Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (11 page)

The reasons why this particular piece of law-making was deemed necessary by Cromwell remain unclear, unless it was intended as yet another weapon against the clergy, specifically, perhaps, to reduce the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. Aside from this, Cromwell frequently took an unforgiving moralistic stance against immorality of any kind – although he probably supported mistresses himself – and the entry of this legislation onto the statute book may reflect a new biblical
fundamentalism in his thinking. For example, in 1536, one of his henchmen visited the archdeaconry of Coventry, Stafford and Derby and found, to his horror, that ‘Most of the knights and gentlemen live so incontinently, having concubines and their children openly in their houses and putting away their wives, that the country is offended and takes evil example [from] them.’ The miscreants were ordered to take back their wives and expel their mistresses, or else appear before Cromwell in London to ‘show cause why they should not be compelled’ to do so.
⁷⁸

More pertinent was the Act of Supremacy,
⁷⁹
declaring that Henry, ‘his heirs and successors, kings of this realm … [was/were] the only Supreme Head in earth of the Church of England called
Anglicana Ecclesia
and shall have and enjoy … all honours, dignities … immunities, profits and commodities to the said dignity’. All references to the Pope, now only the ‘Bishop of Rome’, were to be erased from the prayer books in every church.

There was much muttering and rumbling in the country about the King’s business, a lot of it stirred up by the clergy. James Harrison, the parson of Leigh, Lancashire, was incensed in July 1533 when he heard about the proclamation of Anne as queen: ‘I will none for queen but Queen Catherine! Who the devil made Nan Boleyn, that whore, queen?’
⁸⁰
William ap Lli, a Welsh priest, in the same month ‘wished to have the king upon a mountain in North Wales called the Withvay, otherwise called Snowdon … He would souse [beat] the king about the ears until he had his head soft enough.’
⁸¹
The Colchester monk Dan John Frances claimed in January 1534 that the King and his Council were ‘all heretics, whereas before they were but schismatics’.
⁸²
He added graphically that when Henry had gone to Boulogne to meet Francis I, ‘the Queen’s grace followed his arse as the dog follows his master’s arse’.
⁸³

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Act of Succession, speedily enacted in March 1534, demanded personal commitment to the breach with Rome, if commanded, from every subject within the realm aged over fourteen. The preamble summed up the new reality of governance in the realm:

The Bishop of Rome … contrary to the great and inviolable grants of jurisdictions given by God immediately to emperors, kings and princes in
succession to their heirs, has presumed in times past to invest who should please them to inherit in other men’s kingdoms and dominions, which thing, we your most humble subjects both spiritual and temporal do most abhor and detest.

The continuance and sufferance whereof, deeply considered and pondered, were too dangerous to be suffered any longer within this realm and too much contrary to the unity, peace and tranquillity of the same, being greatly reproachable and dishonourable to the whole realm.
⁸⁴

All might now have to take an oath declaring their sacred belief that the marriage between Henry and Anne was lawful. At the same time they would also have to swear their allegiance to Princess Elizabeth (and any other children of the marriage) as rightful and lawful successors to the throne. There was no room now for neutrality in Henry’s England: you were either for the King, or against him.

The words of the oath were drawn up by Lord Chancellor Audley and the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. They were quite simple and direct:

You swear to bear faith, truth and obedience alone to the king’s body and to his heirs of his most dear and entirely beloved lawful wife Queen Anne, begotten and to be begotten. Further to the heirs of our said sovereign lord according to the limitation in the statute made for surety of succession in the crown of this realm and not to any other within this realm, nor foreign authority or potentate …

And that to your cunning, wit and uttermost of your power, without guile, fraud or any undue means, you shall observe, keep, maintain and defend the said Act of Succession … against all manner of persons of what estate, dignity, degree or condition [who]soever they be … And in no way attempt, nor to your power suffer to be done or attempted … anything, privily or apartly, to the let, hindrance, damage or derogation thereof … by any manner of means … or pretence.

So help you God and all saints and the holy evangelists.
⁸⁵

It was treason for anyone to oppose the succession, by writing or any action, and misprison to speak against it.

And Cromwell now extended the legal definition of treason. His
Treasons Act,
⁸⁶
passed the same year, dragged a wide-sweeping range of activities into the realm of treachery against monarch and state. It was now high treason to:

For good measure, he threw in a new crime of ‘rebelliously’ detaining or delaying any of the King’s ships, ammunition or artillery.
⁸⁷

By an unkind stroke of fate, on 23 March 1534, in Rome – after seven impossible years of painful deliberation, negotiation, wrangling, recriminations and diplomatic impasse – Pope Clement VII finally awarded judgment to Catherine, ruling that her marriage to Henry was entirely valid under God’s law. Unfortunately, he had missed the English boat, which had sailed on without him.

Back in London events were moving fast. On 13 April, senior members of the clergy, amongst them Bishop Fisher, were summoned to Lambeth Palace to take the Oath of Succession. Sir Thomas More was also called there from his home across the Thames at Chelsea. He was happy to swear the Oath of Succession, but would not sign any document that contained the preamble to the Act, which covered the supremacy. As Cromwell told Cranmer: ‘If [Fisher and More] be sworn to the succession and not to the preamble, it is to be thought that it might be taken not only as a confirmation of the Bishop of Rome’s authority but also as a reprobation of the king’s second marriage. No such things should be brought into the heads of the people.’ Therefore, the King demanded that both should take the full oath: ‘His grace specially trusts that you will in no way attempt to move [persuade] him to the contrary. That manner of swearing, if it should be suffered, might be an utter destruction to his whole cause and also to the effect of the law.’
⁸⁸

There was no escape. Four days later, More was arrested on charges
of misprison, taken by river to the Tower and lodged in the Bell Tower, next door to the rooms of the lieutenant of the fortress. Sir Richard Southwell, who had escorted him, advised him to send home the chain of gold that he wore around his neck. More refused, saying, ‘No sir, that I will not, for if I were taken in the field with my enemies, as I am a knight, I wish they should fare somewhat the better for me.’
⁸⁹

Fisher, who also refused to take the oath, joined him behind the curtain walls of the Tower. Both were detained at the King’s pleasure. Cromwell also arrested four Carthusian monks, the secular priest John Haile and Richard Reynolds, a monk from the Bridgettine house at Syon, Middlesex, all for refusing to take the Oath of Succession.

But elsewhere, by July 1534, a total of 7342 people in England and Wales had sworn the oath.
⁹⁰

Faithful servants should always receive their just rewards. For Cromwell, a grateful sovereign continued to bestow upon him appointments and grants of lands. On 12 April 1533, he had been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, in connection with his duties in dealing with the royal finances. Later that year he was given the sinecure positions of Recorder of Bristol and Steward of Westminster Abbey.

Now came his crowning moment: Henry’s chief secretary, Bishop Gardiner, was in disgrace for opposing the Act of Supremacy and had been banished from court. Cromwell was chosen to formally succeed him some time around 15 April 1534 and swiftly turned the job into that of the King’s Chief Minister and head of national security.

In his podgy hands, he now tightly held all the reins of England’s government.

CHAPTER FOUR

A Bloody Season

By the Mass … it is perilous striving with princes. And therefore I would wish you somewhat to incline to the king’s pleasure. By God’s Body, Master More
, Indignatio principis mors est –
the anger of the prince means death
.

THOMAS HOWARD, DUKE OF NORFOLK, TO SIR THOMAS MORE, 1534
¹

Henry was never a king who could endure any opposition. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More were now both safely incarcerated in the Tower of London, their resistance to the Oath of Succession and the Act of Supremacy effectively neutralised. That was not enough for the King. Cromwell’s new treason legislation had made ‘malicious denial’ of the royal title an inescapable capital offence. For Henry the issue was simple and clear cut: if you had new powers, why not use them to destroy your enemies once and for all?

The trigger for his vengeance was an inopportune decision by the new sixty-six-year-old Pope Paul III, who was elected to succeed Clement VII on 12 October 1534. On 20 May 1535, he created Fisher a cardinal priest of St Vitalis, presumably in the hope that this would improve his treatment in England.
²

The Pope and his advisers did not understand Henry. It was like showing a red hat to a bull.

The King flew into a mighty rage and forbade Fisher’s cardinal’s hat to be sent to England. He declared bitingly that he would ‘send [Fisher’s] head afterwards to Rome for the cardinal’s hat’.
³

Sir Gregory Casalis, Henry VIII’s agent at the Vatican, reported to Cromwell on 29 May regarding the reaction to his official protests at the Pope’s decision:

I went to all the friendly cardinals and remonstrated with them for offending the king and [his] kingdom in this way, for the Bishop of Rochester was sticking to his opinion against the king from vainglory for which cause he was in prison …

I expressed the greatest indignation, so that the whole city talked of it and the Pope sent for me. I spoke even more strongly to his Holiness, telling him that he had never made a graver mistake. He tried to show that he had acted with good intent.

Casalis strongly advised the pontiff not to send the red hat without hearing from England first. Paul III, for his part, begged him to use all means to explain and excuse the act to Henry.
⁴

The diplomatic ripples spread ever wider across the European pond. Ridolfo Pio, Bishop of Faenza and the papal nuncio in France, appealed to the French King in early June for his help in freeing Fisher from prison. Francis I was less than optimistic at his chances:

He doubted his success for he feared this hat would cause [Fisher] much injury … The King of England was the hardest friend to bear in the world; at one time unstable and at another … obstinate and proud, so it was almost impossible to deal with him.

Sometimes, said Francis, he almost treats me like a subject … He is the strangest man in the world and I fear I can do no good with him, but I must put up with him, as it is no time to lose friends.
⁵

Fisher, elderly and sick, was thus left to his dire fate.

Cromwell, meanwhile, was busy accumulating evidence to provide a veneer of legality for Fisher’s destruction. One account claims that one of Cromwell’s servants tricked the Bishop into making an outright denial of the supremacy after being promised that nothing he said would
subsequently be used against him during his arraignment.
⁶
So much for the lawyer’s phrase ‘without prejudice’ that covers pre-trial conversations. Cromwell certainly led a delegation from the King’s Council to see Fisher in the Tower and to question him on his attitude to the supremacy. After the Bishop again refused to take the oath, Cromwell read out the provisions of the Treasons Act, so the prelate could be in no doubt as to the consequences. The iron jaws of his legal trap had snapped tight on the frail Bishop.

The executioner in London had a busy, blood-soaked schedule that early summer.

On 29 April 1535, three Carthusian priors and two priests appeared before the Court of King’s Bench at Westminster for their blatant denial of the supremacy.
⁷
Cromwell had led their interrogations at his official residence of the Master of the Rolls. John Houghton, prior of the London Charterhouse, and Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, priors of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire and the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire respectively, appeared with Dr Richard Reynolds, a monk of the Bridgettine house at Syon, on the banks of the Thames in Middlesex, John Hale, the vicar of nearby Isleworth, and Robert Feron or Fern of Teddington.

Syon was at that time a hotbed of treasonable gossip. A ‘fellow of Bristol’ had several conversations concerning the King’s marriage ‘and other behaviours of his bodily lust’. Reynolds recounted a conversation with the porter, who claimed that ‘our sovereign lord had a sort [a company]
⁸
of maidens over one of his chambers at Farnham [Castle, Surrey] while he was with the old lord [Bishop] of Winchester’. Thomas Moody, priest, had corresponded with Feron about the rumour that ‘the king’s grace had meddled with the queen’s [Anne’s] mother’. A layman predicted that the Pope would be in England before midsummer.
⁹
Hale, moreover, told Feron graphically that the King’s life was