentle reproof for failing to discharge his office, as his duty to 
 the King demands. Points out that his 'excess of living' has 
 brought him into contempt. 
 
 My very good lorde aftre my right harty co;^mendac2ons 
 I am now enforced to write my mynde plainly vnto youe as to 
 him the pr^seruation of whose honour I desire Bothe for the 
 discharge of my dueuty to the king^.f highnes, and for the 
 declaration of myn hartye good will whiche I here vnto you, 
 and therfor I require you my lorde to take it in good parte. 
 First I trust you consider what a charge you haue there vnder 
 the king^j Maiestle and I woold youe should remember Both 
 what besemeth a man to doo being in that place, and that the 
 same conteineth in it no state of inheritaunce, ne terme for 
 lief But vppon the good Behaxiiour of the p^rsonne having it. 
 Nowe if you shuld waye the thing and the nature of it indif- 
 ferently, Wold you thinke it mete that a man shuld haue that 
 charge, which wold Bring himself to suche necessitie that he 
 shuld be constrayned to put all thing^J to sale, that be com- 
 mytted vppon sp^ciall trust to his discreation, neglecting of 
 thone parte the kinges highnes honour to be pr^serued in 
 the satisfaction of his grauntt^j, of thother parte as it were 
 contempnyng all frieendeship in giving place to a litle Lucre. 
 Surely my lorde suche a gouernoa;- as you Be shuld not 
 Bynde himself at any manes request to p^rforme that shall 
 not p^rcase lye in him, ne by any his excesse in living make 
 himself soo nedye, that whenne the present thing shuld happen, 
 he shuld be forced to haue more estimac?bn of money thenne 
 regarde to the tayle it Bringeth witk it. If I were not 
 determyned to contynue yot(r lordships assured Freende 
 I wold not worke this plainly wit/t you, neither thinke that 
 I doo it vppon any affection, for I wold (do) that I maywil 
 honestly, oon man I haue often tymes reco;«mended that 
 is the Surveyo?/r whom the Kinges Ma.zeste woold haue s^rued 
 of foure men according to his graunte and Late co?;2maunde- 
 ment made for the same. But yet I write not this so moche 
 for him alone as for others and chiefly for yourself, and after 
 for the poore man that is berer herof who hathe yo?^;' Bonde. 
 Whiche your honour shalbe to p^rforme and accomplishe, and 
 Bothe myn aduise and desire shal concurre wit/i the same, lest 
 it might be taken jrvel where p^rcase you did it vppon an 
 honest grounde. Finally my lorde I remayn^ your harty 
 Freende, and desire you to expresse yoz^r Freendeship again 
 
392 LETTERS OF [1534 
 
 toward^j me in your honoz/irable proceding^j, and the helping 
 of such as the king^j MazVite wold shuld be there preferred, 
 among^j the Whiche the Surveyr is not the last, and yet 
 I wold he shuld haue nothing onles his s^ruice des^rue it. 
 Thus most hartely Fare you wel From the Nete the xvii"" of 
 Nouembr 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my very good Lorde the Viscounte Lisle Deputie 
 (of) the king^j towne and the Marches of Calays. 
 Endd. by Lisle. Tochyng the gyft of romys 
 
 87. Cromwell to Lady Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1448. Nov. 20 {1534). 
 
 Denies the report that he is displeased with her. If she continues to act 
 as she has, she will always find him a firm friend. 
 
 In my right harty maner I co7;«mend me vnto your good 
 ladiship. And wheras I am infourmyd that reaport hathe 
 been made vnto you that I shuld be displeasid with your 
 ladiship . Where of trouthe I knowe no cause wherfore 
 I shuld so be, Wherfore I pray you geve no soche credence 
 ne beleffe to any p^rsone, for your good ladiship vsyng your, 
 selfe in all causes none otherwise then I here that ye do, and 
 as I doubte not that ye will here after contynewe, shall fynd 
 me as redy to do you any pleasure, that may lye in me to do 
 as any frynd that ye have. And thus the blessed Trenyte 
 pres^rue your good ladiship. At london the xx"' day of 
 November. 
 
 Your louyng Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right honoziirable and my very good lady 
 my lady lisle be this youen. 
 
 88. (Cromwell) to (Henry VIII). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1613. (1534.) 
 
 Reports that Mr. Southwell is content to sell the manor beside East 
 Yafibrd, in Yorkshire, and will show it to the King's surveyor. 
 
 Pleasythit your highnes to be adu^rtysyd how that Sythyn 
 my repayre to london I haue^ spokyn with Mr. Sowthwell 
 to whom I haue declaryd yotir most gracyous pleasure 
 
 ^ c. o. Surveyed and I Fynd I haug 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 393 
 
 touching the purchasing of his Mannour besyd^j est yafford 
 who most humblye Submyttyth hym vnto the plesure of 
 your magestye and ys right well content that your grace 
 appoyntyngi Suche persons to vew the sayd manno«^r as 
 shall (stand) v/itk your highe pleasure he wyll gyue his 
 attendaunce to shew vnto them the same to thentent your 
 highnes may be trewlye certeffyed vppon the vew of the 
 Comodytes belongyng to the same, and that ons known, 
 ■with your most gracyous plesure, Further conclusyon to be 
 takyn & Such as to your highnes shall Seme most mete. 
 Wherfor and it might please yozir grace that I myght know 
 your plesure who yottr highnes woolde appoynt to Survey 
 the sayd Manour I woolde then accordyngly^ cause In- 
 struccyons to be in Redynes For the same^ 
 
 89. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1614. (1534.) 
 
 Desires him to give Mr. Alan a lease of the farm of Canewood and Cane- 
 field, in Essex, without delay, and trusts he has made no promise 
 which will prevent him from doing this. 
 
 My Lorde after my right hertie reco;;2mendac?ons where 
 as I haue wrytten to you in the fauours of my veraye Frend 
 Mr. Alen for his p;'rferrement to the Ferme of Canewod and 
 Canefeld^j And hauing receyued your answer thereunto 
 whereby I do p^rceyve your desire is to haue respite of 
 your consent and graunnt^j in that behalf till your commyng 
 to London alledging that in the meantyme ye will do your 
 possible to call agayn a former promise by you thereof made 
 to a nother person, My lorde I trust ye haue made no such 
 promise which in case ye haue, yet I doubt not ye will so 
 compase it that my purpose be not Disapoynted by that 
 meane. And therefore my lorde Forasmoche as I do so 
 ernestly meane and intende the satisfacczon of my saide 
 Frend in that parte, I shall eftesones most hertelie requyre 
 you indelayedlie to confourme your self to thaccomplissh- 
 ment thereof, and all excuses set a pa^te, to make him out 
 a lease of the said Ferme according to my former request, 
 Which be ye assured in Few word^j I shall intend so to 
 requyte as ye shall haue no cause to thinke the same 
 bestowid vppon an ingrate person 
 
 ^ c. 0. Indififerent ' c. o. to p;>-scede 
 
 ' c. o. yt may also pie 
 
 MERRIMAH. I D d 
 
394 . LETTERS OF [1534 
 
 90. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 1615. <IS34-> 
 
 On behalf of Thomas Miller, an English subject, whose goods have been 
 wrongly detained by James Sinclair, governor of the north of Scot- 
 land, and who cannot get redress. 
 
 After my right hertie coMmendaczons it may lyke you to 
 undrestonde that where A Shyp called the Andrewe a.per- 
 teynyng to one Thomas Miller beyng a Subiect to my most 
 dreade sou^raigne Lorde Kyng and maister by chaunce of 
 tempest or other mysfortune was ronne Aground in the north 
 parties of the Realme of Scotland. And yet neuif^thelesse 
 the most parte of alle the goodes and merchandises in the 
 said Shypp amountyng to the value of cclx li. sterling as 
 I am enformed were there and then (saved) by the diligens 
 and labours of the seruauntes of the said Thomas they beyng 
 taken owt and by them savely kepte to their saide maisters 
 vse by the space of viii or ix dayes. Vnto suche tyme 
 as one James Seyntcler governer and ruler in the said North 
 parties of Scotland vndre the Kynges grace your maister 
 Without any reasonable cause toke awaye the said goodes and 
 merchandises from the Servants of the said Thomas and so 
 the same euer sens hathe kept and deteyned agaynst good 
 equitie and consciens. And for as moche as at your last 
 beyng in Englond ye gentilly promised me that if I wrote 
 vnto you for relief or necessitie of any the Subiectej of 
 Englande in cases or Justice, ye wolde the rather at my pore 
 contemplacion put youre good endevor to accomplysshe my 
 request. At whiche tyme also of yo^^r said beyng in England 
 thys case was then by me and other the kyng my Maisters 
 Counsayle mocioned, and declared vnto you, Whereapon ye 
 promised vs that yf the partie damaged repayred to your 
 parties for Justice after your comyng home that then he 
 shold be restored as to reason, right, and conscience shold 
 apperteyne. And thys notw/t,^stondyng albeit the said 
 Thomas Miller by the late maister of the said Shipp hath 
 made humble sutes for Justice and Restitucion of hys said 
 gooddes and merchandises to hys greate costej and charges 
 yet neuerthelesse he hath hitherto had nor can get any 
 redresse. Wherefore at the desyre of the said Thomas I at 
 thys tyme am bold to wryght vnto you, right hartely desiryng 
 you that at the repaire of the said Thomas or eny of hys 
 servants to you witk these my letteres that he may by your 
 good favors and meanes so reasonably be ordered in thys 
 case as he shall haue no cause reasonable to compleyn for 
 
1534] THOMAS CROMWELL 395 
 
 lak of Justice, by whiche doyngi?j I shall accompt my self 
 bounden to reaquite your gentilnes •viith semblable pleasures 
 for Any Frend or Neyghbour of yours. 
 
 Endd. A Copie of a k^fere writen into Scotland in the 
 favo«r of one Thomas miller of london 
 
 91. Cromwell to 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. i6i6. ^1534.) 
 
 Desires him to restore the lands which he has wrongfully taken from 
 Reginald Williams in the West Country. 
 
 After my right hertie co»2mendaczons Forasmoche as 
 I haue bene sued vnto and requyred by my Freendes to 
 adresse thiese my letteres vnto you in the fauowr of one 
 Reignolde Williams from whom as I am crediblie infoarmed 
 ye do deteyne and w/t^olde certeyne londes in the weste 
 cuntrey contrary to all right and good equitie albeit the 
 saide Reignalde Williams as manifestly appereth by his 
 euydenc^j is nexte heire vnto the same londes I shall 
 therfore hertely desyre you the rather at this my requeste 
 and contemplacion that without any further molestation or 
 truble in the lawe ye will calle togither your Freendes and 
 after co:wm«nication had in the mattier to conclude a Finall 
 ende therin accordinge to equitie and co^sciens so that the 
 saide Reignolde receyue no iniurye nor wronge at your 
 hande ^, but also bynde me to shewe you lyke pleasures 
 accordinglie. thus Fare ye well. At my howse of 
 Stepneth 
 
 92. (Cromwell) to the University of Oxford. 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 6l8. (1534.) 
 
 The King is displeased at hearing of the ill-treatment of the inhabitants 
 of the town by the authorities of the University, and desires that 
 amends be made. 
 
 I comend me vnto yow Aduertysing the same that wher 
 the king^j hyghnes is crediblie infourmed of your abusions 
 vsurpacyons & vngentill demeanour vsed toward^j the king^j 
 highnes his subiect^j & inhabitaunt^j of that his towne of 
 Oxforthe & subberb^j of the same I can not but mervaile 
 that ye being men of Lerning & in whom shoulde remayne 
 both wisedom & discressyon wille in suche wise demeane your 
 
 ' c. o. And in thus doynge ye shall not ponlie do a thinge proffitable 
 and right meritorious ioiyour sowle 
 
 D d 3 
 
396 LETTERS OF [^534 
 
 self ^ not onelie in making of lawes & ordyaauaces Amongst 
 your self to their hindrance hurt and preiudice but also 
 contrary to the Mnges lawes whiche aperethe in you to haue 
 proceded of nothing but mere malice Wherfor intending to 
 conduce & Allecte yow to som good conformyte & quyetnes 
 the king^j hyghnes therfore hathe co^zmandyd me to advise 
 yow not onlie to restore all such persons as you haue dis- 
 comoned permitting them to do & occupie as they did before, 
 wz't^out mayntening or suffering any scoler or seruaimtes 
 to occupie wztk in the toune or suburbe of f/ie same as a bur- 
 gesse there dothe except he or they do agree there fore wz't^ 
 the sayd burgesses But also that in no wise ye do vexe 
 trouble or inquyete any of the saide inhabitaunt^j by suspen- 
 sion excoMmunycaci(?;z discomonning banysshement or other- 
 wise, vsing suche discression t^at all varyaunc^j may ceasse & 
 be stayed amongst yow so as all malice and evill will being 
 cowtempned & expulsed from yow, good amyte peax & quyet- 
 nes may take place accordynglie. And duobt ye not or it be 
 long the Kinges Counsaile by his gracz'ous co»2maundement 
 will & haue determyned to set suche an ende & redresse 
 amongst yow as god willing shall be an establisshing of a 
 perpetuall peax good vnyte & accorde amongst yow for euer 
 fayell ye not this to do as yow wyll answre vnto the kyng« 
 highnes & advoyde the daungz'er of his indingnacion & high 
 displessur And so Fare ye well 
 
 Add. To the Chauncelour and comissarie wtt/i other the 
 heddes & membres of the vnyversite of Oxforde be this youen 
 Endd. A copye of a \ettex& to Oxforth 
 
 93. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 187. Feb. 8 (1535). 
 
 The King has written to Lisle to give Ralph Hare the next vacant 
 position at %d. a day. Advises Lisle to follow the King's orders. 
 
 In my most harty wise I co»2mend me vnto your good 
 lordship. And persayvyng that the king« highnes hathe 
 not only geven vnto Raufe Hare by sufficient writyng vnder 
 the privey scale, the roume of eight pence sterling by the 
 day whiche shall first and next fall voyde wMin that the 
 towne of Calays, but hathe also writen vnto you his kifferes 
 vnder hys signet confermyng thesame and mencionyng therby 
 his pleasure and expresse cowzmaundment in that behalfe, 
 these shalbe therfore as your lordshippes assured frynde to 
 
 ' c. 0. to their hindrance hurte & preiudice 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 397 
 
 my power to advise you to folowe the kyng^j cowmaunde- 
 ment therin for the satisfaction of his pleasure in that be- 
 halfe. Wherby ye shall not only des^rue the Kynges right 
 harty and condigne thank^j but also admynyster and do vnto 
 me and other of his frynd^j whiche dothe write vnto you also 
 in his favour, great pleasure and gratuyte, the whiche god 
 willyng shalbe on my part in semblable wise recompensed. 
 And thus the blessed Trenyte pr^serue your good lordship. 
 At the Rolles the viii"" day of February. 
 
 Your lordshippis Freend assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell, 
 
 Add. To the right honourable and my synguler good lord 
 the vicount lisle the kyng^j depute at Calays. 
 Endd. Mr. Secretoryes leUere 
 Mr. Sekretarye the viii"" of Febrewary consuming raff Hare. 
 
 94. Cromwell to the Prior of Dudley. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 191. Feb. 10 (1535). 
 The King desires the Prior personally to repair to Cromwell at once. 
 
 I Cowmende me vnto youe. Lating youe wit that for cer- 
 tain causes the pairticularities wherof ye shal knowe herafter 
 The king^j pleasure and co^maundement is ye shal Ime- 
 diatly vppon the sight herof all delayes and excuses set- 
 aparte personally repaire vnto me wheresoeuer it shall chaunce 
 me to be without faylling as ye wil answer to his grace at 
 your extreme pmll. From the Rulles the x*'' of Februarye. 
 
 Your Freend Thomas Crumwell 
 
 Add. To my Freende the prior of Dudleye yeve this witk 
 spede. 
 
 95. Cromwell to the Mayor and Aldermen of 
 London. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 221. Feb. 15 (1535). 
 
 Desires for Robert Baxter, a clerk of the Common Bench, the next 
 vacancy in the clerkships of their court. 
 
 In my ryght harty wise I commend me vnto you & to euery 
 of you And albeit I am many wise importune & bold apon 
 you for my selff & my {rendes When cause & occasion hath 
 
398 LETTERS OF [i535 
 
 so requyred. This shalbe to aduertise you that Robert 
 Backster one of the Clarkes writers w?U John Joyner the 
 kyages Preignetory of his grac^j comen bench at West- 
 minster is very desyrous to be one of the Clarkes of your 
 Courte & hath made instant peticion to me that by myne 
 intercession to be made vnto youe in his izMour he myght the 
 rather & more effectually opteyne the same. And were as 
 I am acerteynyd that the Rowmes of your foure Clarkes are 
 now furnyshyd & non of theym voide. Wherefore I hertely 
 desyre & pray you at the contemplacion of these my letters 
 and for my sake wylbe content to graunt vnto the said Robert 
 the next vacac/on of one of the iiii Clark^j of that your courte 
 And I dare will undertake for hym that he shall at all tymes 
 (yf he lyue to optayne the same) vse and behaue hymself like 
 an honest officer. And for your goodnes herein to be shewed 
 vnto hym (for my sake) ye shalbe well assured to fynd me as 
 redy semably to requyte you of suche gratuite & pleasure as 
 shall lye in me to shew vnto you. And thus fare ye well 
 from the Rollys the xv day of february. 
 
 Add. To my veray good Lorde the Mayowr of the Citie 
 of London and to his worshypfull Brethern thaldermen of the 
 same & to euery of theym. 
 
 Endd. From Mr. Crumwelle. 
 
 96. Cromwell to Henry Burton. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 239. Feb. 19 (1535). 
 
 The King is informed that Burton has disturbed Lady Carew in her 
 possession of a free chapel and ground, granted her by the King. 
 Desires him to cease troubling her. 
 
 In my hartie maner I co?«mende me vnto you, Aduertising 
 the same that Whereas complaint hath nowe lately been made 
 vnto the King^j Ma«>jtie on the behalf of my Ladye Carewe 
 howe that you haue made a wrongfull and riotouse entree into 
 a certayn free chapell and a litle close grounde abowt the 
 same whiche chapell and grounde his hieghnes hath geven and 
 graunted vnto her by his grac(?j \ettex&s, patents during her 
 lief, the remayndre thereof to Fraunceys Carewe her sonne^ 
 and to the heyres masles of his bodye begoten, So that it 
 seameth his maiestie hath the Reversion of the fee simple in 
 him, his heyres and successowrs. His Hieghnes willed me to 
 signifie vnto you by these my k^feres his.grac^j pleaso2/r and 
 cow«maundeme«t is that you do not onely permitte, and suffre 
 the saied Ladye Carewe to enioye peaxably the possession 
 
^535] THOMAS CROMWELL 399 
 
 of the premisses, and to restore suche thinges as you haue 
 wrongfully taken owt of the chapell and grounde aforsaied, 
 but also to cease your suete co^zmenced againste her at the 
 co»«men lawe vnto such tyme as both your titles maye be 
 further examined and tryed by lerned and indifferent Coun- 
 saill, Not failing hereof as you tendere His Hieghnes pleasour, 
 Thus fare you hertely well. From London the xix"" daie of 
 Februarye. 
 
 Your louyng Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my Loving freende Henry Burton. 
 
 Endd. In the bahalf of the Ladye Carewe & her sonne 
 Fraunceys. 
 
 97. Cromwell to the Earl of Shrewsbury. 
 
 Heralds' Coll. of Arms, Shrewsb. MSS. A, f. 57 ; Cal. viii. 247. 
 Feb. 20<iS3S>. 
 
 Sends him a letter from the King. As for the farm of which the Earl 
 wrote, Cromwell has discovered that his servant is not anxious to 
 leave it, and he is unwilling to urge him. 
 
 After my right harty co»«mendac?ons to yois^r good lord- 
 shippe w«t/« semblable thank^j for your heiteres Lately 
 addressed Vnto me The same shall herew?t^ receyue the 
 King^j highnes heUres of answer to suche credence as yow 
 co»?mytted to my Freende Maister Butt^J to be declared Vnto 
 him. And albeit his Maiestie hathe not resolutely answered 
 to the particular point^j of your credence aforsaid yet your 
 lordshippe maye be assured at your cu;«myng vppe to re- 
 ceyve suche answer in eu^ry of the same as shalbe to your 
 contentac/on. And vndoubtedly his grace woolbe as gladde 
 to see your lordshippe as any man I suppose in his realme. 
 Suche is his entier love and {a.uour toward^j yowe. Whiche 
 I am as gladde to p^rceyve and see as your self could desire 
 the same. Touching the ferme wherof yoztr lordshippe wrote 
 vnto me I haue been in hande w«t^ my seruaunt and like as 
 I wold be lothe to constrayne him if I might otherwise chuse 
 to forgoo it Soo I perceyve he woll not leave it onles it shalbe 
 for advoyding of my displeasure, and again the man dothe 
 me soo good s^ruice that w/t^ equitie I canne presse him no 
 further therin thenne I haue doon. Neuertheles if yoztr 
 lordshippe woll haue me eftsones to travail in it I shall doo 
 asmoche more therin as yozir self shall at your cuwmyng 
 
400 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 thinke mete for me. And thus moost hartely Fare yow well. 
 From the Rulks the xx"» of February 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my veray good Lorde Therle of Shrewisbury 
 lord Steward of the King^j Houshold. 
 
 98. Cromwell to Admiral Chabot, Sieur de 
 Brion 1. 
 
 Bibl. Nat. de Paris, Fonds Moreau, 737, page 83 ; Cal. viii. 337. 
 <Mar.>4, 1535. 
 
 The report of the Treasurer of Brittany will assure him how desirous the 
 King is to remain in friendship with the King of France. Urges de 
 Brion to do all he can to strengthen and increase the amity. 
 
 Monseigneur, 
 
 J'ay receu les lettres qu'il vous a pleu m'escrire ensemble 
 entendu vostre response, et charge de M'. le Tresorier Pala- 
 m^des, laquelle, selon sa tr^s bonne maniere de faire, et au 
 tr^s grand contentement du Roy, mon maistre, il a sceu tres- 
 bien dire et declarer, et pourtant que par la response qu'il 
 emporte, vous pourrez clairement cognoistre la bonne con- 
 stance et continuation d'amiti^ et vnion, en quoy le Roy mon 
 dit maistre entend persister k tout iamais tant luy que sa 
 post^rit^, sans aucunement varier, ains faire tout ce que avec 
 son honneur et condescentement luy sera possible, au desir du 
 Roy, son bon fr^re : pourtant aussy, que le diet Tresorier vous 
 S9aura faire ample rapport de toutes choses ; 
 
 Monseigneur, apres vous avoir tr^s afifectueusement prid que 
 veuilli^s persuader, et si mestier est, inculquer k la ma'^ du 
 Roy V° Maistre, la grandeur de leur amitie, et bonne intention 
 de la dicte response et qu'il ne veuille presser ne desyrer le 
 Roy de chose pourquoy Ton pense avoir suspicion ou con- 
 iecture qu'en I'amiti^ d'entr'eux y entre aucun respect de 
 lucre ou proffit particulier: car ce n'est pas assez, comme 
 vous S9avez trop mieux, que leur amiti^ soit cogneue et prinse 
 pour ferme et establie par entr'eux et leurs amys, qui est 
 k leur grand confort et encouragement : Mais aussy est tr^s 
 expedient de I'entretenir et conduire en sorte que leurs 
 Ennemis et malveillans n'ayant cause d'y pouvoir penser, ne 
 suspecter aucune interruption, qui sera a leur tr^s grand 
 esbahissement Confusion et desconfort : et ce faisant, comme 
 
 ^ From the official Record Office transcript. 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 401 
 
 bien gist en vous, le bien et plaisir, qui k tout le monde en 
 adviendra, ne se s9avoir assez estimer, sans vous rescrire pour 
 le pr&ent plus au long, m'estre de tr^s bon cceur recommandd 
 k V° Seigneurie et offert tout ce en quoi vous S9auray faire 
 honneur et plaisir Je supplie nostre benoist Cr^ateur, que, 
 a vous Monseigneur, il veuille donner sa saincte et digne 
 garde. 
 
 Signe, Vostre a commandement 
 
 Thomas Cramwell. 
 Escript 4 Londres, 
 le iv iour de May ^. 
 1534- 
 Add. A Monseigneur 
 
 Monseigneur I'Admiral de France. 
 
 99. Cromwell to Lord Lisle. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 419. Mar. 21 <IS3S). 
 
 The King marvels at his delay in granting Thomas Appawell a position 
 as soldier at Calais. Desires Lisle to give him the next vacant 
 place. 
 
 After my right harty cowmendacionsvnto yotir good lordship, 
 thiese shalbe for asmoche as the l^ing^i- highnes before this tyme 
 in consideracion of the good and acceptable s^ruice done vnto 
 his sayd highnes by his faythefull subgec[t] Thomas Appowell. 
 Hathe geven and graunted vnto hym the roume of a Souldiour 
 of the retynewe at Calays whiche first or next shuld fall and 
 be voyde witk the wages of viii d. a da[y] as by the king^j 
 graunt therof made vnder his signet beryng date the second 
 day of May in the xxiii*'' yere of his reigne and other his 
 sp^riall leUerea sithens directed vnto you for that purpose 
 it dothe more playnly appere. And that notw?t^standing, 
 hitherto he hathe not been preferred to any suche roume, 
 as he saythe wherat considering the kinges sayd graunt and 
 leUeres seu^rally made for that purpose his highnes dothe 
 not a litle marvaill. Wherfore I requyre and pray you for 
 asmoche as thesayd Thomas hathe done good s^ruice, and is 
 right mete for that roume. And the rather for my sake 
 and at the contemplacion of these my k/Z^res, to graunt vnto 
 hym the next roume that shalbe voyde wz't/^ thesayd wages, 
 shewing vnto hym your lordshippes favour in that behalf. 
 
 ^ The date ' May ' is obviously a quite certain that the letter was 
 
 mistake; it should be 'March.' The written March 4, 1535, which, of 
 
 dates of the embassy of Gontier and course, was 1534 O.S. Cf.Cal.viii. 
 
 the itinerary of the King make it p. 133 n. 
 
403 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 Wherby besides that ye shall do a very good dede, ye shall 
 admynyster and do vnto me right thankfuU pleasu[re] the 
 whiche god willyng I will in semblable wise requite, thus the 
 blessed Trenyte preserue you. At the rolles the xxi day 
 of Marche. 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my veray good lord the vicount lisle the King^j 
 depute at Calays. 
 
 100. Cromwell to Sir Gregory da Casale. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 523. April 10, 1535. 
 
 The King is glad to hear that the Bishop of Rome begins to appreciate 
 the justice of his cause. Urges that every effort be made to prevail 
 upon the Pope to give formal sentence in favour of the divorce. 
 
 Mag«2^ce 'Domini Gregori salutem et commendadonem 
 Complures post vestruM hinc discessum, et uariis temporibus 
 datas a vobis Utiera.s accepi, quarum recensiores sub die xx 
 februarii Romae scriptae sunt, quicquid uero de occurewtiis 
 istis publicis, ac priuatis Regiae Matesiatis rebus in dictis 
 Mtiens unquam significabatur sigiUatim^ ac diligenter id ipsi 
 semp)er exposui, gratumqw^ et acceptum habet sedulu^ istud 
 ■vestrum. scribendi officium,nec ego antea vestr\s Mtteris respond!, 
 c^uod putaui, praeter Istorum successuu^« cognitione;^ (quae 
 sui nouitate grata semper est) non esse admodum multa, 
 quibus particularius foret respondendum : Nunc autem 
 Regia MazV.ftas quum v^^-^ras tum ad se, turn ad me 
 \ittera.s pressius, accuratiusqw^ perlegisset, illud inter coetera, 
 mente adnotauit, Pontificem vobiscu;« loqui uoluisse, sum- 
 mawq«^ praesetulisse Regiae 'M.aiestati gratificandi propen- 
 sionem, et ob eam causam, duos accersisse ex hetruria iure- 
 consultos cum primis eruditos, quorum doctrinae sanoq«^ 
 iudicio potissimum fidat, eorumq«^ sententias, et opiniones 
 pro Regiae Ma.iestat\s causa stare, et eiusmodi esse vestris vos 
 \itiexis affirmatis ut pontifex ex officio debeat praesens matri- 
 monium, etiam si de ualiditate dispensationis a lulio factae 
 constaret, approbare, Coeterum causa« hanc, ut ueritatis 
 fundamento totam innitentem, et si Regia Ma?>i'tas cum Deo 
 satis firmatam habeat, et omni ex parte stabilitam, in hunc 
 tamen sensum \itier:a.s yestr&s interpretatur, Pontificem scilicet 
 de eius rectitudine et aequitate cum sua Regia Maiesiate 
 quam optime sentire, Proinde si amicum ac syncerum istud 
 pectus erga Serenissimum Dominum meum Regem (quod vos 
 scribitis) re uera habet, quin potius, ut bonum quenq?^ virum 
 ab omni prorsus odio, et affectu liberum, et immunem in primis 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 403 
 
 decet, si ueritati ex anima fauet, eius certe sunt partes, ut 
 suam banc erga Inuictissimum homiaum meum Regem in 
 causa omnium iustissima bene affectam uoluntatem, suo etiam 
 publico testimonio, et approbatione vniuersi orbi reddat per- 
 (\tMm manifestam, suaq«^ sponte, innataqw^ animi probitate 
 et solius ueritatis propagandae studio, nulla Regiae Maiesiatis 
 intercessione expectata, ad id adducatur, ut nuUius metu, seu 
 respectu a uero rectoqz^^ deflectens de prioris matrimonii 
 inualiditate, praesentisq?^^ firmitate, et robore ingenue pro- 
 nunciet, quem ad modum doctissimis illis viris, quos huius 
 rei causa ab eo accersitos, istic adesse scribitis, maxime probari 
 significatis, efficiet certe Pontifex rem suo munere, et officio 
 dignam, Seremssimo Domino meo Regi, qui suae causae 
 iustitiam tot uigiliis, sumptibus ac laboribus diu quaesitam, 
 et iam pridem cum Deo compertam habet, ueheme^ter gratam, 
 sibiq«^ in primis, et pontificatui suo longe utiliorem, quam 
 nunc demonstratione sit opus, Vos autem si hac in re nullo 
 Regiae Matestatis expectato mandato, nuUoq?^^ suo iussu (non 
 enim firmiora suae causae quam nunc habet adiumenta 
 aliunde sperat) quicqziid profeceritis, ac Pontificem vestra, 
 dexteritate ex vobis ad id quod scribitis adduxeritis, eiusdem 
 Regiae Matestatis expectationi quae non vana, aut victa 
 officia, nee infructuosos rerum euentus de ves^ris actionibus 
 sibi polHcetur, procul dubio respondebitis, et haec a Pontifice 
 beneuolentia et gratia ex officio proueniens eo nomine gratior, 
 et acceptior erit, quod ueritatis ratio, ddque respectus, sanaqj^ii? 
 conscientia ad hoc eum mortaliu»« nemine procura^te, nunc 
 commouerit. Et bene valete. Londini Diex Aprilis M.D. xxxv. 
 
 Vester bonus amicus 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. Magnzfico Equiti, Domino Gregorio Casalio etc. 
 Amico carisszmo. 
 
 101. (Cromwell) to (Sir Gregory ba Casale). 
 
 R. O. Cal. vii. 268 \ (April 10, 1535.) 
 
 Draft in English of the preceding. 
 
 After my right (hearty) co^^mendacions, Sithen your depar- 
 ture I haue receyued sundry of your letUres whereof the last 
 here date at Rome the xx day of Februarie. And whatsoeu^r 
 ye haue signefied vnto me by yoztr saide k^^^res aswell of the 
 publique occurrant^j there as of the K'mges highnes pryuate 
 
 ^ This letter is obviously misplaced in the Calendar. 
 
404 LETTERS OF [i535 
 
 affairees I haue aliwayes intymated and declared the same to 
 the king^j maiestie who right thankefully and acceptablie 
 taketh and estemeth your diligence in wryting And now 
 having p^rvsed and redde both yoiir letteres iaddressed to his 
 maieste and also to me his highnes hathe speciallie noted in 
 the same amongst other that the bisshop of Rome speking 
 vfitA you shewed himself veray propice and desirous to 
 gratefie his saide highnes And that he had sent for out of 
 Ethrurie twoo Lawyers being singulerly well lerned in whose 
 doctrine and good iudgement he hathe grate trust and con- 
 fidence Whose sentenc^j and opynyons do stonde hoUie w«t^ 
 the king^j highnes cause Afifirmyng (as ye wryte) that the 
 saide Bisshop of Rome of his duetie and office ought to 
 approbate and confyrme this present matrymonie albeit it 
 depended vppon the validite of the dispensacion made by 
 Julius. So as Notwit^stonding that the king^j maiestie having 
 his saide cause sufficientlie diffyned and being himself in that 
 behalf resolutely determyned and grounded as vppon the 
 foundacion of veryte and trowth hathe discharged his con- 
 science therein (like a good vertuous and catholique prynce) 
 afore god and the worlde Yet his maieste dothe in suche 
 sence interpretate your k/feres that (as appereth by the same) 
 the saide bisshop of Rome begynneth now somwhat to sauour 
 and fele the iustnes and equyte of the saide cause and 
 partelie to stande witA the K'mges maiestie in the same. 
 Wherefore if the saide bisshop of Rome do in dede bere so 
 frendelie and syncere good mynde and will toward^i' the 
 king^.f highnes (as ye do wryte) or rather if he love the trewth 
 as it beco;;2meth euery good man to do setting a.parte all 
 hatred and affection it is his parte to shew the same now to 
 the vnyu(?rsall worlde in this most iust and rightcious cause 
 by his owne publique testymonye and approbacion. And of 
 his owne free will and w?t^out any sute or intercession of the 
 king^j maiestie onelie adhering to the trewth and neglecting 
 all other respect^j to pronounce the invalidite of the first 
 mat^zmony and the validite of the seconde according to the 
 sentenc^j iudgement« and diffynytions of the saide ii° lerned 
 men which as ye wryte the saide bisshop of Rome called and 
 sent for vnto him for that purpose which if the saide Bisshop 
 of Rome will, surely he shall do (a) thing v/ourthie his office 
 and merite of god and the worlde and to the king^.y highnes 
 veray thankefull and acceptable pleasure, and also to him 
 self and his see moche more profite and good then now 
 nedeth to expresse. And you for your parte if in this 
 matier as of yozir self ye can any thing profite or pm^aile 
 by your good policie and dexteryte toward^.? the conducyng 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 405 
 
 of the saide Bisshop of Rome to that conformyte (as ye wryte 
 in your saide \ettex&i) ye shall then vndoubtedlie answer to the 
 king^j highnes expectaczbn And the same preceding of 
 the beneuolence of the saide Bisshop of Rome and the zele 
 that he hathe to the due execucion of his office and duetie 
 shalbe the more grate and acceptable a grete dell to the 
 King^j highnes and the hole wo«rlde, seeing that the mere 
 veryte and the respecte that he hath to god and his owne 
 conscience shall move him thereunto wzt^out any mortall 
 mannes procurement 
 
 Endd. A Mynute of certeyn leUeres responsyve to on at 
 Rome 
 
 A mynute of a 'Lettere to intymate to the Pope the 'Kmges 
 desyre to haue him condiscend to the dyvorce & to allowe 
 the second maryage. 
 
 102. (Cromwell) to Mr. Riche. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 563. Apr. 20 {1535). 
 
 Requests him to use his influence to induce Mr. Sinclair to cease suing 
 Edward Campion, clerk of the peace in Essex. 
 
 After my m[ost] hertie maner I co^zmende me vnto you, 
 and evyn so I pray you at this my request and contemplac/on 
 to be good Maister and frende vnto Edwarde Campion clerke 
 of the peax -witkin the shere of Essex of and in all suche his 
 busynes towching the same his office and to be ameane for 
 hym in the same unto Mr Sayntclere hym to desire to putt 
 the said campion to no further vexacions and swies for the 
 said office as he hath heretofore done. In doyng whereof you 
 shall admynister vnto me right singular pleasure, which god 
 willing . I shall not for get semblable to requyte as shall lye 
 in my litill power. And this hertelye fare ye well. At 
 london this xx"" day of Aprill 
 
 Add. To my lovyng frende Master Riche. 
 Endd. M3mute of lettexe. 
 
 103. Cromwell to the Prior of Trewardreth. 
 
 B. M. Add. MSS. 6,416, f. 8 ; Cal. viii. 743. May 21 (1535). 
 
 The King is informed that the town of Fowey is in a bad state, because 
 the Prior, who has the liberties of the town in his hands, administers 
 it so badly. Desires him to amend his ways. 
 
 M' priour as vnaccquanted I haue me cow«mended vnto you, 
 and whereas it is comen vnto the king^j highnes knowledge 
 that the Towne of Fowey is sore decayed and thoccasion 
 
406 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 therof partlie is that in the saide Towne is no order of 
 Justice bicause the liberties concerninge the same graunted 
 by the king^j highnes and his noble progenitours to your 
 predecessours and by theime vnto the inhabitaunti?j of the 
 saide Towne remayne in your handes and kepinge So that 
 betwene you no maner good order equitie nor iustice is exe- 
 cuted and vsed wz't^in the saide Towne. Wherfore I require 
 you to condiscende and agree w/t^ the inhabitaunti?^ of the 
 saide Towne so that you hauynge your reasonable approued 
 duties, they may haue theire liberties to be vsed and extended 
 amongeste theime witMn the saide Towne to thincrease of 
 good order v/itA'm the same. And as ye shall agre therin to 
 certifie me in writinge by Thomas Trefifry berer herof. For 
 his highnes thinketh that the saide porte of Fowey oweth to 
 be his and to be holden of hime so that his grace entendeth 
 from hensforth to haue it as well prouided for witk good 
 gouerna«^nce and of defence for vtter enemyes as other his 
 townes and partes be w?t^in those parties. Wherunto ye 
 for yoz(r partie before this tyme haue had litle or no re- 
 garde neyther to the good order rule and defence therof ne 
 yet to the good rule and gouernaunce of yourself your 
 monasterie and religion as ye be bounde wherfore his highnes 
 thinketh that ye be vei'ay vnworthey to haue rule of any 
 towne that cannot well rule yourself. And that I may haue 
 aunswer as is afforesaide by this berer what ye intend to do 
 I require you to thintente I maye certifie his highnes therof 
 And thus fare ye well. At london the xxi* daie of Maie 
 
 ^Your Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the priour of trewardreth in Cornewall be this 
 youen. 
 
 104. (Cromwell) to Dr. London and Mr. Claymond. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 790. May (1535). 
 
 Desires them to request the fellows of Magdalen to admit Thomas 
 Marshall as president of the college, on the resignation of the 
 present president, who has already signified his willingness to give 
 up his position, 
 
 In my right harty maner I co»«mende me vnto you. And 
 where the Presedent of Mawdelyn College, as well by his 
 seu^^all k^/^res as by mouthe (of his mere motion) at sundry 
 tymes, myche co?«mending the qualities of my Lord and frende 
 master Thomas Marshal[l] graunted vnto me, that he wulde 
 
J535] THOMAS CROMWELL 407 
 
 be contented to resigne that his Rowme to the same master 
 Marshall, alledging that he was a man very apte & mete for 
 the same, promysing further and nothing doubting, but in that 
 behalf be bothe coulde & wolde fynde the meanes to obteyne 
 the goode willes & myndes of the felowes of the said College. 
 Neuertheles nowe of Late (to me no litle m^^-vaile) the saide 
 presedent when I desired hym to accomplishe his saide pro- 
 messe, alledged for his excuse that the goode willes of the 
 saide felowes coulde not in that behalf be opteyned. Wherfore 
 I hartely desire and pray you effectually in my name to 
 solicite & entreate the saide felowes as by your wysdomes ye 
 shall thinke most conuenient that they for my sake & at 
 this my desire wilbe contented to conforme theym selves vpon 
 the resignation of the said presedent to the admission of the 
 saide master Marshall, or elles that contrary Wyse att the Leaste 
 I may knowe by your writing in whome the mater sticketh. 
 In doing wherof ye shall not only des^^ue bothe Laude & 
 prayse in the furderaunce of the saide master Marshall, whose 
 adwfluncement I hartely desire, but also I wille not faile 
 to remembre your kyndnes in that I may doo you pleasure. 
 
 And thus hartely fare ye well, from London the daye 
 
 of May. 
 
 Endd. The Copie of ak^^^re Sent to Mr. doctor London 
 & Mr. Claymond. 
 
 105. Cromwell to the Earl of Cumberland. 
 
 B. M. Add. MSS. 12,097, f. l ; Cal. viii. 893. June 18 (iS3S>- 
 
 Requests him to discover and apprehend certain evil-disposed and riotous 
 persons, who have unlawfully assembled in the county where the 
 Earl lives. 
 
 After my right harty recowmendacion vnto your good 
 lordship, thiese shalbe tadu^rtise the same that the king« 
 highnes hathe been adu^rtised that diu^^se riotous and ill- 
 disposid p^rsones of the parties wher ye inhabite, or wzt^in 
 your offices and roumes (as it is sayd) hathe lately vnlawfully 
 assembled theymselfes together to no litle nombre in riotous 
 maner to so^me lewde and vnthriftie intent and purpose. 
 Wherfor his highnes myndyng the quietenes of his subiect(?j, 
 and good rule and order to be maynteynyd and kepte wzt/^in 
 this realme Willithe and co^zmaundithe you and other of the 
 Justices of his peax, furthewA-^ after the receyt herof to make 
 inquisicion and serche, who and what nombre of the sayd 
 p^rsones hathe so assembled theymselfe, and for what cause 
 intent and purpose they hathe so done And that ye also 
 
408 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 enquire who hathe beene the Capitall and cheffe doers in that 
 partye, and further that ye cause theym to be apprehended 
 and taken and sent hither w?t^ all convenyent spede together 
 ■fiith all that ye shall fynd and knowe concernyng the pre- 
 mysses, and suche other offenders as ye shall not think good 
 to be sent vp that your lordship cause theym to be put vnder 
 sufficient suretyes for their good aberyng accordyng to his 
 lawes, prayeng your lordship to adu^'rtise me of that ye shall 
 do in the premysses by the berer herof v^ith all convenyent 
 spede. And thus the blessid Trenyte pres^rue you At the 
 rolles the xviii*'' day of June. 
 
 Your lordshyppis Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right honow^able and my veray good lord 
 the Erie of Cumberland be this youen. 
 
 106. Cromwell and Audley to the Mayor and 
 Commonalty of Cambridge. 
 
 Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, i. 371 ; Cal. viii. 1036. July 14 (lS35). 
 
 Desires them to take measures to avoid any trouble with the members of 
 the University at the approaching Stourbridge Fair. 
 
 After our hertye commendacions, wher variaunce debate 
 and strif hath long depended betweene the Vycechauncellor 
 of the Universite of Cambridge and the scolers of the same of 
 the one partie, and you and the cominaltye of the towne of 
 Cambridge on the (other) party, concernyng both your iuris- 
 diccions and liberties. And albeit we, wyth others of the 
 king's counsaile by his graces commaundment, entended to 
 have pacyfyed the sayd variaunce or this tyme ; yet never- 
 thelesse, for that we have had no convenient leasure for the 
 same, the said variaunce as yet remaynith undetermyned. 
 And forasmuche as Sturbridge fair is nowe nere at hand 
 at whiche tyme it is thought verey like that variaunce 
 and breche of the kings peax may happen betwixt you, bi 
 reason of suche iurisdiccions as ether of you pretend e to 
 exercise in the same faire, if remedye were not provided for 
 the same, we therfore, calling to rememberaunce that for the 
 conservacion of the Kings peax an order was takyn the last 
 yere at Lambeheth, before the most Reverend father in god 
 the archebysshop of Canterbury and other the Kings Coun- 
 saile, what ether of you shuld exercise in the said faire without 
 interrupcion of other, till the variaunce betweene you were 
 fully determyned, Do nowe therfore advertise you that the 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 409 
 
 Kings pleasure is that as well ye for your parts, as the said 
 Vicechancellour and scolers for their parts, shall firmely for 
 this faire tyme to cume this yere, observe and kepe the same 
 order in every poynt w^ithout violacion therof : Signifying unto 
 you that we have written our letteres to the said Vycechaun- 
 cellour and scolers for the same cause, Putting you out of 
 doubt that by the due keping of the said order, ye shall take 
 no preiudice of eny your lawfull liberties that of right ye ought 
 to have, uppon examynacyon and fynall determynacyon of 
 ether your titles, To the proceeding in the finall order wherof, 
 we will with all diligence (god willing) put our effectuall 
 endevor this next terme, as the kings pleasure is we shuld do, 
 requiring you to take pacyens in the meane season. And 
 thus almyghtye Jhu have you in keping. Wrytten at London 
 the xiiij'*' daye of July. 
 
 Your frends, 
 
 Thomas Audeley Knt. Chauncell. 
 Thom'. Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the Maier and comynaltie of the Towne of 
 Cambridg be this yeven. 
 
 107. (Cromwell) to the <Duke of Norfolk). 
 
 B. M. Titus B. i, 318 ; Cal. viii. 1042. July 15 (1535). 
 
 Sends a royal proclamation against conveying coin out of the realm, and 
 a copy of the statute of 5 Richard II to the same effect. The 
 council gave its opinion that the King's proclamation in this case 
 should have the same force as a statute. 
 
 May hit please your grace to be Adutrtysyd that I haue 
 resayuyd your leiUres ^ p^rsayuyng by the Contentt^j therof 
 that the Kyng^j highnes dothe moche m^rveyle that I haue 
 not adu^rtysyde yo^^r grace what order my lord chauncelor 
 and others of his Counceyll hath^ takyn Concernyng the 
 conveyaunce of Coyne owt of the realme. Syr according 
 to your gracyous coMmaundement vppon tewysdaye last 
 Mr. Attorney and I bothe dyd Intymate & declare the 
 King^i- pleasure vnto my lorde Chauncelor who Immedyatlye 
 Sent For My lorde cheffe Justyce of the kyng^j benche the 
 chefFe Justyce of the Co»2mon place the cheffe Barron and 
 Mr. Fytzeherberd Mr. Attorney Mr. Solysytor and I being 
 present and the Case by my sayd lord Chauncelor openyd 
 dyuers oppynyons ther were, but Fynally it was Concludyd 
 
 ' c. o. this nyght at xii of the Cloke 
 ^ c. o. done and what order ys 
 
 MERRIMAN, I 
 
 E e 
 
410 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 that all the statuttes sholde be Inserchyd to See whether ther 
 were anye Statute or lawe able to serue for the purpose and 
 yf ther were it was thought good, that yf it sholde happen 
 any accydent to be wherby ther myght Be any occasyon 
 that the money sholde be conveyed owt of the realme that 
 then proclamacyon sholde be made growndyd vppon the 
 sayd Statute adding therunto poletyklye certayn thing^j For 
 the putting the Kyng^j Subiect^j and other in more terroure 
 ande Feare vppon which deuyse serche was made and a 
 goode estatute Founde which was made in the Fyfte yere 
 of Kyng Rychard the seconde the Copye wheroff translatyd ^ 
 into Inglyshe I do sende vnto your grace drawne in vaasiner 
 of A proclamacyon by the aduyse of the Kyng^j lernyd 
 Counsayle. But Amongyst all other things I mouyd vnto 
 my sayd lorde chauncelor my lorde cheffe Justyce and other 
 that yf in Case ther were no law nor statute made alredye 
 for any suche purpose what myght the Kyng^^ hignes by the 
 aduyse of his Counsaylle doo to wrt^stande so greate a 
 daunger lyke as your grace alledgyd at my beyng w?t/^ you 
 to the which yt was answeryd by my lorde cheffe Justyce 
 that the Kyng^j hyghnes by the aduyse of his Cownsayll 
 myght make pr^clamacyons and vse all other polecyes at his 
 pleasure as well in this Case as in Anye other lyke For the 
 avoyding of any suche daungers and that the sayd pro- 
 clamacyons and polyces so deuysyd by the King & his 
 cownsayll for any such purpose sholde be of as good effect 
 as Any law made by parlyament or otherwyse which oppyrzyon 
 I assure your grace I was veray gladde to here ^ wheruppon ^ 
 the sayd statute* was drawen in to a {copy) in forme as 
 (a) proclamacyon I do now sende the same to your grace * 
 and thus the holye trynyte pr^serue your grace in long 
 lyff good (health) witk the Increase of moche honor at london 
 the xv"" day of July. 
 
 108. Cromwell to Sir John Russell, Roger Wynter, 
 John Pakyngton and John Vampage. 
 
 Library ofWilliam Berington, Esq., of Little Malvern Court. Not in Cal. 
 July 18 (1535). 
 
 Desires them to examine the complaint of Robert Symonds, of Pershore, 
 in Worcestershire, and see that justice is done if possible. 
 
 I co>«mende me vnto you in my right hertie maner And 
 by the tenure [of these letters] whiche I sende vnto you 
 
 I f. o. drawne * c. o. to thentent the Kynges 
 
 ^ c. o. Serche was made and gracyous pleasure may be known 
 
 c. o. the Copye of this drawen according to the sayd 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 411 
 
 herin closid ye may p^rceue the complaynt of Robert 
 Symond« of p^rshor in the countie of Worcester wherfor 
 I hartely desire and pray you groundly to consider and 
 pounder the content^j of the same and callyng the parties 
 before you ye be soche waies and meanes as ye can best 
 devise examyne the hole circumstaunce therof and sett 
 a fynall ende therin if ye can And if through the obstinacie 
 of either of the said parties ye cannot convenyently so do 
 then my further desire is that ye wryte vnto me the truthe 
 and playnes of the mater with the circumstaunces therof to 
 thintent I may therin cause some meanes to be founde as 
 the [case] rightfully shall require wherby ye shall do a very 
 good and meritorious dede. And thus fare ye hartely well 
 at London the xviij"" day of July 
 
 Your Frende 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my louyng frendes Sir John Russell Knyght 
 Roger Wynter John Pakyngton and John Vampage Esquyres 
 or to thre or two of them. 
 
 109. Cromwell <and Audeley) to Sir John Russell, 
 John Packington, and John Russell, Esquire. 
 
 Library of William Berington, Esq., of Little Malvern Court. Not in Cal. 
 July 2o(i535>. 
 
 Desires them to survey the possessions of the clergy in the Shire of 
 Worcester according to the King's commission, and to send an 
 account of their value to London. 
 
 After our right hartye co;;«mendacyons where the Kyng^j 
 Co»2myssion was dyrectyd vnto you & other for the surveyng 
 and taxacion of the clere yerely values of all the possessions 
 of the clergie in the Shire of Worceter accordyng to a boke 
 of Instruccyons assigned witk the hand of the Kynges highnes 
 annexed vnto the said CoMmissyon we signyfie vnto you that 
 the Kyng^j pleasure ys that ye callyng your fellowes Joyned 
 witk you in Co^^myssion shall witk all possible dylygens 
 accomplysshe theffect^j therof And to sende to vs to london 
 all the bokes taken by you of the vieu & value of the said- 
 possessions by one or two suche of your fellowes whiche were 
 Audytours of the same before the xij"" day of Septembre 
 next co;«myng. Not faylyng this to do at your perill. And, as 
 
 estatute made in the sayd Fyfte yere afforsayd and that was all that was 
 of Kyng Richarde the second as ys done in that matyere by 
 
 E e a 
 
413 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 ye entende to advaunce the Kynges pleasure in this behalf. 
 And thus fare you well. At london the xx* day of Julye 
 
 Thomas Audeley K. Chauncello?/r 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To their loving freend^j Sir John Russell the yonger 
 Knight John pakington EsquzWr and John Russell Esquier 
 and to eu^ry of theym be this yoven. 
 
 Endd. Wigorn. 
 
 110. Cromwell to Bonner. 
 
 Library of Lord Calthorpe. Not in Cal. July 23 (iS3S). 
 
 Begs him to make speed in his journey. Bonner's commission is ready, 
 and Mr. Gostwick will deliver to him the Duke of Holstein's letter. 
 
 Mr. Boner I co»«mende me vnto you. Signefieng vnto 
 the same that the Kyng^.r pleasure is ye w«t^ your college 
 shall wz't^ all spede and possible haste set your selffej forward 
 toward^j thaccomplisshement of your iottrney, and cause 
 your Ship also to be rigged and made redy so as ye haue 
 no cause of Delaye. Your commission I vnderstonde ye 
 haue alredy made and sealed, and touching the Duke of 
 Holst^.y kif/^re if ye haue not yet receyued it Mr. gostwike 
 shall delyuer it you or to Cauendish accordinglie. Prayeng 
 you ones agayne to make all thacceleracion and hast 
 forward^j that ye can possiblie as ye intende to please the 
 King^j highnes. And so Fare ye well. At Wynchcombe 
 the xxiii day of Julie 
 
 Your Freend THOMAS 
 
 Crumwell. 
 
 Maister Boner the King^j highnes nothing dowtyth in your 
 wysedom polyce and discrecyo« But that ye wool! Vse your 
 Self according to his trust and expectacy^w. 
 
 Add. To his louing frende Docto?/r Boner be this youen 
 \vit/i spede. 
 
 111. Cromwell to Mr. Riche. 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. 1130. July 29 (1535). 
 
 Desires him to express to the Duke of Suffolk the King's displeasure at 
 the 'decay' of certain places, which the Duke affirms he has repaired. 
 Urges him to request the Duke to part with certain reversions which 
 are desired by the King. 
 
 After my right hertie cowmendaczons these shalbe to 
 adu^^-tise you that the king^j highnes hauyng receyued your 
 leiieres hathe youen me in co/«maundement to make you 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 413 
 
 answer as here insueth. First touching suche leases as it is 
 supposed shoulde be made by the Duke of Suffolke, the 
 king« highnes seyeth that he knoweth not that the saide 
 Duke or his officers haue made any lease syns the com- 
 munycac/on had betwixt them of this bargayn, but his highnes 
 is certenly infowrmed that the saide Duke or his officers haue 
 offered to make fourth certen leases syns the tyme of the 
 saide co;«munycac2bn had. Whereof his maieste can not but 
 raervaile and for the same conceyueth som ingratitude and 
 vnkyndenes in the said Duke if it can so be proved. Secondely 
 touching the Decay of Ewelme and Donyngton the king^j 
 highnes answered that what sotwer the saide Duke hathe 
 spent vppon them, it may well appere in what decay they 
 stonde, and who soeuer shall view them shall facilly p^rceyue 
 that grete somes of money will not sufficientlie repaire them 
 as his highnes himself w?'t^ his eye hath vewed the saide 
 Ewelme at his graces late being there. And for Donyngton 
 the house is not onelie in decay but also the keper of the 
 same Mr. Fetyplace hath both consumed and distroyed the 
 Dere and game there and also wasted the •woodes in such wise 
 as it is thought he hathe not onehe forfaited his patent but 
 also right ill deserued to haue eyther fee or thanke for any 
 good service he hathe don there. And semblablie the 'kmges 
 highnes hauing ben at Hokenorton whiche his grace lyketh 
 veray well can not perceyue ne also his Surueyours sent 
 thither can not see how that xv'' li should be employed 
 there as it is affirmed by the saide Duke, so as it is not vnlike 
 but that the saide Duke hathe ben deceyued by his officers. 
 And whatsoeu^r hath ben spent there, yet will it requyre no 
 small sommes of money to repare and buylde it after the 
 king^j mynde and pleasure whiche wilbe chargeable to his 
 highnes. And touching the game of the red Dere at 
 Hokenorton aforsaide, his maiestie Doubtith not but that the 
 saide Duke will iustefie his couuenfl?/nte and agrement viitk 
 the keper for the keping of Ixxx red dere there accordinglie. 
 Thirdely concerning the reuersions of the lady Gordon and 
 John Verney the kmges highnes p^rceyuing the conformyte 
 of the saide Duke in that behalf and also yotir travaile and 
 diligence in the same gyueth vnto him and you both therefore 
 his grac^j hertie and condigne thank^j. Trusting that like as 
 his highnes hathe heretofore mynystered grete benefit^j and 
 co»2modytees vnto the saide Duke, who hathe atteyned this 
 degree honour and astate that he now is in by the meanes 
 and onely ad2/ia;uncement of the kinges saide highnes. So the 
 saide Duke wilbe contented to departe with the saide reu^^sions 
 frankely and frely to his highnes of his mere lyberalite to 
 
414 LETTERS OF 11535 
 
 extende toward^j him, and to permytte his maiestee to haue 
 the saide reu^^'sions viitkia his bargayn alredy made as his 
 grace thought he had had, onely trusting to his grac^j bountie 
 and goodnes for the recompence of the same. Wherein the 
 king^j pleasure is ye shalbe playne witk the saide Duke, 
 vttering and declaring vnto him the good opynyon which the 
 king^j highnes hathe conceyved in his conformyte toward^j 
 all his gracious request^j and affairees, and how he of all men 
 is thereunto bounde if he do well consider the manyfold 
 benefit^j that he hath receyued at the king^j- hande. Wherefore 
 ye may counsaile him not to gyue any cause or occasion in 
 this behalf to the kyng^j highnes to conceyve any Jalousie or 
 mistrust in him but that rather he will shew herein his frankenes 
 and liberall herte toward^j his maiestie without stycking witk 
 his grace in so small a matier. And so doing let him be 
 assured that like as the king^j highnes heretofore for lesse 
 cause youen on the saide Duk^j parte, hathe adwaunced him 
 to this honour and astate that he now is at, So shall his 
 maiestee the rather now be Dryven to consider the frankenes 
 and gentill liberalite of the saide Duke in this behalf if he 
 frankely do com forwardi?j wit/i the same. And Fynally 
 I pray you on my behalf to say somwhat to the saide Duke 
 in this matier alledging vnto him that as I am, alwayes haue 
 be^n, and euer wilbe his graces poure frende so I requere him 
 not to stycke witk the king^j highnes in this matier, and pray 
 his grace not to doubte but that the king^j highnes wilbe as 
 good lorde to him in recompence of the saide reu^rsions as if 
 his highnes Did now parte and couuewaunte witk him for the 
 same aforehand. Wherein eftesones I pray you shew him on 
 my behalf that my poure and frendelie aduise is that his grace 
 shall liberally wryte to the king^j highnes in this matier so as 
 his highnes may thereby p«'ceyue the saide Dukes gentill 
 herte and naturall zele toward^j his maieste aswell in this 
 as in all other thing^j. Which be ye assured in myn opynyon 
 shalbe more beneficyall vnto the saide Duke then x tymes 
 so moche lande as the saide reuersions Do amount vnto. 
 Requering you so to shew his grace fro me as from him that 
 wold be as glad of his grac^j welth and pr^speryte as any one 
 of his poure frend^j. So knoweth otir lorde who send you 
 well to fare. From the Monastery of Tewkesbury the xxix" 
 Day of Julie. 
 
 Your Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To his louyng Frende Mr. Ryche Solycytour to the 
 king^j highnes be this youen. 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 415 
 
 113. Cromwell to the Earl of Rutland. 
 
 Belvoir Castle MSS. Not in Cal. Aug. 9<I53S>. 
 
 Desires him to examine a certain warden and his friars, and report the 
 result of his investigation to the King. Requests him to apprehend 
 Friar John Colsell, and detain him till further notice. 
 
 Mylorde after my right hertie cowmendaczons these shalbe 
 to adu^rtise your lordship that having receyued your leiieres 
 and declared the effect^j of the same to the king^j highnes, 
 who for your dyh'gent adu«'tisement of suche thing^j as do 
 touche his maiestie and for your good will shewed toward^j 
 the correction of suche transgressones gyueth vnto you his 
 grac^j hertie and condigne thank^j', Forasmoche as the king^j 
 highnes is adu^rtesed that the warden of those Freres which 
 haue spoken those sedicious wordes, is a right honest p^/-son 
 and that it may be that he is accused by such light persons 
 as p^rcase can not iustefie the same, the king^j highnes there- 
 fore requyreth yozir lordeship to call before you the saide 
 warden and all other his Freers and to take som payne 
 thoroughlie and exactely to here Debate and examyn^ the 
 matier witk them and their accusers, so as the trewth and the 
 hole circumstaunc^j of the matier may trewlie and substaun- 
 cyallie appere in suche wise as eu^ry man may haue his 
 merit^j and desert^j according to good iustice. And of yoz^r 
 lordeshippes proceding^j in that behalf and what matier ye 
 shall Fynde vppon the saide examynaczon it may please your 
 lordeship to signefie the same witA the circumstaunc^j to the 
 king« highnes or his counsaile, vppon the which adu^rtisement 
 your lordship shall knowe ferther of the king^j- pleasure. 
 Touching the other Frere named Frere John Colsell vsing the 
 decitful arte of magike and astronomye, the king^j pleasure 
 is that ye shall cause him to be taken and apprehended and 
 deteyn him in warde vntiU ye shall haue other knowlege and 
 adu^rtisement of the king^j pleasure in that behalf, and thus 
 the holie trynytie pr^serue your lordeship in long lif and helth 
 wztk thincrease of honoz/r At Barklay hoornes the ix*"" day of 
 
 August. 
 
 Your lordeshyppes assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right honozi^/'able my lorde the Erie of Rut- 
 lande be this yeuen. 
 
416 LETTERS OF [i535 
 
 113. (Cromwell) to (Wallop). 
 
 R. 0} Cal. ix. IS7. August 23 (1535). 
 
 Instructs him to justify to Francis the King's doings, especially the 
 executions of More and Fisher, and to request Francis to support 
 Henry in all his actions against the Pope. The King is desirous that 
 Melancthon should come to England. 
 
 Sir after my most hertie reco7«mendacions these shalbe to 
 adu^rtise you that the xvii* Day of this Moneth I receyued 
 from you a packet of leiUres which indelayedlie I delyuered 
 vnto the king^j highnes and conferred wit/z his grace theffect^j 
 both of your leiteres and all others w?t^in the saide packet 
 being directed aswell to his highnes as to me. And after his 
 highnes had witk me pervsed the hole content^j thoroughlie 
 oiyour saide letieres, p^rceyuing not oneliethe lykelyhod of the 
 not repairee into Fraunce of Philip Melanchton, but also yo?/r 
 commumcacioas had witk the frensh king vppon yo^^r De- 
 maunde made of the king^j highnes pencions wztk also yo7ir 
 Discrete answers and replicacions made in that behalf, for the 
 which his maiestee gyueth vnto you his hertie and condigne 
 thank^j, Ye shall vnderstonde that his highnes cowmaundid 
 me to make you answer in this wise folowing First as touching 
 the kyng^j money his highnes dowtith not but seeing bothe 
 the Frensh king and also the grete Maister haue prc^mised 
 you it shalbe depechid ye will as the case shall requyre not 
 cease to call vppon them till it be Depeched And ferther 
 considering that the saide frensh king vppon your saide 
 Demaunde of the saide pensions so sodaynelye fell into cowz- 
 munycacion witk you aswell of his frendeship and humanyte 
 shewed to the kyng^j highnes, alledging that he at all tymes 
 hathe answered for the kynges highnes specyally being last at 
 Marcelkj vfitk Pope Clement witk other things as in your 
 saide leiUres appereth, as also concernyng the execucions 
 lately don^ here wA,^in this realme, The king^j highnes not 
 a litle m^rvaileth thereat, and thinketh it good that as of 
 yourself ye take som occasion at conuenyent tyme and opor- 
 tunyte to renovate the saide cowmunycacyon both witk the 
 Frensh kyng or at the least witk the' grete Maister, sayeng 
 vnto them, that where the saide Frensh kyng alledgeth that 
 he hath at all tymes answered for the kyng^i' highnes in his 
 cause and specyally to the saide Pope Clement at Marcelk^ 
 affirmyng his pr^cedyng^j to be iust and vpright concernyng 
 the Matrymony as ye do wryte, in that albeit the kyng^j 
 highnes pr^^ceding^j in all his affairees w/t^in this realme 
 being of such equyte and iustnes of themself as they be, nedeth 
 
 ^ A copy of this letter is also to be found in Longleat House. 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 417 
 
 not any defence or assistence ayenst Pope Clement or any 
 other foreyn power, having goddes worde and lawes onelie 
 sufficient to defende him Yet in that that ^ the said frensh kyng 
 hathe as he sayeth answered at all tymes on the king^j parte, 
 he hathe don^ nothing but the parte of a brother in iustefieng 
 and verefyeng the trewth, and so contynuyng shall Do as 
 ap^rteyneth to a prynce of honoz/r which the king^j highnes 
 doubtith not he hath and will do onely in respecte to the 
 veryte and trewth besidi?^ the amyte betwixt them both iustlye 
 requyring the same. And concerning thexecuc?bns Don^ 
 wzt^in this realme ye shall sey to the saide Frensh Kyng that 
 the same were not so mervelous extreme as he alledgeth, for 
 touching Mr. More and the Bisshop of Rochester w/t;^ suche 
 others as were executed here, their treasons conspiracies and 
 practises secretely practised aswell wztMn the realme as witA' 
 out to move and styrre discension and to sowe sedycyon 
 w/t^in the realme, intending thereby not onelye the distruc 
 tion of the kyng but also the hole subuersion of his highnes 
 realme being explaned and declared and so manyfestly proved 
 afore them that they could not avoyde nor Denye it and they 
 thereof openly detected and lawfully convicted adiudged and 
 condempned of high treason by the Due order of the lawes of I 
 this realme, it shall and may well appere to all the worlde that [ 
 they having such malice roted in their hert^j ayenst their \ 
 prynce and Sou^reigne and the totall Distruction of the J 
 cowmen weale of this realme, were well worthie if they had 
 had a thousande lyves to haue suffered x tymes a more terrible 
 Deth and execucion then any of them Did suffer. And touching 
 suche word^.f as the saide frensh kyng spake vnto you con- 
 cernyng how Mr. More dyed and what he saied to his 
 doughter going to his iudgement and also what exhortacions 
 he shoulde gyue vnto the kyng^j subiect^j to be trew and 
 obedient to his grace (assuring you that there was no such 
 thing) whereof the gret Master promysed you a Double at 
 length. In that the king^j pleasure is that ye shall not onelie 
 procure the saide double and sende it hither but also sey vnto 
 the saide frensh king that the kyng^J highnes can not other- 
 wise take it but veraye vnkyndely that the saide frensh king 
 or any of his counsaile at whose hand^^j he hathe so moche 
 meryted and to whom he hathe mynystered so many grete 
 benefit^j pleasures and co;«modytees shoulde so lightly gyue 
 eare faith and credence to any such vayne hrntes and fleeng 
 tales Not hauyng first knowlege or adu^rtisement from the 
 king^j highnes here and his counsaile of the veryte and 
 trewth, Affirming it to be the office of a frende hering any 
 
418 LETTERS OF [i535 
 
 suche tales of so noble a prynce rather to haue compressed 
 the bruters thereof to sylence or at the least not p^rmytted 
 them to haue dyvulged the same vntill such tyme as the 
 king^j maiestee being so dere a frende had ben adu^rtesed 
 thereof and the trewth knowen before he shoulde so lightly 
 beleve or allege any suche reporte which ingrate and vnkynde 
 Demeanure of the saide frensh king ysed in this behalf 
 argueth playneleye not to remayn in his brest such integryte 
 of herte and syncei'e amyte toward^j the king^j highnes and 
 his proced'mges as his highnes alwayes heretofore hathe 
 expected and loked for. Which thing Ye may propone and 
 alledge vnto the saide frensh king and the grete Maister or to 
 one of them witk suche modestie and sobrenes as ye thinke 
 they maye p^rceyue that the king^j highnes hathe good and 
 iust cause in this parte somwhat to take their light credence 
 vnkyndelye. And where as the saide frensh king sayeth 
 that touching such lawes as the kinges highnes hathe made 
 he will not medle wzt^all alledging it not to be mete that one 
 prynce should desire a nother to chaunge his lawes sayeng that 
 his be to olde to be chaunged, to that ye shall sey that such 
 lawes as the king^j highnes hathe made here be not made 
 Without substauncyall ground^j by grete and mature aduise 
 counsaile and deliberacion of the hole polycie of this realme 
 and are indede no new lawes but of grete antiquyte and many 
 yeres passed were made and executed -witkin. this realme as 
 now they be renovate and renewed onlye in respecte to the 
 comen weale of the same. And it is not a litle to his highnes 
 m^rvaile that the saide frensh kyng euer wolde counsaile or 
 aduyse him if in case hereafter any suche like offenders should 
 happen to be in this realme that he should rather banyssh 
 them then in suche wise execute them And specyallie con- 
 sidering that the saide frensh king himself in cowmonyng 
 •witk you at that tyme not onely confessed thextreme exe- 
 cucyons and grete Bruyllie of late don in his realme But 
 also that he now intendeth to w/t/«draw the same and to 
 revoke and to call home agayn such as be out of his realme 
 the king^i- highnes therefore the more straungely taketh his 
 saide aduise and counsaile Supposing it to be neyther thofifice 
 of a frende nor of a brother that he wold Determyn himself to 
 call home into his realme agayn his subiect^j being out of the 
 sam.e for speking ayenst the Bisshop of Romes vsurped auc- 
 toryte, and counsaile the kynges highnes to banysshe his 
 traytours into straunge partes where they myght haue good 
 occasion tyme place and oportunyte to worke their feat^j of 
 treason and conspiracie the better agaynst the king^j highnes 
 and this his realme. In which parte ye shall somwhat 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 419 
 
 engreve the matier after such sorte as it may well appere to 
 the saide frensh king that not onelie the king^j highnes might 
 take those his counsailes and co?«munycacions both straungely 
 and vnkyndely thinking the same not to precede of mere 
 amyte and frendship, but also vsing such polycie and austeryte 
 in proponyng the same w?t^ the saide frensh king and the 
 grete Maister taking such tyme and oportunyte as may best 
 serue for the same, as they may well p^rceyue the kinges 
 highnes proceding^j here ^ff^tkm this realme both concerning 
 the saide execucyons and all other thing^j to be onely groundid 
 vppon iustice and the equyte of his lawes which be no new 
 lawes but auncyent lawes made and establisshed of many 
 yeres passed wit/iin this realme and now renovate and renewed 
 as is aforesaide for the better order weale and suretie of the 
 same. And ye may farther say that if the frensh king and 
 his counsaile well consyder as they ought to do that it were 
 moch better to aduatince the punysshment of traito«^rs and 
 rebelkj for their offences then to ponysshe such as do speke 
 ayenst the vsurped auctoryte of the bisshop of Rome who 
 Daylie goth about to suppresse and subdue kyng<?j and prync^j 
 and their auctorytee gyuen to them by goddes worde. All 
 which matiers the kyng^i- pleasure is that ye shall take tyme 
 and occasion as ye talkyng agayn wA/« the frensh king or the 
 grete Maister may declare yottr mynde as before is prescribed 
 vnto you. Adding thereunto such matier wztk such reasons 
 after your accustomed dexteryte & discression as ye shall 
 thinke most expedyent and to serve best for the king^j 
 purpose, Defence of his proceding^j and the profe of the frensh 
 king^j ingratitude shewed in this behalf. Not Doubting in 
 yo?/r wisedom good Industrie and discrete circumspection for 
 thordering and well handeling of the same accordinglye. 
 
 And touching Melanchton^ considering there is no lyke- 
 lihod of his repayree into Fraunce as I haue well perceyued 
 by your letteres, the "kynges highnes therfore hath appoyntid 
 Cristofer Mount indelaiedlie to take his \ourney where Me- 
 linchton is and if he come to prevente Mounsieur de Langie 
 in suche wise as the saide Melancton his repay re into Fraunce 
 may be stayed and dyuertid into Englond Not doubting but 
 the same shall take effect accordynglie. And as to Mr. Heynes 
 the kyng« pleasure is that he shall go to Parys there to^ 
 lerne and dissiphre the opynyons of the lernid men and their 
 inclynacions and affections aswell towardei- the kynges highnes 
 ^rocedmges as to the bisshop of Rome his vsurped power and 
 auctoryte, after such sorte as the ]dages saide highnes hathe 
 
 ^ c. o. &c. the kyuges high ^ c. o. reside and demoure 
 
420 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 now wrytten to him by his graczbus leUeres addressed both to 
 him and the saide Cristofer Mounts Dyrecting them what 
 they shall do in all thing^j comytted to their charge at this 
 tyme As I doubt not they will put thereunto their devoires 
 for the accomplisshment of the king,?j pleasure as aper- 
 teyneth. And thus makyng an ende prayeng you to vse 
 your discression in the pwponing of the premisses to the 
 Frensh king and the grete Master or the one or both of them 
 vsing the same as a Medecyn and after suche sorte that as nere 
 as ye can it be not moch displeasauntly taken Adu^;-tesing 
 the king^j highnes from tyme to tyme of the successes thereof 
 and of all other occuraunt^j as the case shall requyre, I shall 
 for this tyme bid you most hertelie Fare well &c. Thorne- 
 bery the xxiij day of August. 
 
 Endd. Fraunce 
 
 114. (Cromwell) to Nicholas Oldisworthy. 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 241 (i). Sept. I (1535). 
 
 Desires him to give up all the possessions of the bishopric of Hereford to 
 such persons as the Bishop-elect shall appoint. 
 
 In my harty wise I co;«mend me vnto you . Aduertising the- 
 same that for certayne causes the king^j highnes spatially 
 movyng, his graces pleasure is that ye shall surcease any 
 farther to yntermedie viith the possessions and land^.y be- 
 longyng to the Busshopriche of Hereford but that ye suffer 
 suche as the Busshop elect shall appoynt to haue the doyng 
 of the same. And that ye farther suffer the officers appoynted 
 by thesayd Busshop to resceyve aswell the next rent due at 
 the Fest of thannu/^ciacion of our lady last past as all other 
 rentes due sithe that tyme. And that ye fayll not thus to do 
 as the king^.y trust is in you . thus fare ye well. At Bromham 
 the first day of September. 
 
 for Nicholas Oldisworthye. 
 115. (Cromwell) to (the Abbess of Wilton). 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 271. Sept. 4 (1535). 
 
 Desires her to act kindly towards his friend William Nevill in the matter 
 of the lands belonging to her monastery. Nevill does not wish to sue 
 her though he has good cause so to do. 
 
 Madame, after my right harty recommendations vnto you, 
 thiese shalbe like as here tofore I have writen vnto you, to 
 
 . ^ CO. whereby 
 
^535] THOMAS CROMWELL 421 
 
 desire you to be good lady and frynd to my lovyng frynd 
 wilham Nevell about the Ferme of Chalke and do such 
 reparacions as belongithe vnto the same according to your 
 graunt therof made and that ye will suffer hym to have and 
 enioy such copy holdes as he of right shuld have and holde of 
 your Manotir of Semky belongyng to that your Monastery, as 
 by sufficient writyng and copies therof it dothe more at large 
 appere, in suche wise as he may have no cause farther to 
 complayne ouer you therfore. I cannot p^rsayve any reason 
 iust cause or meanes wherby ^ ye may or shuld deny hym the- 
 same. he hathe been, and yet is all wayes redy to paye his 
 rent and do that which ought or shuld ^ apperteyne vnto hym 
 to do in that behalf according to his wrytyng therefore. 
 Which ye refuse and will not suffer hym to do ^. I p^rsayve 
 the honestie of the man to be suche, that he is veray lothe to 
 vexe or sewe you by the order of the co^^^mon lawe or other- 
 wise*, although he hathe good cause even so to do, whiche 
 if he wold he may do right well to yo7ir inquietacion for 
 thadvoydyng [wher]of I desire you the rather at the contem- 
 placion of thiese my k^/'^res and for ^ your owne quietenes and 
 ease to graunt hym his right yn the premysses ^. Wherby be- 
 sid^j that ye shall shewe and declare yot(r self to be one that 
 will do no p^rsone wronge, and kepe yoztrselie in quyetenes 
 and rest, ye shall admynester and do vnto me therby right 
 thankfull pleasure. The whiche I will not forgete semblably 
 to requyte. And thus fare ye hartely well. At Wolfall the 
 fourthe day of September. 
 
 116. Cromwell to the' Mayor and Commonalty of 
 Cambridge. 
 
 Cooper's Annals, i. 372 ; Cal. ix. 278. Sept. 5 (iS3S)- 
 
 As Chancellor of the University .desires that all differences between the 
 town and the scholars may cease. Requests the Mayor to permit 
 the University to continue in the enjoyment of its privileges. 
 
 After my moost harty commendacions, Understanding that 
 the body of that the Universitie of Cambridge hath elected 
 and chosen me to be their hed and Chauncelor, and that there 
 is question at this tyme betwene you touching the exposition 
 and qualifieng of the Deere made the last yeer by the kings 
 
 * c. o. ye can haue to right well do and 
 
 '^ CO. shall ^ c. o. my sake 
 
 ^ c. o. wherfore and for asmoche " c. o. in suche wise as he may 
 
 .as haue no cause eftesones to com- 
 
 '^ CO. whiche if he wold he may playne one you for this matier 
 
423 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 counsail, for an order to be had without contencion betwene 
 youe and the Universitee in Sturberige fayr, whiche decre ye 
 have already commaundement for this yere to observe and 
 kepe, contending on your part nothing to be comprehended 
 under the name of Vitaill, but that whiche shuld be presently 
 spent in the said faiier, and calling Salmon in barrel, musterde 
 sede, fishe, and suche other, with an exempcon from the terme 
 of vitaill by the name of merchandise, denyeing in like maner 
 the said Universitie to appoint two of their body to ioyne 
 with two of youe in the serche of merchandises there, sayeing 
 ther shal non other serche this yere for their parte, but those 
 that being of their congregacion the last yere were thenne 
 appointed for that purpose, whiche be nowe departed from 
 them and ioyned to youe in the libertie and freedom of the 
 towne. Bicause ye knowe that I have been ever desirous to 
 establish a quiet order betwene youe, and that with as moche 
 favour towards your parte as I might with indifferency and 
 justice, And that I doubt not but that ye will at my con- 
 templacon remembre the preservacion of the Kings peax, 
 and use suche a temperaunce in yo?/r procedings, as with the 
 saufgards thereof I may have cause to rest in your love and 
 kindness towards me. Being again for myn owne parte, moche 
 desirous nowe at the entree to the said Chauncelorship (which 
 office with the kings contentacion and pleasure I accepted 
 not so moch upon any respecte as to be the rather a meane 
 to set a quietnes betwene youe) to have al contencions and 
 controversies ceasse on eyther side, tyl direction and final 
 order may be taken therein. In the whiche I assure youe 
 I shal with such celeritee and indifferency travyll, as ye shall 
 not perceyve me a partie, but a personage holly bent without 
 al respects to the advancement of the common weal ; I have 
 thought good to addresse my letteres unto youe and by the 
 same to desire and praye youe, al vayne and frivolous qualifi- 
 cacons set aparte, to permyt and suffer the said Universitie 
 for this yere, according to the mynde and entent of the said 
 decre, to use and exersise their privileages in the things 
 specified, and also to use at their libertie the comen prison 
 of the Tolbothe as they have doon and as by their charters 
 they clayme to doo, soo as their procede on your part no 
 cause of breache of the peax, wherin ye shal serve the king 
 as appertayneth, and administer unto me suche thankful! 
 pleasure as I shall be gladde to deserve and requite towards 
 youe, in like maner most hartely desiring and eftsones praye- 
 ing youe, touching their Civile courte to be kept in the fayr 
 or any other thing that may com in to question, so to use 
 yourself as I may perceyve you remembre your dueties 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 423 
 
 towards the king in the keping of his peax, and shewe yaur- 
 selves gladde to doo unto me gratitude and pleasure. And 
 thus fare youe hartely wel. From Whofall the fifte day of 
 September. 
 
 Your lovying freend, 
 
 Thom' Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my loving Frends the Mayre and his Brethern 
 of the towne of Cambridge, and to every of them. 
 
 117. Cromwell to Chapuys^ 
 
 Vienna Archives; Cal. ix. 326. Sept. 10 (1535). 
 
 Reports the joy of the King at hearing of the success of the Emperor in 
 storming Tunis. Hopes on his return to give Chapuys satisfaction 
 in his request to visit the Princess Mary. Cf. Letter 121. 
 
 Magnifice atque observande Domine orator plurimam 
 salutem et commendationem. Quem admodum D. vestra, 
 felices et christiano cuique principi speratos cesaree ma"' 
 successus non grauatur crebris suis litteris Serenissimo domino 
 meo regi significare ita sepe antea ab eius regia ma'* conceptam 
 toto pectore letitiam, suis nunc recentioribus litteris eadem 
 vestra D. ingeminauit et quam pulcherrime adauxit. Ex 
 lectione namque tum cesaree ma''' turn domini de granuell 
 litterarum, que toti christiano orbi saluberrimam diuinitusque 
 concessam Tunisii expugnationem describebant tam solido 
 gaudio inuictissimus dominus meus rex affectus est, ut si sue 
 ipsi ma'' gloriosa hec obuenisset victoria, maiori neutiquam 
 affici potuisset nee alium vllum quam qui a deo nunc concessus 
 est, tam sancte a cesare suscepte expeditionis euentu sibi 
 vnquam pollicebatur. Hanc igitur victoriam omni quidem 
 dignam laude, cesaree ma" iterum atque iterum gratulatur 
 salutaremque rei publice christiane precatur, cui sic ex corde 
 fauet, vt si vlla vnquam occasione, vllane sua opera, quicquam 
 addi poterit, experietur cesarea ma'"' me nihil de Serenissimi 
 domini mea regis in se affectu, amicoque animo meis antea 
 litteris vestre D. frustra, aut parum sincere totiens affirmasse. 
 Ad id vero quod in suarum litterarum calce vestra D. addidit, 
 vt scilicet, quantum intelligo, bona regia Ma"' venia, sibi liceat 
 illic Dominam mariam inuisere iuxta regia pollicita impense 
 rogo D. vestram, vt istud suum desiderium velit in meum re- 
 ditum defferre, tuncque futurum spero quod tum hac in re, tum 
 aliis omnibus present! meo sermone vestre do'' expectation! 
 
 ^ From the'ofiScial Record Office transcript. 
 
424 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 plurimum satisfiet siue feliciter valeat. Ex aula regia apud 
 Wolfal die x. septembris. 
 
 V. D. 
 
 Ex animo amicissimus 
 
 Thomas Crumuell. 
 
 Add. Magnifico atque observando domino Eustachio 
 Chapuysio Cesare ma''° oratori. 
 
 118. (Cromwell) to '■. 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 470. Sept. 29 (153S). 
 
 The King desires him to pay half the last year's rent of the bishopric of 
 Worcester to the Bishop, and the remainder to M. Gostwick for the 
 King. 
 
 ^ I co;«mend me vnto you. Adu^rtisyng thesame, that the 
 \<Ynges pleasure and co»«maundement is, that ye ynitk con- 
 venyent spede after the receyt herof, shall content and pay 
 vnto my lorde the Busshop of Wissetour the halfe yeres rent 
 of the hole Busshopriche due this last yere, and the rest 
 to retayne yn your owne hand^.y to the kyng^j vse Wherfore 
 I require you furthewz't^ so to do w/t^out any delay, as the 
 'kynges trust and expectacion is yn you. Thus fare ye hartely 
 well. At Wynchester the xxix day of September. 
 
 Postscript. 
 I Co;«mend me vnto yow aduertysing the same that the 
 kyng^j highnes pleasure is that of the holle yeres Rent dew 
 to his highnes and levyable at this Fest of Saynt Mychell 
 of the yssews reuenews and '^ro&Qcttes of the Busshoprych 
 of Worcester ye shall Content and paye or Cause to be 
 Contentyd (and) payde vnto my lorde the Busshop of 
 Woorcest^r the hole half yeres proffytt^j evynlye to be 
 deuydyd and the residew For the Fyrst hallffe yere to 
 be payd to the hand^j of Maister gostwyke to the kyng^j 
 vse and this ys expresslye the kynges plesure and so Fare ye 
 well at Wynchest^^ 
 
 119. Cromwell to the Countess of Oxford. 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 485 (i). Sept. 30 (1535). 
 
 Desires her to restore Mr. Tirrell to the possessions from which she has 
 wrongfully expelled him. The King wishes to have justice done in 
 that cause. 
 
 In my most harty maner I commead me vnto your good 
 ladishippe. And wher as ther hathe of long tyme depended 
 
 ' c. 0. In my right harty wise 
 
'J^535] THOMAS CROMWELL 42& 
 
 betwene you and this berer Maister Tirrell certayne con- 
 trau^rsies, aswell concernyng his clayme to the parke and 
 Bailliswike of Camps, as a certayne copie Holde Whiche he 
 bought in the same Towne, from all the whiche ye haue 
 expulsed hym, I shall most hartely desire and pray you at the 
 especiall contemplacion herof, to restore hym agayne to 
 thesame. Whiche request I make not only vnto you bycause 
 I thinke ye haue vpon displeasures conceyved agaynst hym, 
 parcase in some part by the mysvsyng of hymselfe toward^^ 
 you, done vnto hym, in his expulsion from the same park 
 Bailliwike and copie hold and your detynewe therof all 
 togither wronge and Iniurye, but because it should be 
 dishonourable to you, to haue the same in open Court of 
 Audience tried agaynst you, and likewise displeasaunt to be, 
 that way disapoynted of your will and pleasure, whiche as 
 I nowe frendly and frankly write vnto you, bicause that 
 I wold be glad, ye shuld w?t/20ut constraynt do as shall 
 apperteyne to your honour, and iustice. So I am enforced 
 to adu^rtise you, as yotir poore frende, that the "kixiges highnes 
 like a prynce of honour is mynded to haue iustice precede 
 Without respect in that cause, Eftesones therfore requyryng 
 your good ladiship the rather for my sake wA^out any 
 extremyte to be good lady vnto hym, who I dare affirme wilbe 
 glad to do vnto you during his liffe that s^ruice and pleasure 
 that shall lye in his litle power. As know^//^ god who send 
 your good ladiship long liffe and well to fare. From 
 Wynchester the last day of September. 
 
 Your ladyshyppis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To the right honoz/rable and my good lady my 
 Lady Anne Countes of Oxford by this youen. 
 
 Endd. A lettere directed from my vaasiei- to the Lady 
 Anne Countes of Oxford. 
 
 120. Cromwell to (Davye Morgan Kemys). 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 486. Sept. 30 <I53S>- 
 
 Requests him to allow John Crede to retain possession of certain lands 
 in Cromwell's manor of Rumney in Monmouth to which he has a deed, 
 until reasonable cause can be shown for his ejection. 
 
 'Da.tttin per Copia;;^ 
 I Commend me to yow. And for Asmoche As I haue 
 scene the Deed made <to> John Crede for certeyn Land^j 
 in my manno7^r of Rompney called the Splott^.f And other 
 
 MERRIMAN, 
 
 rf 
 
426 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 Lond^^ there. Which I take to be a goode Deade. And 
 that NotwA^standing the said Crede Saithe that ye entend 
 to putt hym From the Same. Wherefore I Requyre you to 
 permytt And Suffre hym to holde And kepe the possession 
 thereof According to the tennoz^r of his Deade Vntill Suche 
 tyme as Apon youre Adu^;rtisement thereof I maie knowe 
 A Reasonable Cause . Whie he shuld be putt from the same. 
 Att Wynchester the Laste daie of September. 
 
 Your Loving maister 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 121. Cromwell to Chapuys '. 
 
 Vienna Archives ; Cal. ix. 484. Sept. 30, 1535. 
 
 Reports the King's joy at the news of the Emperor's success at Tunis. 
 Desires Chapuys to postpone a little longer his visit to the Princess 
 Mary. Cf. Letter 117. 
 
 Magnifice et observande domine orator plurimam salutem 
 et commendationem. Litteras quas vestra D. antea ad me 
 dedit grato hilarique semper animo accepi, non mediocremque 
 animi letitiam ob id presertim semper attulerunt, quod cesaree 
 ma'" successus vt sperandum et christiano reipublice saluti- 
 feros, vberrime nunciabant ; recentiores vero iste eo nomine 
 gratiores acceptioresque extitere quod succinte atque distincte 
 totius expeditionis rerum, temporum atque locorum seriem 
 et euentum ab ipso initio in hunc vsque diem sic describunt 
 et ob ipsos oculos ponunt vt eas legendo rebus gestis prope 
 modum mihi videar interfuisse, tantaque Serenissimus dominus 
 mens rex animi attentione de hiis me referentem audiebat 
 vt fraternum eius erga cesaream ma*"™ affectum et propensum 
 quoddam erga publicam quietem studium quam facile fuerit 
 agnovisse. Ad id porro quod per ministrum suum vestra 
 dominatio mecum agit et de quo statuendo iniectis com- 
 perendinationibus se protrahi suspicatur, non possum pro 
 mutue nostre coniunctionis sinceriorisque amicitie vinculo, 
 eam non summopere rogare, et pro innata sua prudentia et 
 animi equitate, boni consulere velit, quicquid in hoc Domina- 
 tionis vestre desiderio deffertur quum nihil interim omittatur 
 quod ex Serenissimi domini mei regis honore et dignitate, 
 simulque illustrissime domine marie securiori salubriorique 
 educatione esse posse videatur, quum maiori cure nemini sit 
 quam ipsi Serenissimo patri, qui regie sue humanitatis nimis 
 
 ■■ From the official Record Office transcript. 
 
15351 THOMAS CROMWELL 427 
 
 esset oblitus nisi carissimam filiam paterno complecteretur 
 affectu et aliorum vigilantia sibi in mentena redigi expectaret, 
 quod salubritati, atque solatio filie esse posset. Itaque quam 
 possum ex animo dominationem vestram obsecro, vt suum 
 istud illustrissimam dominam mariam inuisendi desiderium 
 ab amico pectore potius quam vlla necessitate profectum in 
 aliud commodius tempus defferre non grauetur, et enim vt fieri 
 facile potest de huius illustrissime domine neglecta valetudine 
 falso aliquid ad vos deferri, ita a dominatione vestra peto, vt 
 affirmanti mihi velit certam habere fidem nihil scilicet cure 
 studii, atque diligentie omitti quod ad illustrissime domine 
 Marie conseruationem expedire posse videatur. Pestis deinde 
 sic londini, locisque vicinioribus seuit, vt inofficiosus videri 
 posset, quicunque illinc veniens dominam mariam in aere 
 alique temperie agentem, quam saluberrima, officii gratia 
 nunc temporis vellet inuisere. Non grauetur itaque dominatio 
 vestra hoc meum responsum benigne amiceque, vt solet 
 interpretari nilque a me prospiciet pretermissum, quod ex 
 huius regie ma''° dignitate, Cesaris honore et domine marie 
 conseruatione esse potuerit. Sed de hiis in proximum con- 
 gressum colloquemur vberius, et felix valeat vestra dominatio 
 cui ex animi sententia, optima queque euenire precor . wintonie 
 die vltimo septembris i535- 
 
 E. v. D. 
 
 Ex corde amicus 
 
 Thomas Crumuell. 
 
 Add. Magnifico Domino Eustachio Chapuysio Cesaree 
 ma*'^ oratori plurimum observando. 
 
 132. Cromwell to Sir Gregory da Casale. 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 240. Sept. 1535. 
 
 Explains, for the Pope's benefit, the reasons for the executions of More and 
 Fisher, and describes them as men proved guilty of high treason 
 Wonders at the Pope's indignation at their just sentence. 
 
 Magnifice Domine Gregori plurimam salutem et corn- 
 mendadonem. Quae turn ex ferraria tum ex bononia vestris 
 \ettex\% nuper ad me scripsistis, sigillatim omnia (ut mei est 
 officii) Serenissimae Regiae lUz.iesta'ii significaui, in quibus, 
 ut multa erant, publicarum rerum cognitionis gratia lectu non 
 iniucunda, et vesixx cum 'Domino Parisiensi habiti sermones 
 ipsi probantur, ita non satis demirari potuit, 'E-^iscop'i Roffenj/.r 
 et Thomae Mori mortem, pontificis, WYwxso^ue curiae animuw 
 adeo srauiter offendisse, ut ex hac re conceptam indignationem 
 
 iff a 
 
438 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 haud facile possint concoquere, licetq;^^ Inuictissimae Regiae 
 Maiestati mortalium nemini, praeterqw^ Deo (cum quo actiones, 
 consiliaq?^^ sua habet qiiajn maxime coniuncta)ulla sit factorum 
 suorum reddenda ratio, ne tamen maleuolorz/wz calumniis, ac 
 ueritatis obscuratione, Regium suum nomen istic traducatur, 
 quid ea in re actum fuerit succincte ad vos perscribam : Post- 
 qirnm igitur Regia MazVjtas bene fauente, ac promouente Deo, 
 causam suam publicam eruditissimorz/w^, probatissimoru^/^q?/^ 
 totius christianitatis vitorum, qui nullis passionibus, seu 
 affectibus essent obnoxii, consensu, et authoritate tandem 
 terminasset, et ad ipsam ueritatem omni ex parte firmasset, 
 coeperunt isti boni viri, quibus res praeter expectationejw 
 ceciderat, et spes moliendi noua (ut iam animo agitarant) 
 praecisa fuerat, in alias cogitationes, syncere parum, animum 
 intendere, quumq?<i? optimus Rex ex uigilantissimi principis 
 officio (quod a Deo acceptum sustinet in terris) sui Regni 
 quieti, et commodo prospicere, hominumq?i(^ mores multa iam 
 parte coUapsos in melius corrigere conaretur, istud etiam 
 publicum bonum, quoad iieri per eos potuit, simulatae integri- 
 tatis praetextu adnissi ^ sunt, sed nullo cum fructu impedire, 
 atqtie praeuertere, huius eorum sceleris indicia Rex habebat 
 perq«^fl?« manifesta, sed ut vana semper floccifecit, et nihili 
 habuit, sperans aliquando futurum <\uod hac sua indulgentia, 
 hos viros (quos ut non penitus cognitos nonnunquam antea 
 in precio habuisset) ad aliquam frugem, ac mentis sanitatem 
 reuocaret, At ipsi, quibus genuina ambitio, sui ipsius amor 
 et sapientia quaedam singularis diuersum persuaserat, optimi 
 principis benignitate, ac mansuetudine pertinaciter sunt abusi, 
 et ubi publicum Regni concilium (quod parliamentu«« uocant) 
 pro Regni quiete stabilienda, ut ad certa tempora haberetur, 
 indictum foret, ceperunt und^cunq?/^ sollicita cum sedulitate 
 clanculu;;? exquirere, qua de re tractari, quidque in hoc 
 parliam^«to, ut expediens rei ptidlicae agi oporteret, quicquid 
 uero aliorum delatu ex re praeterita rerum usu, uel coniectura 
 usque collegissent id statim communibus consiliis trutinabant, 
 omnia secus interpretawtes, qtie Regni quies ac utilitas ex- 
 poscebat, eo quidem argumenton^w et rationum apparatu, ut 
 rudi plebeculae non rnulto cum labore potuisset imponi, 
 quumq«^ ex conscientia parum sana, Regis animum sibi 
 offensum suspicarentur, ueriti ne parum commode, audacterq«^, 
 quod tacite animo moliebantur, tractare possent, ex hiis non- 
 nullos delegerunt, quos audaculos aut linguae uelocitate 
 promptiores, aut sui studiosos existimarunt cum his anti- 
 quioris amicitiae occasione ageba^t familiaribusq?^^ colloquiis 
 excipiebant, ac si quos morbo animi laborantes suae opinionis 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 429 
 
 reperissent, in horum sinum iam antea conceptu»« pectore 
 uenenum euomebant, suae erga claementissimum Regem fidei, 
 et obseruantiae, atq?/<? in ipsam patriam charitatis prorsus 
 oblki, Haec dum in uulgus haberentur passimque sparsa 
 promiscue essent, baud somnulenter solertissimus princeps 
 perscrutari coepit, quibus fundame;«tis tam impia coniuratio 
 hiteretur, quibusq?^^' enutriretur authoribus, luce clarius per- 
 spexit, ab hiis integerrimis iuris tantam iniquitatem deriuari, 
 quam redarguebant non obscuri testes, ultro, citroq?^^ missa 
 chyrographa, ipsorumqz^^ oris confessio, haec et alia que multa 
 iustissimuwz principem adegeruwt, ut hos rebelles, ac degeneres 
 subditos, in patriam ingratos, communi bono aduersos, publicae 
 pacis turbatores, tumultuosos, impios, seditiososqw^ viros in 
 uincula carceresq?^^ coniecerit, nee id praetermittere poterat, 
 nisi patefacta iniquitate, sui officii consulto immemor permittere 
 uoluisset, huius sceleris contagionem publica cum pernicie in 
 <\tcam multos transferri. Carceribus autem mancipati tracta- 
 bantur humanius, 3.\.c\tce mitius <\uam par fuisset, pro eorum 
 demeritis, per Regem illis licebat proximor«^M colloquio, et con- 
 suetudine frui, ij fuerant illis appositi, praescriptiq?/^ ministri, 
 quos a uinclis immunes antea fidos charosqz^^ habeba«t, id cibi 
 genus eaq«^ condim^;^ta, et uestitus ei concedebantur, quae 
 eorum habitudini, ac tuendae sanitati, ipsi consanguinei, nepo- 
 tes 2,t(iue affines, et amici iudicabant esse magis accommoda, 
 Coeteruw tanta Regis mansuetudine, fides, obseruawtia, ueritas, 
 atnorque recti apud rebelles istos, proditoresq?/^ homines usq«^ 
 adeo exoleviit, ut constanter iniqui esse maluerint, quam sui 
 sceleris poenitentiaRegis bonitatematqw^ claementiam experiri, 
 et enim postquam certae leges, statuta, atque decreta, re prius 
 multa deliberatione in omnem partem discussa, publica parlia- 
 me«ti authoritate, assensu atque consensu condita prae- 
 scriptaqwi? fuere, et ab omnibus nullo discrimine, repugna;?te 
 nullo, ut sancta necessaria toti Regno utilia, et cum uera 
 christi religione potissimuM consentientia admissa, atq?^^ re- 
 cepta sunt, soli isti repugnabant, suae impietatis praesidium 
 semper aliquod fortuitum sibi ex tempore pollicentes, non- 
 nunquam omissa rerum humanarum cogitatione se totos 
 dLminauim contemplationi egregie simulabant addictos, interim 
 studia, uigilias. cogitatusq?^^, suos omnes uicnnque carceribus 
 obnoxii eo intendebant, ut quibuscunq«^ possent fallaciis, 
 praestigiosisq^/^ argumentis tam sanctas Regni leges, tantaqz^^ 
 authoritate firmitas ac rectissime stabilitas, soli ipsi perni- 
 ciosissimae seditionis principes in commune malum eluderent, 
 refellerent, atq?^^ turbarewt, huius autem tam impiae, perfidae 
 ac iniquae affectae uoluntatis extant manifestissima indicia 
 extant chyrographa ipsa eorum manu carbonibus, et creta (si 
 
430 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 quahdo deerat atrame«tum) depicta, ultro, citroq?^^ clam ab 
 ipsis destinata, neque ipsi ibant inficias complures mutuo 
 acceptas missasq«^ liUeras, fuisse in ignem coniectas ut 
 taciturn, tutumq«^ suae iniquitatis seruatorem, aliud nihil 
 hiis hVferis conscriptum erat, quam quod ad publicam sedi- 
 tionem potissimu;^ spectaret, sustinere diutius non potuit 
 mitissimus Rex istorum culpam tarn atrocem, legumq?/!^ 
 examini publico foro et aperto iudicio illos commisit, Laesae 
 Ma^iestatis, ac rebellionis rei reperti sunt, aXque damnati, 
 supplicium de eis sumptum est longe quidem mitius quam 
 leges, ac iudicia praescribebant aut eorum culpa exegisset, 
 ex qvLoxum exemplo ad sanitatem, ad fidem qtiam multi 
 rediere : Quicunqz^^ sano defecatoq?/^ est iudicio non obscure 
 huic perspicere potest quod praecipitanter pontifex, et curia 
 Romana uUam ex hac re animi offensionem conceperit, per 
 Regiam 'Niaiesiat&vsi non stat, quominus pontifex in suos 
 Carrfz'wales 'E'piscopos eosq«e omnes, in quos ius ullum sibi 
 uendicat, iure suo utatur, non eorum causam suam aestimat, 
 nee offenditur, si pontifex, aut quiuis alius chnsti&mis princeps 
 ullum de male meritis subditis aut rebellibus supplicium 
 exigat : Iterum igitur, 2X.que iterum miratur, pontificem ex 
 hac re tantum indignationis animo concepisse, sed hanc 
 indignationem, quam tantopere exacerbare uidetur curia, tunc 
 depositam iri putat, quum desierint maleuoli suggerere quae 
 falsa su«t, quumqz^^ mentiendi uia fuerit illis praeclusa, quibus 
 quum nil aeque graue, atqz^^ raoltstMin sit, qttam quod sviotum 
 consilior^/M tam strenua fundamenta deiecta fuerint, id operae 
 precium non exiguum esse ducu«t, ut hoc uelamine suas 
 technas callide contega«t priuatamq^^ offensionem, si quae 
 sit, pontificis causam faciant. Non grauetur itaq«^ pontifex^ 
 si Regia yiaiesizs suo Regniqwi? sui iure, si quando expeditj 
 uicissim utatur: Haec itaque omnia tum pontifici, turn 
 coeteris omnibus, qui ex \yorum rebelliu»« suscepto supplicio 
 quicquid offensionis concoeperint sedulo enarrabitis, ut quam 
 ex falsa auditione animi molestiam imbiberu^t, hanc uera 
 audiendo, multa mentis tranquillitate quandoq?^^ deponant, 
 nihilqw^ omittetis, in eorum qua superius commemoraui 
 enarratione, etenim Regiae Maiestati gratissimu»2 erit, ne 
 ipsa ueritas, ut se habet, maleuoloraw calumniis obscuretur, 
 quia si tantum increbuerit mendax paucorum delatio, ut 
 nullus hac in re amplius apud illos sit locus ueritati relictus, 
 falsas GotMin calumnias quantum cum Deo poterit Regia 
 Maiestzs sustinebit, quae sic Regni sui statum, resq?^^ omnes 
 undequaq«5 firmitas, stabilitasqw^ habet, sic suorum fidem, 
 pectora, et obseruantiam compertam tenet, ut iniuriam omnem, 
 si qua alicunde inferatur, queat non multo cum labore deo 
 
'^535} THOMAS CROMWELL 431 
 
 bene iuuante, refellere at propulsare. Et bene valete. Ex: 
 Aula Regia apud Brumham Die Septembm MDXXXV. 
 
 Vester bonus amicus 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. Ma.g!izJico Equiti, 'Domino Gregorio Casalio etc. 
 
 123. (Cromwell) to . 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 241 (ii). (Sept. 1535.) 
 
 The King thanks the recipient for his letter, and for the articles of the 
 charge he has given to the inquests, and desires him to act furthei; 
 according to his discretion. 
 
 After right harty co»«mendacion, ye shall vnderstand that 
 I have resceyved yotir \ettere of the xxvi"' day of August viiik 
 the articles of the charge that ye haue geven to thenquestes 
 ther the whiche \ettexe and articles I have at large shewed 
 and declared vnto the 'kmges highnes who ^ consideryng your 
 payne and travaill takyn therin right well allowithe and 
 acceptithe your good procedyng^j and doyng^j in that 
 behalfe, yevyng vnto you therfore right harty thank^j; 
 requyryng ^ the same farther like as ye have alredy begonne 
 So to precede therin withe suche acceleracion and spede as ye 
 convenyently may do, accordyng to thexpectacion and trust 
 that his highnes hathe in you. And touchyng the enquestes 
 that ye have charged for that purpose all though they be the 
 king^j ser\xa\xntes and sworne for that purpose, yet for asmoche 
 as many of theym in some poynt^.? p^rchaunce may be 
 o&endours will therfore conceyll and not fynd the truthe in 
 exxery poynt. Wherfore the king^j pleasure is that ye well 
 consideryng the same may order and devise eu^ry thyng after 
 yotir discresion, and as ye shall se cause besid^^ theffect of 
 the verdictes of thesame enquestes. 
 
 124. Cromwell to the Mayor, Bailiffs, and 
 Burgesses of Cambridge. 
 
 Cooper's Annals, i. 373 ; Cal. ix. 615. Oct. ij (i53S>- 
 As the King has approved his election as Chancellor of the University, he 
 
 desires them to appear at the two yearly leets held by the University, 
 
 and not to deny to the University the use of the King's prison called 
 
 the Tolbooth. 
 In my right harty maner I commende me unto youe. And 
 whereas it hath pleased the kings highnes, uppon an election 
 passed by the universitie of Cambridge wherin they chose me 
 to be their hedde and Chaunceler, to condescende that I shuld 
 accepte and take the same, to the intent that all matiers 
 
 ' c. 0. for your ^ c. 0. you even 
 
433 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 depending betweene you and them, in contencon and variaunce, 
 might be i-ather by my meane and mediacon be finished, and 
 soo determyned, as eyther parte myght enjoye such privileages 
 as shuld be thought conveniente for them, with the advaunce- 
 ment of justice, the quiet and tranquillitie of the common 
 weale, Wherin I purpose with suche dexteritie to travayl, as 
 you shall have good cause to think that -all respects and 
 affecttions laide aparte, I only mynd that which appertayneth 
 to the office of a faithfull counsailor. Ye shall understande, 
 that forasmoche as I am credibly advertised, that notwith- 
 standing the said universitie hath hertefor had not only the 
 serche of vitail and the correccon of waightes and measures 
 there, and may by the kings Charters (as they doo and of long 
 tyme have doon) kepe two letes in the yere, to be furnyshed 
 with the townesmen, for the punishment and amerciament 
 of suche as shuld be founde offenders in that behaulf, but also 
 the use of the kings prisonne there called the Tolbothe, for 
 the punyshment of all such other offences, as they may by 
 their said Charters correct and punish, the rather of perverse 
 mynd than otherwise, doo from tyme to tyme, when the 
 said letes be summoned, as wel make slender appearance in 
 the same, ne being theer charged, present and amerce the 
 offenders, as by virtue of your othe you be bounde, wherby 
 the good order to be observed therin is utterly confounded, to 
 the great detryment of the publique weale of the hole towne, 
 with the inquietacon of the kings subgiectts abiding within 
 the same. As utterly deny them the use of the said prisonne ; 
 I have thought good, by these my lettres, to desire and praye 
 youe, and nevertheles on the kings behaulf for the better 
 preservacion of his graces peax, to commaunde youe, not 
 only to mak your due appearance in the said letes, and their 
 to enquire, present, and amerce the offenders, as hath been 
 accustomed, but also bothe to permytt and suffer them to 
 have the correction of waightes and measures, and the use of 
 the said prisonne at their liberties, as they have had, without 
 yotir denyal or interrupcon to the contrary, untyl suche tyme 
 as the kings highnes shal take finall order and direction in 
 all things depending in variaunce or question betweene youe, 
 whiche his Majestic wil not fayle to do with al speede and 
 celeritie. And thus fare youe hartely well. From Stepnay, 
 the 15th daye of Octobre. 
 
 Your lovyng freend, 
 
 TtiOUAS Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my hartely beloved Freendes the Mayre, Bailieffs, 
 and Burgesses, of the towne of Cambridge, and to every of them. 
 
i53o] THOMAS CROMWELL 433 
 
 1.25. <Cromwell> to John Gostwick. 
 
 B. M. Titus B. iv, ff. 114-5 ; Cal. ix. 647. Oct. 20, 1535. 
 
 Finds that Gostwick is charged with the sum of ;^i6,o32 16s. Zd. due to 
 the King from divers persons, for conveying corn out of the realm. 
 ■ Desires him to collect as much of it as he can. 
 
 Mr Gostwyck. Where ye stande Charged in the Book^j 
 of Specialties Betwene you & me made at your furst entrie 
 into your Office subscribed -with our handi?j for the Receipt 
 of Sixtene Thousande thirty & two pound^j sixtene shil- 
 lings and eight pence, due vnto the Kings Maiestie by 
 diu^rse & sundry p^rsonnes, for the Conveyaunce of Come 
 & other things out of this Realme contrary to the Kings 
 Lawes, as appereth by the condiczbns of their obligac/ons, 
 remaynyng in your Custodye, And forasmuche as I do vnder- 
 stande and perfitely knowe that a grete parte of the said 
 su7«me of xvi™^ xxxii li xvi s viii d ys vnlevyable, desperat 
 & cannot be had nor recou^red by reason that certain of the 
 saide p^rsonnes haue certificaths, somvne other fallen in vtter 
 decay, by occasion of the grete losses & hynderauncs that 
 they haue susteyned as well by See, as Lande, And somme of 
 theim dedde, & not knowing of whome to be aunswered 
 Whereby I haue Considered the same to be mattier of Con- 
 science, not intending nor mynding to charge you further 
 than shall stande with the same, nor vtitk nomore sume or 
 s\xmvaes than hath or herafter shall co;«me vnto your hands 
 Have therfore thought it good, aswell for your Discharge, and 
 myne. As also for the spedy Recoueryng and Receipt of the 
 Rest of the Money due by the saide sp^rialties, this to devise 
 & wryte, By the same in the Kings Maiesties name Auc- 
 torizing you, to call all the said parties before you, -wiik all 
 seleritie & spede. And by your discrescz'on, so to vse them, 
 That the kings highnes may be aunswered of the money, 
 that by your saide discrescion shalbe thought of verey right 
 & Conscience sufficient. Further in the kings name Auc- 
 torizing you by vertue herof, to take newe composic/ons of 
 suche as hath not their money in arredynesse. And also by 
 the same to deliu^r all suche specialties vnto the parties or 
 ther deputies, as shalbe proved of right either to haue Cer- 
 tificate or other sufficient Discharge. And this Subscribed with 
 my hande shalbe vnto you your heires executoz/rs & deputies 
 sufficient Discharge at all tymes hereafter, for your so doing. 
 Wrytten the xx" day of Octobre the xxvii" yere of the Reigne 
 of our Soueraigne Lorde king Henry the eight. 
 
 Endd. A minute of a lettre to M"" Gostwyke, towching 
 
434 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 a newe ordre and composic/on to be taken vtitk certayn 
 persons standing chardged in grete somvacs of monaye vnto 
 the kingi?j MazWtie whiche be vnleviable and desperate by 
 reason the parties by casualtes be brought to greate pou^rtie 
 
 126. Cromwell to Gardiner. 
 
 B. M. Add. MSS. 25,114, f. no ; Cal. ix. 848. Nov. 19 (i535>. 
 
 Urges him to work diligently in France for the delivery of the ships at 
 Bordeaux. Sends a dozen of Gardiner's orations and a dozen of 
 those of the Dean of the Chapel Royal also, for him to distribute 
 according to his discretion. 
 
 My veray good lorde aftre my moost harty co;«mendac2ons 
 by maister brian whom the 'kmges highnes at this tyme 
 sendeth vnto his good brother the frenche king sufficiently 
 instructed to certain purposes, as by his instructions wherunto 
 ye shalbe participant and make him again the semblable to 
 yours, ye shal pi?;'ceyve, ye shal receyve his highnes \etteves, 
 touching matiers of importaunce, whiche as his grace doubteth 
 not but ye wil setfurth -with suche dexteritie as shal best 
 conduce his desire to effecte Soo his pleasure is ye shal -with 
 suche stomak and courage travail with the frenche king and 
 his counsail in that pointe touching the delyueraye of the 
 .shippes as ye maye not onely obteyne the same but also 
 declare and shewe therw/t^ howe ingrately his highnes is 
 handeled therin speaally being at this tyme soo secrete and 
 freendly treatie betwene him and his good brother as there is 
 for matiers of soo high consequence, znxonges whiche things 
 also his grace desireth youe to remembre the declarac/on 
 of the french king of tharticles sent by Melancton, luthers 
 epistle in the same, -wiih thother circumstances conteyned 
 in the copies lately sent vnto you. Ye shall also receyve 
 h&vfiiih a dosen of your orations and another dosen of the 
 deanes, whiche the king^j pleasure is ye shall by thaduise of 
 Mr. brian and Maister Wallop destribute to suche p^?'sounes 
 there as among^j youe ye shal think convenient. In whiche 
 treatie to be had concernyng the shippes ye may not forget 
 to inculce what Joye the subgiett^j here conceyved for his 
 recou^rye in the procession, and howe they bee again sithens 
 stayed vppon this staye of the shippes whiche hath indede soo 
 contrary a countenawnce to our doing^j as it is no m^rvayl 
 thoughe they be abasshed at it. And this matier the king^j 
 highnes woU haue you chiefly prosecute, leving to Sir John 
 Wallop only the sute for the moneye, bicause the promyse 
 therof was made vnto him. And thus I pray god sende your 
 
T^535l THOMAS CROMWELL 435 
 
 lordshipp well to fare. From the Rulles the xix«' daye of 
 Nouembre 
 
 Yotir lordshippis assuryd 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my veray good lorde my lorde of Winchestre 
 the klnges highnes Ambassador at this tyme wztk the french 
 king. 
 
 Endd. From the Roulles the xix*^ of Novembre. Mr. 
 Secretary 
 
 127. Cromwell to Gardiner and Wallop. 
 
 B. M. Add. MSS. 25,114, f. 232 ; Cal. ix. App. 8. Dec. 7 (1535). 
 
 Desires them to discover the real incHnation of the French King, and to 
 ascertain whether they have any secret plans on foot. Gives a list of 
 the sums of money due to the King. 
 
 Aftre my moost harty co;;2mendac?ons wztk like thanks.? 
 for yonr gentle leiUves and aduertisement^j of the Occurrant^j 
 there, ye shal at this tyme receyve the king^i- highnes leUeres 
 answering to yours of the xxviii"" of Nouembre The content^.? 
 wherof as his highnes doubteth not but ye wil duely consider 
 and accomplishe tempmng neu^rtheles the same in suche 
 sorte, as yoztr wisedomes shall think maye best s^rue to 
 thentertaynement of thamytie betwene his grace and the 
 frenche king, and the conducing of his graces desire to effecte. 
 Soo his highnes spe«ally desireth youe to endeuour yowselfes 
 by all the meanes ye canne possibly deuise and excogitate 
 to explore serche and knowe the veray inclynac?on of the 
 frenche king and whither the frenchemen haue any pryvie 
 practises in hande, and of the lightlywod of the successes of 
 the same wit/t suche other occurrant^j as shall chaunce to 
 comme to yozir knowleage to aduertise his highnes, as I shal 
 for my parte desire youe to doo to me the semblable as the 
 tyme and hast of your dispeches wil give you leave. The 
 treatie belli offensiui ratified at Amyans I sende vnto youe 
 herwttk, And as cowcernyng thaccompt of the money due to 
 the king^j highnes First there is due to his grace 1m' ^ crownes 
 lent to the duke of Bavier for the whiche the frenche king 
 standeth bounde by obligaczbn. Item 1m' ^ crownes lent at 
 his request for the assistence of the duke of Wittenberge, for 
 the whiche they haue non acquietance, but were bounde by 
 promyse to repaye it in cace there ensued no good successe 
 
 ' i. e. 50,000. 
 
436 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 of themployment of the same whiche condition and con- 
 venaunt is wit/iout question determyned. 
 
 Item there is due vnto his grace the hole penczbn and salt 
 moneye for the last yere ended at Nouembre. 
 
 And wheras the king^j highnes in these his \etteres nowe 
 sent vnto youe hathe co?;2maunded youe Mr. wallop to presse 
 th&m^erours, Ambassadoz/tr for your declaration to the denyal 
 of thouertures, like as I writing by his graces co;;2maundement 
 vsed the same terme, for declaracz'on of yo?/rself, to thintent ye 
 shal not thinke that anything is further ment therby thenne 
 to haue youe vse that worde to him to extorte what ye canne 
 in that matier, his highnes cowmazmded me in this sorte to 
 expounde the same vnto youe. And thus moost hartely fare 
 youe well. From Richemont the vii* of decembre. 
 
 The 'kmges highnes s^QciaWy desireth youe to reme;«bre his 
 co?«mandement touching the delyu^rance of the shippes 
 
 Yottr assuryd Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To myn assured frend^j My lorde of Winchestre 
 and air John Wallop knight the 'kinges Ambassadoz^rs in 
 fraunce. 
 
 Endd. From Richemonde the vii"^ of decembre. Mr. 
 Secretary. 
 
 128. Cromwell to Gardiner, 
 
 B. M. Add. MSS. 25,114, f. 234 ; Cal. ix. App. 9. Dec. 7 <IS3S>. 
 
 Has been unable to obtain a copy of the treaty which he promised to 
 send, and thought it better to postpone sending it than to delay the 
 bearer. The King desires him to labour for the delivery of the ships. 
 
 Aftre my moost harty co?%mendac«ons to your lordshippe 
 Thise shalbe to aduertise youe that Albeit in myn other Xettex&s 
 writen ioyntly to youe and Maister Wallop I haue signified 
 that ye shuld by this berer receyve the treaty belli offensiui 
 whiche ye wrote for, yet having here suche busines that 
 I could (not) dep«rte to london to cause the same to be 
 copied, I thought it more expedient to differre the sending of 
 it vntil we shal dispeche another currozw vnto youe, thenne to 
 demore your seruaunt here tyl I might haue goon to london 
 for that purpose. And wheras your said seruatmt hath de- 
 clared vnto me your credence concernyng your necessitie of 
 money, I shall not fayle by the next messanger to take 
 suche direction vjit/z youe for the satisfaction of your desire 
 in that parte as ye shall haue cause to be contented. The 
 king^j highnes desireth youe to labour effectually <for) the 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 437 
 
 delyu^^-ance of the shippes at Burdeulx according to suche 
 instructions as ye haue in that behaulf. And thus moost 
 hartely Fare youe well. From Richemonte the vii*'» daye of 
 Decembre in hast 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd Freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my veray good lorde my lorde of Wynchestre 
 the king^j Ambassado?^r in fraunce. 
 
 Endd. From Richemonde the vii"" of decembre. Mr. 
 Secretary. 
 
 129. Cromwell to the Mayor, Aldermen and 
 Bailiffs of Cambridge. 
 
 Cooper's Annals, i. 377 ; Cal. ix. 977. Dec. 15 (1535). 
 
 Marvels that they have not complied with his requests that the University 
 be permitted to use the Tolbooth, and desires them to delay no 
 longer. Will see that justice is done in all respects. 
 
 In my right harty maner I comende me unto youe. Lating 
 you wit that I cannot a little marvayle to understand that 
 notwithstanding my sundrey lettres hertofor addressed unto 
 youe, tuching the permission of the use of the Tolboth, the 
 furniture of the Universitie leates, the advoyding of newe 
 practises, usages, or imposicions, wherby might insewg debate 
 and contencion betweene you and the said universitie, to your 
 owne disquiet, with the offence of the kings peax, ye have 
 both refused to doo and accomplish those things persuaded 
 and enioined therin unto youe, and for the contynuance and 
 nutryment of discorde and trouble amonge the kings subiectts, 
 devised newe things and meanes to augment and engrece the 
 same. The prysonne first is the kings, and seing his grace by 
 his charters and grauntes hath ioyned the universitie with 
 youe in the use therof, I cannot conceyve what ye meane to 
 denye that whiche his grace hath graunted, and by vertue 
 thereof, they have so long enjoyed, which expressly your 
 baylie Ousburn did bothe to the procurators, and also to the 
 vicechancelors deputie. A sergeant of yours also lately tok 
 a peace of cloth from the stall of a commone minister of the 
 Universities for non apparance in your Leate contrary to the 
 comandment given at the tyme of Sturberige fayr, that ye 
 shuld reyse no newe custome, or gather any newe exaction or 
 imposiccon, uppon any scoler, his servaunt or their comone 
 ministers ; ye have also refused alonly this yere, to make a 
 certain othe before the congregacion at Saint Maryes church, 
 for the conservacion of the peax, and the presentement to 
 
438 LETTERS OF [1535 
 
 the vicechauncelor of vagabundes and others, breakers and 
 interrupters of the said peax. Nowe shal I, being only a 
 Counsailor, and otherwise then honestie and justice wil no 
 partie, whiche have not only proffessed to travayl for the 
 quiet of both parties, but will devise and labor also to per- 
 forme the same, desire youe to permytt them, first to have the 
 free use of the tolboth as they have had: to see the cloth 
 restored, taken violently awaye by your sergeant ; To see their 
 leats furnished, and to tak such othe, and use all suche things 
 and custumes as ye have doon, untyl fynal direction may be 
 taken betweene both parties. And yet I must ever saye, 
 whiche ye shall also fynde true, that in cace ye shall doo any 
 wrong, or not fulfill that ye be bound unto, wherby tumult 
 and busines shuld rise amonge the kings people, though I do 
 indede favor your cause, as appertayneth, and will also be 
 gladde to doo therein what I canne for your comoditie, Yet 
 in cace prayer and gentle entreatie cannot pull and allure 
 youe awaye from the doing of wrong and iniury, both to the 
 king and his subjectts, I will not fayle to advaunce, to the 
 uttermost of my power Justice and to see punished with 
 extremytie the interrupters thereof, to the example of other. 
 And therfor eftsones, I most hartily praye youe to conforme 
 yourselfs to quietnes in these pointes, and therein to performe 
 that without contencon whiche the princes grauntes, ever to 
 be reverently obeyed, doo require of youe. Ye shal by this 
 waye and meane, doo your dueties, first toward his grace, to 
 me administer most thankfull pleasure, and with your honesties 
 provyde yourselfs quiet and rest, with a good end in all suche 
 controversies as depende between youe and the said uni- 
 versitie. And thus fare youe hartely well. From Stepnaye, 
 the xv*'' daye of Decembre. 
 
 Your freend, 
 
 TnoviAS Crumvv^ell. 
 
 Add. To my loving freendes, the Mayre, Aldermen and 
 bailieffs of the towne of Cambridge. 
 
 130. Cromwell to Gardiner. 
 
 B. M. Add. MSS. 25,114, f. 112 ; Cal. ix. loio. Dec. 24 (1535). 
 
 Thanks him for his letters, and promises to attend to Gardiner's wants. 
 The postscript of Cromwell's other letter will inform Gardiner o£ 
 Thwaites' arrival here, and of the answers made to the letters he 
 brought. 
 
 Aftre my moost harty co;«mendacons to your lordshippe 
 m\.h like thank^rj for your gentle leiteres by the post scripta 
 
'^535] THOMAS CROMWELL 439 
 
 in myn other letters nowe writen vnto youe by the king^j 
 highnes co;«maundement ye shal p^rceyve tharryval here of 
 your seruauat Thwaytes, vfitk the determynacibn for answer 
 to be made to suche lettev&s as he brought wM him. I shall 
 in the meane tyme so satisfie peter lark yowr serummt 
 touching your request for money that ye shall by the next 
 post p^rceyve ye be not forgotten, but sufficiently and soo 
 furnished as ye shall haue cause to be contented. Your 
 doing^j- be no lesse thankfully accepted, thenne yozer wisedom 
 travail and diligence therin do require and for my parte if 
 there be anything elles here that I may doo your pleasure 
 in, vppon your aduertisement I shalbe glad wzt/i al my 
 harte to satisfie youe in the same. And thus most hartely 
 fare youe wel, from the Rulles the xxiiij"" of Decembre 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my veray good lord my lord of Winchestre. 
 Endd. From the roulles the xxiiij of decemb^r Mr. 
 Secretary. 
 
 13L Cromwell to Gardiner. 
 
 B. M. Add. MSS. 25,114, f. 114 ; Cal. ix. 1039. Dec. 30 (1535). 
 
 The King approves of his service, and assures him that he will be glad to 
 welcome him on his return. Reports the illness of Katherine. Has 
 arranged for his money with Peter Lark. 
 
 My veray good lord aftre my moost harty C07«mendac20ns 
 Thise shalbe taduertise youe that vndoubtedly the king^.? 
 highnes doth in soo thankful! sorte accepte your s^ruice 
 there doon vnto his maiestie, and in euery condiczbn soo 
 allowe approve and cowmende your wise substanciall and 
 discreate preceding, as like as ye haue moche cause to 
 reioyse therin, soo shall the same be certain meane and 
 occasion, that ye shall assuredlye what ende soeuer your 
 busines there shall take, returne to his highnes as hartely 
 welcom and in as greate reputaczon as youe could yourstSi 
 desire, wherof for my parte I am euen for many respect^j as 
 gladde as ye canne be yourself. Touchyng his graces 
 affayres I write nothing bicause the same be sufficiently 
 touched in his highnes Xetter&s, nowe addressed vnto youe, 
 only for newes ye shal vndrestand that the douagier is in 
 greate daunger whiche his Maiestie also willed me to signifie 
 vnto youe, as by the copye of a 1^^/^re sent from themp^roz^rs 
 Ambassador here touching her syknes ye shal p^rceyve. 
 And as concernyng yoiir money I haue taken ordre wzt/% 
 
440 LETTERS OF [i535 
 
 your serv«?mt peter lark, soo as ye shall I doubt (not) be 
 shortly therin satisfied. And thus beseching god, to sende 
 youe a good newe yere, I bid youe as well to fare as I wold 
 myself. From the RuIIes the penultime of Decembre 
 
 Your lordshippis assuryd freend 
 
 Thomas Crumwell. 
 
 Add. To my veray good lord, My Lord of Winchestre 
 the K-inges highnes Ambassadozw^ in Fraunce. 
 
 Endd. From the Roulles the xxx*"^ of Decembre Mr, 
 Secretary 
 
 132. (Cromwell) to (the Prior of Montacute). 
 
 R. O. Cal. ix. 1127. (1535.) 
 
 Has received his letters saying that a young person has made suit to 
 obtain the lease after its expiration. The King is assured that he 
 will not recommend any one to him who will not act honourably and 
 for the King's profit. 
 
 In my right hertie maxier I C07«mende me vnto you Ad- 
 u^rtesing the same that I haue receyued your k^r^ifres right 
 well p^rceyuing the content^j of the same And where as ye 
 write vnto me that a nother person of younger yeres should 
 make sute for thopteyning of the lease after the yeres all 
 redie graunted in the same being expired and determyned' 
 the truth is that there is labour made aswell vnto Mr. Norres 
 as other which is not so vehement ne hastie But that it may 
 be right well stayed. Neu^rtheles the king^j highnes hauing 
 ferme trust in your dexteritie and wisedom must nedes haue 
 regarde and expectac?on in your \etiexos. Doubting not but 
 ye will not pr^ferre any other vnto his highnes but suche as 
 shalbe right mete to do that thing which shalbe most for their 
 own honestie and will haue good regarde and aspect to the 
 King^.f most proffite. 
 
 133. (Cromwell) to (Pole)\ 
 
 B. M. Cleop. E. vi, 371 ; Cal. viii. 220. (1535.) 
 
 Desires the recipient to answer the things contained in Starkey's letter 
 to him, which was written by the King's express commandment. 
 
 Syr after my most harty reco;;«me«datyanys thys shalbe in 
 few & short wordys to requyre you accordyng to the callyng 
 
 ^ This letter, though written in Cromwell to Pole, transcribed by 
 
 Starkey's hand and addressed to Starkey on the inside of the cover 
 
 Harvell, is believed by Mr. Gairdner of a letter to Harvell. V 
 
 to be a copy of a letter written by 
 
1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 441 
 
 that our lord Jhesu Chryst hath callyd & redemyd you that 
 ys to say as wel wyth the gyft of gud leiteres and vnder- 
 stondyng, as wyth the most excelle?zt gyft of jugemewt in the 
 same, ye wyl indeuur yourselfe to make answere vnto such 
 thyngys as be cowtynyd in master starkeys lette'ces to you 
 wrytyn at thys tyme, by the kyng our masturys & soueraynys 
 expresse cu/«ma«deme«t & that the same answer may be 
 such & of such gravyte, as the lyght & truthe therof may be 
 to the honowre of god, & the satysfactyon of hys hyghnes. 
 Wherof I assure you I wold be as glad as any parewt or frend 
 ye haue lyuywg not dowtyng in your approuyd wysedome & 
 jugemewt but that ye wyl extewd the gyftys gyuew vnto you 
 in such wyse as leuyng al your respectys or affectyon wole 
 so inserch your co?zscyence & jugemewt for the truth as ye 
 wole both dyscharge yourselfe agaynst god & your prywce, in 
 dowyng wherof you shal assurydly dow the thyng much to 
 thencrese of your meryte & fame, wherin as he that ys your 
 assuryd frend to hys lytyl power I requyre you to haue 
 indyfferewt cowsyderatyon & so to ordur yourselfe therin 
 as the expectatyon of your frendys wythe the jugemewt of al 
 me?; that knowyth you may be satysfyd in that behalfe & thus 
 our lord send you no worse to fare than I wold ye dyd at 
 london 
 
 Add. To my synguler frend Mayster Edmu;?de Herwel 
 marchant at Venyce 
 
 134. (Cromwell) to <an Abbot). 
 
 R. O. Cal. viii. II22. (1535. > 
 
 In consideration of his willing mind, has obtained the King's licence for 
 him to resort to his manors near his monastery, provided that by so 
 doing he causes no disturbance. 
 
 Ye shall vnderstand that I haue resceyved yottr Xetteres^, 
 and touching that ye desire z.monges other thing^^ licence for 
 yotir selfe and certayn of your bretherne to walke to your 
 manoz/rs and other places about yo^r monastery. Ye shall 
 understand that in consideraczon of the good and toward 
 mynd that I have found yn you toward^j me and my ser- 
 uaunt^.y diu^rse ways I ^ have opteynyd licence of the kmges 
 highnes for your selfe that ye may resorte vnto your maners 
 and other convenyent walkes nygh vnto your monastery, so 
 
 1 c. o. wz'tA the . . . and towch- ceyued your \etterts 
 ino- the contentiej of the same ye '^ c. 0. am contented 
 
 shall vnderstand that I haue res- 
 
 G o- 
 
 MERRIMAN, I t> 
 
442 LETTERS OF THOMAS CROMWELL [1535 
 
 that no co?«mon brute may be reysed therby, not doubtyng 
 but ye will vse your selfe so (as for the good will and mynd 
 I bere toward you) it may be to the good zele of religion 
 and as I may therby resceyve no disworship therby. so that 
 always your bretherne must ned^'i' use and order theymselfej 
 accordyng to the Iniunccions in that case geven unto theym 
 in that behalf. 
 
 END or VOL. 1. 
 
 Oxford : Printed at tlie Clarendon Press, by Horace Hart, M.A.