Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (47 page)

35
Lewes Priory, which owned lands in Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Middlesex, Wiltshire, Devon, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, was surrendered on 16 November 1537 by the prior, Robert.

36
LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, p. 360.

37
Cromwell’s ‘remembrances’ for November include a prompt to establish the ‘true value’ of the priory’s estate at Castleacre in Norfolk ‘for my part thereof’ and to ‘set order for making ready of Lewes and to have a book made of the stuff’. See BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 437.

38
BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 390. See also LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, pp. 341–2.

39
BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 389.

40
HMC ‘Rutland’, p. 26.

41
About £2,700 in 2006 money.

42
LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, p. 477.

43
LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, p. 378.

44
34 Henry VIII cap. 40.

45
LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, p. 388. A month later, Thompson was still in trouble. He pleaded that he was using ‘all diligence’ as surveyor and overseer of the King’s works, but if ‘he had knowledge of the expenses and the choice of labourers, it would be to the king’s advantage’. He begged Cromwell to give him this authority, or else ‘would gladly be dismissed’. Ibid., p. 432.

46
Henry habitually expelled those in court who wore mourning for their friends. He was to continue to wear mourning himself throughout the Christmas festivities at Greenwich and up to Candlemas, 2 February 1538. It was the only time he paid this tribute to a dead wife.

47
LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, pp. 414–15 and ‘State Papers’, vol. VIII, p. 5. The Duchy of Cleves is in modern Germany and covers today’s districts of Cleves, Wesel, Duisburg, Jülich and Berg. In the mid-sixteenth century, it was a Protestant ducal state.

48
Count William of Ravestein was the son of the Duke of Cleves.

49
‘State Papers’, vol. VIII, pp. 6–7.

50
LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, p. 419.

51
Kaulek, p. 5.

52
Kaulek, p. 9. James V had briefly wooed her in 1536.

53
Cromwell’s instructions to Mewtas are in ‘State Papers’, vol. VIII, pp. 10–12.

54
Kaulek, p. 13, letter dated 31 December 1537.

55
Fraser, p. 289.

56
Kaulek, pp. 17–19 and 23–4, Teulet, pp. 131–4.

57
‘State Papers’, vol. VIII, pp. 39–40.

58
‘State Papers’, vol. VIII, p. 146.

59
The oil painting, 70.5632.5 in. (179.1682.6 cm), survives in the National Gallery, London (NG 2475). It was purchased by the National Art Collection Fund, with the aid of an anonymous donation, in 1909.

60
Byrne,
Letters of King Henry VIII
, pp. 192ff.

61
Kaulek, pp. 48 and 51–3.

62
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, p. 111.

63
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, pp. 110–11.

64
Kaulek, pp. 80–1 and LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, p. 28.

65
Strickland, vol. III, p. 170.

CHAPTER EIGHT
:
Reformation and Retribution

1
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 226. See also Cook, pp. 200–1 and Wright, pp. 224–5, where the recipient is wrongly identified as Sir Richard Riche. John London (1486–1543), another of Cromwell’s commissioners, was responsible for dissolutions in Reading, Oxford, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire after 1538. He was a priest and notary public and had come under threat in 1533 after one Richard Jones, arrested and imprisoned in the Tower for his involvement in alchemy and prophecy, promised he would reveal things about London ‘that would make him smoke and others too of his affinity’. See Elton, ‘Police’, p. 56 and DNB2, vol. 34, pp. 351–2.

2
When all her teeth were collected by order of Edward VI’s Protestant government in the early 1550s, they filled a whole wine tun. See Fuller, p. 331. The saint, who died in
AD
249, had all her teeth knocked out.

3
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra, E iv, fol. 120.

4
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 88.

5
LPFD, vol. IX, pp. 154–5.

6
A Catholic church, dedicated to Our Lady of the Taper, was consecrated in Cardigan on 23 July 1970.

7
Cook, pp. 165–6 and 263–4.

8
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, p. 79.

9
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, p. 100.

10
A gorget was a collar, worn below the neck.

11
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, p. 107.

12
A tablet with a representation of the Crucifixion kissed by the priest during mass.

13
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, pp. 79, 100–1 and 107.

14
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, pp. 168–9 and Cook, p. 144.

15
Bernard, p. 331.

16
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 75.

17
Fuller, p. 333.

18
The old Roman road.

19
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, pp. 223–4 and Cook, pp. 206–7.

20
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, p. 74 (letter from Latimer to Cromwell, 25 August) and pp. 272–3.

21
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, pp. 250–1.

22
The Abbot of Hailes talked in a letter to Cromwell in February 1538 of his fears of condemning himself as ‘guilty of misusing it, as changing and renewing it with drake’s blood’. See LPFD, vol. XIII, pt i, p. 119.

23
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 90 and Holinshed, p. 807.

24
These included two pieces of the Holy Cross; St James’s hand; the stole of St Philip; a bone of St Mary Magdalene; an arm bone of St Edward the Martyr; the jawbone of St Ethelmold; a bone of St Andrew and two pieces of his cross; and a ‘piece’ of St Pancras’s arm. For the full inventory, see BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 223. See also Cook, p. 202; the inventory is also reproduced in Wright, pp. 226–7.

25
LPFD, vol. XIV, pt i, p. 156.

26
NA SP 1/133, fols. 51–53.

27
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt i, p. 516, March 1538.

28
Ironically, Walsingham is still a busy place of devout pilgrimage for both Anglican and Catholic pilgrims. A replacement statute of Our Lady of Walsingham was carved for a new Anglican shrine in 1922, copied from the seal of the medieval religious house there. The Catholic shrine was re-founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1897 and the Slipper Chapel dedicated as the National Shrine to Our Lady in 1934.

29
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, pp. 162–3, 20 January 1540.

30
An order of Franciscan monks. The reformers nicknamed them ‘Friars Obstinate’.

31
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 78, fn., and pp. 78–9.

32
Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, pp. 203–4.

33
Born
c
.566, died 660. St Derfel was said to be one of King Arthur’s warriors before turning to religion after the Dark Ages Battle of Carnlan, in Snowdonia, when legend says only seven survived the carnage. Such was the reputation of Bardsey that, during the Middle Ages, three pilgrimages to the island were reckoned equal to one to Rome. The ruins on the island are of the thirteenth-century Augustinian monastery of St Mary, dissolved in 1537. Today, Bardsey remains a popular site of religious retreat.

34
The remains of what is said to be a carving of St Derfel’s horse can be found in the porch of Llandderfel. In reality, it depicts a red stag, which formed part of the shrine.

35
5 April was the saint’s feast day.

36
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 55, letter from Price to Cromwell, 6 April 1538. See also Wright, pp. 190–1.

37
Price wrote to Cromwell reporting that after he rejected their offer, they planned to come to London to see the Lord Privy Seal ‘not only to make suit … but also to make … complaints on me. Therefore I purpose … to give attendance upon your lordship within this fortnight that I may answer to such complaints [about] me.’ Ellis, ‘Original Letters’, 3rd series, vol. III, pp. 194–5.

38
Darvell Gadarn, or Derfel Cadarn, from the Welsh meaning ‘valiant’ or ‘strong’.

39
Hume, p. 80.

40
Hume, p. 81.

41
Hall, pp. 826–7. Forrest was amongst fifty-three English martyrs to be beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 9 December 1886.

42
Hall, p. 827.

43
The church took its name from the makers of pattens, or over-shoes, who worked in the parish. The church was burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684–7. It is now the home of the Anglo-Filipino Charismatic Episcopal Church.

44
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 81.

45
The right to present a priest to an ecclesiastic benefice.

46
Portinari, ‘a native of Italy’, was granted denization – the right of a foreigner to reside in England – on 14 February 1537. See LPFD, vol. XII, pt i, p. 252. He was to fulfil a number of missions for Cromwell and later worked on the unfinished tomb of Henry VIII in the late 1540s. For more information on Portinari, see L. White, ‘Jacopo Aconcio as an Engineer’,
American Historical Review
, vol. 72 (1967), no. 2.

47
Cook, pp. 138–9.

48
Cook, p. 140.

49
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, p. 291. Henry Courtenay was first cousin to Henry; Henry Pole, Lord Montague, was a second cousin. See also BL Add. MS 33,514, fol. 5.

50
This aspect of the story seems likely to be apocryphal, as the book was not published until 1532. Machiavelli wrote it in 1513, but copies may have been circulated around the courts of Europe before publication.

51
LPFD, vol. XI, pp. 34–5.

52
LPFD, vol. XI, p. 44.

53
LPFD, vol. XI, p. 181.

54
Merriman, vol. I, p. 204.

55
BL Add. MS 30,662, fol. 246 (copy).

56
BL Add. MS 25,114, fol. 262, 25 April 1537.

57
LPFD, vol. XII, pt i, p.xxxix, fn.

58
LPFD, vol. XII, pt i, p. 561.

59
‘State Papers’, vol. VII, p. 703.

60
LPFD, vol. XII, pt i, p. 570.

61
See Wilding, pp. 195–8 and LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, pp. 280–1.

62
‘State Papers’, vol. II, pp. 551–4, fn.

63
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, p. 91.

64
Henry suffered from varicose ulcers in the legs and probably chronic osteitis, a very painful bone infection. See Hutchinson, pp. 127–9. Predicting the death of Henry was now treason under the law.

65
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, p. 418.

66
The Somerset butcher John Howell claimed Courtenay’s arrest was because of a personal quarrel between him and Cromwell and he boasted he would recruit a group to rescue him. See NA SP 1/121/67.

67
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt ii, pp. 422–5.

68
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 91. The others arraigned on 4 December were Dr George Croft, Chancellor of the Diocese of Chichester; Montague’s chaplain, who denied the King’s supremacy; and one of his servants, Hugh Holland.

69
She was beatified in 1886. It took eleven blows to finally kill her.

70
LPFD, vol. XIII, pt i, p. 72.

71
Foxe, vol. V, pp. 229ff.

72
Burnet, vol. 1, pt i, bk iii, p. 186.

73
Foxe, vol. V, pp. 181–234.

74
Burnet, vol. 1, pt i, bk iii, p. 187 and Foxe, vol. V, p. 236.

75
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 90.

76
These included the ceremonies of ‘holy bread, holy water, processions, kneeling and creeping to the Cross on Good Friday and Easter Day; setting up of lights before the Corpus Christi; bearing of candles upon the day of the Purification of Our Lady and all other laudable ceremonies yet be not abolished nor taken away by the king’s highness’.

77
The name given to the followers of John Wyclif, a heretical, anti-clerical group, numerous in England in the later fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth centuries and ruthlessly suppressed.

78
Henry II is more likely to have cried out: ‘What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house that not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk!’ He was taken at his word and Becket was murdered in the north-west transept of Canterbury Cathedral on the night of 29 December 1170 by four knights: William de Tracey, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville and Richard le Bret.

79
See TRP, vol. I, pp. 275–6; Elton, ‘Police’, p. 257, fn.; and also Wilkins, vol. III, pp. 847–8. There has been much debate amongst historians over claims that a mock trial of the dead Becket was staged by Cromwell in the Court of King’s Bench, the hearing beginning on 11 June 1539. The legend has it that, unsurprisingly, Becket did not appear in person and was assigned counsel to speak for him – but he was subsequently convicted of rebellion and treason after an enthusiastic prosecution by the Attorney General, John Baker. See ‘Wriothesley’, vol. I, p. 90, fn.; J. F. Lewis, ‘Lollards, Reformers and St Thomas of Canterbury’,
University of Birmingham Historical Journal
, vol. IX (1963), pp. 1–15; and Fred Levy,
Tudor Historical Thought
, San Marino, California, 1967, p. 86. Despite some cogent arguments supporting the reality of the trial, it seems likely the event was a fairy tale concocted in the seventeenth century.

80
The position of the shrine is today normally marked by a lighted candle. The monument was so heavy that it has left an indentation in the floor of the chapel.

81
The shrine is depicted on a pilgrim’s badge – a medieval tourist souvenir – of
c
.1400, 3.125 in. (7.9 cm) in height, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Accession Number 2001.310).