Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (20 page)

One particular payment stands out above all the others because of the amount: the £2,553 (or £946,000 in modern values) paid to Anthony Denny, Henry’s trusted privy chamber ‘fixer’, ‘for the king’s use’ on 1 November 1538. This was no gambling debt. The circumstances strongly suggest it may have been a loan and, indeed, it was fully repaid – but without interest – twenty-eight days later. A sycophantic Cromwell regularly gave presents to his royal master. In June 1539, the herald Gilbert Dethicke,
Norroy King of Arms
, was paid nineteen shillings for providing a ‘collar of velvet for the strange beast my lord gave the king’. Would that we knew what species of beast this was.

Cromwell’s main forms of enjoyment were music and plays. There are a number of disbursements to actors and musicians such as the 6s. 8d for Princess Elizabeth’s minstrels in June 1537, and the 7s. 6d paid to ‘the king’s flutes’ the following month. Christmas that year must have
been a jolly time, with Cromwell paying out a total of £2 10s. for three performances by separate troupes of thespians. There is no obvious sign of his own company of players, who perhaps were too busy touring the realm, staging the Minister’s insidious propaganda dramas, to appear before him. He also spent money on his own household’s music-making, such as the £13 6s. 8d paid to ‘Mark Antonio for supplying certain shawms and other instruments’ in April 1537, and to ‘Weston, £2 10s. for a lute’
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in January of the following year.

The accounts record sixteen shillings spent on, amongst other purchases, a velvet purse for Will Somers, Henry’s famously witty court jester. This may have been in return for a performance at Austin Friars by the little hump-backed man and his acrobatic monkey, although as Somers was the only man who had both Henry’s ear and friendship in the King’s later tetchy years, there may have been a devious element of bribery on the Minister’s part to this influential member of the royal household.
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Cromwell probably considered his own establishment incomplete without his own jester, or fool, on the payroll and, accordingly, in November 1538 William Lambard was sent across the English Channel to Calais to escort back Anthony ‘the fool’. He claimed modest travelling expenses of five shillings. The next month, there is a payment of 34s. 6d for ‘bells for Anthony’s coat’, which conjures up images of noisy, flamboyant comedy to distract the Lord Privy Seal from the wearisome burdens of affairs of state. Perhaps loud guffaws creased those tight-lipped bovine features as Anthony faithfully turned somersaults or cracked a merry quip to amuse his normally taciturn master. He must have been successful in his efforts to entertain: he was still employed the following year, since Lawrence the hosier received 22s. 6d for making stockings for the jester, by warrant of the steward Thacker. Around the same time, Cromwell paid out 10s. to ‘Mr Reynold’s servant for bringing a cage of canary birds’ to one of his houses.

The Minister’s duties clearly included sometimes arranging, at his own expense, the sumptuous court masques or elaborate musical dramas so beloved of Tudor monarchs. Entries for February 1538 record one, perhaps two, such productions then staged at the court. Christopher the milliner was paid £10 17s. 11d ‘for the stuff of the masque of King
Arthur’s knights’ and an extra £3 for ‘his labour and the workmen’, who probably shifted the scenery about. There is an additional 21s. 2d for his ‘trimming’ or embroidering the costume of ‘Divine Providence when she played before the king’. Obviously this was a masque with a moral, although the action may have included some comic episodes involving hobby horses (wooden toy horses), which were made and painted for £33 17s. 6d. The same month, there was a payment of £5 10s. 5d to one Heywood who may have been the impresario of this masque, or possibly of a second, separate drama. Bargemen who ferried ‘Heywood’s masque to the court and home again’ on the Thames were paid 16s. 8d for their pains. Robin Dromey and his colleagues received twenty shillings ‘for waiting two nights the same time my Lord made the king a masque’ and the Italian engineer Giovanni Portinari received £25 11s. 5d for other ‘charges of the masque’, most likely construction work associated with the grandiose temporary structures used as scenery or theatrical props. Surprisingly, the supposedly dour Cromwell took part in these elaborate charades: in January 1537, £13 6s. 8d was paid to the tailor Farleon for making the costume for ‘my Lord’s part of the masque’. It must have been a sumptuous outfit and we can only conjecture as to what type of role he played.

Cromwell also enjoyed hunting and there are innumerable entries concerning falcons and hawks, greyhounds, spaniels and new arrows for his crossbows.

The accounts also provide a picture of the food consumed at the Lord Privy Seal’s dining tables, much of it gifts from a multitude anxious to please him in their attempts to curry favour. Amongst the oxen, mutton, stags, pheasants, partridges, curlews, capons, quail, geese, gulls, swans, hens and rabbits sent to Cromwell, or bought by his steward, appear some rather more exotic fare such as marzipan and oranges, ginger and nutmegs, the latter expensive luxuries at the time. The fruit and vegetables included cherries, apples, quinces, gooseberries, beans and artichokes, the last apparently an especial favourite, which came from the royal gardens at Hampton Court. Amongst the different fish and shellfish were cod, ling, oysters, cockles (these from Sir William Fitzwilliam, the Lord High Admiral) and the two porpoises delivered in June 1537 and
May the following year. Some of the food came from the royal kitchens, such as the tart sent by ‘Downer of the Pastry’ in December 1537, but there were also regular suppliers, such as the hearty ‘Mrs Bigges’, whose servant was always tipped two shillings for bringing her ‘tripe and puddings’. Cromwell also paid the substantial sum of £400 to ‘Mr Hill, serjeant’ of the King’s cellar, ‘in full payment of a bargain’ on 20 June 1537. Was this disposal of royal wines an entirely innocent ‘rebalancing’ of Henry’s cellar, or was the Minister engaged in a little private trading?
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Overall, the cost of the Lord Privy Seal’s various households increased from around £90 a month in 1537 to between £300 and £400 in 1538–9, as more properties were added and new retainers hired.

Cromwell maintained his love of jewellery. He clearly had an account with the goldsmith Cornelius Hayes, paying him ‘£20 on a reckoning’ now and then, but his most expensive acquisition was of a diamond and a ruby from a jeweller called Jenyns in November 1537, which cost him £2,000, or a breathtaking £741,000 at today’s values, a sure indication of just how much wealth he had amassed by that time. This ‘great ruby’ may have been the gem set in a ring by ‘John of Antwerp’ who the following month charged Cromwell fifteen shillings for the work and twenty-nine shillings for the gold in the ring. This was the first of many such commissions for the Dutch-born jeweller, amongst them the £19 7s. paid for making a gold cup and cover weighing fifty-three ounces (1,502 g), which was the Minister’s New Year gift to Henry in 1539. It was taken straight to the safety of his secret jewel house. These presents were costly items and their value was closely monitored by a discerning royal eye. John Hussey, the London agent for Viscount Lisle, Deputy of Calais, described the ritual of gift-giving in January 1538: ‘The king stood leaning against the cupboard [in the presence chamber], receiving all things and Mr Tuke
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at the end of the same cupboard, penning [listing] all things that were presented. Behind his grace stood Mr Kingston
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and Sir John Russell and beside his grace stood the Earl of Hertford and my Lord Privy Seal.’
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At least in 1534 and 1539, Cromwell could find some comfort that his was the largest gift (by weight of silver gilt and value) of any given in return by the King, and this was a certain-sure mark of continuing royal
favour.
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In the latter year, as well as dispensing the usual gifts to the royal family, Cromwell also distributed his own New Year largesse, mainly in the form of money, to members of the royal household: £36 to the gentlemen of Henry’s privy chamber, and £4 10s. to the King’s four gentlemen ushers. Those who brought him their own gifts received £104 16s. in return. It always paid to keep happy those close to the King.

Payments for medical services enable us to build a picture of Cromwell’s health, which seemed generally good during 1537–9. Earlier, in March 1535, he had suffered from a ‘rheum, which caused a swelling in his cheek and eye’.
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This laid him low and on 17 April the King visited his loyal Minister at his house at Austin Friars to enquire after his health. Cromwell did not return to his duties until 1 May.
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A surgeon named Forest received five shillings in February 1537, and in November the Minister required treatment from John Barnes, ‘doctor of physic’, who was paid ‘20 crowns of the sun’, or £4 13s. 4d, for his services. Later that month, Forest was recalled to administer more treatment, generally painful during the Tudor period, and paid ten shillings for inflicting that pain. He was back again in mid-April 1538, and at the beginning of the following month there were two payments to Dr Cromer (one at St James), but whether these were for professional consultation or, more prosaically, gambling debts, we can only guess. In July, Philip the apothecary received £1 13s. 11d ‘for necessaries for my lord’ and in January 1539 Cromwell may have hurt his leg, as two foot stools were purchased ‘to set my lord’s leg on’ at a cost of twelve pence. He is known to have walked with a rolling, awkward gait, with one leg possibly slightly longer than the other, and this treatment may have been connected.
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Being overweight could not have helped.

On 26 August 1537, Cromwell was proudly installed as a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter
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at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and his accounts include his payments made on that glittering occasion. The next day, Richard Cromwell, on his behalf, proffered a handsome tip of £25 to ‘the vergers, deans, sextons and other officers there … and to the king’s servants that waited upon my lord at his installation’. Christopher Barker,
Garter King of Arms
was paid ten marks (£6 13s. 4d) for
Cromwell’s robes, plus another five for his trouble in organising the ceremony.

There is no doubt that the Lord Privy Seal was a generous tipper – money can be a great lubricator for the wheels of government – but, in all fairness, he could also be generous in handing out alms to the needy poor. His accounts are littered with details of his donations out of his own purse, or made on his behalf by one of his retainers, all documented as carefully as if they were tax-deductible. For example:

An anonymous early eighteenth-century writer, a great champion for Cromwell, described a possibly apocryphal incident in which the Lord Privy Seal, riding in his coach with Archbishop Cranmer in Cheapside, London, recognised an old woman in the street as they passed by. She came from Hounslow, Middlesex, and he suddenly recalled that he owed her forty shillings from years before. ‘He immediately ordered one of his servants to conduct her to his palace and when he returned from court, he did not only pay his debt but settled an annual pension of £4 on her and a new suit of clothes every year, as long as she lived.’
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From the same source comes another story of Cromwell’s generosity, but this may not be wholly apocryphal as it is known to have been circulating in London in 1609. The Florentine banker Francisco Frescobaldi, who employed Cromwell in his youth in Italy, had now fallen on hard times and had come to London to recover the huge sum of 15,000 Italian ducats, more than £2,600, owed to him by obdurate English merchants.

Again, there was a chance meeting in the street, and the Minister, then on his way to the court at Westminster, immediately jumped off his horse and ‘affectionately embraced him … scarcely refraining from tears’. They met later, probably at Austin Friars, when ‘the Lord High Admiral and other lords that were with him’ were astonished at the warm welcome provided to the Italian. ‘My lords,’ said Cromwell, ‘marvel not that I am so glad to see this man, but for his means, I have attained to this dignity.’ Flinging open a strongbox, this ‘most assured friend’ gave Frescobaldi cash for his clothes and lodgings, and then handed over four weighty money bags containing 1,600 ducats. Other kinds of practical assistance were also made available. He demanded ‘an exact account of the names of his debtors and places of their abode which he gave to one of his attendants, charging them diligently to find them out and to require payment of those debts within fifteen days or to abide the hazard of his displeasure’.
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Needless to add, the debts were speedily repaid.

Cromwell had other debts to worry about – those of his stolid and wastrel son, Gregory. Cash handouts from an incorrigibly indulgent father totalled more than £420, or £156,000 in 2006 terms, during 1537–8, although these outlays began to tail off after twenty-year-old Gregory’s advantageous marriage on 3 August 1537, at Mortlake, to Elizabeth, widow of Sir Anthony Ughtred, sister of Queen Jane Seymour. Gregory had been keen to marry the daughter of Sir Thomas Nevill of Merewith in Kent and made ‘various offers’ to her father. But Cromwell had other plans for his son. Sir Thomas wrote to him on 10 March 1535: ‘I am comforted in my disappointment by your choice of another husband who has many virtues.’ She married one of Cromwell’s henchmen, Sir Richard Southwell.
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The Seymours gave Gregory £50 for spending money on the occasion of his marriage, and doubtless subsequently the Seymour family also became a soft touch. Then there were his expenses, again picked up by a considerate Cromwell, such as: