Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Gregory Cromwell’s wedding in August 1537 thus had momentous consequences. Immediately, it produced new areas of demarcation in local politics across lowland England, pivoting on deals between Cromwell and the Duke of Norfolk, but additionally it created patterns for the remaining monastic dissolutions up to 1540. The aftermath of the Pilgrimage saw the Crown close not only all smaller monasteries reopened by the Lincolnshire rebels and Pilgrims but, additionally, larger houses with heads implicated in the stirs. Whalley, Hexham, Bridlington, Jervaulx, Kirkstead, Barlings were all declared forfeit to the Crown by the attainder of their heads for treason; that followed the provision thoughtfully inserted to this effect in the Treason Act of 1534 (see above, this page). Further suppressions were swelling beyond a trickle, to the extent that Cromwell found himself financially disadvantaged. In the course of his long involvement in monastic affairs, he had accumulated so many grants of fees from monasteries that he now felt their loss. A partial solution emerged only in spring 1538, when he was awarded the Stewardship of all suppressed monasteries north of the Trent, plus a set of named dissolved houses around the kingdom: an office with a handsome fee of £100 per annum.47