This is all doubtless true, but whether or not he was alone in the stand he made against the bill is quite another question. Henry was perfectly satisfied with humbling the Cardinal to the extent that he had already done, and did not wish him to suffer any more; in fact the opposition, consisting of most of the nobles led by Norfolk and Anne Boleyn, were in constant fear up to the day of Wolsey’s death, lest he should regain the King’s favour. If Cromwell had gone openly over to the other side at this juncture, he would have gained nothing, and incurred the odium due to a deserter. He took the only generous and right side, but in serving his master he served himself far more[152]. Wolsey, as we have seen, had made a written confession of all his misdeeds as soon as the first blow had been struck against him[153]. This confession was produced by Cromwell, and it gave the proposers of the bill of attainder an excuse for dropping it. Cromwell supplied the pretext for abandoning a measure displeasing to the King, and consequently impossible to carry through this very subservient Parliament; by so doing he gained the praise of a saviour of his master in his extremity.

This was the first step: the second was to win the favour of other nobles, while still preserving the appearance of loyally serving his fallen master. It was scarcely less important than the first, and was carried through by Cromwell with the greatest rapidity and success. His method of accomplishing it, however simple, was eminently characteristic, and merits description.

It has already been shown how thoroughly Cromwell realized the importance of money as a political force. Though the traditional reproach of parsimony and stinginess so often cast at Henry VII.[154] is in great measure unmerited, it is undeniable that his careful financial management and accurate audits had served to surround his government with an atmosphere of ostensible frugality. Henry VIII., on the contrary, delighted in outward splendour and magnificence; his Court was by far the most brilliant that England had ever beheld, and nobody could play his part there who was not prepared to lavish vast sums upon his outfit. But the greater part of the nobles were quite unable to do this. It had been an important part of the plan of Henry VII. for establishing a strong kingship to keep all possible rivals of the Crown in a state of financial dependence. Many items in the State Papers of his son’s reign bear witness to the complete success of these schemes of impoverishing the nobility[155]. Only by pawning and selling lands, estates, goods and chattels could the nobility obtain sufficient sums to make a good appearance at the brilliant Court of Henry VIII.

Such a state of affairs was a golden opportunity to a man in Cromwell’s position and of Cromwell’s talents. To Wolsey, whose mind had been intent on the larger schemes of his foreign policy, the notion of staving off the hatred of the influential people about the King by gifts of money, would never have occurred. Cromwell hit upon the scheme in a moment, as the only sure road to favour at the Court[156]. Now that Wolsey had surrendered himself almost wholly to the counsels of his painstaking, watchful, close and wholly unscrupulous adviser, Cromwell immediately persuaded him to grant annuities to the Court favourites. The casual reader must not deceive himself into thinking that this was done at Wolsey’s own suggestion; the measure was too evidently Cromwellian to leave any room to doubt its originator, and if any further proof be needed, it is furnished by evidence in the Cardinal’s papers. In a letter to Cromwell written in December, 1529, Wolsey says, ‘Yf the desspleasure of my lady Anne be [some]what asswagyd, as I praye God the same maye be, then yt shuld [be devised t]hat by sume convenyent meane she be further laboryd [for th]ys ys the only helpe and remedy. All possyble meanes [must be used for] atteynyng of hyr favor .......... I comyt me to yower wyse handling[157].’ In the same month Cromwell made out the draft of a grant by Wolsey to George Boleyn, Knight, Viscount Rochford, son and heir apparent of Thomas Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, bestowing on him an annuity of £200 out of the lands of the bishopric of Winchester, and a similar gift of £200 out of the abbey lands of St. Albans[158]. Another letter from Wolsey to Cromwell in January, 1530, says that, according to his servant’s advice, he has had Mr. Norris’s fee increased from £100 to £200, and would like to have Sir John Russell’s annuity of £20 made 40 or 50, if Cromwell thinks it expedient[159].

It is thus clear that these and other similar gifts were bestowed at Cromwell’s advice and suggestion, and that the inevitable consequence was that the advantage resulting from them accrued to a far greater extent to the Cardinal’s agent than to the Cardinal himself. Wolsey, in his confinement at Esher, was forced to trust himself implicitly to the shrewd and selfish counsellor, who moved about among those whom it was most important for him to propitiate, and soon found means to make it appear that Wolsey’s favours in reality emanated from him. Cromwell’s selection of those to whom the presents were made seems also to hint that he was working in his own interest more than in his master’s. He must have known that the members of the Boleyn party, to whom the greater part of the grants were made, hated Wolsey himself too thoroughly to permit them to forget their grudge for the sake of a few hundred pounds, but the sums bestowed were sufficiently large to make the recipients of them very friendly to the Cardinal’s agent, who to all intents and purposes appeared to be the real giver. Hints of all this must indeed have reached Wolsey’s ears. Though throughout all the period of the attainder his gratitude, as expressed in his many letters, was, in view of the real facts, most unnecessarily effusive[160], he later writes to Cromwell that he hears ‘he has not done him as good offices as he might, in connexion with his colleges and his archbishopric.’ But Cromwell had by this time got everything into his own hands, so that Wolsey was forced to do exactly as he was bidden. Whenever the Cardinal undertook anything on his own responsibility, without asking his servant’s advice, it was greatly resented. If Wolsey dared to hint that Cromwell was not wholly devoted to his interests, the latter sent back a complaining and half-threatening reply[161]. The Cardinal was even forced to write a humble apology to his agent for sending Edmund Bonner on some mission without his advice[162]. The less able Wolsey became to help himself, the more harsh and imperious was his all-powerful counsellor. With the whole control of his master’s interests at the Court in his own hands, it was exceedingly simple for a man of Cromwell’s peculiar talents to dispose the funds committed to his care in such ways as tallied best with his own interests, while casual onlookers simply regarded him as an honest servant of his fallen master; and Wolsey, unable to learn the true state of affairs at Court, was kept practically ignorant of his real designs. Cromwell had thus succeeded in attaining a most enviable position, which was aptly described in a letter which he received from Stephen Vaughan, who took the opportunity to congratulate him, and also to warn him against over-confidence in the following words:—‘A mery semblance of wether often thrustithe men into the Daungerous sees, not thinking to be sodaynly opprest wythe tempest when vnwares they be preuented and brought in great ieopardie. The Wyndes arn mutable vnsure and will not be caryed in mennys handes to blow at a becke. Parell euerywhere followithe men, from the birthe to the Dethe, And more thretenethe them whiche entreprise Difficult and vrgent matters, then those whiche only sekethe easy and light matters ye thoughe they have great apparance of vertue, such is thinstabilitie of the worlde, wher we find undique miseriam[163].’

A final opportunity was given to Cromwell to ingratiate himself with King and nobles when Henry took into his hands the revenues of St. Albans and Winchester, and of the colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. In this, even honest Cavendish could see that ‘Cromewell perceyved an occasion given him by time to helpe himselfe.’ The intricacies of the law of the period were such that annuities and fees out of the revenues of these colleges, granted by the King, after he had seized them, could only be good while Wolsey was living, because the King, having obtained his right to them by Wolsey’s attainder in the praemunire, could not retain that right after the Cardinal’s death[164]. Thus, to have the grants secure during the lifetimes of the recipients, ‘there was none other shifte but to obtaine my lord’s confirmation of their patents. Then began every man both noble and gentleman who had any patents out of Winchester and St. Albans to make suite to Mr. Cromwell to solicit their cause to my lorde to get therin his confirmation, and for his paines therin bothe worthily to reward him and every man to shewe him such pleasures as should be at all times in their small powers, whereof they assured him.... Now began matters to worke to bringe Master Cromwell into estimation in suche sorte as was muche hereafter to his increase of dignity; ... and having the ordering and disposition of the landes of these colleges he had a great occasion of suitors, besides the continual access to the King, by meanes whereof and through his witty demeanour he grewe continually into the King’s favour[165].’

It is hard to realize how deeply Wolsey felt the seizure of his two colleges. They had been the pride and joy of his declining years. Instead of working earnestly to avert their surrender into the King’s hands, as a true servant would have done, Cromwell permitted and almost welcomed it, as a means to give him a chance to further his own ends, and wrote empty, and, it would seem, almost contemptuous letters of consolation to the Cardinal, of which that of August 18 is an excellent example[166]. Instead of going to his master in his sorrow and disgrace, as Wolsey repeatedly requested him to do, he held himself aloof, and under the pretext of looking after the Cardinal’s interests at Court, contrived for his own rise and advancement. It is true that he stood by Wolsey in the parliamentary crisis in 1529, and that it was largely through his efforts that Wolsey obtained his temporary pardon in February, 1530; but when, at the last, the Cardinal’s enemies turned against him a second time and secured his complete downfall, there is no record of Cromwell’s saying a word or doing a thing in his behalf. On November 29, 1530, Wolsey died, shattered and disgraced.

It is very unfortunate that there still exist so few of Cromwell’s letters during the last two years of Wolsey’s life. There are preserved at present only twelve letters from him during this period[167], seven of which are addressed to Wolsey. In none of them does he give evidence of a sincere desire to serve his master at all costs; the dominant note of the greater part of them is one of selfish and rather supercilious advice; of a morality easy and cheap, because the preacher of it evidently felt himself beyond the possibility of its ever being applicable in his own case. There is also very little trustworthy information about the means he employed to introduce himself to the King, except what has already been mentioned in connexion with Wolsey’s fall. Foxe asserts that Sir Christopher Hales, Master of the Rolls, commended him to Henry, and further affirms that Sir John Russell said a good word for him, in return for Cromwell’s saving his life at Bologna, so that the latter was enabled to have a private conversation with the King in Westminster Gardens[168]. Part of this story is obviously false; Cromwell could not have been at Bologna when Sir John Russell was (between 1524 and 1528), because he was occupied in England at that time, as his correspondence shows. To judge from this, little reliance can be placed on the rest of Foxe’s tale; and there are no contemporary documents that bear out his statements. Another story, which is perhaps more probable, is that of Chapuys[169], who states that at Wolsey’s death Sir John Wallop attacked Cromwell with insults and threats, so that the latter for protection procured an audience with Henry, whom he promised to make the richest king that ever was in England. Henry, it appears, was so struck with this offer, that he immediately made Cromwell a member of his Council, but told nobody about it for four months. This tale is in many respects similar to the account contained in Pole’s Apologia: but the story of the Cardinal does not mention the quarrel with Wallop, and the report of Chapuys does not say a word about the plan for the solution of Henry’s ‘grete matier’ by which Cromwell, according to Pole, completely fascinated the King. All the accounts, however, seem to agree that by some means he managed to secure an interview with Henry soon after Wolsey’s death, at which he clinched everything that he had already gained, and obtained the favour of the King by one master-stroke. Pole’s story of this interview contains information which leads us into the thick of Cromwell’s political career. Before we proceed to examine it in detail a brief chapter must be devoted to a description of the actors and past events of the great political drama in which Cromwell was to play a part, and to a further analysis of his own character and ideals.