Thomas Cromwell, the Earl of Essex and tool of King Henry
VIII of England, seems to have been born at Putney in Surrey, of humble origin.
He was the son of one Walter Cromwell alias Smith, a many-talented fuller, shearer,
brewer & blacksmith of that village. All the early stories of his life are
obscure and often self-contradictory. The only certain facts
seem to be that he had been in Italy in his youth and had, afterwards, been in
business in Antwerp. It is, however, extremely probable that he had also served
as a private soldier. He was back in England as early as 1513 and beginning to
prosper in business both as a merchant and a solicitor. He was employed by
Thomas Wolsey as collector of the revenues of his Archiepiscopal See of York,
as early as 1514, and he sat in Parliament in 1523. Wolsey evidently employed
him if he had dirty work to do. For example, he was his agent, in 1524,
in the suppression of some small monasteries whose revenues were to go
to the Cardinal's foundations at Oxford and Ipswich; and he is said to
have executed this task with much vulgar cruelty. Finally, Cromwell
became Cardinal Wolsey's chief financial adviser and, in 1530,
managed to give the World the impression that, both in Parliament
and outside it, he was defending fallen greatness, while he was,
in reality, taking care not to be involved in his patron's fall. Like
the unjust steward, he advised the Cardinal to satisfy his enemies
with large bribes, of the conveyance of which he was to be the agent. We
have no authority for saying that Wolsey in any way 'bequeathed' Cromwell as a
trusty servant to the King, nor do we even know how or when the King first
became acquainted with his future minister: but, by the beginning of 1531,
Cromwell had become a privy councillor and, a year later, Master of the Jewel
House and Clerk of the Hanaper.
By the Spring of 1533, Cromwell's position was assured. He became
Chancellor of the Exchequer, then King's Secretary, then 'Vicegerent in all
causes ecclesiastical'. This made him practically a Royal Commissioner for
enforcing the statutes passed in the then sitting Parliament and the brutality
with which he enforced them is notorious. King Henry, who was at this period of his
life intoxicated with triumph and pride, needed an instrument such as Cromwell
who would be entirely devoid of scruples. At the same time, there is much
evidence that Cromwell even exceeded his master's savage instructions. The
manner in which Fisher, More and the Carthusian monks were brought to their
deaths, the manner in which, in the subsequent visitation of the monasteries, a
case was artificially got up against the monks, form the blackest blots on the
name of Henry and of his minister. As Lord Privy Seal, Cromwell was raised to
the peerage, in 1536, as Baron Cromwell and, four years later, he received the
Earldom of Essex. But the reaction had already begun. Cromwell presumed upon his
influence and sought to impel Henry in the direction of Lutheranism. The King,
who never lost his balance or his faculty of feeling the pulse of his people,
saw that he had already gone too far. Though he allowed the minister to involve
him, for political reasons, into something like coquetry with the North German
princes, who had embraced Lutheran views, and even to provide him with a fourth
wife - Anne of Cleves - of German origin, he drew back, in 1540, and flung the hated
Earl to the wolves. Cromwell was attainted, refused a hearing and, after abject
appeals for mercy, beheaded in the July.
Attempts have been made, especially by ardent Protestant
partisans, to whitewash Cromwell's character, but they have been wholly in vain.
Though he had furthered the translation of the Bible and professed an
ostentatious friendship with Cranmer, he died a Catholic, or declared that he did
so, and none of his own contemporaries seem to have had a good word to say for
him.
