Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

In immediate practical terms the Chancellorship brought Cromwell one chore, but in the longer term one highly important opportunity for patronage. The chore was to collect the fines or hear excuses from a wide range of gentlemen and esquires who had to their dismay been confronted with a demand to come to Queen Anne’s coronation and be knighted, or face a fine. In fact it may have been to undertake this imminent task that Cromwell was given the Chancellorship as the most immediately vacant office in the Exchequer. Knighthood was of course an honour, but came with the expectation of much ill-rewarded public service, and many were genuinely unable to contemplate such a lifetime’s financial burden. In any case, this was in reality a windfall tax on the moderately well-off, with the actual knighting as the alternative. The protests of those claiming they should not have to pay the fine because their income fell below the forty-pound-a-year income threshold for knighting, plus wheedling letters from their friends, built up to a considerable correspondence, which in itself gave Cromwell the chance to dole out favours right across the realm.53