The years of
Thomas Cromwell in power were arguably the most crucial in
the early-modern history of England. The changes he masterminded were vast and resonate to this day and yet, so many details of the man’s life are missing, the narrative is incomplete. We might ask if Thomas Cromwell is the sort of man who we might invite into our apartment for dinner so that we can engage him in interesting conversations?
For historians, playwrights and novelists that remains a difficult question.
Everyone who has taken any interest in the Tudor era will have an instant recollection of Thomas Cromwell, invariably prompting a range of expressions such as ‘sinister’, ‘scheming’, ‘despotic’, the ‘pragmatic King’s fixer’ and so on. For some he remains simply one of the most hated men who ever held public office in all English history.
The exceptional Cambridge scholar Sir Geoffrey Elton was concerned with Cromwell’s role in the Tudor court, the church and the inchoate English state. Elton sifted through obscure manuscripts and records from the Parliamentary archives as well as the Statutes that were enacted during Cromwell’s later years, whereas no attempt was made to write a biography of the man and that was because to Elton, Cromwell 'the man' was a nightmare. Many historians have attempted to peer behind the screen in the last 50 years, looking more at Cromwell’s life, his mind and motives rather than a minute examination of policies, of ransacked monasteries and a nation that began to distance itself from its Continental neighbours, most of which were then under the all-embracing title of the Holy Roman Empire.
Many cannot tear themselves away from Holbein’s portrait of a portly bureaucrat with podgy hands, emotionless and fussy over the papers he closely clutches. Others have more-recently shown a renewed enthusiasm for a task that is certainly problematic.
I have before me a copy of Loades’ biography published in 2013, and in it he devotes a mere
four pages to Cromwell’s upbringing and his sojourn on the Continent. Loades is swift to return Thomas to England and scrutinise his dealings with the Parliament, with the King, Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More, and although a glimpse of the person begins to focus, Loades does not really introduce us in personal terms.
In 2014 Tracy Borman published her biography in which she ticked-off the list of set topics such as the humiliation of Catharine of Aragon, the dissolution of the monasteries, the downfall of Anne Boleyn and of course the proverbial Man in Black that Holbein gave us.
This work however is significant in devoting at least three chapters to Cromwell’s life, beginning with his birth, his years as a soldier in Italy and as a cloth merchant in the Netherlands. There are several other biographies that I will oversee in due course.
Diarmaid MacCulloch is the Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and at the present time he is writing a new Cromwell biography which we may expect in early-2018. MacCulloch explains that the problem with finding the elusive human character of Cromwell is that, as meticulous he was with papers and letters almost all we have are the contents of his in-tray. When Thomas was arrested in 1540, MacCulloch explains, his loyal household clerks and friends sensed that everything that had been sent out in writing – on any number of subjects, would at any moment be seized and would be used with malicious intent by their Master’s enemies. We picture several nights at Austin Friars with manuscripts and letters being consigned to the hearth and in so doing half of the archives were lost. The drafts and letter-books (handwritten precis of outward correspondence) were the out-tray and the staff’s reasoning was sound in that any suspect’s writings to others were far more valuable to gain a conviction than what he had received.
It ought to noted that the Professor is generalising here, because a very large archive of Cromwell's papers is extant. I have a copy of Thomas Cromwell on Church and Commonwealth: Selected Letters, 1523-1540, edited by A. J. Slavin who examined and photographed some 400 letters of Thomas Cromwell that are held in the British Library and the Public Records Office. They are however, replies to what came into his 'in-tray', and are confined to official subjects and so they do not express his subjective opinions to any degree.
Many are just tersely-officious commands, to put it mildly. For example from April 1535, 'To Pole', a curt directive that bears the tone of regal displeasure, for Cardinal Pole had been linked to Yorkist rebels who had been executed for treason. Cromwell warns Pole, "I require you to have indifferent consideration and so to order yourself therein."(Slavin, p. 74.) It is a brief illustration of MacCulloch's complaint, that the surviving correspondence contains no sentimental reminisces of Thomas' past experiences nor what his personal feeings might have been. (but see elsewhere here, where one letter did at least did reveal a wry sense of humour.)
There is, continues MacCulloch, the problem with writing a Cromwell biography in that he is a close-relative of Macavity the Cat. T.S. Elliot’s poem describes an elusive mouser named Macavity:
the early-modern history of England. The changes he masterminded were vast and resonate to this day and yet, so many details of the man’s life are missing, the narrative is incomplete. We might ask if Thomas Cromwell is the sort of man who we might invite into our apartment for dinner so that we can engage him in interesting conversations?
For historians, playwrights and novelists that remains a difficult question.
Everyone who has taken any interest in the Tudor era will have an instant recollection of Thomas Cromwell, invariably prompting a range of expressions such as ‘sinister’, ‘scheming’, ‘despotic’, the ‘pragmatic King’s fixer’ and so on. For some he remains simply one of the most hated men who ever held public office in all English history.
The exceptional Cambridge scholar Sir Geoffrey Elton was concerned with Cromwell’s role in the Tudor court, the church and the inchoate English state. Elton sifted through obscure manuscripts and records from the Parliamentary archives as well as the Statutes that were enacted during Cromwell’s later years, whereas no attempt was made to write a biography of the man and that was because to Elton, Cromwell 'the man' was a nightmare. Many historians have attempted to peer behind the screen in the last 50 years, looking more at Cromwell’s life, his mind and motives rather than a minute examination of policies, of ransacked monasteries and a nation that began to distance itself from its Continental neighbours, most of which were then under the all-embracing title of the Holy Roman Empire.
Many cannot tear themselves away from Holbein’s portrait of a portly bureaucrat with podgy hands, emotionless and fussy over the papers he closely clutches. Others have more-recently shown a renewed enthusiasm for a task that is certainly problematic.
I have before me a copy of Loades’ biography published in 2013, and in it he devotes a mere
four pages to Cromwell’s upbringing and his sojourn on the Continent. Loades is swift to return Thomas to England and scrutinise his dealings with the Parliament, with the King, Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More, and although a glimpse of the person begins to focus, Loades does not really introduce us in personal terms.
In 2014 Tracy Borman published her biography in which she ticked-off the list of set topics such as the humiliation of Catharine of Aragon, the dissolution of the monasteries, the downfall of Anne Boleyn and of course the proverbial Man in Black that Holbein gave us.
This work however is significant in devoting at least three chapters to Cromwell’s life, beginning with his birth, his years as a soldier in Italy and as a cloth merchant in the Netherlands. There are several other biographies that I will oversee in due course.
Diarmaid MacCulloch is the Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and at the present time he is writing a new Cromwell biography which we may expect in early-2018. MacCulloch explains that the problem with finding the elusive human character of Cromwell is that, as meticulous he was with papers and letters almost all we have are the contents of his in-tray. When Thomas was arrested in 1540, MacCulloch explains, his loyal household clerks and friends sensed that everything that had been sent out in writing – on any number of subjects, would at any moment be seized and would be used with malicious intent by their Master’s enemies. We picture several nights at Austin Friars with manuscripts and letters being consigned to the hearth and in so doing half of the archives were lost. The drafts and letter-books (handwritten precis of outward correspondence) were the out-tray and the staff’s reasoning was sound in that any suspect’s writings to others were far more valuable to gain a conviction than what he had received.
It ought to noted that the Professor is generalising here, because a very large archive of Cromwell's papers is extant. I have a copy of Thomas Cromwell on Church and Commonwealth: Selected Letters, 1523-1540, edited by A. J. Slavin who examined and photographed some 400 letters of Thomas Cromwell that are held in the British Library and the Public Records Office. They are however, replies to what came into his 'in-tray', and are confined to official subjects and so they do not express his subjective opinions to any degree.
Many are just tersely-officious commands, to put it mildly. For example from April 1535, 'To Pole', a curt directive that bears the tone of regal displeasure, for Cardinal Pole had been linked to Yorkist rebels who had been executed for treason. Cromwell warns Pole, "I require you to have indifferent consideration and so to order yourself therein."(Slavin, p. 74.) It is a brief illustration of MacCulloch's complaint, that the surviving correspondence contains no sentimental reminisces of Thomas' past experiences nor what his personal feeings might have been. (but see elsewhere here, where one letter did at least did reveal a wry sense of humour.)
There is, continues MacCulloch, the problem with writing a Cromwell biography in that he is a close-relative of Macavity the Cat. T.S. Elliot’s poem describes an elusive mouser named Macavity:
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
We don’t suspect that a mysterious cat is by-default menacing, nor unworthy of our attention and so there is a purpose for examining Cromwell much deeper, and it is becoming clearer that a clarification of the Lord Chancellor’s momentous actions can be found as much as in the person who he became after he left England’s shores as it is in the Statutes. We can examine the journals, diaries, letters and papers of those who knew him to fill in many of the intriguing gaps. Also, the world he inhabited with its customs, clothes, household rituals.
Like that cat, we can discern a substantial amount about that personal side to Cromwell
as well as explain just how he achieved momentous changes and what his motives were from his deeds. I am not pursuing a shadow. Holbein’s portrait and two book-covers show only one side of Cromwell’s face but I have just begun to see him much closer, in full-face, a vital step before I open my door and begin the dinner-party. He has extraordinary experiences to share with us and so it will be an entertaining night.
- Borman, ibid.
- Loades. ibid.- MacCulloch, D. Thomas Cromwell review –
new biography of the hero of Wolf Hall. September 3, 2014. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/03/thomas-cromwell-untold-story-tracy-borman-review
- Eliot. T.S. Macavity: The Mystery Cat, from Collected Poems 1909-1962.
- Slavin, A.J. Ed. Thomas Cromwell on Church and Commonwealth: Selected Letters, 1523-1540. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated (1969).
- Eliot. T.S. Macavity: The Mystery Cat, from Collected Poems 1909-1962.
- Slavin, A.J. Ed. Thomas Cromwell on Church and Commonwealth: Selected Letters, 1523-1540. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated (1969).
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