Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (44 page)

34
CSP, vol. IV, pt i, pp. 449–50.

35
His efforts included loans of £100 from Sir William Paulet, together with the Master of the Savoy Hospital and Robert Browne of Newark, who lent £124. See LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, p. 3,078.

36
Pollard, p. 277.

37
LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, p. 2,849.

38
‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 367–8.

39
LPFD, vol. IV, pt iii, p. 2,949. See also BL Cotton MS Appendix XLVIII, fol. 13.

40
‘Cavendish’, pp. 296–7.

41
‘State Papers’, vol. I, p. 370.

42
BL Cotton MS Appendix XLVIII, fol. 25.

43
Cited by Williams, ‘Cardinal’, p. 159 and Merriman, vol. I, p. 328.

44
A palace of the Archbishops of York. Cawood Castle, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was largely demolished in 1750 but the chapel and gatehouse, built in 1526–50, survive.

45
Hall, p. 773.

46
Vergil, bk XXVII, p. 333.

47
Sylvester and Harding, p. 205.

48
‘Cavendish’, pp. 371–2 and p. 371, fn.

49
‘Cavendish’, p. 389.

50
Pollard, p. 300.

51
‘Cavendish’, p. 387.

52
‘Wriothesley’, vol. I, p. 16.

53
‘Cavendish’, p. 395.

54
CSP, vol. V, pt i, p. 569.

55
NA STAC 2/7.

CHAPTER THREE
:
Daily Round, Common Task

1
CSP, vol. V, pt i, p. 569.

2
Nichols, pp. 52–6.

3
Tyndale (?1491–1536) translated the New Testament from Greek into English in 1525 in Wittenberg, Germany. It was printed in Cologne.

4
See Rex, p. 866.

5
Tyndale, pp. 174–5 and 177–9 and Ridley, p. 198.

6
Strype, vol. I, bk i, p. 172 and Nichols, p. 56.

7
Tanner, p. 77. Sir Thomas More wrote a stringent reply to Fish’s pamphlet in
A Supplication of Souls
, published in 1529.

8
Haas, p. 133, fn.

9
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra F ii, fol. 249.

10
Hall, p. 766.

11
The Clergy Act, 21 Henry VIII cap. 13. Hall, p. 766, suggests all the lawyers were involved in this work, which presumably included Cromwell.

12
NA KB 29/162/12. See also Scarisbrook, ‘Pardon’, pp. 25ff.

13
Merriman, vol. I, p. 334.

14
The court, together with the Court of Chancery, sat in Westminster Hall until 1825.

15
The last vestiges of the Statute of Praemunire, relating to the appointment of bishops and deans, were swept away only in 1965. See NA HO 304/155.

16
Scarisbrook, ‘Pardon’, pp. 34ff.

17
Holinshed, p. 766.

18
LPFD, vol. V, pp. 613–4. In 1535 John Clasey wrote to Cromwell about a ‘secret matter’. Wolsey had asked him ‘to put a young gentlewoman into the nunnery at Shaftesbury [Dorset] … in my name, though she was his daughter. She is now commanded to depart by your visitation and knows not whither. I beseech you to write to the abbess that she may continue there until her full age … She was born about Michaelmas and is about twenty-four years old’. See LPFD, vol. IX, p. 75.

19
LPFD, vol. V, pp. 117, 491, 600, 618, 732.

20
For more on this sad story of unrealised grandeur, see Hutchinson, pp. 259–73.

21
Elton, ‘Revolution’, pp. 88–90 and p. 88, fn.

22
Merriman, vol. I, pp. 349–50.

23
Cromwell had threatened the abbot: ‘I would be loath and also very sorry [that] the king’s highness should be informed of your demeanour … I doubt not though peradventure his highness would esteem you to be abbot of his monastery of Bury, yet he would not forget that [it] is your kind and sovereign lord who … might think some unkindness and presumption in you so to handle him …’ See Merriman, vol. I, p. 351.

24
LPFD, vol. V, p. 288.

25
BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 48. Reprinted in ‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 380–3.

26
Foreign Wine Act, 23 Henry VIII cap. 7 and Statute of Sewers Act, 23 Henry VIII cap. 5.

27
LPFD, vol. V, p. 329.

28
Cromwell’s first inventory of the jewel house holdings is in NA E 36/85.

29
This in turn was derived from the medieval Latin
hanaperium
.

30
John Judd until 1538 and then Richard Snow.

31
NA E 163/10/19. She also received lands worth £1,000 a year to support the estate.

32
An ‘ordinary’ is a cleric, such as a bishop.

33
The Commons complained about: the legislative powers of the Church’s Convocation; ‘subtle questioning’ by prelates during heresy trials; conferment of ecclesiastical offices upon young men said to be relatives of bishops; excommunication as punishment for minor offences; the expense suffered by laymen having to appear in distant ecclesiastical courts; excessive church court fees; the ‘great charges’ levied on parishes when clergy were instituted into them; the large number of holy days; and the secular offences committed by clerics.

34
Hall, p. 784.

35
LPFD, vol. V, pp. 343–4.

36
24 Henry VIII cap. 12.

37
Muller, ‘Letters’, pp. 50–1.

38
Signed at Langley, Buckinghamshire, 22 August 1532. The treaty was sworn at Windsor on 1 September. See Muller, ‘Letters’, p. 51.

39
Cited by Elton, ‘Revolution’, p. 96 and fn. For further information on this extravagant diplomatic
coup de théâtre
, see Alfred Hamy,
Entrevue de François premier avec Henry VIII à Boulogne-sur-Mer en 1532
, Paris, 1898.

40
He was appointed to the archdeaconry of Taunton. See Nichols, p. 244.

41
Wilding, p. 51.

42
‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 390–1.

43
BL Cotton MS Otho C x, fol. 159.

44
‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 392–3.

45
Statute in Restraint of Appeals, 24 Henry VIII cap. 12.

46
He was released after the coronation of Anne Boleyn.

47
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. II, p. 276. Thomas Bedyll had written regularly to Cromwell reporting progress at Dunstable. His letters are in BL Cotton MS Otho C x, fols. 164B and 166B.

48
‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 396–7. The divorce decree, in Latin, is in BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 71. The twelve grounds for the divorce, also in Latin and written in Cranmer’s own hand, form the ninety-one-page volume of BL Cotton Vespasian B v, and is reprinted by Burnet, vol. II, pt i, bk ii, p. xliii.

49
Hume, p. 13.

50
CSP, vol. IV, pt ii, p. 700.

51
BL Cotton MS Otho C x, fols. 168–170.

52
BL Cotton MS Otho C x, fols. 199–203B. Another copy is in BL Harleian MS 283, fol. 112B, which supplies words missing from the damaged original. This version has the words ‘Princess Dowager’ crossed out in ink in two places, probably by Catherine herself.

53
Cited by Paul, p. 123.

54
LPFD, vol. VI, pp. 357 and 682.

55
BL Harleian MS 283, fol. 75. It says: ‘Where as it has pleased the goodness of almighty God to send to us at this time, good speed in the deliverance and bringing forth of a princes to the great joy … and inward comfort of my lord, us and all his good and loving subjects of this his realm.’

56
See Shagan, chapter 2, ‘The Anatomy of Opposition in Early Reformation England: The Case of Elizabeth Barton, Holy Maid of Kent’, pp. 61–88.

57
Her possessions were later seized by the crown under her attainder and were listed by Cromwell’s officers. Henry would not have found much profit from her ‘two carpets, (one cut in pieces); an old mattress, seven coarse sheets, a coverlet and a pair of blankets with two pillows and a bolster; two plates, four dishes, two saucers and a little basin; a little old diaper towel; two candlesticks; a piece of plank for a table and a little chest’. See BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 84.

58
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 75.

59
Her aiders and abettors were: Bocking, Richard Dering – also a monk of Canterbury, Richard Master – priest of her home village of Aldington, Thomas Laurence – Registrar to the Archdeacon of Canterbury, Hugh Riche – friar observant, Henry Gold – Parson of Aldermary in London, and two gentlemen – Edward Thwaites and Thomas Gold. See ‘Wriothesley’, vol. I, p. 23, fn.

60
LPFD, vol. VI, p. 479.

61
Wright, p. 29.

62
Scarisbrook, ‘Henry’, p. 322 and Devereux, pp. 91ff.

63
He was consecrated Bishop of Bangor on 19 April 1534, but retained his abbey. He had written to Cromwell the previous November: ‘I beseech your mastership to call to your remembrance that you devised and thought it good [that] the king’s highness to give me the temporalities of the said bishopric, whereon I humbly desire you to be a man for me, if it may stand with your pleasure.’ See ‘State Papers’, vol. I, p. 410.

64
The text of his sermon is printed in Whatmore, pp. 463ff.

65
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fols. 79 and 81. Reprinted in Wright, pp. 19–25.

66
BL Harleian MS 6, fols. 40A and 148ff., and Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. II, pp. 315–18.

67
The others were Master, Bocking, Dering, Gold (the London priest) and Risby.

68
Treason of Elizabeth Barton (Pretended Revelations) Act, 25 Henry VIII cap. 12.

69
Burnet, vol. I, bk ii, p. 115.

70
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E vi, fol. 161.

71
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 85.

72
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E vi, fol. 149.

73
Elton, ‘Police’, p. 58.

74
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 84.

75
Elton, ‘Police’, p. 60 and Taylor, pp. 48ff.

76
25 Henry VIII cap. 6.

77
Ironically, Lord Hungerford was the first to die under the Act in 1540, on the same scaffold as Cromwell, although the prime charge against him was treason. Nicholas Udall (1504–56), cleric, paedophilic Provost of Eton College and playwright of the first English comedy,
Ralph Roister Doister
, was the first to be charged for this crime alone in 1541. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he was released from Marshalsea Prison in Southwark before a year was out. Buggery remained a capital offence in England and Wales until 1861.

78
BL Harleian MS 604, fol. 62.

79
26 Henry VIII cap. 1.

80
Elton, ‘Police’, p. 278.

81
NA SP 1/77/203.

82
Schismatic – someone who is guilty of splitting a Church in two.

83
NA SP 1/82/151.

84
26 Henry VIII cap. 22. Tanner, p. 383.

85
Burnet, vol. I, bk ii, p. 111.

86
26 Henry VIII cap. 13.

87
Tanner, pp. 379 and 388–9.

88
Merriman, vol. 1, p. 381.

89
Roper, pp. 89–90.

90
Ridley, p. 237.

CHAPTER FOUR
:
A Bloody Season

1
Roper, p. 71.

2
Seven were created cardinals at the same time, five Italians and Jean du Bellay, who had been the French ambassador to London. The last named was Fisher. The Pope later disingenuously denied that he knew the Bishop was imprisoned.

3
The hat got as far as Calais. LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 345.

4
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 291.

5
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 320.

6
Harpsfield, pp. 232–4.

7
NA KB 8/7 pt i includes the charges against them.

8
As in Psalm 62: 3: ‘Ye shall be slain all the sort of you.’

9
LPFD, vol. VIII, pp. 213–15.

10
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 280. By European standards, Henry was not the great libertine of folklore. Aside from court flirtations, surviving accounts document extramarital affairs with just three women – Elizabeth Blount – mother of his bastard son Henry Fitzroy, later Duke of Richmond, Mary Boleyn and Margaret Shelton.

11
BL Add. MS 8,715, fol. 53.

12
A criminal court. From the French
oyer
, ‘to hear’.

13
Their charges of high treason are detailed in NA KB 8/7 pt ii.

14
BL Harleian MS 530, fol. 54.

15
Another copy of Fisher’s indictment is in BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E vi, fol. 178B.

16
Harpsfield, p. 243.

17
Harpsfield, p. 244.

18
Harpsfield, p. 246.

19
Hall, p. 212.

20
CSP, vol. V, pt i, p. 179 and LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 373. The feast day of St Peter is 29 June.

21
BL Arundel MS 152, fol. 294.

22
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 309.

23
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 385.

24
Harpsfield, p. 189. Riche was thought even by his contemporaries to be ‘very light of tongue, a common liar, a dicer and of commendable fame’.

25
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 395.

26
Roper, pp. 94 and 103.

27
LPFD, vol. III, pt ii, p. 437.

28
LPFD, vol. III, pt ii, p. 81.

29
LPFD, vol. III, pt ii, p. 403.

30
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 284.

31
‘State Papers’, vol. I, p. 427.

32
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 75.

33
LPFD, vol. III, pt ii, p. 114.

34
LPFD, vol. VIII, p. 1. Another translation is ‘the big fuck’, which is probably more accurate given Norfolk’s sometimes blunt, coarse speech.

35
BL Add. MS 28,587, fol. 81.

36
CSP, vol. V, pt i, p. 484 and vol. V, pt ii, p. 81.