Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII (6 page)

Meanwhile Wolsey’s health was giving cause for concern. On 19 January de Augustino, his physician, wrote to Cromwell urgently requesting that Dr Butts, who served the king in the same capacity, should be sent down to Esher and should bring some electuaries with him. What was wrong with him we do not know, but the crisis seems to have passed because he was soon writing to Cromwell again in the same pleading tone as before. He will do nothing without his advice, and begs him to come down to Esher. How often Cromwell made that trip is not clear, but it was not often enough to satisfy Wolsey. On 6 February he was disappointed not to have seen him the previous night, and on 10 March he was expecting a visit in the morning.
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Obviously they had much to discuss, not least the diocese of Winchester from which Wolsey was soliciting a pension. It may have been the result of his poor health, but the cardinal’s letters during the spring of 1530 became increasingly querulous. Perhaps he suspected his servant of playing a double game, and not without justice because Cromwell was naturally seeking to turn his constant presence in the court to his own advantage. As early as 3 February 1530 Stephen Vaughn wrote from Antwerp to congratulate him on his success; ‘you now sail in a safe haven,’ he declared, obviously in response to news of the king’s favour, and on 13 April Cromwell carried out a profitable exchange of lands with the king. This cost him £500 as he had little land to offer, but was well worthwhile, because in addition to the profits of the lands secured, such an exchange was a sure token of the royal grace.
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Interestingly enough, a subsidy assessment of Wolsey’s household made in January 1530 includes both John and Robert Cromwell, who were presumably kinsmen, but makes no mention of Thomas.
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This may have been for the simple reason that he was no longer resident, but it may also represent another step in his gradual detachment from the cardinal. If that was the case, neither of them was admitting it; William, Lord Sandys, wrote to Cromwell on 17 June about the keepership of the manor of Farnham on the assumption that he spoke for Wolsey, who was still the bishop there in spite of his forfeitures, and at the end of the same month Cromwell wrote to the cardinal what can only be described as a friendly letter about diverse pieces of business which they had in hand. On 30 July Wolsey wrote to him again, expressing appreciation for all the pains that he had taken. Whatever was left of his estate he owed to Cromwell’s efforts, for which he would requite him when he was able. However he also complains of his renewed illness, and how he cannot sleep for weeping, which makes the reader suspect that he was already in the grip of that ailment which was to carry him off in November.
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On 18 August it was noted that Mr Cromwell had such opportunities of access to the king that it was to be hoped that he would remember Wolsey in his misfortune, and a few days later Thomas replied to his letter of the 30th, discussing various bits of business and ending, ‘I am, and during my life shall be, with your Grace in heart, spirit, prayer and service, to the uttermost of my power.’
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There is no reason to suppose that he was being dishonest, but his access to the king had opened opportunities which he could not afford to ignore, and he was briefly in the position of the man who serves two masters. Either Wolsey would be restored to grace or he would be forced to cut his ties with him, no matter what professions he might make.

If Cromwell was being less than straight with the cardinal, Wolsey was also not being entirely frank with his servant. We do not know what they discussed at Esher before his departure for the North, but there is no mention in the surviving correspondence of the latter’s attempts to collect Continental support for his reinstatement, let alone of his surreptitious efforts to open negotiations with the papacy.
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Cromwell was his agent for domestic affairs, and broad though his remit was, it did not include this sort of business. There is no trace in Cromwell’s papers of the near fiasco over the Treaty of Cambrai in 1529, which played a large part in the original withdrawal of the king’s confidence, nor of his interest in the papal election of 1523, and there is no mention of these later negotiations either. Wolsey’s agent in these transactions was his Italian physician Augustine Augustino, who proved less than trustworthy when he was arrested at the beginning of November 1530, although whether he was responsible for the original incriminating leak is not clear. Wolsey was arrested on the same day, but whereas Augustino was whisked straight off to the Tower for interrogation, the cardinal was allowed to make his own way south under escort, while the case against him was assembled. Although he had been planning a grand enthronement ceremony in York, in fact he never made it further north than Southwell, being arrested at Cawood on 4 November.
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On his way to London his various ailments, and the general misery of his circumstances, caught up with him and he died (not without a suspicion of self-harm) at Leicester Abbey on 29 November. Just as he had been no party to the negotiations which brought about Wolsey’s final downfall, so Thomas Cromwell was not affected by his passing. He had done his duty as long as it was relevant, but by December 1530 an altogether more appealing prospect was opening up before him.

While all this was going on he continued his private legal practice, taking full advantage of his position at court and in the cardinal’s confidence. On 4 June 1527, for example, Sir John Vere wrote an appreciative letter to Cromwell, saying that ‘your sending to Edward Hardy made him more pliant than either I or Sir Giles Capell could achieve’ with the result that the dispute between Hardy and one Kneewill was settled.
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We do not know the nature of Cromwell’s intervention, or what the dispute was about, but this tribute indicates that he earned his fee. Francis Lovell was involved in a matrimonial tangle in March 1528, and sought his guidance as to how to proceed, and in December of the same year he arbitrated a dispute between Ralph Dodman, alderman of London, and John Creke over certain bonds which had been delivered in Bilbao. His position with the cardinal meant that clergy frequently appealed to him to sort out problems relating to their benefices, and cases could be cited from both Bangor and Norwich, which usually involved the payment of fees.
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His remit was wide, and in December 1529 he arbitrated another dispute, this time jointly with Nicholas Lambert, alderman of London, in a domestic row between two London grocers, and took bonds from them to abide by their decision. Some of his commissions seem to have come from the king, although it would be wrong to suppose that he was actually in the royal service at this time. For example Sir John Russell wrote to him on 1 June 1530, when Wolsey was already in the North, instructing him on Henry’s behalf to make out a patent for a particular office, which was clearly in the cardinal’s gift as archbishop, and may have been the treasurership which had been discussed earlier. He was also to draft a letter for Wolsey’s consent, and to drop a hint that the king had not forgotten his former minister. The archbishop held the seal for this appointment, so his consent was essential, although in view of what was to happen five months later, the hint may have been less than reassuring. Russell also went on to say that Henry was speaking well of Cromwell, which may be taken as an indication that he would be prepared to take him into service when the circumstances permitted.
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However, in spite of the temptation, there is no evidence to suggest that, unlike Stephen Gardiner, he rushed to abandon the fallen chancellor. As long as Wolsey was alive, and irrespective of misunderstandings between them, he continued to regard himself as the cardinal’s man, and Henry seems to have understood this position and accepted it. Once Wolsey was dead, however, the rules of engagement changed. His last service to his former master came at the end of November 1530, when he arranged his obsequies and settled his debts as far as he was able. A list of the cardinal’s personal effects was also drawn up, although in the absence of a will it is difficult to know what happened to them.
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It is reasonable to suppose that once his accounts were settled what was left would have been divided among his remaining servants, and that Cromwell took the lion’s share.

What if
[Henry]
should shortly after change his mind, and exercise in deed the Supremacy over the church of the realm … or what if the Crown of this realm should in time fall to an infant or a woman. What shall we then do? Whom shall we sue unto? Or where shall we have remedy?

Bishop John Fisher

So when did Cromwell enter the king’s service? There are indications that he may have been involved in drafting the anti-clerical legislation in the autumn of 1529, but the evidence is inconclusive and he may have been functioning simply as a member of a House of Commons committee.
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The best guess is probably January 1530, but at that stage he would have been a comparatively humble member of the administrative staff, and evidently did not consider that to be incompatible with his relationship to Wolsey. Some such step would explain Stephen Vaughn’s remark about his sailing ‘in a safe haven’. The story told much later of a dramatic interview with the king, during which he presented Henry with a blueprint for ending his matrimonial troubles and promised to make him ‘the richest prince in Christendom’, is almost certainly a fabrication.
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Neither Cavendish nor Hall, who were contemporary observers, mention any such event, and indeed Cavendish speaks explicitly of his growing gradually in favour during the year 1530. What does seem to have been the case, however, is that after about a year, Cromwell had become a member of the king’s council. In 1531 this was not the honour which it would have been ten years later, when the formation of the Privy Council had consolidated that inner ring, to which he certainly did not belong. Cromwell was what would have been known at the time as a Councillor at Large, who would be summoned only when his particular expertise was required. That expertise was in the law, and he was what would have been known a few years earlier as a ‘Councillor Learned’.
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As such, he may well have been called upon to give an opinion on the king’s marriage, because during 1530 Henry was groping his way towards a new policy. Having run up against a stone wall of papal and Imperial obstruction, he was looking for a way to declare his independence and circumvent them both by getting a verdict declared within England. Such an idea was not altogether new. As long before as 1515 he had spoken of having no superior on earth, in connection with the Standish affair, but that had not been followed up or particularly noted outside England. More importantly, and much more recently, his specially established ‘think tank’ on the situation had come up with a more considered judgement to the same effect.
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This group, which consisted of Nicholas de Burgo, Edward Foxe and Thomas Cranmer, had been set up in 1529 on the urging of Anne Boleyn to find a solution to the problem. Henry must have been kept in touch with their workings because before its report was produced, in the summer of 1530, Henry was instructing his agents in Rome to urge the
privilegium regni
, which claims that, by the ancient privileges of his kingdom, no King of England could be cited to appear outside of his realm, and that any issues of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had to be settled domestically. Decisions of the early councils were invoked in support of this, but unsurprisingly his agents could find no reference to it in the Vatican Archives.
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Nor did those scouring the libraries of Europe for evidence to support his case find anything relevant, even when they were allowed to look. The search at home proved to be more fruitful, and it must have been some word of that which the king was using in his urgent quest. His researchers turned up a letter in the so-called
Leges Edwardi Confessoris
, which purported to have been written by the second-century Pope Eleutherius to King Lucius of Britain, declaring that all jurisdiction belonged to him as a Christian king, including that over the Church. That King Lucius was a myth and the letter a forgery was not appreciated by anyone at the time. More substantially, according to Aelred, King Edgar had reproved the morals of the clergy, and claimed that such a judgement belonged to him as king.
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According to Ralph de Diceto, because of the scandal of the rivalry of two Popes, Urban and Clement, England had refused obedience to any Pope after the death of Gregory VII in 1085, but that was manifestly untrue, and altogether the list of authorities was not impressive. Equally questionable was the quotation from Bracton, saying that the king was
vicarius dei
, and his rule the rule of God, because he had no superior. Bracton was no canonist, and his statement in any case is not clear. The Old Testament was also appealed to, the reforms of Jehosophat being particularly relevant. Jehosophat had established spiritual judges in all the cities of Israel, and appointed priests and others to hear appeals at Jerusalem, which seemed to Henry to constitute a biblical precedent for what he wanted to do.
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While the king had God-ordained sovereignty, he might from time to time delegate a part of that authority to the priesthood, which kings of England had manifestly done for centuries, without forfeiting his rights in that respect. Such powers may never be alienated finally from the king’s divinely granted prerogative. Consequently Henry was speaking of himself as Emperor and Pope in his own realm as early as September 1530. These ideas were familiar in English jurisprudence, so it is not surprising to find the Duke of Norfolk airing them to Chapuys before the end of 1530.
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However, when the king canvassed them in a specially convened meeting of lawyers and divines in October 1530, and asked whether Parliament had the right to enact that the king’s cause be heard by the Archbishop of Canterbury, notwithstanding the Pope’s prohibition, he was met with a flat negative.
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It is not known whether Cromwell was one of the lawyers consulted, but if so then the verdict was a defeat for him as well, because although he was not a member of the king’s ‘think tank’, it is fairly clear that he was exploring the same ground. He may well have been one of the lawyers whom the king was consulting in a general sense. Henry was angry at the rebuff, and postponed the next session of Parliament until January 1531 because there seemed to be little point in convening it if it was unable to help him in his dilemma. Instead he took the dramatic step of indicting the whole clerical estate of praemunire on the grounds that the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction itself constituted a breach of the statute, which was, in a sense, an extension of the indictment to which Wolsey had pleaded guilty the previous year.
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