IN THE KING’S SERVICE

The decade which followed Cromwell’s appointment as counsellor to Henry VIII. witnessed some of the most striking changes that have ever taken place in England. The question which must obviously occur to every student of the period, is whether the King himself, or his new minister, was the real cause of the secular and religious revolution of the years 1530 to 1540. The difficulty of the problem is increased by the fact that Henry and Cromwell made every effort to conceal their traces; scarcely any information can be gleaned from their correspondence. We are therefore forced to draw our conclusions for the most part from external evidence and the reports of contemporary writers.

It may be justly said that in general the probabilities point to Cromwell as the true originator of the startling changes which occurred soon after his accession to power. The fact that the ultimate object of all these changes was the concentration of power in the hands of the Crown is not in itself of great value in determining the identity of their originator; for the strengthening of the monarchy was an end which both King and minister always kept in view: in the methods by which this object was attained, however, we have a most valuable clue to aid us in the solution of our problem. These methods were all intensely Cromwellian: their directness and efficiency are essentially and distinctively characteristic of the King’s new minister. In the contrast between the dawdling ineffectiveness of Wolsey’s device for solving the problem of the King’s divorce, and the summary, revolutionary process by which it was finally secured after the Cardinal’s fall, lies our strongest ground for supposing that it was at Cromwell’s instance that the decisive step was taken. It seems almost impossible that Henry, after having suffered himself to be guided so long by Wolsey, in the management of his ‘grete matier’ should have adopted at the Cardinal’s death a plan to secure his wishes, so thoroughly repugnant to the principles of his old adviser, unless the idea had been put into his head by another. When the King had once determined to break with Rome, it followed as a matter of course that the advice of the minister who had suggested the first step, should be adopted in devising measures to secure the King in the new position which he had assumed. The means employed to attain this end—the intimidation of the clergy and the suppression of the monasteries, the attacks on the independence of Parliament, the ruthless execution of those who opposed the late innovations—all bear the stamp of the sinister genius of Cromwell as unmistakably as the great revolution that rendered them necessary. Documentary evidence too comes in to help us here; scarcely an important Act was passed in Parliament between the years 1533 and 1540, of which there is not some previous mention in Cromwell’s papers and memoranda. Against these reasons it may be urged that none of the foreign ambassadors at the English Court mentions Cromwell as an important factor in the government until three years after he entered the King’s service, and that the country in general certainly regarded the events of the years 1530 to 1533 as the work of Henry alone; and that these facts are strong testimony that the King’s new minister did not attain any high degree of prominence until the crucial period of the struggle with Rome had passed. But this paucity of contemporary information concerning Cromwell’s earlier years in the King’s service may be better explained in another way. If Henry’s new minister was the true author of all the revolutionary measures of this period, it was certainly most unlikely that he should be paraded before the eyes of the people as such; it was, on the contrary, to his own interest, and also to the King’s, that he should be kept in the background. By permitting the people to think that Henry was the real originator of all the new schemes for establishing the Royal Supremacy in Church and State, the suddenness of the transition between Wolsey’s ministry and that of his successor was disguised. Moreover, had the people known that Cromwell was at the bottom of these changes, which were universally unpopular, nothing would have saved him from their revenge. As long as the new measures were attributed to the King, respect for the royal name was enough to prevent a revolt. Cromwell, on the contrary, who was not even of noble birth, could not have struck a blow in his own defence, had the people fastened upon him as the cause of the hated innovations. It was necessary to keep him concealed until his position was so secure that the popular odium could not shake him from it. When, in 1533, the mask was finally thrown off, Chapuys and the other foreign ambassadors realized all at once that Cromwell’s sudden burst into prominence would have been quite impossible, had not the ground been thoroughly prepared for it by important services rendered during the first years of his ministry.

Such, then, are the general reasons for thinking that Cromwell was the man who planned out and carried through the various measures which have rendered famous the period of his ministry. In examining separately the different events which took place, we shall meet with other evidence which points to the same conclusion. Most important is the account contained in Pole’s Apologia ad Carolum Quintum, which describes at length Cromwell’s first measure, his plan to secure Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon; a scheme by which he won the confidence of the King and irrevocably committed himself and his master to the policy which he followed to the end of his days. Henry, it seems from Pole’s story, had become utterly discouraged at the time of Wolsey’s death concerning the prospect of ever obtaining a separation from his first wife. He had vainly attempted to get an encouraging reply from the English clergy, and his failure in this added to his despondency; his council, which lacked all initiative, could only rejoice that he intended to abandon his efforts. At this juncture the Satanae Nuncius, as Pole names Cromwell, solicited and obtained an audience with the King, and proposed a plan by which Henry could free himself from Papal restrictions, marry Anne, divorce Katherine, and yet ostensibly remain true to the Catholic Faith.

Cromwell introduced himself with his usual tact and skill. In a few modest and carefully selected sentences he excused himself for daring to offer an opinion on a subject of which he felt himself to be so very ignorant—but, he continued, his loyalty to the King would not permit him to be silent when there was the smallest chance of his being able to serve his sovereign at this momentous crisis. He was certain, he said, that the King’s troubles were solely due to the weakness of his advisers, who listened to the opinions of the common herd, and did not dare to act upon their own responsibility. All the wise and learned were in favour of the divorce; the only thing lacking was the Papal sanction; was the King to hesitate because this could not be obtained? It would be better to follow the example of the Lutherans, who had renounced the authority of Rome. Let the King, with the consent of Parliament, declare himself Head of the Church in England, and all his difficulties would vanish. England was at present a monster with two heads. If the King should take to himself the supreme power, religious as well as secular, every incongruity would cease; the clergy would immediately realize that they were responsible to the King and not to the Pope, and would forthwith become subservient to the royal will. Henry may have been surprised by the audacity of Cromwell’s scheme, but he was also much pleased, as it promised to satisfy all his dearest wishes. The Satanae Nuncius received his hearty thanks, and was further rewarded by a seat in the Privy Council[189].

Cromwell must have realized from the first, that the adoption of his scheme to throw off the Papal authority in England would encounter the greatest opposition from the clergy, but he had already devised a plan by which every objection could be silenced and the refractory ecclesiastics overawed. His whole policy in this crisis was based on the knowledge that the position of the clergy since Wolsey’s fall was completely altered. They were no longer in any sense popular. The State Papers of the period contain many lists of the grievances of the Commons against them[190]. They had received a severe lesson from the Parliament of 1529; they were now isolated, timid and demoralized. Cromwell was the first to perceive and make use of their changed condition. At the same time he realized how completely the House of Austria had possessed itself of the Papacy; the failure of Wiltshire’s embassy to the Emperor in Bologna, in 1530[191], assured him, if he needed any assurance, that the day of compromise with the Pope was passed, and that no divorce would ever come from the Vatican; he saw that if a separation of Henry and Katherine was to be secured at all, the battle-ground on which it was to be won was not the Papal Curia at Rome, but the Houses of Convocation and Parliament.

So it was conveniently discovered that Wolsey’s guilt was shared by Convocation, the Privy Council and the Lords and Commons, and indirectly by the nation itself; as all these had recognized the Cardinal in his capacity of legate, and so had become, by language of the statute, his ‘fautors and abettors.’ Again conveniently, but also most unreasonably, while the laity, who had eagerly availed themselves of the Cardinal’s jurisdiction, were tacitly passed over, the clergy who had been the only ones to make a stand in opposition to the legatine authority, were included in the Praemunire. So in December, 1530, as Holinshed quaintly puts it, ‘the kings learned councell said plainlie’ that the ‘whole cleargie of England ... were all in the premunire[192],’ and the Attorney-General was instructed to file a brief against the entire body in the Court of King’s Bench. The clergy then assembled in Convocation, ‘and offered the King 100,000 pounds to be their good lord, and also to give them a pardon of all offences touching the Praemunire, by act of Parliament.’ To their surprise and dismay, however, Henry refused the bribe, unless, in the preamble to the grant, a clause were introduced making him ‘to be the Protector and only Supreme Head of the Church and clergy of England[193].’ The whole plot on the part of the King and the Privy Council was conducted with the greatest possible secrecy, and their real motives were probably not guessed at by the world outside. Even the astute Chapuys was completely deceived respecting the King’s actual intention. In his letters of the 23rd and 31st of January, 1531, he informs the Emperor that ‘when the King has bled the clergy, he will restore to them their liberties, and take them back into his favour,’ and later declares that ‘the whole thing was done to bring about a union between the clergy and the nobles[194].’ It was not until the 14th of February, when the entire affair had been carried through, that the Spanish ambassador really understood what was happening, and discovered that it was all something more than a striking exhibition of Tudor avarice[195].

In the meantime a number of Latin manifestoes appeared favouring the King’s divorce, and inveighing against the Papal Supremacy[196]. But in spite of all these intimidations, the clergy though weak did not intend to surrender without a struggle. We are told that ‘ille de suprematu regis conceptus haud bene placuit praelatis et clero, inde eum modificari voluerunt. Per tres itaque sessiones cum consiliariis regiis (among whom Cromwell doubtless was most prominent) ratio inita fuit quomodo regis animum flectere possent ad mollioribus verbis exprimendum articulum illum[197].’ At first Henry announced to the clergy through Rochford that the only alteration he would accept would be the insertion of the words ‘post Deum.’ In the end, however, he yielded in this point, and consented to an amendment moved by Archbishop Warham, so that in its final form the clause read ‘Ecclesiae et cleri Anglicani, cujus singularem protectorem, unicum et supremum dominicum, et quantum per Christi legem licet etiam supremum caput ipsius majestatem recognoscimus.’ Both the Canterbury and York Convocations hastened to accept this compromise, and the latter voted an additional grant of £18,000. The only bishop who raised the slightest objection to the royal demand was Cuthbert Tunstall, of Durham. It is obvious that if the famous ‘quantum per Christi legem licet’ was really enforced, the victory which the King’s party had gained was but an empty one: the amendment has been characterized as ‘a clause by which all practical value was taken out of the act[198].’ But Henry certainly had no idea of permitting a restriction as vague as this seriously to interfere with his schemes; if the qualification became really troublesome he was quite prepared to have it expunged. For the moment he had been willing tacitly to acknowledge that there was some force in the clause in order to overcome the obstinacy of his opponents, but Chapuys was certainly not far wrong in saying that it was ‘all the same as far as the King is concerned as if they had made no reservation, for no one will now be so bold as to contest with his lord the importance of this reservation[199].’ The long-deferred pardon was at last granted: though when it was first sent down from the Lords, the Commons discovered that the laity were not mentioned and so were still in the Praemunire: a deputation from the Lower House, however, waited upon the King and expressed their doubts, and though at first Henry treated them harshly, he finally succumbed, and the laity were included in the pardon[200].

But the struggle was not yet over. The following year witnessed a continuation of the attacks on the independence of the clergy. This time, however, Henry and Cromwell had determined that the brunt of the battle should be borne by Parliament, which responded to the mandates of the King and his minister with gratifying celerity. Shortly after the opening of the session, in January, 1532, there appeared in the Lower House that famous document, which is usually known as the ‘Supplication of the Commons against the Ordinaries[201].’ The designation is certainly misleading: so preponderant was the part played by one of the Commons in the preparation of this memorable petition, that it cannot be fairly regarded as the work of them all. The nature of the charges of which the ‘Supplication’ was composed, its phraseology and the handwritings in the various drafts of it which are preserved to us to-day[202] leave little doubt that it was originally devised by the genius of Cromwell. It was in fact the first of a number of measures ostensibly emanating from Parliament, but in reality prepared by the King’s minister and forced by him upon the very tractable Lords and Commons. The purport of the supplication was, in brief, to accuse the clergy of making laws and ordinances without the assent of the King or his lay subjects, of demanding excessive fees, of dealing corruptly and unfairly, especially with cases of heresy, and to request the King to take measures for the remedy of these abuses. The Ordinaries, to whom the petition was delivered from the King on April 12, at once composed a temperate and dignified reply, in which the injustice and unreasonableness of the charges preferred against them were courteously but plainly pointed out[203]. Parliament in the meantime had been prorogued for three months, but as soon as it had reassembled it was forced to take up the cudgels again[204]. The clergy had stated their case so well that Henry, in dread lest the faint-hearted Commons should abandon too soon a quarrel into which his minister had led them, thought it advisable to intervene himself in the dispute. A short interview between the King and the Speaker was enough to reanimate the drooping spirits of the House: Henry was even spared the trouble of a frank avowal of his attitude in words—a gracious promise to be ‘indifferent’ between the disputants was quite sufficient to ensure the continuance of the struggle. The Ordinaries were not slow to discover that their first reply had been totally ineffectual, and hastened to compose a second which, though maintaining in general the position which had originally been assumed, contained a concession that no new laws should be published without the royal consent[205]. A good deal more haggling, however, was necessary before the final compromise was reached[206]. In fact matters moved so slowly that the King was obliged to make (or let Cromwell make for him) another of his suspiciously timely discoveries to the effect that his sovereign rights as Supreme Head were not clear, because every bishop at his consecration had made an oath of allegiance to the Pope. The Commons were asked to rectify this, and were about to pass severe censure on the bishops, when they were prorogued once more on account of the ragings of the plague. Before he let them go, however, the King had probably ascertained that the clergy intended to submit. Threatened on all sides, Convocation on the 16th of May finally agreed not to pass any more new regulations without the King’s licence, and to examine and revise, according to the royal wishes, the canons already made[207]. The most important result of the controversy for us to notice is that the King, acting (as he evidently did) on the advice of Cromwell, had succeeded in reducing Convocation to complete subjugation, and in making Parliament pliant to his will, as it had never been before. The scheme of controlling the clergy is doubly significant, first, as the cause of a great change in itself; second, as the first step of the dominant policy of the next ten years, for establishing the Royal Supremacy in Church and State. It must not be forgotten however that Cromwell’s action, in defiance of Papal authority at this juncture, arose from no hate of the Romish dogmas nor from any love of the new religion. He carried out all his schemes solely from political motives; the religious, the emotional side left him absolutely untouched; the practical, the politically serviceable aspect of the case, alone appealed to him.

Popular as Henry doubtless was, Cromwell must have realized, when he thus threw himself heart and soul on the King’s side in the divorce case, that he had staked everything on the continuance of the royal favour. The best of the clergy were strongly against the cause of Anne Boleyn, and there were but few who disagreed with them. The general sympathy of the nation for Katherine was greater than ever. Chapuys tells us that Henry was urged by the crowd in the streets to take back the Queen, and that Anne Boleyn was not infrequently publicly insulted[208]. The mob, and still more the friars, spoke of her openly as a common prostitute, who ‘ruled the King and beggared spiritualty and temporalty also.’ A letter of the imperial ambassador tells us that the provincial of the Friars Observants at Greenwich (better known as Friar Peto) preached before the King, and told him that ‘the unbounded affection of princes and their false counsellors deprived them of their knowledge of the truth, and that Henry was endangering his crown by his marriage, for great and little were murmuring at it.’ The King concealed his vexation as best he could, but later ordered one of his chaplains to preach there in his presence, and contradict all that Peto had said. At the end of this sermon the warden arose, and answering for his minister in his absence, dared to say in Henry’s presence that the royal chaplain had lied. The King was very angry and had the warden and preacher both arrested[209]. Most of the Greenwich friars were eager to stand by their brethren, but some proved less incorruptible, and gave secret information against the steadfast ones.

The result of all these murmurings among commons and friars was that Cromwell was kept very busy in finding out and extirpating ‘sedycyous opynyons’ as they were termed. In order to clinch the advantages that were to accrue to Henry as a result of his newly-assumed ecclesiastical position, it was as necessary to discover and either destroy or convert the laymen opposed to it, as it was to keep in submission the clergy from whose hands it had been snatched. Henry could have probably found no abler man in the realm to accomplish this purpose than his new minister. Early in 1532 Cromwell began to create a system of espionage, the most effective that England had ever seen, that in a short time was to render unsafe the most guarded expression of dissent in politics or religion. The success which this organized method of reporting treason later obtained, is one of the most striking proofs of the relentless energy of its originator. But Cromwell’s efforts to extirpate sedition, and to encourage the new ecclesiastical system, were not confined to England alone during these first years of his ministry. The years 1531 and 1532 must not be passed over without some slight reference to his connexion with William Tyndale. There was no counsellor about the King, upon whom Cromwell could rely as an intelligent and consistent ally, to help him carry out his schemes of ‘political Protestantism.’ In this dilemma he turned to William Tyndale, who was at that time in the Low Countries. The theory of ‘one King, one law in the realm; no class of men exempt from the temporal sword, no law except the law of the land’ advocated in ‘The Obedience of a Christian Man,’ doubtless struck Cromwell, if he read the book. It was perhaps the nearest approach he had yet found in writing to the policy he was steadily pursuing; he immediately desired to induce the reformer to return to England and to enlist him in the defence of his great cause. The fact that Cromwell was able to persuade the King to permit him to attempt this is a good proof of his influence with Henry. In May, 1530, Tyndale had been denounced as a perverter of God’s word[210]; but so great was the change which the new minister’s accession to power had wrought in the royal policy, that Henry now allowed Cromwell to write to his old friend Stephen Vaughan in the Netherlands[211], and commission him to try and discover where Tyndale was, and induce him to return to England. To this request Vaughan sent a double reply to Henry and Cromwell, informing them that he had written to the reformer (three separate letters to different places, not knowing where he was) and had received his answer, in which Tyndale said that the news of what had lately happened in England made him afraid to go there[212]. In a confidential postscript to the letter to Cromwell, Vaughan writes in most glowing terms about the reformer, saying that he was of far greater knowledge than the King’s Highness took him for, as plainly appeared by his works. ‘Would God he were in England.’ As usual Vaughan’s enthusiasm had run away with his discretion. He was the exact opposite of Cromwell in this respect; he was ever full of emotion and feeling, while his master was to the last degree practical and calculating.

In spite of his first rebuff, Vaughan persevered in his attempts, and on the 25th of March sent Cromwell another letter, in which he expressed a little more hope of getting Tyndale to go to England[213]. Three weeks later his efforts received some more substantial reward, for on the 18th of April he wrote to Henry[214], that he had at last obtained an interview with the reformer, and that though the latter still refused to comply with his request, his words had been such as to arouse the enthusiasm of Cromwell’s agent more than ever. With this letter Vaughan sent to Henry the manuscript of Tyndale’s new book against Sir Thomas More, called the Answer, which the reformer did not wish to put in print till Henry had seen it, because the latter had been displeased at the hasty and unlicensed printing of his former work, The Practise of Prelates. The letter and the book were not destined, however, to have the desired effect on the King. The Answer was sufficiently plain to indicate that Tyndale’s religious beliefs were not of the sort that would ever be serviceable to Henry; the reformer was altogether too full of Protestantism for its own sake, to suit either the King or his counsellor. For once Cromwell had mistaken his man. To say that the King was thoroughly vexed and annoyed, when he had perused Vaughan’s letter, and the enclosed work, is a mild statement of the facts. The original letter which Vaughan wrote is not extant, but there is a copy of it in the British Museum which ends most abruptly with the words ‘To declare to your Magyste what In my pore Judgement I thynke of the man, I asserteyne your grace I haue not communyd with A man[215]’; a fact which suggests the possibility that the irritable King vented his anger on the unoffending sheet of paper, and tore it in two. The letter with which Cromwell, at the King’s direction, replied to Vaughan, is a still surer index to the impression which the latter’s report had produced on the King. What with the precipitation of his emotional, enthusiastic, and unpractical friend, Cromwell must have been placed in a very awkward position. The many corrections and interlineations in the draft of the letter he wrote in reply to Vaughan, sufficiently reveal his great perplexity and bewilderment[216]. The subject-matter of the letter will speak for itself. The rage of the King is vividly described, and Vaughan is repeatedly warned to abandon the reformer: but in spite of everything he continued to attempt to persuade Tyndale to return. He had two more fruitless interviews with the latter, described in his letters to Henry of the 20th of May, and to Cromwell on the 19th of June[217], and after that came back to England for the summer. In November he returned to the Netherlands, and wrote again to Cromwell warmly on Tyndale’s behalf, but not a word did he receive in reply[218]. In the meantime Henry and Cromwell had dispatched Sir Thomas Elyot to arrest the reformer and bring him home[219]. Vaughan finally saw the danger he ran in advocating the cause of the author of the ‘venemous and pestiferous workes,’ and dared say no more. The rest of his letters during these two years do not even once mention him. The whole Tyndale episode is noteworthy as the nearest approach to a mistake in Cromwell’s internal policy. Henry’s anger probably gave him a clear warning that many more such would bring him to certain ruin. He was saved from serious consequences in this case, only because he had amply atoned for it by his brilliant success in obtaining the submission of the clergy.

Cromwell was also occupied, during these two years, in re-establishing Wolsey’s foundation at Oxford, under the new name of King Henry the Eighth’s College. He was appointed receiver-general and supervisor of all the lands belonging to it; and the adjustment of claims, transfer of property, new foundation and charter kept him very busy, and gave him an excellent opportunity to display his legal talent. He also superintended the building of a new palace at Westminster, regulated the wages of the men working on the fortifications at Calais, and was also busy with minor duties in the King’s own household—the care of the royal plate and jewels, and even the drawing of patterns for Henry’s robes of state[220]. From the close of the year 1529 until his fall, the best index to the various occupations in which he was engaged is afforded by his famous ‘remembrances.’ These consist largely of short and usually incomplete sentences, sometimes even single words, jotted down at odd moments by Cromwell or his chief clerk, on loose sheets of paper—often on the backs of letters and drafts of important documents. They are for the most part absolutely disjointed and unconnected in matter, form, and handwriting. Sandwiched in between apparently careless phrases which later expand into the most drastic of parliamentary enactments, we find minute details concerning the wages of labourers, the cost of New Year’s presents at the Court, or even matters of a private nature: next to a memorandum for the signing of a letter for some Spaniards occur the significant words, ‘To Remembre the Auncyent Cronycle of magna Carta and how libera sit Cam into the Statute[221].’ The less important items are of course by far the more numerous, especially in the first six years when the King loaded his new minister with details of the greatest variety and complexity. Towards the last the ‘remembrances’ are fewer in number, and deal less extensively with minor matters; but even up to the very end we find ample evidence that the King’s minister carried in his head an amount of detail of a comparatively unimportant nature, which would have been quite impossible for a man like his predecessor. The Cardinal, absorbed in studying the great diplomatic combinations of continental Europe, had shamefully neglected minor affairs at home. Cromwell, in his ten years of power, not only atoned for the errors of Wolsey, but also familiarized himself with every detail of domestic administration to an extent that no King or minister had ever done in England before. It would have been almost impossible to carry through the tremendous changes which had followed the divorce, without the aid of a counsellor of the peculiar talents of Thomas Cromwell.

The thread of our narrative now becomes so complicated, when the new minister is at last fully installed in the King’s service, that it will be necessary to depart from the chronological order of events hitherto followed, and to treat separately each phase of Cromwell’s policy, up to the reaction of 1539. The Internal and Foreign Administration, Suppression of the Monasteries, of the Pilgrimage of Grace, &c., all move on hand in hand, and in order to understand their bearing on one another, it is only needful to remember that they were all the work of one man, and were proceeding in general at the same time.