Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Thomas Cromwell: A Life > Status Update

‘The King, in the printed Answer to the Pilgrims, publicly used that phrase ‘Privy Council’, implying that the whole Council had recommended Cromwell to the monarch as suitable for office. That made him one Councillor among several. He thus paid a price for survival: this newly formalised body sat not as a vehicle for his power, but to check it.‘

‘Anne was now victim of the most extreme example of Henry’s ability to turn deep affection into deep hatred, and then to believe any old nonsense to reinforce his new point of view. Cromwell was his minister and must do his bidding, but the minister had his own reasons for enthusiastically pursuing the Queen to destruction. That is what he did, eliminating both her and the courtiers‘

‘During the ‘reign’ of Queen Anne, Thomas Cromwell had quietly accumulated power, yet his place in the King’s counsels remained anomalous: clearly now the leading royal minister, yet without great offices and honours to express that reality - not even a knighthood. He was at last in a position to begin remedying this deficiency.’

‘particularly as Anne’s many conservative enemies began considering their options. Later depositions (taken in an entirely different political crisis) reveal that in February 1536 he made quiet feelers to the Lady Mary about securing a deal in which she could become heir apparent in return for acceptance of her present status. This was the deal Cromwell went on to secure from her the following summer.’

‘it is still inescapable that Cromwell had been in charge of the two prisoners’ fates since the beginning of 1534, and once the King had shown the depth of his malevolence in Fisher’s death, the minister choreographed the judicial procedures which briskly led to More’s execution. The court’s decision was based on evidence from Richard Rich, Solicitor-General and already firmly within Cromwell’s circle of patronage’

‘Five years before, Cromwell had set off from Wolsey at Esher ‘to make or mar’ in the 1529 Parliament. Now Bishop Gardiner was licking his wounds in that same episcopal palace, Thomas More had exchanged the Lord Chancellor’s seat for a cell in the Tower and the conservative bishops who had sneered at Cromwell’s master that autumn were humbled. Out of his will-wishers, there remained Anne Boleyn to deal with’

‘Most likely Anne could only be persuaded to accept something of the reality of Cromwell’s position with good grace once he had triumphantly steered her through to marriage and coronation. It is striking that his next preferment, and that merely the Chancellorship of the Exchequer (not then an exalted office), was finalised on the day the King first showed off Anne as his Queen - Easter Eve 1533‘

‘together with her brother George, to whom she was very close, she was working in the same religious direction as the royal minister. Yet as far as Cromwell was concerned, the great fact which shaped their relations for the rest of her life, and which makes sense of the events which now played out at Court over more than half a decade, was that she was the person most responsible for destroying his dear master’

‘characterise this form of religion... very different from the stentorian public proclamation which marked out the magisterial Reformations of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin. At the time, Cromwell was often called a Lutheran, particularly by those who hated the Reformation. But the reality of his religion is anything but Lutheran. Ultimately, its nearest relative in mainland Europe is Italian.‘

‘In 1523 he entered service with another of England’s greatest men - yet it was not Cardinal Wolsey who first refocused his interests from London and international legal work and commerce, but a different Thomas: Thomas Grey, second Marquess of Dorset, England’s only marquess at the time. It is likely that Cromwell’s Welsh gentleman cousin Morgan Williams, by then in Dorset’s service, was the means of introduction.’