Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (6 page)

His words doubtless stunned the chaplains crowded in the chamber. Cromwell hastened on: although he had ‘not received of your grace’s gift one penny towards the increase of my yearly living’, he would now happily donate his own cash to assist those worse off than himself in the Cardinal’s household. Whereupon he dipped into his purse, produced £5
in gold and handed it to Wolsey. ‘Now let us see what your chaplains will do. I think they will part with [give] you much more than I have done, who be able to give you a pound [to] my one penny.’

‘Go to, masters,’ he urged the helplessly entrapped chaplains, who then reluctantly, resentfully donated enough money for Wolsey to pay three months’ wages to his yeomen and provide them with the equivalent of one month’s board in cash. It was the first time that Cromwell had publicly displayed any antagonism towards the clergy. Was this merely a little barbed joke – so he could watch them squirm in front of their fallen master? Or was it an early harbinger of his attacks on the Church and its doctrine in the years ahead?

After some lengthy discussions in secret with Wolsey, he mounted his horse and, accompanied by his faithful clerk Ralph Sadler, left for London. He told Cavendish: ‘You shall hear shortly of me and if I speed well, I will not fail to be here again within these two days.’

The mission seemed to promise a slim hope that Wolsey’s lost fortunes could somehow be restored. If Cavendish and his fellow liverymen in the household believed that, they did not know or understand Thomas Cromwell.

His actions and motivations when he reached London remain a matter of conjecture. More pragmatic than his dejected master, he recognised the reality that Wolsey was now irretrievably down and had been counted out. For his own sake, it was high time he distanced himself from the fallen Cardinal if he were to have any chance of realising his hard-nosed ambitions of achieving wealth and status in the madhouse of Tudor politics.

His options were all too limited in a royal court that, from the queen-in-waiting downwards, was now packed with Wolsey’s enemies, watchful for rich pickings from his downfall. Those who possessed the precious gift of patronage would plainly regard Cromwell with deep suspicion as the Cardinal’s own creature. Cromwell nimbly overcame these apparently unassailable obstacles and managed to procure himself a seat in Parliament just two days before a new House of Commons was due to be sworn in, even though few vacancies were still available. Like any adroit politician in a tight spot, he called in the favours owed him and ruthlessly
exploited his friendships. On arrival in the capital, he immediately dispatched Sadler to interview his friend Sir John Gage,
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MP for Sussex, Vice-Chamberlain of the Household and, most significantly, an ally of Wolsey’s arch-enemy, the conniving Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk. Sadler told Cromwell that night:

I spoke with Mr Gage and, according to your commandment, moved him to speak to my lord of Norfolk for the burgess’s room [member’s seat] of the Parliament on your behalf. He accordingly did so without delay, like a faithful friend and … Norfolk [told] Mr Gage that he had spoken with the king … and that his highness was very well contented you should become a burgess, so that you would order yourself … according to such instructions as the said Duke of Norfolk shall give you from the king.
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Norfolk would be happy to speak to Cromwell the next day about arranging his election, Sadler dutifully reported.

The clerk had been very industrious at court on his master’s behalf. He had talked with his friend Sir Thomas Rush, whose stepson Thomas Alvard held a parliamentary seat at Taunton in Somerset and who might be prepared to stand down in favour of Cromwell. This was speedily agreed, with the help of Sir William Paulet, Master of Wards,
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who, irony of ironies, promptly released the seat as one of the boroughs previously controlled by Wolsey, as Bishop of Winchester.
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Cromwell was thus surprisingly returned to Parliament, mainly through the influence of Norfolk, who must have received pledges of eternal loyalty from Cromwell in return for assistance in manipulating House of Commons proceedings to his order.

Those promises would turn out to be entirely hollow. In the turbulent years that followed, the ambitious Duke would surely rue the day he extended a helping hand to Cromwell at a time when the autocrat’s political career was in ruins and his life appeared consigned to the gutter.

Shortly afterwards, Cromwell returned to Esher with ‘a much [more] pleasant countenance’ and boasted to Cavendish that he had ‘adventured to put in his foot where he trusted shortly to be better regarded, or ever the Parliament was finished’.
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There were more secret discussions with
Wolsey and Cromwell left again late that night to return to London, as he could not afford to be absent from Parliament the next morning.

Norfolk was busy preparing a Bill of Attainder against Wolsey for debate as the first item of business for Parliament, after its opening session on 3 November. The Bill, nicknamed the ‘Book of Articles’ because of its vast bulk, was passed in the Lords on 1 December and sent down to the Commons for approval. But there it faltered, probably because of its unnecessarily virulent language and the wild claims it contained,
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and the Attainder with its forty-six articles was dropped, probably by royal command, before Parliament was prorogued on 17 December. It had nevertheless achieved its principal political aim: the Cardinal’s name and reputation had been thoroughly and salaciously blackened.

Wolsey, isolated, depressed and anxious, wrote constantly to Cromwell, imploring him for advice and assistance. Reading his appeals today, it is impossible not to feel at least a shred of sympathy for the once haughty and imperious Cardinal, now consigned to the shadows of public life. His letters indicate painfully just how far he had tumbled from his halcyon days as an arrogant, proud Minister. The extravagant pomp and circumstance of his own glittering court, those battalions of obsequious, richly attired retainers, were now transient memories, clouded by his deep despair. As with all suddenly deposed leaders, he must also have suffered the sour frustrations of suddenly vanished personal power and authority.

With the status and vast wealth drained from him, Wolsey swiftly degenerated into a frail, sick and lonely old man, fearful of what the future might hold for him. Gone were his peremptory commands and directives. Now Wolsey had been brought to his knees and was begging his former servant for help:

My own entirely beloved Cromwell:

I beseech you, as you love me and will ever do anything for me, repair hither this day, as soon as the Parliament is broken up, leaving apart all things for that time.

I would … communicate things to you, wherein for my comfort and
relief, I would have your good, sad, discreet advice and counsel but also upon the same, commit certain things requiring expedition to you on my behalf.

From Esher, in haste, this Saturday in the morning with the rude hand and sorrowful heart of your assured friend.

With the shrewd understanding of what could bring Cromwell scurrying to his side, Wolsey added this postscript: ‘I have also certain things concerning yourself, which I am sure you will be glad to hear and know. Fail not, therefore, to be here this night. You may return early in the morning again, if your need shall so require.’
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But this emotional blackmail and coy coaxing did not tempt his former solicitor down from London. Cromwell, probably anxious to demonstrate that his allegiance to Wolsey was a thing of the past, ignored his increasingly frantic pleas to visit. The Cardinal, still not realising that the master–servant relationship had ended, wrote impatiently:

There [are] few things since my trouble that [have] more grieved me than your not coming hither at this time, for now is the season that you should do to me most good and acceptable pleasure in advancement of my pursuits.

Wherefore, at the reverence of God, tomorrow in the evening, be it never so late, take the pain to come hither, and having speech with the same but one hour, you shall depart that night or so early in the morning as you shall not be missed there.

For all love, leave me not now, thus destitute of all comfort.
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Henry meanwhile had vindictively forced Wolsey to surrender to the crown his London residence at York House and his country properties at The More and Tittenhanger in Hertfordshire. The King had even dismantled his new gallery at Esher and transported it, piece by piece, for incorporation into the new royal Palace of Westminster, knowing this would ‘torment’ Wolsey. If this were not enough, the Cardinal’s waking hours were now filled with rumours that the royal grant of the Cluniac monastery of St Augustine at Daventry, Northamptonshire, was to be declared void. The priory was one of the largest and richest of those
suppressed and its revenues were vital to the prosperity of his new Oxford college.
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Were this income and his prized legacy to England’s education system now to disappear?

Cromwell continued steadfastly to ignore his increasingly urgent pleas to visit.

Wolsey’s letters take on the pathetic, fraught tones of an elderly, forlorn parent callously abandoned by their progeny:

The ferdering [delay] and putting off of your coming hither has so increased my sorrow and put me in such anxiety of mind that this night my breath and wind, by sighing, was so short that I was, by the space of three hours, as one that should have died.

If you love my life, break away this evening and come hither … [that] I may open my mind to you … which I cannot commit to writing …

Take some pains now for me and forsake me not in this my extreme need and where as I cannot, God shall reward you. Now is the time to show whether you love me or not.
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Wolsey knew full well who was responsible for his downfall and was troubled that the poison of Anne Boleyn’s disfavour still afflicted him. When Sir John Russell had recently supported the Cardinal when talking to the King, she had sulkily refused to speak to him for nearly a month.
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Wolsey asked Cromwell to consult Sir Henry Norris, Groom of the Stool, ‘if the displeasure of my Lady Anne be [some]what assuaged, as I pray God the same may be’ and urged ‘all possible means’ be employed to ‘attain her favour’.
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Anne was meanwhile tightening the grip of her sensual feminine power over a doting Henry. To prove the point for everyone to witness and marvel at, she mischievously caused a new motto to be embroidered on her servants’ blue-and-purple livery coats:
Ainsi sera, groigne qui groigne
, bluntly declaring: ‘This is how it will be, however much people grumble.’
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She boasted that she would rather see Catherine of Aragon ‘hanged, than have to confess she was her queen and mistress’.
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There was no hope of any reconciliation with this headstrong girl, with her black eyes firmly fixed on the consort’s throne.

Cromwell wrote comforting letters to the ailing Wolsey and helpfully suggested he should grant money to members of the Boleyn faction at court. When all else fails, bribery can subtly quench the hidden fires of antagonism. Anne’s star was now shining dazzlingly at Henry’s court and her family were basking in its radiance. On 8 December 1529, her father was created Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde and her brother George, now Viscount Rochford, became a gentleman of the King’s privy chamber. He received an annuity of £200 from the income of the bishopric of Winchester and another of £134 from the lands of St Alban’s Abbey in Hertfordshire, also formerly in Wolsey’s gift.
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It must remain a matter of speculation whether Boleyn was allowed to believe the gift was instigated by Cromwell himself purely for his own advancement. It would certainly have been wise to hitch himself to the Boleyn bandwagon: on 24 January 1530, Wiltshire was appointed Lord Privy Seal and promoted to the King’s Council.

Was the lawyer merely being discreet in the help he gave his former master or horribly duplicitous, comfortable in a casual betrayal of the Cardinal and ready to use his cash to further his own career? In truth, Cromwell appears to have trodden a precarious line between remaining ostensibly loyal, defending Wolsey in public with ‘witty persuasions and deep reason[ing]’, while craftily still insinuating his way into fresh circles of influence.
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He was thus adept at playing both ends against the middle. It was probably Cromwell, perceptively sensing that Henry still had lingering affection for his fallen Minister, who engineered some improvements in Wolsey’s living conditions.

Events looked to be taking on a happier complexion for the Cardinal. In January 1530, Wolsey, to his delight, received a tangible, thoughtful token of the King’s continuing regard – the arrival of a troupe of four royal physicians, led by Henry’s favourite and most trusted doctor, Sir William Butts,
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to nurse him through an acute attack of dropsy.
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The Cardinal commented that neither doctors nor medicine would be the cure for his sickness – only the King. The following month, he was allowed to leave his Esher episcopal palace for a small house called ‘The Lodge’ at Richmond in Surrey.

Most importantly, Cromwell obtained a pardon under the Great Seal
for Wolsey on 12 February, probably only a few days after he entered the King’s service as an adviser on parliamentary and legal affairs. Cavendish heard that Henry reputed him ‘to be a very wise man and a meet instrument to serve his grace’. Cromwell’s new role had another immediate benefit for his former master: two days later the Cardinal was restored to the archbishopric of York. Then, at the beginning of March, Wolsey was allowed to progress to a larger, much more comfortable residence alongside the Carthusian monastery at Sheen.

Moving ever closer to the royal court, Wolsey was buoyed by growing hopes that his humiliating trials were nearing their end. But as he sat peacefully in devout dialogue with the monks, or alone in ‘godly contemplation’
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amid the cloistered calm of the Charterhouse, his fate was unexpectedly and finally sealed by his powerful adversaries, still plotting in the corridors and chambers of Henry’s palaces in and around London, downstream along the River Thames.