Thomas Cromwell

English administrator and statesman

• Born: 1485?
• Birthplace: Putney, near London, England
• Died: July 28, 1540
• Place of death: London, England

During the 1530’s, one of the most crucial and turbulent decades in English history, the chief minister of Henry VIII was Thomas Cromwell, who helped bring about the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the separation of the Church of England from Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the establishment of Protestantism in England.

Early Life

Thomas Cromwell was born to Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith, brewer, armorer, and cloth merchant. Records of Thomas Cromwell’s youth are scanty, based mostly on gossip or on Cromwell’s own possibly unreliable accounts of his life. According to them, he fled from home in his teens and went to Italy, where he served as a soldier under the Italians and French. Leaving the army, he set himself up as a wool merchant in Florence and in the Netherlands. Some accounts say that while in Italy, he met Niccolò Machiavelli ; what is certain is that he had read Machiavelli’s work in manuscript and became a disciple of it. Largely self-educated, Cromwell became a book lover and taught himself Greek and Latin, Italian, and French.

By 1512 or 1513, he was back in England, where he married Elizabeth Wykys or Wykeys, a wealthy widow, and began to practice law, while continuing to operate as a wool merchant. Between 1514 and 1520, he made several trips to Rome. Around 1520, he began to perform legal and administrative jobs for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, archbishop of York and lord chancellor of England. In 1523, Cromwell became a member of the House of Commons, and the next year, a member of Gray’s Inn.

Life’s Work

Cromwell became increasingly useful to Cardinal Wolsey, who in 1525 employed him to dissolve several monasteries so that their confiscated wealth could be used to endow Wolsey’s colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. Cromwell did this so satisfactorily that he became Wolsey’s confidential secretary and thus the power behind the power behind the throne. No scruples deterred Cromwell from doing whatever was required to gain and keep power; in 1527, he advised cardinal-to-be Reginal Pole to forget about ethics and practice the cynical power politics of Machiavelli’s Il principe (wr. 1513, pb. 1532; The Prince, 1640).

In 1527, Elizabeth Cromwell died, leaving her husband with a son and two daughters. He never remarried. Henry VIII , however, was eager to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon , and to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn . When Wolsey failed to obtain for the king either an annulment or a divorce, Henry removed him from his offices and brought a bill of attainder against him. Despite his Machiavellian views, Cromwell defended Wolsey so ably that he earned the appreciation of the king, who took him into the service of the Crown and in 1531 made him privy councillor.

The following April, he became master of the king’s jewels and shortly thereafter clerk of the hanaper. In September, 1532, he became acting secretary of state and in April, 1534, succeeded in ousting Secretary of State Stephen Gardiner and taking the post himself. A year earlier, he had already become chancellor of the exchequer. As Cromwell worked his way deeper into the king’s confidence, he was rewarded by being made master of the rolls and in July, 1536, lord privy seal and Lord Cromwell of Wimbledon.

To win the royal confidence and favor, Cromwell worked out a plan to obtain for Henry his divorce, his marriage to Anne Boleyn, supremacy over the Church in England, and the remaining wealth of the monasteries. To begin with, he proclaimed that all the nation’s clergy had violated the Statute of Praemunire in recognizing the Legatine authority of Cardinal Wolsey, even though the king had sanctioned that authority. In consequence, the clergy had to pay an immense fine and acknowledge the king as the “Only Supreme Head” of the Church. In 1533, Cromwell wrote and forced through Parliament the Act in Restraint of Appeals, canceling appeals to the Papacy in marriage and testamentary cases. In January of 1533, Henry married the pregnant Anne Boleyn, and in May, the new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, pronounced Henry’s first marriage invalid and his new one legitimate.

Continuing to gratify the king, Cromwell engineered through Parliament more legislation that led to the Act of Supremacy, which in defiance of Pope Clement VII, who had declared in favor of Queen Catherine, made the king Supreme Head of the Church in England, effectively severing England from Rome and placing it in the Protestant camp. Cromwell also had passed a new Act of Succession, in favor of Anne Boleyn and her children, and a new Treason Act making it treasonable to challenge either the king or the new queen. Thus, Cromwell forged an absolute despotism for King Henry and used it to execute any who obstructed his policies, chiefly Chancellor Thomas More and John Fisher, bishop of Rochester. Cromwell harbored no hatred for his opponents; they were simply like chess pieces that must be removed.

When Henry became Supreme Head of the Church, he appointed Cromwell its vicar-general. In that capacity, Cromwell ordered an investigation of the monasteries and between 1536 and 1540 dissolved the monastic houses and confiscated their wealth for the Crown. Cromwell’s harsh attacks on the clergy and monasticism led to several Catholic rebellions, most notably the Pilgrimage of Grace in Yorkshire, which was brutally suppressed. In 1538, Cromwell claimed to have discovered a conspiracy in Salisbury and Exeter, and though the evidence was questionable at best, he had the abbot of Glastonbury and other monastic leaders hanged and the king’s cousin the marquess of Exeter and the leaders of the Pole family executed as traitors. Systematically, Cromwell consolidated absolute power in the monarchy and enjoyed his share as the virtual ruler of England.

Meanwhile, Henry’s matrimonial problems increased. When he wearied of Anne Boleyn, who had borne him a daughter, Elizabeth, rather than the son he craved for the royal succession, he wished to marry Jane Seymour, accused Anne of adultery and incest, and had Cromwell serve as prosecutor in the rigged trial that resulted in the execution of the queen and four of her alleged lovers, including her own brother, Lord Rochford. Jane Seymour bore Henry the male heir for which he so longed but died in childbirth. After a brief period of mourning, Henry began to look for a fourth wife.

Undertaking the role of marriage broker, Cromwell looked for a favorable foreign alliance. Though he had no strong religious principles and had engineered the break with Rome for reasons of expediency rather than belief, Cromwell had been maneuvering for an alliance with the German Lutherans to maintain a balance of power against a possible alliance between Spain and France in opposition to England. King Henry, who had earned the title “Defender of the Faith” by an early attack on Martin Luther, still considered himself a Catholic of sorts, despite his break with Rome, and balked at such an alliance. Cromwell, however, was persuasive, and the king reluctantly allowed him to proceed. Accordingly, Cromwell negotiated a marriage with Anne, the niece of the duke of Cleves.

Henry had not met her but was persuaded of her charms by a flattering portrait of her by Hans Holbein, the Younger. Yet when she arrived in England at the end of December, 1539, Henry was disenchanted, emphatically disliked her looks, and complained that Cromwell had deceived him. From that moment, Cromwell’s days were numbered. The duke of Norfolk introduced his attractive niece Catherine Howard to allure the king, who had already ordered Cromwell to extricate him from his latest marriage. Trying to keep the royal favor, Cromwell in April had Parliament confiscate the wealth of the Knights Hospitalers of St. John, and on April 17, the king named him earl of Essex and on the next day made him lord great chamberlain.

Cromwell, however, reached this height only to fall. Led by Norfolk, his enemies plotted against him and persuaded Henry that the man who had made the king the Supreme Head of the Church of England was a heretic and hence a traitor. Cromwell’s fate was that he had succeeded too well; he had done everything necessary to give the king absolute power, he had subdued the Church and seized its wealth, and he had killed off anyone who might be inclined to further rebellion. Only in foreign policy might he still be necessary, but it turned out that the French-Spanish alliance did not materialize and that the marriage to thwart it was a disaster. Not noted for gratitude, Henry attacked Cromwell with his own weapons and with no warning had him arrested on June 10, under a bill of attainder for treason. Imprisoned for a month and a half in the Tower of London, Cromwell was beheaded on July 28, at Tyburn.

Significance

As Henry VIII’s chief minister during the 1530’s, Cromwell brought about the separation of the Church of England from Roman Catholicism, and though he seems to have been utterly indifferent to religion himself, he was the person chiefly instrumental in making England officially Protestant. By making it possible for Henry to marry Anne Boleyn, Cromwell was in part responsible for her daughter Elizabeth’s eventually becoming the legitimate heir and queen. Cromwell did more than anyone else to consolidate royal power and to create a national administration. A descendant of his sister was Oliver Cromwell.

He appears as a minor character in William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (pr. 1613, pb. 1623; with John Fletcher) and is the title character in the apocryphal Shakespearean play History of Thomas, Lord Cromwell by “W. S.” (1592). The latter play, written from a Protestant perspective shortly after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, makes Cromwell a martyr to the Protestant cause and portrays him as a paragon of Puritan virtues. Subsequent playwrights and novelists have all seen Cromwell as a cold, ruthless, unscrupulous person, the embodiment of Machiavellian ideology, who would not hesitate to dispose of any person or any institution that got in his way. He appears as a treacherous and self-serving antagonist in H. F. M. Prescott’s novel The Man on a Donkey (1952), in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons (pr. 1954), in the 1969 film version of Anne of the Thousand Days (pr., pb. 1948), and in the British Broadcasting Company television series Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972).

Historians are divided in their judgment of Cromwell, some seeing him as an efficient administrator, others deploring his ruthless methods. Yet he was loyal to Wolsey and to the king, and he changed the course of English history profoundly and irrevocably.

Bibliography

Beckingsale, B. W. Thomas Cromwell, Tudor Minister. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978. Sees Cromwell as a dynamic visionary but also as a ruthless opportunist for whom the end justifies the means: “Amidst the sordid struggles of court politics he did retain a vision of a great monarchy, a prosperous commonwealth and a religion, purged of superstition.”

Bernard, G. W. “Elton’s Cromwell.” In Power and Politics in Tudor England: Essays. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. Reexamination and critique of G. R. Elton’s biography of Cromwell. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Dickens, A. G. Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation. New York: Macmillan, 1959. A brief study in the Teach Yourself History Library. Admires Cromwell’s energy and abundance of new ideas; considers that “all the great constructive and destructive achievements of his [Henry VIII’s] long reign were crowded into the eight brief years of Thomas Cromwell’s ministry.”

Elton, Geoffrey Rudolf. Reform and Renewal, Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973. One of the few studies that presents Cromwell approvingly. Sees Cromwell operating on “firm principles of a spiritual renewal resting on the truths of the past” and accordingly “less determinedly secular and less ruthlessly radical” than formerly portrayed.

Innes, Arthur D. Ten Tudor Statesmen. 1934. Reprint. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971. Devotes one chapter to Cromwell, stresses the influence of Machiavelli on Cromwell’s evolution into a relentless practitioner of political expediency. Sees Cromwell as the heartless forger of absolute despotism for Henry VIII.

Loades, David. Politics and Nation: England, 1450-1660. 5th ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999. Examination of Cromwell’s life and career against the backdrop of the extended power struggle between the Tudors and the aristocracy and Henry VIII’s consolidation of power. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Marius, Richard. Thomas More, a Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. Examines Cromwell’s role in the persecution of More for his refusal to approve the dissolution of the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. Shows Cromwell manipulating the law to cause More’s downfall and death. Illustrated.

Maynard, Theodore. The Crown and the Cross: A Biography of Thomas Cromwell. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950. The standard biography. Admires Cromwell’s administrative, legal, financial, and diplomatic abilities but expresses disgust at his cold-blooded and sinister lack of compassion. Illustrated.

Scarisbrick, J. J. Henry VIII. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. The standard biography of Henry VIII, this volume considers Cromwell in his role of formulating and carrying out royal policy. Makes no judgment of Cromwell and sees him as a competent administrator who gave England “good governance.” Illustrated.

Williams, Neville. The Cardinal and the Secretary: Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. New York: Macmillan, 1975. Studies Cromwell as Wolsey’s subordinate and successor. Sees Cromwell as a “real innovator, directing the complicated moves in the break with Rome to establish a national state.” Considers Cromwell stronger in domestic concerns than in diplomacy.

Wilson, Derek. In the Lion’s Court: Power, Ambition, and Sudden Death in the Reign of Henry VIII. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Vivid study of the perils of Henry VIII’s court details the fates of six members of the court, including Cromwell and five other men named Thomas. Provides Cromwell’s background and education, as well as a thorough survey of his activities in the court, and the events leading up to his beheading. Includes illustrations, maps, sixteen pages of plates, bibliographic references, and index.