Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (48 page)

82
Holinshed, pp. 806–7. Wriothesley describes how the Canterbury monks had earlier enclosed another skull in silver ‘for people to offer to, which they said was St Thomas’s skull, so now the abuse was openly known that they had used many years afore’. See ‘Wriothesley’, vol. I, pp. 86–7. The official account of religious changes during this period, written in 1539 by Thomas Derby, Clerk of the Privy Seal, casts doubts on the fate of Becket’s remains. He wrote: ‘His shrine and bones are … taken away and bestowed where they will cause no superstition …’ The following section of that sentence is struck out: ‘as it is indeed amongst other of that sort conveyed and buried in a noble tower.’ See LPFD, vol. XIV, pt i, p. 156. A skeleton found in 1888 below the floor of the eastern crypt seems unlikely to be that of Becket. Five theories on what happened to the saint’s remains are discussed in John Butler’s
The Quest for Becket’s Bones
, New Haven, 1995, but the mystery remains.

83
John Hussey, the agent in London for the conservative Lord Lisle, jokes, with heavy humour, in a letter of 8 September, that ‘Mr Pollard has been so busy night and day in prayer with offering unto St Thomas’s shrine and hearse … that he could have no idle worldly time’ for other business. This is a reference to a report that Pollard spent many hours in prayer before defacing the shrine. Pollard, appointed King’s Remembrancer of the Exchequer in May 1535, purchased the dissolved Cistercian abbey at Forde, near Chard, Somerset, in 1540. The following year his income from lands and fees amounted to £230, or £85,000 in today’s money. He died in 1542.

84
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 86, fn. The ring appears amongst the diamonds fitted to the golden collar worn by Henry’s daughter, Mary, when queen after she ascended the throne of England in 1553. It may have been given as a gift when she married Philip of Spain the following year. See Arthur P. Stanley,
Historical Memorials of Canterbury
, London, 1887, p. 254, fn.

85
She accompanied the French King’s Madeleine to Scotland for her very brief marriage to James V and remained there until his second marriage to Marie de Guise. She was now making her return to France.

86
‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 583–4. This was presumably the fake skull (see note 82, above). After her tourist’s visit to the church, the prior sent her a generous present of rabbits, capons, chickens and fruit – so much food that she exclaimed: ‘What shall we do with so many capons?’ The answer was easy: she invited him to dinner.

87
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 87. The church claimed to be built on the site where Becket was born. See Thomas Fuller,
History of the Worthies of England
, London, 1662, p. 203. After surrender, the church was sold to the Mercers’ Company, which later built its livery hall on the site. For a history of the church and hospital, see Sir John Watney,
Some Account of the Hospital of St Thomas Acon
, London, 1892. On 21
October 1538, the hospital was suppressed ‘and the master and brethren put out and all the goods taken to the king’s treasury’, ibid., p. 88.

88
Muller, ‘Reaction’, pp. 76–7.

89
See Frederick Bussby,
Winchester Cathedral 1079–1979
, Ringwood, 1979, p. 46. A conjectural reconstruction of the shrine is on p. 49.

90
Knowles, p. 238.

91
Cook, p. 199.

92
Wilkins, vol. III, p. 840.

CHAPTER NINE
:
The Distant Sound of Conflict

1
Muller, ‘Letters’, p. 399.

2
Beaton (1494–1546) was appointed Archbishop of St Andrews in 1539 and became Chancellor of Scotland in 1543, as well as protonotary apostolic and legate
a latere
. He was assassinated three years later in revenge for his condemnation of George Wishart, one of the most popular Scottish religious reformers, who was burnt for heresy at St Andrews in 1546.

3
Halliwell, vol. I, pp. 359–60.

4
The French ambassador Louis de Perreau, Sieur de Castillon, departed without his successor being named. The Spanish envoy Chapuys was not withdrawn until his replacement arrived.

5
‘State Papers’, vol. I, p. 593.

6
Elton, ‘Police’, p. 261.

7
Merriman, vol. II, pp. 151–5 and Burnet, vol. II, p. lxxix.

8
NA SP 1/136 fols. 226–8.

9
NA SP 1/144 fols. 93, 135. The rumour originated with sixty-year-old Margaret Ede, of the same town, who had misheard a sermon as she lacked ‘a great part of her hearing’.

10
‘State Papers’, vol. I, pp. 612–13.

11
Elton, ‘Police’, p. 260.

12
NA SP 1/144 fol. 128.

13
‘State Papers’, vol. VIII, p. 590.

14
The Act for the Advancement of True Religion (34 and 35 Henry VIII cap. I) of 1543 withdrew permission for everyone to read the English Bible, limiting the privilege to noblemen, gentlemen and merchants (who could peruse it in private). Low-born women, workers and apprentices were strictly prohibited from reading it publicly or privately.

15
Ribier, vol. I, pp. 357–9.

16
Byrne,
The Lisle Letters
, vol. V, p. 1,415.

17
See A. F. Pollard, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s Parliamentary Lists’,
Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research
, vol. XI (1931–2), pp. 31ff.

18
Muller, ‘Letters’, p. 399. Letter from Gardiner, written in the Fleet Prison, 14 October 1547. His phrase ‘turned the cat in the pan’ probably means that Cromwell had deviously later reversed their roles in his account of the conversation.

19
See E. R. Adair, ‘The Statute of Proclamations’,
English Historical Review
, vol. XXXII (1917), p. 35.

20
31 Henry VIII cap. 8. See ‘Lords Journal’, p. 123.

21
Tanner, p. 534.

22
Cromwell was still interrogating her. On 19 April 1539 he informed Henry: ‘I shall assay to the uttermost of my power and never cease till the bottom of her stomach [her innermost thoughts] might be clearly opened and displayed and to that I shall not be slack.’ See BL Cotton MS Titus B i, fol. 265.

23
The Countess of Salisbury’s attainder is 31 Henry VIII cap. 15.

24
31 Henry VIII cap. 10.

25
Holinshed, p. 810.

26
A long edged and hooked weapon, used against attacking horsemen. The name ‘morris’ comes from ‘Moorish’, supposedly describing the origin of the weapon.

27
Bill, or pole, weapons included halberds (with an axe head and spear point), partisans (spear point), and glaives, a long edged weapon with protruding hooks.

28
The arms of the City of London are
Argent, a cross gules, in the first quarter, a sword in pale, point upwards, of the last
.

29
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, pp. 95–6.

30
Cromwell also paid out 23s. 8d to John ap Richards for gunpowder fired as a salute at Stepney before the muster began. See LPFD, vol. IX, p. 340.

31
Sir Thomas Audley.

32
Umbrellas were not widely used in England until the early seventeenth century.

33
The King’s Bridge was at the eastern end of the Palace of Westminster, a short distance from Old Palace Stairs. It was a landing stage rather than a bridge.

34
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 100.

35
BL Royal MS 18 A.L., a twenty-five-page quarto volume. It may have been read by Henry himself. The original draft, with autograph corrections, is in BL Cotton MS Faustina C ii, fols. 5–22. See also Sydney Anglo, ‘An Early Tudor Programme for Plays and other Demonstrations Against the Pope’,
Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes
, vol. XX (1957), pp. 176–9, for further discussion of Morison’s propaganda proposals.

36
See Anglo, pp. 266–7.

37
Bale (1495–1563) was educated at the Carmelite convent in Norwich and Jesus College, Oxford, and became an embittered religious reformer. On Cromwell’s death in 1540, he fled to Germany and stayed there for seven years before returning to England during the reign of Edward VI. He became vicar of Swaffham, Norfolk, in 1551 and was appointed Bishop of Ossory (the oldest Irish bishopric) two years later. On Mary’s accession, he again fled to Europe and finally ended his days as a prebendary canon at Canterbury.

38
Anglo, p. 267. See also McCusker, p. 5.

39
LPFD, vol. XIV, pt ii, pp. 337 and 339.

40
See J. H. P. Pafford (ed.), introduction to
Kynge Johan
, Oxford, 1931, p. xvii.

41
McCusker, p. 75. John Murray,
English Dramatic Companies 1558–1642
, 2 vols., London, 1910, vol. II, p. 36 lists the known performances staged by Cromwell’s troupe of actors. There is a reference to ‘the Secretary’s players’ in payments to actors in Leicester in 1537–8. See Mary Bateson (ed.) et al.,
Records of the Borough of Leicester 1103–1603
, 4 vols., Cambridge, 1899–1923, vol. III, pp. 41 and 58.

42
LPFD, vol. XII, pt i, p. 244 and Anglo, p. 266.

43
Printed by Thomas Berthelet of Fleet Street, the King’s printer 1530–47, royal bookbinder and stationer. Printed 1539, STC 18111–2.

44
The second edition was also printed by Berthelet. See Elton, ‘Police’, pp. 202–4.

45
Also printed by Berthelet, STC 18110.

46
LPFD, vol. XIV, pt ii, p. 340.

47
LPFD, vol. XII, pt ii, p. 478. Morison wanted Cromwell’s help in arranging a £400 loan to the owner of a ‘fair house’ in Norwich, which property would be given to Morison on receipt of the advanced cash. ‘If you would get him this money to get me this house, you should put me in such credit that, with a little more help, I might attain to a marriage worth two of the house,’ he told Cromwell.

48
NA SP 3/5/93 (Lisle Letters).

49
Cited by Elton, ‘Police’, pp. 134–5.

50
31 Henry VIII cap. 13. Cromwell had earlier written to the heads of monasteries in the King’s name telling them they should not listen to idle rumours of further suppressions: ‘[The King] does not intend in any way to trouble you or devise for the suppression of any religious house that stands.’ See Knowles, p. 239.

51
Cook, p. 217, letter to Cromwell, 2 December 1539.

52
At Jervaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, the lead ‘pigs’ had been stacked at the west end of the nave, but before they could be taken away, the vaulting of the roof collapsed,
burying the pile. They were found during excavations of the site in 1923 and later re-used for re-leading the Five Sisters window in the north transept of York Cathedral. See Cook, p. 137, fn.

53
See Gaimster and Gilchrist, Richard K. Morris, ‘Monastic Architecture: Deconstruction and Reconstruction’, p. 240. At St Alban’s, Hertfordshire, the excavation of the chapter house site in 1978 uncovered wheel ruts leading through its west door and into the cloister garth.

54
Cook, pp. 241–2.

55
He had asked Cromwell for a leave of absence from the session of Parliament in spring 1539 because of his physical infirmity. See Knowles, p. 262.

56
He was a friend of the conservative Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, and had educated his stepson James Basset at Reading Abbey.

57
Holinshed, p. 811.

58
All these men were amongst the English martyrs beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 13 May 1895.

59
BL Cotton MS Cleopatra E v, fols. 313–320. Unsurprisingly, all his amendments were included in the final text, including the description of his title in the preamble. This he changed from ‘Supreme Head of this Church in England’ to ‘by God’s law, Supreme Head of this church and congregation of England’.

60
‘Wriothesley’, vol. 1, p. 103.

61
Writing in code.

62
He married Margaret, niece of the Lutheran divine Andreas Osiander, at Nuremburg during the period when he was ambassador in Germany in 1532, a year before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. Clerical marriage was illegal then.

63
Byrne,
The Lisle Letters
, vol. V, p. 1,425.

64
31 Henry VIII cap. 14.

65
Burnet, vol. I, pt i, bk iii, p. 195.

66
John Cox,
The Works of Thomas Cranmer
, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1844–6, vol. II, pp. 394–5.

67
Scarisbrook, ‘Henry’, pp. 421–2.

68
A light shallow-draught rowing boat that conveyed passengers.

69
Burnet, vol. I, pt i, bk iii, p. 195. See also Nichols, p. 237.

70
Burnet, vol. I, pt i, bk iii, p. 195.

71
Mori and Vivis, bk i, letter 28, cols. 22–9.

72
Strype, vol. I, pt ii, p. 438.

CHAPTER TEN
:
The Royal Neck in the Yoke

1
Hatfield House, CP 1/27.

2
On France’s north-east coast. The town and the immediate surroundings (the ‘Pale of Calais’) were held by England between 1347 and 1558 as a bridgehead on the European mainland.

3
Hall, p. 832.

4
His father had given him £40 for his expenses in going to Calais, but he had to borrow a further £10 from one of his servants when he was there. ‘Bruges’ the tailor was paid £9 for Gregory’s new ‘apparel’ and for coats for his two companions, Wadham and Conisby. Cromwell also paid out £100 to his nephew Richard ‘against the coming of the queen’. See LPFD, vol. XIV, pt i, p. 344.

5
Holinshed, p. 811.

6
Sweepstake
, 300 tons, was built in 1535, and
Lion
, 140 tons, the following year. See Geoffrey Moorhouse,
Great Harry’s Navy
, London, 2005, p. 323.

7
A carrack was an ocean-going ship design developed in the fifteenth century with three or four masts and an aftcastle over the high rounded stern and a forecastle over the bows.