Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (41 page)

I have of long time been right desirous … to render most humble thanks, as also to desire continuance of … your highness’ most benign goodness.

Most humbly beseeching your majesty, mercifully to accept this my most obedient suit and to extend your accustomed pity and gracious goodness towards my poor husband and me who never have, nor God willing never shall, offend your majesty, but continually pray for the prosperous estate of the same long time to remain and continue.

YOUR MOST BOND WOMAN
ELIZABETH CROMWELL

Gregory was a Member of Parliament for the last decade of his life with an undistinguished performance. He died at Launde from the ‘sweating sickness’, like his mother, on 4 July 1551. Three days later, his widow married John Paulet, later Second Marquis of Winchester.
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Gregory’s heir was a minor at his father’s death, but later married the daughter of his stepfather. He died in December 1592.

The baronetcy continued until it was inherited by Cromwell’s great-great-grandson, another Thomas, who was created Viscount Lecale in November 1624 and, twenty years later, Earl of Ardglass. It became extinct with the death of the Fourth Earl on 26 November 1687.
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Sir Richard, Cromwell’s nephew who had changed his name from Williams in 1531, enriched himself from the dissolution. He married Frances Myrfin in 1518 and had two sons. He kept his appointment as a gentleman of Henry’s privy chamber and died on 20 October 1544, aged only thirty-two. He founded the arm of the family that later produced another protector of England, Oliver Cromwell.

Of the others in this tight little human drama, Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester, who had been thrown into the Tower by Cromwell in the tussle for power just before his downfall, was saved by his arrest and was eventually pardoned the following August. Sir Richard Riche
died in his bed in 1567 after a lifetime of narrow escapes from entirely just retribution. Stephen Gardiner was imprisoned soon after Henry’s death in 1547 and remained incarcerated for much of Edward VI’s reign for sedition and his failure in religious conformity. On the accession of Mary I, who returned England to Catholicism, he became Lord Chancellor. He died at the Palace of Westminster on 13 November 1555. Norfolk was condemned for treason in the dying days of Henry’s reign but escaped execution when the King died. He too remained imprisoned in the Tower until Mary’s reign and was another who died peacefully in his bed, in 1554. Mary burnt Cranmer as a heretic on 21 March 1556, leaving as his legacy the wonderful rolling English words and phrases of the Book of Common Prayer.

Both Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher were canonised by Pope Pius XI in 1935. The Carthusian priors also became saints in 1970.

Catherine Howard was beheaded on 13 February 1542 for her rampant adultery. Anne of Cleves died in 1557 and was the only one of Henry’s wives to be buried in Westminster Abbey, amongst the kings and queens of England.

The last word has to go to Henry, so well served by that corpulent, black-coated Minister. Legend has it that whenever the King, an inveterate gambler, was dealt a knave at cards, he would exclaim: ‘I have got Cromwell.’

And, scornfully, he told the French ambassador in May 1538 that his Minister was ‘a good household manager, but not fit to meddle in the affairs of kings’. If it were humanly possible, Henry may have come to regret those dismissive words.

Once he had lost the loyal services of his most ruthless and resourceful administrator, as well as the Machiavellian architect of England’s foreign policies, he began to feel uncomfortable and isolated. Henry confidently believed only he possessed the supreme skills and cunning required to rule England alone. His self-assurance swiftly dissipated. Never endowed with any patience for the minutiae of government, the King soon became tired of the burden and within less than a year, he was angrily ruing the day that Cromwell was destroyed.

In one of his increasingly frequent outbursts of tearful, vituperative
rage, he complained bitterly that his subjects were ‘unhappy people to govern whom he would shortly make so poor that they would not have the boldness, nor the power, to oppose him’.

Most of his privy councillors were concerned more with lining their own pockets than serving him and, moreover, ‘upon light pretexts, by false accusations, they made him put to death the most faithful servant he ever had’.
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Cromwell would have enjoyed the unexpectedly fulsome epitaph and laughed at the discomfiture of his enemies.

Chronology

Dramatis Personae

Henry Tudor
(1491–1547). King of England, France and Lord of Ireland, Defender of the Faith and supreme head of the Church of England.

Catherine of Aragon
(1485–1536). Henry’s first queen. Youngest child of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Spain, and aunt to Charles V, the Spanish emperor. Married Henry’s elder brother, Prince Arthur, on 14 November 1501 but left a widow, aged sixteen, at his death on 2 April 1502. Married Henry on 11 June 1509 and crowned queen on 24 June. Between 1510 and 1518 she bore six children, of whom only Princess Mary survived. The couple’s failure to produce a living male heir led to Henry’s decision to seek a divorce. Died at Kimbolton Castle, of cancer of the heart, 7 January 1536.

Anne Boleyn
(?1501–36). Second wife of Henry VIII and second daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, later Earl of Wiltshire. Her sister Mary was Henry’s mistress. Anne became pregnant by him and they secretly married on 25 January 1533. She gave birth to Princess Elizabeth on 7 September but failed to produce any male heirs. Executed 19 May 1536.

Jane Seymour
(?1509–37). Henry’s third queen, whom he married on 30 May 1536 at the Palace of Westminster. Died from puerperal fever and septicaemia following birth of Prince Edward at Hampton Court, 24 October 1537.

Anne of Cleves
(1515–57). Henry’s fourth queen. Married at Greenwich Palace, 6 January 1540. Marriage annulled by Clerical Convocation on 9 July 1540 and by Parliament on 13 July 1540. Pensioned off. Died 16 July 1557 at Chelsea. Buried in Westminster Abbey.

Catherine Howard
(1522–42). Henry’s fifth queen. Married 28 July 1540 at Otelands, Surrey. Beheaded at Tower Green, 13 February 1542, for treason.

Princess Mary
, later Queen Mary I (1516–58). Fourth and only surviving child of Henry and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Proclaimed queen 19 July 1553. Reintroduced Catholicism to England. Married Philip, son of Charles V of Spain, at Winchester, 25 July 1554. Died, childless, from ovarian or stomach cancer, St James’s Palace, London, 17 November 1558.

Princess Elizabeth
, later Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603). Daughter of Henry and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Succeeded Mary as queen November 1558. Secured Protestantism as state religion. Died, unmarried, from pneumonia and dental sepsis, Richmond, 24 March 1603.

Prince Edward
, later King Edward VI (1537–53). Legitimate son of Henry and Jane Seymour. Proclaimed king 31 January 1547 at the Tower of London. Died of tuberculosis, Greenwich Palace, 6 July 1553.

CANDIDATES FOR HENRY’S BRIDES

Anne of Lorraine
(1522–68). Married three times, firstly to René de Châlon, Prince of Orange, in 1540, then to Renatus von Nassau-Breda, also Prince of Orange, in the same year, and finally to Philip Herzog von Cro
ÿ
-Aerschot in 1548.

Christina
(1522–90). Daughter of Christian II of Denmark, widow of the Duke of Milan. Married François, Duc de Bar, 1541. Became Regent of Lorraine, 1545.

Louise de Guise
(1520–42). Married Charles de Cro
ÿ
, Prince de Chimay, in 1541.

Marie de Guise
(1515–60). Married Louis d’Orléans, Second Duc de Longueville, in 1534. He died in 1534. In 1538 she became the second wife of James V of Scotland (1512–42) and mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. Regent of Scotland during her daughter’s absence in France, 1554.

Marguerite de Valois
, Duchesse de Berry (1523–74). Daughter of Francis I of France and his first wife Claude. Married Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, in 1559.

Marie de Vendôme
(1515–38).