Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (36 page)

On 22 April, the Lord Privy Seal returned to the House of Lords with a startling proposal: the abolition of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in England and the personal appropriation of their substantial lands, property and wealth by the King.

It was a characteristically blatant and opportunistic bribe to secure Henry’s goodwill via his purse. It had worked earlier with the lucrative dissolution of the monastic houses, and here was one remaining religious order, just ripe for the plucking.
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But with the Knights of St John, there could be no trumped-up accusations of carnal excesses or corruption: the Hospitallers, in their distinctive black robes blazoned with a white Maltese cross, were famed for their irreproachable lives and Christian fervour.

Cromwell picked the only tenable accusation: their denial of the royal supremacy. For him, it was an old friend, well tried and absolutely reliable. But when his proposals were laid before the Commons, they were greeted by vocal and violent hostility. Approval of an Act dissolving the order
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finally came in early May, but only after three days of heated debate when the cronies on Cromwell’s parliamentary payroll finally wore down the opposition.

He moved fast to sequester the Hospitallers’ assets to provide Henry with an ample return. A now mutilated account sheet shows a total of 959½ ozs (27.2 kg) of gilt plate and 1,093½ ozs (31 kg) of parcel gilt seized from their church at St John’s Clerkenwell, north of London, within days of the Act’s passing onto the statute book. A total of £588 6s. 8d in ready money (£220,000 at 2006 values) was also grabbed, together with ‘ornaments of the church remaining in the vestry’. Much of the booty was immediately sold off, including stocks of wine, three carts and four working horses.
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Sir William Weston, the last Grand Prior of the order in England, shocked at the abolition of all he loved and worked for, died suddenly on the day the Act of Dissolution took effect.

The court had joyously celebrated May Day with five days of jousting against all-comers at the tiltyard at the Palace of Westminster.
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On 2 May, Richard Cromwell, the Minister’s nephew, was knighted. Open
house was kept at Durham House, the former grand London palace of the Bishops of Durham, not far away on the Strand,
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where the revellers were supplied with ‘all delicious meats and drinks so plenteous … and such melody of minstrelsy and were served every meal with their own servants after the manner of war, their drum warning all the officers of household against [of] every meal which was done, to the great honour of this realm’.
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The celebration ended with a sumptuous feast at Durham House, open to the citizens of London as envious spectators. It was to be the last public appearance of Anne of Cleves as queen. Henry spontaneously gave every one of the challengers in the tournament 100 marks each (just over £67) and a house to live in ‘for ever’ from the revenues of the Hospitallers’ lands.
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Even given the improved state of the exchequer, Cromwell must have ground his teeth in frustration at his monarch’s gallant generosity, even though one of the recipients was his nephew.

Despite all the carousing at court, there was no holiday for the Minister, still intent on filling the King’s purse as a means of securing his favour. On 3 May, he introduced a new taxation bill into the Lords
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– a Subsidy of Fifteenths and Tenths – which passed into law just five days later.
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These were both irregular taxes, normally raised only in an emergency, such as paying for the physical defence of the realm or a foreign war. But Cromwell knew full well how to manipulate the legislators into sycophantic compliance. The draft preamble to the law is a model of political obsequiousness:

The Commons, men selected to express the voice of the realm in this Parliament, seeing the benefits God has poured upon us through the opening and showing of His Word and remembering the errors we have so long slept in, through the deceits of the subtle serpent, the bishop of Rome, cannot but embrace the one and hate the other and therefore we look for the extreme prosecution and devilish hatred of the bishop of Rome.

And to show that we have banished the papacy out of our heads and desire to set forth Christ and His Gospel, we do offer and give unto your most royal majesty, toward the maintenance, propagation and setting forth and defence of the Gospel and this, the defence of our country …
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… sizeable handouts of cash from Henry’s subjects. To ensure a generous contribution, Cromwell emphasised just what a grievous fiscal burden their gracious sovereign was labouring under. The introduction to the Act describes the charges the King had recently underwritten: the military repression of the rebellions in Lincolnshire and the North; maintenance of three councils (the Welsh Marches, the North and the West); the naval preparations of the previous year against ‘the pretended invasion’; the fortification of the English Pale in France and two castles along the Scottish border; and, finally, the new artillery forts along the south coast from Kent to Cornwall (and the cost of arming them with ordnance). If all this was not enough, the hard-pressed exchequer also had to fork out for the ‘repair of Westminster Hall and abolishing the bishop of Rome’s authority’.

Never have a group of legislators been so anxious to donate their constituents’ hard-earned cash to the crown. The provisions of the bill were so complex that few members of the Commons fully understood them and, pushing home his advantage, Cromwell told them that Henry would be very vexed indeed if they disloyally rejected the measures.
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Obediently, they complied, voting for a double grant of taxation, firstly of four-fifteenths and tenths of total personal income, payable over four years, and secondly, a shilling (5 pence) in the pound levied on the value of property – double that for foreigners resident in England – payable annually for two years.
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One would suppose that Henry would have been more than satisfied by the unexpected and welcome income from the sequestration of the Hospitallers’ property and the new taxation. It proved not to be case: always a slave to his passions, he was preoccupied with other, even weightier matters.

On 9 May, the King, fresh from the excitements and spectacle of the tourney, was still at Westminster and sent for Cromwell, ordering him to

repair unto us for the treaty of such great and weighty matters, as whereupon do consist the surety of our person, the preservation of our honour and the tranquillity and quietness of you and all other loving and
faithful subjects, like as, at your arrival here, you shall more plainly perceive and understand. And that you fail not, as we especially trust you.
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The matter at hand was his unfortunate loveless marriage to Anne, and, more pertinent and immediate, the associated and now wholly inconvenient alliance with her brother, Duke William of Cleves. Under this agreement, William could invoke English military assistance if he was attacked by Emperor Charles V. Now, Spain had demanded that the Duke should surrender his province of Gelderland (part of modern Holland) – or face invasion. Henry would never dream of going to war with mighty Spain over a tinpot little German ducal state, even if it was ruled by his brother-in-law, and Cromwell was peremptorily told to get England out of this embarrassing diplomatic bind. Two days later, Cromwell wrote to the English ambassador at the imperial court with instructions to inform Charles V that the English alliance with Cleves could be scrapped if necessary.

Again feeling under threat, Cromwell lashed out. Lord Lisle, who arrived in London in May, was arrested on treason charges at ten o’clock on the night of 19 May and sent to the Tower. Although the scandal surrounding his chaplain was ostensibly the cause of his downfall, it is more likely that being an illegitimate son of Edward IV was a major factor in the arrest, as Cromwell no doubt played on Henry’s latent fears of a new flowering of the White Rose in England. The Minister then turned his sights on England’s bishops and their religious loyalties. He swooped on Dr Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester and Dean of the Chapel Royal, a former ambassador to France and, most significantly, an ally of Gardiner, amid accusations of his denying the royal supremacy and being in traitorous communication with Cardinal Pole. Sampson, although a close friend of the King, was dispatched to the Tower on 31 May, and Henry did nothing immediately to save him. Dr Nicholas Wilson, one of the King’s chaplains – ‘a great theologian’ – was also imprisoned for ‘relieving certain traitorous persons which denied the royal supremacy’.
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On 1 June, Ambassador de Marillac reported to Francis I of France:

The rest of the bishops are in great trouble, some for fear of being found guilty of the same deed and some for the differences they have upon some religious questions, as each party to establish what they maintain would destroy those who sustain the contrary.

For this and the affair of the prisoners, parliament is still kept sitting and one cannot say when it will end, for every day new accusations are discovered.
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The same day, de Marillac told Annede Montmorency, the Constable of France, that a ‘trustworthy person … says he heard from Cromwell that there were still five bishops who ought to be treated thus, whose names, however, cannot yet be learnt unless they are those who lately shook the credit of Master Cromwell so that he was very near coming to grief’.
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The ambassador added: ‘Things are brought to such a pass that either Cromwell’s party or that of the Bishop of Winchester must succumb. Although both are in great authority and favour of the king, their master, still the course of things seems to incline to Cromwell’s side, as Winchester’s dear friend, the said Dean of the chapel is down.’

There were also rumours, later proved unfounded, that Sir John Wallop, the ambassador to France, had fled to Rome. De Marillac reported: ‘Last night a secretary to the king was sent by Cromwell to learn if I had any news of Wallop.’

Sadler wrote to the Minister about his conversation with Henry about the Bishop of Chichester. Sampson, said the secretary, had

denied the chief points laid to his charge. His majesty said little but that he liked both him and the matter the worse, perceiving by the examinations that there were witnesses sufficient to condemn him …

[The King was content] that [the Duke of Suffolk] should have the use of the Bishop’s mule and, if the Bishop’s goods were confiscated, have the mule as the king’s gift.
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On 7 June, Sampson, still in the Tower, wrote to Cromwell denying that he sought any return to the ‘old usages and traditions of the church’. Gardiner, he said, had lately wisely urged him to ‘leave ceremonies to the king’s ordering and not to break them without great cause’. Winchester
had said the bishops were all of one opinion about the liturgy – that ‘many old traditions, [such] as praying for souls [of the dead], baptising of infants … must be kept’. He commended himself to Henry’s goodness and thanked Cromwell for ‘signifying that the king is his gracious lord’.
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The Minister again felt safer, more secure.

But he had reckoned without the relentless spite and venom of Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester.

Some time on Thursday, 8 June, Henry gave Lord Chancellor Audley secret instructions to draw up a parliamentary bill pronouncing that Cromwell had undermined his sovereign’s objective of a religious settlement.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Traitor’s Cry for Mercy

These laws I made myself alone to please to give me power more freely to my will, even to my equals, hurtful [in] sundry ways (Forced to things that most do say were ill) upon me now as violently seize by whom I lastly perished by my skill
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MICHAEL DRAYTON,
HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE LORD CROMWELL
, 1609

Cromwell’s arrest was as ruthless as it was sudden. Sir Anthony Wingfield, Captain of the Guard, seized Cromwell as the Privy Council met at the Palace of Westminster, soon after dinner on Saturday, 10 June 1540.

Norfolk, cock-a-hoop at the downfall of his arch-enemy, must have relished springing the trap. As the Lord Privy Seal walked into the room and sought his place at the head of the council table, he shouted: ‘Cromwell! Do not sit there! That is no place for you! Traitors do not sit amongst gentlemen.’

If the Minister was shocked at the insult, he showed no sign. Calmly, he replied: ‘I am not a traitor.’

Before he could utter another word, Wingfield, with six halberdiers lined up behind him, strode quickly into the room and seized his arm. Unnecessarily, the captain announced the patently obvious: ‘I arrest you.’

‘What for?’ said Cromwell, his lawyer’s mind quickly searching for the legality of the moment. ‘That, you will learn elsewhere,’ replied the captain laconically, and his men moved forward to escort their prisoner away.

But this was no ordinary prisoner. He demanded to speak to the King and was brusquely told that this was ‘not the appropriate time’. He must have promptly realised he would never again be granted access to Henry and that, once in the Tower, he would be, to all intents and purposes, already a dead man.

Cromwell now quickly grew both angry and despairing. Red-faced, his grey eyes starting from their sockets in fury, he tore off his hat and hurled it down onto the stone floor in a hopeless gesture of frustration and surrender. Gone was his notorious mask of inscrutability, now stripped away by fear and defeat. He glared at Norfolk like a defiant, trapped animal and cried out: ‘This, then, is the reward for all my services.’ Turning to face the other councillors, now all on their feet, he appealed: ‘On your consciences, I ask you, am I traitor?’

His words caused uproar in the crowded room. Sensing the blood of their victim, their hatred and animosity burst forth in a torrent of invective. Some answered: ‘Yes!’ yelling, ‘Traitor, traitor,’ and others joined the chant, beating out a rhythm of loathing by thumping the table with their fists. Another shouted, his bitter words rising above the hubbub: ‘Let him be judged by the bloody laws that he has made. Under them, many an innocent word has become treason.’