Thomas Cromwell: The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister (4 page)

Cromwell by this time was preoccupied with a rather vain pet scheme of Wolsey’s: to build and endow two new secular colleges, one in Oxford and a second in his birthplace Ipswich, both to be called Cardinal’s College. To provide the cash to fund these projects, Wolsey cast around for financial resources to avoid dipping into his own well-filled purse. He hit upon the alien and minor monasteries
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and quickly obtained a papal dispensation from Pope Clement VII to suppress those said to be in decay. There were handy precedents for such dissolutions: Bishop Waynflete of Winchester had acquired two priories to support Magdalen College, Oxford, in the second half of the fifteenth century, and, as recently as 1524, Bishop Fisher of Rochester had seized two religious houses for the benefit of St John’s College, Cambridge. Now Wolsey claimed that these small monasteries were ripe for suppression, as ‘neither God was served, nor religion kept’ within their crumbling walls.

On 4 January 1525, Cromwell and Sir William Gascoigne were instructed to investigate five monasteries and their wealth to establish their value.
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Their commission named the first casualties amongst the minor religious houses – at Tickford,
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Ravenstone and Medmenham in north Buckinghamshire, Poughley in Berkshire and Wallingford in Oxfordshire. The same day, Cromwell and John Smythe were appointed attorneys for Thoby, Stanesgate and Tiptree, all in Essex, which had already been granted to John Higden, the new dean of Cardinal’s College, Oxford.

Eventually, twenty-nine religious houses were to be suppressed on Wolsey’s orders; a total of around eighty monks, canons and nuns were all evicted without ceremony. The dissolutions yielded a net income of approximately £2,000, or nearly £700,000 at present-day prices, to fund the Oxford college alone.
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The prime agent in this plunder was Cromwell, who had fully demonstrated his skills at conveyancing properties and his remarkable attention to detail. He had to survey and value each monastic property, list its possessions and put them up for sale, then arrange for the disposal or lease of its lands. He was normally present at the surrender of each religious house. Moreover, he acted as a progress-chaser in the construction of the two colleges.

Of course, there were always opportunities for making money on the side for Cromwell and another of Wolsey’s agents, Dr John Allen.
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Some religious houses offered generous bribes to be spared from the indignity and inconvenience of suppression. Properties could also be rented out at a higher price than officially agreed, and the difference pocketed. Some of their choice goods and chattels could be appropriated and sold off for private profit. It is not surprising that Cromwell abandoned his cloth-trading business around this time: there were easier pickings and more lucrative methods of accumulating wealth.

Such under-the-table deals were not unusual in Tudor times, but the scale of the corruption caused ripples of disquiet, if not disgust. Sir William Knight, secretary to the King, wrote to Wolsey from Beaulieu in Essex in August 1527 to warn him that Henry shared that uneasiness: ‘I have heard the king and noble men speak things incredible of the acts of Mr Allen and Cromwell – a great part whereof it shall be expedient that your grace do know, as at your coming, you shall, not only from me but by other faithful and loving servants.’
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The constant temptation must have been irresistible, but Wolsey appears to have done nothing to stop the sleaze. He may have believed that the attacks on his servants were merely a weapon to discredit the suppressions; in any case, he was more than satisfied with the progress on his two colleges.

Cromwell was constantly beset by those wanting to cash in on the dissolutions. For example, Thomas Canner wrote to him on 14 January
1528, seeking the bells of Wallingford monastery for the people of Basingstoke in Hampshire, where he had been brought up. He enclosed a set of ‘Oxford gloves’ as a token for Cromwell’s pains.
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The other side of this corrupt coin, of course, was that Cromwell became unpopular. The local gentry at Bayham, on the borders of East Sussex and Kent, assembled in disguise and temporarily forced the reinstatement of the ten Premonstratensian canons there. At nearby Tonbridge, the townsfolk petitioned against the closure of the Augustinian priory there, rejecting soothing promises of scholarships at the Oxford college. The new landlords of the monastic properties were more interested in profit and the tenants found themselves living under a harsher, more demanding regime. In August 1527, a ‘sanctuary man’
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was reported to be lying in wait to murder Cromwell, and Cardinal Pole later maintained that people thought Cromwell was in prison and would be punished for his crimes as Wolsey’s agent.
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Security precautions were needed and Cromwell fitted a strong chain to the front door of his home at Austin Friars so that ‘no man not well known might enter’.

Undeterred, he continued with his duties – long hours in the saddle in all weathers, listing, verifying, evaluating. He wrote to Wolsey on 2 April 1528 from Oxford about his visit to Wallingford, reporting that all the goods and household implements had already been spirited away. More sanguinely, Cromwell described the progress in constructing Cardinal’s College in the university town:

The buildings of your college most prosperously and magnificently arise in such a way, that to every man’s judgment, the like thereof [has] never been seen nor imagined, having consideration to the largeness, beauty, sumptuousness … and most substantial building of the same.

Your chapel within the said college [is] most devoutly and virtuously ordered and the ministries within the same not only diligent in the service of God, but also the service done daily within the same, so devout, solemn and full of harmony that in my opinion, it has few peers.
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Cromwell regularly submitted his bureaucratic expenses for his work in setting up the new colleges. One claim, in April 1528, for his work in Ipswich included 56 shillings for vellum ‘for drawing and flourishing
letters … for the king’s patents as [well] as my lord’s deeds and charters; two dozen parchments which cost six shillings and one ream of paper, three shillings’. His personal expenses then amounted to a total of £11 19s. 8d, including ‘my costs at Hampton Court and for my horses at diverse times in the sweating season’.
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In June, Cromwell wrote to Thomas Arundell, one of the gentlemen of Wolsey’s privy chamber, enquiring about the proposed constitution of Ipswich College and warning that it could not be formally established until legal matters had been cleared up in the Chancery Court: ‘I trust, by the assistance of my lord the chief baron [of the exchequer, a judge], unto whom I will resort from time to time for his good counsel, to perform, fulfil and accomplish everything according to [Wolsey’s] gracious pleasure in such ways as he should therewith be right well contented.’
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At last, William Capon, the first Dean of Cardinal’s College, Ipswich, was appointed and, on 26 September 1528, he reported to Wolsey the arrival of the ecclesiastical vestments and plate, brought there by Cromwell, who was ‘at great pains seeing [the] stuff carried hither safely and in preparing the hangings, benches etc. for the hall, which is now well trimmed’. Although building work was continuing, evensong was said in the college chapel, piously attended by Cromwell. The next day ‘it rained continually’, so the planned grand procession through the town had to be cancelled.
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On 18 January 1529, Cromwell wrote to Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey’s secretary but later an arch-enemy, explaining his absence from the Cardinal’s household, then at Richmond, as he was busy selling off Lesnes Abbey, at Bexley in Kent,

where I saw one of the most piteous and grievous sights that ever I saw … the breach out of the Thames into the marshes at Lesnes which be all overflowed and drowned. At the last change, the tide was so high that there happened a new breach which has done as much [damage] there as will cost £300 the new making of the same.

In so much that if my being there had not been to have encouraged the workmen and labourers, I assure you all the labour and money that has been spent heretofore, would have been clearly lost and cast away. And the
workmen … would have departed and left all at chance which should have been the greatest evil that ever happened to the country there.

Cromwell immediately took charge and ‘with the advice of such wise men’ directed the repairs to the sea defences. ‘I trust all shall be well and the works there ended with good speed, God willing.’
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In addition to his work on setting up the colleges, as Wolsey’s secretary Cromwell now exercised patronage on the Cardinal’s behalf over ecclesiastical and official appointments. There was profit in this also. On 25 April 1528, Richard Bellyssis, master of Wolsey’s mint at Durham, wrote to Cromwell, seeking his help in appointing him to a vacant post there: ‘He had charge of the mint in his father’s life and is very expert in fining, trying and coining. There is no-one else in the country fit for the post.’ And if the appointment was made, Cromwell would have ‘the promised gelding’.
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Cromwell was also keen to have loyal men around him in whom he could place absolute trust. He had recruited Ralph Sadler
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to help him with the construction of the cardinal’s colleges, and now wrote to Wolsey introducing Sadler and hoping he would be appointed to some post within the cardinal’s household: ‘I assure your grace, you are much bound to the gentleman, this bearer, for his good report in every place … He and such other[s] have done your grace much good. It shall be in my opinion therefore, right well done to give him thanks accordingly, for by my faith, he is right worthy.’
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Sadler became Cromwell’s clerk, and so began a distinguished career in government service.

But a family tragedy now intruded on Cromwell’s busy life, diligently spent hunting the crock of gold at the end of Wolsey’s rainbow.

Some time before 1529 his wife Elizabeth died, possibly from the fatal infectious fever called ‘the sweating sickness’ that swept England in 1528.
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She had borne him two girls, Anne and ‘little Grace’, who both died young, possibly during the same epidemic, and a son, Gregory. He may also have had an illegitimate daughter.
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Gregory’s education, at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, was a topic that constantly troubled his father, who was determined to provide the boy with the formal learning that had been denied him. He may also have
nurtured ambitious dreams of marrying his son into a noble family, seeing him as another pawn in his driving mission to climb the social ladder. Gregory’s tutor, John Checking, frequently wrote to Cromwell with pleas for money. In May 1528, he sought compensation for ‘his pains, which he did not intend to seek until the whole year commenced at mid-summer’
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and on 28 June that year, he complained of being in debt ‘and pressed for money’. He insisted: ‘There is not a penny in the account but was not spent on your scholars.’

The following month a progress report was written on Gregory, who was in the country, ‘where he works and plays alternatively. He is rather slow, but diligent.’ His previous tutor Palgrave had taught him badly, with the pupil ‘hardly [able] to conjugate three [Latin] verbs … though he repeated the rules by rote’. Checking would ‘have to unteach him nearly all he has learned. He is now studying the things most conducive to the reading of authors, and spends the rest of the day in forming letters.’
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In October, the tutor begged Cromwell to send ‘five yards of marble frieze
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for a gabardine’ for Gregory, ‘to keep him from the cold this winter’, and nine yards for his cousin Christopher Wellifed, who was studying with him; ‘also a bed and a pair of sheets’. Checking wrote of ‘various reports spread’ in Cambridge about Cromwell, which he was glad had proved false – presumably rumours of his imprisonment – and ended with another plea for cash: ‘The plague which sent us into the country has nearly consumed our money.’
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With colder weather in November, the scholars had cloaks to warm them and also ‘a blazing fire to keep them comfortable. Little Gregory is becoming great in letters. Christopher does not require much stirring up.’
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Then came a near disaster: Christopher Wellifed ‘did hinge a candle in a plate to look upon his book and so fell asleep and the candle fell into the bed straw’ and burnt the bed, pillow and three overlays or blankets. Had not the chamber been ‘ceiled and pargetted with plaster, we [might] have had more harm’, reported Checking, claiming 40 shillings compensation.

In July 1529, Cromwell was clearly complaining about his son’s lack of progress at his lessons and taunted Checking about his teaching skills. The tutor was incensed and protested that he had brought up many
scholars, including six Masters of Arts and fellows of colleges. ‘I could have seven scholars for the one that I have at present, if I could be troubled by them.’
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Amid all this talk of education, Checking did not hesitate to seek Cromwell’s good offices in support of a relative ‘with my lord Cardinal’ and promised him ‘an ambling nag if successful’.
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The loss of Cromwell’s wife and daughters may have prompted a sobering realisation of his own mortality, for on 12 July 1529 he signed his last will and testament,
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describing himself proudly as ‘Thomas Cromwell of London, gentleman’. He left his son £660 13s. 4d – increased from £400 in the first draft – together with a similar sum for the purchase of property in London for Gregory to live in. Rental income from tenements should be used for his education until he reached the age of twenty-two, ‘during which time I heartily desire and require my said executors to be good to my said son and to see he lose no time but to see him virtuously ordered and brought up according to my trust’.