This Grey connection suggests new answers for an old puzzle: when Thomas Cromwell became a member of Parliament for the first time, in 1523, for which borough did he sit? A borough constituency it would have to be; it was inconceivable at this stage of his career for such a nonentity to have been chosen as one of the pairs of knights representing a shire. It was too early for him to have looked to Wolsey for a place in Parliament, and in fact the long speech opposing military intervention in France which he may or may not have delivered to the Commons in that Parliament would have been
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