Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII (14 page)

…whereupon the said Lords and Commons by great deliberation finally be resolved that it is and shall be much more to the pleasure of Almighty God and for the honour of this his realm that the possessions of such spiritual religious houses, now being spent, spoiled and wasted for the increase and maintenance of sin, should be used and converted to better uses…

Act for the Dissolution of the Minor Monasteries

Anne Boleyn was executed in May 1536, and Cromwell’s coup against her and her family-based faction had been carried out with the co-operation of Catherine’s friends at court, particularly Carew and the Courtenays, and they expected her fall, and the consequent bastardisation of Elizabeth, to be accompanied by the rehabilitation of Mary. Henry, however, did not see the connection. As far as he was concerned, it was his authority which she was flouting, and he was looking for an unequivocal submission. As he told Chapuys a few days before the crisis broke,

As to the legitimation of our daughter Mary … if she would submit to our grace, without wrestling against the determination of our laws, we would acknowledge her and use her as our daughter, but we would not be directed or pressed therein…
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Anne’s death changed nothing, and although there was plenty of popular support for her, and Jane Seymour herself urged Mary’s unconditional restoration, there is no sign that Henry had changed his mind. Logically the deaths of Catherine and Anne should have restored the status quo in his relations with the papacy, and Pope Paul looked forward to renewed negotiations. However, Henry had no such intention, because what the conservatives did not understand, and Cromwell did, was just how deeply the king was committed to his title as Supreme Head of the Church. It was a central aspect of his special relationship with God.
²
Chapuys also noted this fact in his reports to Charles V, although he attributed it to the king’s ‘obstinacy’. Consequently, until Mary recognised that, there was no hope of a reconciliation. Under a similar misapprehension, several of Mary’s former servants turned up at Hunsdon, expecting to be re-employed. However the status of the household there was indeterminate, because both the king’s daughters were now illegitimate, and Chapuys wisely advised Lady Shelton to take on no one without the king’s express authorisation.
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Meanwhile Mary herself, who seems to have shared the common misapprehension about Anne, waited expectantly for a signal from her father that she was forgiven. None came, and the felicitations of her supporters, which arrived constantly during the latter part of May, began to have a hollow sound.

A week after the queen’s execution, on 26 May, she did the obvious thing and wrote to Thomas Cromwell, asking for his intercession now that the woman who had alienated her from her father was gone. Well informed of the king’s state of mind, the secretary replied that her obedience was looked for as a condition of reinstatement.
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However Mary, whose sophisticated education seems to have given her a very naive view of the real world, did not read the signal. She wrote again on the 30th, asking to see her father and professing her willingness to be ‘as obedient to the king’s grace as you can reasonably require of me’, not apparently realising that this reservation rendered the whole offer nugatory. The following day she wrote a disarming letter to Henry himself, acknowledging her offences in general terms ‘in as humble and lowly a manner as is possible’, and asking for his forgiveness and blessing.
⁵
She congratulated him upon his recent marriage to Jane Seymour, perhaps recognising her as a friend. Unfortunately she spoiled the effect of this dutiful submissiveness by making it clear that there were limits to her obedience. She would obey her father in all things next to God, ‘beseeching your highness to consider that I am but a woman and your child, who hath committed her soul only to God, and her body to be ordered in this world as it shall stand with your pleasure’. Since her obedience to God embraced both the points at issue, the ecclesiastical supremacy and her mother’s marriage, she was conceding nothing, and Henry did not bother to reply.
⁶
Preoccupied with Jane, he presumably saw her letter, but nevertheless went ahead with drawing up a set of articles to be presented to her which would leave no room for evasion. Chapuys, probably informed by Cromwell, was extremely worried by this development. They were allies at this point, because it did not suit either of their plans to see Mary tried, and possibly executed, for high treason. The secretary showed him the draft of a letter that he had prepared for her to sign, which the ambassador thought very dishonourable, but nevertheless agreed to go along with, realising that Henry was on the warpath. On 6 June he reported that he thought he could see an honourable way out. We do not know what this was, but it presumably did not involve the use of the letter.
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His optimism seems to have communicated itself to Mary, although this can hardly have been by Cromwell’s means, because on the 7th she wrote to the latter, full of optimism, asking for some token from the king before she paid her anticipated visit to the court. It may be that she had received the encouraging letter from Queen Jane which we know was written at about this time, because on the following day she also wrote to her father expressing her joy at the news that he had ‘withdrawn his displeasure’.
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Unfortunately her enthusiasm was premature, and again there was no response. Anxious at this silence, Mary wrote again on 10 June, asking for his blessing, and this time copying her letter to Cromwell, asking not to be pressed further in her submission than her conscience would bear. It may be that she thought that her friends in the council would succeed in changing the king’s mind, but we can imagine Cromwell’s reaction on receiving this evidence of continued obstinacy. Henry’s response was critical. On about the 15th he sent the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Sussex and Richard Sampson, the newly consecrated Bishop of Chichester, down to Hunsdon bearing his commission and two questions to which he demanded a straight answer. Would she accept her father’s ecclesiastical supremacy, repudiating the Bishop of Rome? And would she accept the nullity of her mother’s marriage?
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In a stormy and emotional confrontation, she rejected both demands, and the crisis which Cromwell and Chapuys had both dreaded had broken. The judges confirmed that she could now be proceeded against for high treason, and the council went into emergency session. Ominously her known supporters, Exeter and Fitzwilliam, were excluded from these meetings; and two of her friends in the Privy Chamber, Sir Anthony Browne and Sir Francis Bryan, were arrested and interrogated ‘concerning talk had of the estate of the Lady Mary’, presumably of her hoped-for restoration.
¹⁰
Their testimonies make interesting reading, because what emerged was not so much treasonable words as evidence of how delicate the situation had become. Some, even in the inner circle of the court, had expressed the view that Mary would make a very satisfactory heir, if only she would submit to her father. The idea that she had been conceived in good faith by parents who believed themselves to be married (
bona fide parentum
) had also been canvassed, while others had expressed doubts about her actual submission, the latter being the acceptable majority.
¹¹
The actual chronology of events at this time is confused, because on the 13th Mary wrote to Cromwell, saying that she could think of nothing better to do than to copy out the letter of submission which he had sent her. Either she did not do so, or Cromwell retained it, because on the 14th she was still wondering why she had received no token of forgiveness. When he received the news of her interview with the Duke of Norfolk, he exploded with exasperation, drafting a fierce letter of rebuke, in which he lamented his own foolishness for ever having attempted to help her. It is highly unlikely that he ever sent this letter, because he knew the king well enough to know that this game was by no means over, and that Henry would be very reluctant to proceed to extremes against his daughter.
¹²
In spite of her words to Norfolk, submission was still a possibility, because potentially she was a stabilising element in the domestic situation, and the key to improved relations with the Empire. He could not afford to give up just yet, however unpromising things looked. Consequently during the week which followed the commissioners’ visit to Hunsdon and while the council was in session, Cromwell was also using all his ingenuity to find a constructive solution to the deadlock.

When it came to the point, he seems to have achieved his objective by indirect means. He convinced Chapuys that Mary faced the alternatives of surrender or death, gambling on the hope that she did not share her mother’s taste for martyrdom. Chapuys in turn convinced Mary, because without Imperial support her conscience could gain no leverage, and he seems to have argued that to give way to such extreme pressure could carry no stigma of guilt, even to the most scrupulous. The pressure was indeed cruel. Apart from the troubles afflicting Browne and Bryan, her old friend Lady Hussey, the wife of her former chamberlain, had been sent to the Tower merely for speaking sympathetically of her. It gave her insomnia, toothache and neuralgia.
¹³
Finally, on 22 June, she gave way, signing a set of articles which had been sent by her father without reading them, according to Chapuys. However she also wrote a covering letter of unconditional surrender, remitting her whole life to his discretion, which was almost certainly a copy of the model which Cromwell had sent to her for just such a purpose.
¹⁴
It may well be that Jane had also privately urged her to follow such a course, which would explain her expressions of gratitude to her as well as to Cromwell over the days that followed. Within a few days gracious messages arrived from both the king and the queen, and the relaxation of tension was palpable. Henry was probably as relieved as anyone that the hard choice which seemed to be facing him had gone away. Mary’s state of mind at this juncture is hard to assess. On the one hand her correspondence with the secretary is friendly almost to the point of warmth, and she quickly became absorbed in plans for the re-establishment of her household, which suggests that she soon began to appreciate the benefits of restored favour. On 6 July the king and queen visited Hunsdon and stayed for several days, and on the 20th she wrote to Cromwell thanking him for the gift of a riding horse and saddle. It would do her health much good, she observed, to be riding again.
¹⁵
On the other hand, Chapuys represents her as overcome with grief and remorse at having betrayed her principles, and begging him to obtain a special dispensation for her from Rome to ease her conscience. He did in fact make an unsuccessful bid of that sort, but whether it was really at her request we do not know. He had his own conscience to salve for having been a party to her surrender, and he also had her reputation to defend in the courts of Catholic Europe.
¹⁶

There is no doubt that the real winner from all these exchanges was Thomas Cromwell. Mary’s surrender had effectively drawn her teeth as the leader of the Aragonese faction, and cancelled any debt which he might have owed them for their help in bringing down Anne Boleyn. If they had been looking to him to persuade the king to wink at Mary’s obstinacy, and even to include her in the succession, then they were sadly disappointed. But he would never have promised so much, knowing his own limitations. The Duke of Richmond died on 23 July, and, although Henry had never made any move to include him in succession, as his only son he would have been in a strong position, considering that both the king’s daughters were equally illegitimate. The succession had in fact been rearranged by a second Act passed through Parliament in June.
¹⁷
This statute, which Cromwell had as usual drafted and pushed through both houses, declared that the king’s heir would be any child born to him and his present wife, Queen Jane. Failing that, or a child born to any subsequent marriage, the king was given authority to declare the succession by his last will and testament. Neither Mary nor Elizabeth were mentioned. Nevertheless, come August Henry was offering the former’s legitimation and inclusion in the succession as part of a marriage negotiation with the King of France. However, since the condition was that the Duke of Angoulême, the prospective bridegroom, should come to live in England, it is unlikely that this was a serious suggestion.
¹⁸
Mary herself certainly did not think so, but it did signal that she was back on the marriage market after a three-year absence. As she was now twenty, this was not a moment too soon. At the same time, the crowned heads of Europe were not exactly queuing up with offers, and the suggestion that she would be more attractive if she were created Duchess of York was not acted upon. She was, however, enjoying the fruits of her rehabilitation in the reconstitution of her chamber, which saw her united with a number of old friends. She no longer had need of a lady governess, so the Countess of Salisbury was not reappointed, but back came Susan Clarencius, Margery Baynton, Mary Browne and a number of others.
¹⁹
Cromwell was also reaping the rewards of his part in that operation, because within a few days he had been appointed Lord Privy Seal in succession to the disgraced Earl of Wiltshire, who was Anne Boleyn’s father, and on 9 July he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cromwell of Wimbledon. On 18 July he was knighted, and had his earlier appointment as Viceregent in Spirituals confirmed and extended. Henry’s confidence could not have been more fully displayed. He was now also a rich man, having been collecting stewardships and the keeperships of castles and parks, all of which carried substantial fees and could be discharged by deputy: Westminster Abbey in September 1533; Hertford Castle and Park in February 1534; the Savoy and Enfield in May 1535; the manor and park of Writtle in Essex in June 1536, and a number of others.
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At the same time his correspondence makes it clear that he was in receipt of numerous payments in cash and kind in return for his ‘kindness’ to suitors and litigants. What these may have amounted to in the course of a year is hard to calculate, but we can be sure that his stables were not short of geldings, nor his table of fat partridges. Presumably what he and his household could not use or consume was sold on at a profit. We may think of such payments as bribes, but they were a part of the regular practice of petitioning the Crown, and no one thought them amiss – unless they did not get what they were after, in which case they became a grievance. Cromwell’s fees for 1536 totalled seventy-eight items.