WOLSEY’S SERVANT

After the year 1524, there is no further mention of Thomas Cromwell as the cloth-merchant and wool-dyer. He probably realized that his business as a lawyer brought him into much more prominence as a public man, but his term in Parliament doubtless aroused in him a desire for even greater things than the life of a successful solicitor. His advance in legal prominence, however, is marked by his admittance in 1524 as a member of Gray’s Inn, and by his appointment in the same year as one of the Subsidy Commissioners for the Hundred of Ossulton in Middlesex[62]; but such petty distinctions fade into the background in the face of a matter of far more absorbing interest, that is, his rapidly growing favour and intimacy with Cardinal Wolsey.

During the years 1524–1525 he was actively engaged in the Cardinal’s service, and received many letters on legal business which he transacted for his master[63]. Seekers for Wolsey’s mercy or patronage invariably came to him, as a likely means of getting their wishes granted. In several cases requests to the Cardinal are addressed directly to the ‘right worshipful Mr. Cromwell.’ It is evident from the tone of the letters which he received, that to obtain his favour was the first and most important step towards gaining that of his master. He was usually spoken of as ‘Councillor to my Lord Legate,’ and was pre-eminent above all the rest of Wolsey’s advisers. It has been thought by some that the Cardinal employed him in connexion with his political schemes, but this is an error. Cromwell began modestly, as befitted his lowly birth and humble origin, and at this time, at any rate, was employed merely as an agent, chosen for his wonderful knowledge of human nature and his great capacity for business.

In the beginning of 1525, however, Wolsey felt that he had in Cromwell a servant sufficiently capable to be trusted with the performance of a work which was nearest the Cardinal’s heart, namely the destruction of some of the smaller monasteries to furnish funds for the building of his college at Oxford. So on the 4th of January of that year, he commissioned Sir William Gascoigne, William Burbank, and Thomas Cromwell, to survey the monasteries of Tykford, Raveneston, Poghley, Medmenham, Wallingford, and Fynchingbroke and their possessions, and on the same day he appointed Thomas Cromwell and John Smyth as attorneys for the site and circuit of Thoby, Blakamore, Stanesgate, and Tiptree, which had been granted to John Higden, Dean of Cardinal’s College[64].

It may seem strange that Wolsey’s suppression of the smaller religious houses brought him so much unpopularity. It was certainly true that the monasteries had long since ceased to observe the strict traditions of religious asceticism, which had been the watchword of their foundation. Some of them had become resorts of the idle and worthless, who were permitted by supine or indulgent superiors to exchange a life of monastic discipline for one of luxury and indolence, if not of downright vice. But there were a few, seemingly unimportant facts, which outweighed all these charges. In the first place the monks were the easiest of landlords. In their practically defenceless state, it was surely for their advantage to conciliate their fellow men in every way, and to avoid disputes at any cost. They consequently suffered themselves to be imposed upon by their neighbours and tenants, in preference to risking their popularity by asserting themselves. So Wolsey’s measures, which brought in stricter landlords, increased rents, and did away with the good old slipshod management of so many years’ standing, met with ill-concealed dislike. The monks, moreover, were the most hospitable of people; the poor were never turned away unfed, the traveller could always find shelter beneath their roof, and this fact, coupled with the rooted opposition of the less educated class to any sweeping measure of reform adopted apparently without reason, while the old system appeared to all intents and purposes to work well, explained the rest. Wolsey’s measures to suppress the smaller monasteries, and confiscate their possessions to the use of his own colleges, may justly be described as universally unpopular[65].

The first requisites for the accomplishment of such a design as the suppression of the monasteries were an intimate knowledge of law, especially as related to lands and property, and a far-seeing, harsh, and rather unscrupulous nature. These qualities Cromwell possessed in the very highest degree, and as he had been eminently successful in carrying on all Wolsey’s legal business up to this time, and as the Cardinal was too busy with his foreign policy to give his own attention to this favourite scheme, it is no wonder that he chose Cromwell to supervise it for him. The work consisted in surveying and estimating the value of the property of the condemned monasteries, making careful inventories thereof, and finally in stripping them of all their transportable riches, which usually meant altars, furnishings, bells, and tapestry, while their lands and permanent possessions were sold or leased on the spot. The transfer of property, settlements with tenants, and adjustment of claims were a task of far greater intricacy than Wolsey had expected, and Cromwell’s success in carrying it out was little short of marvellous. He was usually present in person at the surrenders and dissolutions; when this was impossible one of his many and faithful agents sent him an exact account of the proceedings in his absence. The number of monks and nuns that were suddenly turned out upon the world with small and irregularly paid pensions was not the least evil feature of the ruthless way in which the suppressions were carried on; but it was nothing to what was to follow a decade later[66].

In addition to surveying and confiscating monastic property, Cromwell was employed directly in connexion with the new buildings at Oxford and Ipswich. He drew up all the necessary deeds for both foundations, and was appointed receiver-general of Cardinal’s College by Wolsey in 1527. He kept account of all the incomes from the suppressed houses and all the expenses incident to the building of both colleges. He was continually superintending the workmen at Oxford and Ipswich, and reported their progress to his master. The Dean of the college at Ipswich wrote to the Cardinal, Sept. 26, 1528, how Cromwell came thither with copes, vestments, and plate, and took great pains to see all the stuff carried in safely, and to prepare hangings and benches for the Hall. Long lists of the manors and monasteries, the incomes of which were devoted to the building and establishment of the two colleges, are to be seen to-day at the Record Office, and attest the gigantic amount of labour that he performed[67].

Cromwell’s efficiency in carrying on this work was only equalled by his notorious accessibility to bribes and presents in the disposal of monastic leases. Adding to this the fact that the measure was radically unpopular in itself, and that when no bribes were offered, Cromwell and most of Wolsey’s other agents were harsh and overbearing in the extreme, the reader ceases to wonder at the outburst of popular indignation. The minute Wolsey’s back was turned Cromwell and his companion Dr. Alen, a hard and grasping man equally well trained in business, proceeded to use the power given into their hands to enrich themselves by every possible means, some of which were utterly unjustifiable. The monastery which could pay a large bribe was often left untouched; of those that were suppressed, probably a certain proportion of the spoils was never employed at Oxford or Ipswich, but went straight into the pockets of the suppressors[68]. Petitions to save farms for poor people, or to get benefices for those whose property was gone, were answered by Cromwell favourably, if granting them meant a substantial reward for him; unfavourably, if the reverse. He became so generally hated that in August, 1527, it was said that a ‘sanctuary man’ lay in wait to slay him, and Cardinal Pole, who was then in London and knew him well, informs us that it was commonly reported that he had been sent to prison, and would be punished for his crimes as Wolsey’s agent[69].

But in spite of all this, instead of being removed from his important post, Cromwell kept on rising to higher favour and more importance. In April, 1527, Henry Lacy writes to congratulate him on his promotion through Wolsey’s favour. In May of the same year he is mentioned as a granter of annuities. His position brought him a great amount of patronage. In 1528 Richard Bellyssis promises him a good gelding, if he will prefer a friend to the position of mint-master in Durham. A merchant requests him to get his son a promotion from the Cardinal. He received many petitions from poor men, who feared they would lose house and home through the dissolution of the monastery from which they were held. But the noble and great, as well as the lowly and humble, were his correspondents and suitors. The Abbot of York writes his heartfelt thanks for his kindness in speaking well of him and his monastery to Wolsey, and Lord Berners begs for his aid in his dealings with the Cardinal[70].

By far the greater portion of Cromwell’s correspondence during the years 1525–1529 is connected with the suppression of the monasteries or the foundation of Wolsey’s colleges. Reports and receipts of money from his agents who visited the religious houses in various parts of the country at his orders, or who superintended the works at Ipswich and Oxford, crowd in upon him with great frequency. Deeds of the sale of castles and manors, valuations and inventories of the property of various monasteries, are received by him in large numbers[71]. In these letters we frequently meet with the names of William Brabazon and Ralph Sadler, who were destined in the near future to become so well known as his agents and commissioners when he entered the King’s service. Before this period he had made the acquaintance of Stephen Vaughan, his friend and correspondent in later years, who figured in connexion with Tyndale in the Low Countries. Vaughan was certainly known to Cromwell at least as early as 1523[72]; and in 1526 was employed by the Cardinal’s servant in connexion with the college at Oxford. In April, 1527, we find Cromwell helping his friend in the recovery of certain goods lost on the sea, and in the following year Vaughan addresses a cordial letter to his benefactor, reporting various things of interest in London, and announcing that he has found so strong a chain for the wicket of Cromwell’s house at Austin Friars Gate, that it will be impossible for any one to enter by force[73]. A year later he was employed as Cromwell’s agent in the Netherlands.

Though mainly occupied with Wolsey’s affairs, Cromwell’s correspondence during the years 1524–1529 shows that he still kept up his business as a lawyer independently. William Bareth writes in November, 1525, that he trusts he will solicit his matter to Mr. Rowe, and sends his wife six plovers ‘for to drynke a quart of wyn withall[74]’; in August, 1526, George Monoux, alderman, promises Cromwell that if his ‘grete matier’ is brought to a safe conclusion, he shall have twenty marks[75]. A ‘lovyng lettere’ from the Aldermen of our Lady’s Gild in Boston, in Dec. 1528, shows that Cromwell still retained the friendship which he probably made years before by obtaining for them the indulgences from the Pope by the offer of choice sweetmeats. It was doubtless through him that the Gild gained the privilege of supplying rare and delicate fowls for the Cardinal’s sumptuous table[76]. Cromwell also found time to correspond with Miles Coverdale, who was then at Cambridge, and who writes with enthusiasm of the pleasures of a visit to his friend in London[77].

It is probable that the terrible sweating sickness which ravaged England from 1527 to 1528 carried off Cromwell’s wife Elizabeth, as there is no further mention of her in his later papers and correspondence, except in his will of July, 1529, where she is referred to as his ‘late Wyff[78].’ She left him one son, Gregory, who appears to have been a dull and plodding lad, and who, after his mother’s death, was sent with his very precocious cousin, Christopher Wellyfed, and several other boys, to be put under the care of a tutor at Cambridge, John Chekyng by name, whose correspondence with Cromwell about the progress of ‘his scolers’ is very interesting and entertaining[79]. Chekyng seems at the very outset to have been unfavourably impressed with Gregory’s talents, declares that he has been so badly taught that he could hardly conjugate three verbs when committed to his care, and reports that he is now studying ‘the things most conducive to the reading of authors,’ and spends the rest of the day in forming letters; while Christopher does not require ‘much stirring up.’ A little later he sends word that Gregory is getting on well in learning under his care, and desires his father to send five yards of ‘marble frieze,’ for his winter ‘galberdyne’; and again, in 1530, he declares that he has been so successful in his teaching, that Gregory will be ‘loadyd with Latyne’ before he comes home again; but it is evident throughout that Chekyng considers every step in advance to have been due to the excellence of his own tuition, rather than to the aptitude of his pupil. If the tone of Gregory’s letters to his father be taken as a criterion of the boy’s character, he must indeed have been stupid and slow beyond belief[80]. But Cromwell was too much occupied with his own affairs, to pay much attention to the remarks of honest John Chekyng. Indeed there is reason to think that his grasping disposition showed itself in small ways to such an extent that he did not always pay the very moderate bills that the tutor sent in for Gregory’s board, lodging, and tuition; but instead taunted Chekyng with not having done well with his ‘folks.’ To these insults Chekyng replied that he had brought up six M.A.’s and fellows of colleges, and that the least Cromwell could do was to pay for the furniture which his scholars had ruined; he then goes on to tell how Christopher ‘dyd hynge a candel in a playt to loyk apone hys boyk and so fell ascleype and the candell fell into the bed strawe’ and there were burnt the bed, bolster, ‘three overleydes and a sparver[81].’

In spite of his niggardly treatment of John Chekyng, it is certain that Cromwell was in very comfortable circumstances during his years of service under Wolsey. An inventory of his goods at his house at Austin Friars, dated June 26, 1527[82], which exists to-day at the Public Record Office, proves that his dwelling was furnished handsomely if not luxuriously, while a draft of his will, written July 12, 1529[83], indicates that his property at that time was by no means inconsiderable. It is to this document that we owe the greater part of our present information concerning Cromwell’s family. It is written in the hand of Cromwell’s chief clerk, and was altered at a later date by Cromwell himself[84]. The document is for the most part self-explanatory, but there are a few interesting facts to be especially noted in connexion with it. The bequests to Cromwell’s daughters ‘Anne and Grace’ and to his ‘litill Doughter Grace’ are our only proof that he had other children than Gregory; and the fact that both these items were crossed out after the year 1529 possibly indicates that the daughters died when young. We also learn that Cromwell’s nephew Richard, the son of Katherine Cromwell and Morgan Williams, had followed in his uncle’s footsteps, and was ‘seruaunt with my lorde Marques Dorssett’ at the time that the will was first composed; but he certainly received other employment soon afterwards, for the name of his master was scored through in the will by Cromwell at a later date, and we also know from other sources that Richard Williams entered his uncle’s service and was active in suppressing the monasteries and in subduing the Pilgrimage of Grace, during the year 1536 and afterwards[85]. Before this date he had changed his name to Cromwell, and later became great-grandfather to the Protector[86]. His mother died before 1529, for Cromwell in his will refers to Elizabeth Wellyfed as his ‘onlye Suster.’ Cromwell’s wife, as we have already seen, had also died before the will was made; her sister Joan married a certain John Williamson, an old friend of Cromwell’s, who later figured prominently in the latter’s service. We also meet with many of the other names mentioned in this will, in Cromwell’s later correspondence. Nearly all the friends of his earlier days were employed by him in one capacity or another as spies, agents, or even minor ambassadors to foreign Courts, after he had entered the King’s service.