Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (43 page)

22
DNB2, vol. 14, p. 367.

23
Also in 1521, the Bakers’ Guild, the second oldest livery company in London, retained Cromwell to draft appeals to Wolsey and the Lord Mayor, the draper Sir John Milborne, for sanction to reform their craft (DNB2, vol. 14, p. 368). In January 1522, William Popley of Bristol asked Cromwell to act on his behalf in a case being considered by the King’s Council (LPFD, vol. III, pt ii, p. 843). Popley’s
letter included pleas from fellow citizens and clients of Cromwell who were frustrated at the lack of progress by their lawyer: ‘Hugh Eliot … wonders that he has heard nothing of his writs and John Green does the same.’ Nothing changes in the legal profession. Later the same month, Cromwell appeared in an action between Richard Chauffer, alderman of Calais, and Lord Mountjoy, over the will of Henry Keble, alderman of London. The case was originally to be arbitrated by the Bishop of London (‘as umpire’) in Calais (LPFD, vol. III, pt ii, p. 1,028) but some of the other adjudicators had not turned up and the case had been referred to London.

24
LPFD, vol. V, p. 422.

25
LPFD, vol. VII, p. 605.

26
Ellis, ‘Cromwell’, p. 12.

27
Cecily, the ‘old lady’ marchioness, wrote to Cromwell in August 1522, addressing him as her son’s servant and requesting him to send quickly ‘the truss bed of cloth of tissue and the feather bed with the fustians [thick twilled cotton cloth] mattress, with the counterpoint’ and to deliver ‘all her tents and pavilions’ to her son Leonard. See BL Cotton MS Vespasian F xiii, fol. 91 and LPFD, vol. III, pt ii, p. 1,026.

28
LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, p. 2,573.

29
Bindoff, p. 729.

30
Ibid. It was the first Parliament summoned since December 1515.

31
The speech includes his modest assertion: ‘Thus have I uttered my poor and simple mind right heartily thanking you all of your benign support and how that you have [heard] so patiently my ignorance …’ It is quoted in full by Merriman, vol. I, pp. 30–44.

32
Cromwell has ignored the Parliament’s three-week prorogation.

33
Merriman, vol. I, pp. 313–14

34
The fragment of a document containing indentures and agreements concerning the manor of Kexby is reprinted in Merriman, vol. I, p. 316.

35
In December 1526 he received a letter from Laurence Gillys there, acknowledging that a woman’s name was spelt wrongly in a subpoena in his suit for debt (‘her right name is Gertrude Cornelys’) and sending him a barrel of white herring as a present (LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,197). In June, Sir John Vere reported gratefully that the dispute ‘between my neighbour Edmund Horsley and Mr Kitchwick is at an end. Your sending [writing to] the former made him more pliant than either I or Sir Giles Capel could get him to be’ (LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,434). In 1527, Philip Brain of Exeter in Devon sought his help in advancing his petition in the Star Chamber (so called because of the stars painted on the ceiling of the room. In 1487–1641, it became a separate judicial body to hear petitions for redress by members of the royal Council, acting as common-law judges) at the Palace of Westminster, concerning a curious quarrel over the legacy left by a deceased local
priest. John Reed, the feisty and avaricious abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Buckfast, Devonshire, had sent his monks over to the home of John Clegger, a local vicar, who was lying seriously ill. They bound him ‘to a bier with cords and carried him to the abbey where he died in three days’. Now the abbot was refusing to hand over Clegger’s goods to his brother, as he claimed they were his ‘by deed of gift’. Two local dignitaries, Sir William Courtney and Sir Thomas Denis, had been commissioned by Wolsey to investigate the case but ‘would do nothing for fear of the abbot’ (LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,668). In April 1527, Cromwell received a letter from Henry Lacy in Calais, congratulating him on promotion ‘through Wolsey’s favour’ but seeking his speedy action in a legal wrangle over the will of Robert Oxenbridge, his wife’s deceased first husband. Lacy requested that Cromwell bring the case up before Wolsey in the Chancery Court, but also raised another embarrassing family problem. The bearer of his letter was his cousin Richard, ‘a soldier of Calais’, who brought with him a notebook detailing the immodest behaviour of Richard’s wife, ‘who has left him and gone to Master Stock, her daughter’s husband’ (LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, pp. 1,381–2).

36
A writ that demands that lands, tenements and chattels are returned to their rightful owner and commanding a sheriff to deliver them to the plaintiff.

37
Merriman, vol. I, pp. 316–18 and LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,670.

38
Boleyn was created Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde in 1529 and his son, George, then acceded to the Rochford viscountcy.

39
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,477.

40
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,568.

41
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. II, pp. 140–1 and Merriman, vol. I, pp. 357–8.

42
Williams, ‘Cardinal’, p. 59.

43
A type of satin damask.

44
A felt hat or cap, worn by doctors of divinity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; probably derived from the Latin
pileus
, a conical hat.

45
‘Cavendish’, pp. 96–101 and 104–7.

46
Pollard, pp. 321–4.

47
Those founded or controlled by overseas abbeys – mainly in France.

48
NA E 24/23/1.

49
A cell of the Cluniac abbey of Marmoutier at Tours in France. An excavation by the North Bucks. Archaeological Society of parts of the site in October 2000 uncovered a portion of the north wall of the priory church. A robber trench from the dissolution revealed pieces of roof tiles and a single fragment of stained-glass window.

50
Knowles, pp. 59 and 61 and LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,129. The value of all the suppressed monasteries is given on p. 1,594.

51
Allen (1476–1534) was appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 1528 and murdered in 1534. He was the brother of Thomas Allen, Cromwell’s friend and debtor.

52
‘State Papers’, vol. I, p. 261.

53
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,695.

54
A criminal who had sought sanctuary within the precincts of a church or monastic house to avoid punishment under the law.

55
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 3,334.

56
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. II, pp. 138–9 and LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,829.

57
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,863.

58
Merriman, vol. I, pp. 320–1.

59
BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 275. Capon complained that the singing men in the choir ‘are well chosen but some of them who are very excellent say they got better wages where they came from’. One man could do not cope with maintaining the college chapel’s vestry, keeping the church clean and ‘ring[ing] the bells, prepar[ing] the altar lights’. He had therefore hired another man with the job title of sexton. ‘There are but five priests under the sub-dean – too few to keep three Masses a day and the sub-dean cannot attend as he is required to survey the buildings.’

60
Merriman, vol. I, p. 324.

61
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,855.

62
Sadler (1507–87) was made a gentleman of Henry’s privy chamber around 1536 and one of the two principal secretaries in 1540. He was also knighted and appointed a member of the Privy Council. He was made Master of the Great Wardrobe in 1543 but retired from public life during Mary I’s reign. He was jailor to Mary Queen of Scots in 1572.

63
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. II, p. 156.

64
The medical name is
Sudor Anglicus
, and symptoms included headaches, myalgia (muscle pain), fever, profuse sweating and dyspnoea, or laboured breathing. See G. Thwaites, M. Taviner and V. Gant, ‘The English Sweating Sickness’,
New England Journal of Medicine
, vol. 336 (1997), pp. 580–2. There were epidemics in 1508, 1517 and 1551, as well as in 1528. Some believe that the disease was transmitted by ticks or lice.

65
Bindoff, p. 728.

66
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,898.

67
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, pp. 1,988–9.

68
Multi-coloured rough and heavy woollen cloth that originally came from Friesland in Holland.

69
Cromwell may have been slow in reimbursing Checking and claimed that he had not done well ‘with his folks’. See LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 1,939 and pt iii, pp. 3,564 and 2,791.

70
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, pp. 2,090–1 and 2,134.

71
LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, p. 2,564.

72
LPFD, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 2,125.

73
The first draft had an entry, subsequently crossed out on her death, leaving 100 marks to ‘my daughter Anne … when she come to her lawful age or happen to be married. And £40 towards her funding until she shall be of lawful age or married.’ The same applies to a bequest to ‘little Grace’, who would have received the same amounts had she lived.

74
Merriman, vol. I, pp. 56–63.

CHAPTER TWO
:
‘Make or mar’

1
‘Cavendish’, p. 259, fn.

2
Pollard, p. 268.

3
Vergil, bk XXVIII, p. 331.

4
Hume, p. 8.

5
The offence of serving a foreign dignitary (in this case, the Pope), thereby committing treason.

6
Henry purchased the property in 1537. Part of the palace, known as Wayneflete’s Tower, named after the Bishop of Winchester who built it, remains as a private residence today.

7
LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, pp. 2,686–7.

8
LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, p. 2,726.

9
Cavendish (?1499–?1562) had entered Wolsey’s service before 1522. After the Cardinal’s death in 1530, he quit public life and retired to Suffolk to write his
Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey
, which he probably completed in 1558. This remained in manuscript until 1641 and did not appear in its entirety until it was included in Christopher Wordsworth’s
Ecclesiastical Biography, or Lives of Eminent Men Connected with the History of England
, 6 vols., London, 1810.

10
‘The Little Office’, or ‘Hours of Our Lady’, was customarily recited by the pious laity in the pre-Reformation Church in England.

11
Made painful or laborious effort.

12
A press or crowd of people.

13
‘Cavendish’, pp. 258–62.

14
From the Latin
counter valere
, ‘be of worth against’.

15
For an assessment of this statesman and military commander, see David Potter, ‘Sir John Gage, Tudor Courtier and Soldier, 1479–1556’,
English Historical Review
, vol. 117 (2002), pp. 1,109–46.

16
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 178 and printed in Merriman, vol. I, pp. 67–8.

17
Paulet was responsible for the lands controlled by the diocese of Winchester during the interregnum between Wolsey’s disgrace and the appointment of Stephen Gardiner in 1531.

18
Bindoff, pp. 729–30.

19
‘Cavendish’, p. 274.

20
Amongst the attainder’s charges was the preposterous claim that Wolsey had attempted to infect the King with syphilis: ‘The same lord Cardinal, knowing himself to have the foul and contagious disease of the great pox, broken out upon him in diverse places of his body, came daily to your grace [Henry, whispering] in your ear and blowing upon your most noble grace with his most perilous and infective breath to the marvellous danger of your highness, if God, of his infinite goodness, had not better provided for your highness.’ An early example of black propaganda. See MacNalty, p. 161.

21
‘State Papers’, vol. I, p. 349.

22
‘State Papers’, vol. I, p. 350.

23
Daventry was dissolved on 16 February 1525 by John Allen, in the presence of Cromwell. Wolsey’s fears were realised: the crown seized the revenues. See
Victoria County History of Northampton
, vol. II, London, 1906, pp. 109–14.

24
‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 351–2 and also printed in Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 2nd series, Vol. II, pp. 27–8.

25
CSP, vol. IV, pt i, p. 449.

26
Pollard, p. 268.

27
Cited by Ives, p. 173. It was apparently the motto of the Burgundian Hapsburgs and Anne had the slogan removed soon after this was pointed out.

28
CSP, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 3.

29
LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, p. 2,730.

30
A letter from Member of Parliament Reynold Littleprow of Norwich to Cromwell, dated 6 February 1530, includes the statement: ‘I hear that you be the king’s servant and in his favour.’ See NA SP 1/65/132.

31
Henry was happy to pick up the physicians’ bill. In February, Eustace Chapuys suspected it was ‘a feigned illness’ staged in ‘the hope that the king would go and see him’. On another occasion, Chapuys reported that Wolsey had been ill for eight days and ‘the doctors fear an access of madness which they say will bring on immediate death’ – see CSP, vol. IV, pt i, pp. 444, 449. Wolsey’s own doctor,
Augustine de Augustinis, asked Cromwell on 19 January for Butts’ attendance and to procure some leeches – they had to be hungry ones – for bloodletting, insisting that ‘no time should be lost’. The leeches were to be applied by another Italian, Balthasar Guersie, surgeon to Catherine of Aragon. See BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 365.

32
Oedema, formerly known as dropsy, is a swelling of a body organ or tissue through the accumulation of excess fluid. It is sometimes caused by diseases of the heart or kidneys.

33
Wolsey visited the Charterhouse every day ‘and in the afternoons, he would sit in contemplation with one of the ancient fathers of that house in their cells, who converted him and caused him to despise the vain glory of the world and gave him shirts of hair to wear, the which he wore diverse times after’. ‘Cavendish’, p. 285.