Thomas Cromwell

“ I cannot understand it," said Sir Miles Paton.
"Aye, I trow many are puzzled by Thomas Cromwell's doings. He has been everything by turns,—from a mercenary in the army of Italy to the man next in power to the King of England, whom he has made equal to the Pope in all matters of faith and belief, and absolute ruler in Church and State. No other king in this realm has ever dared to assume such power as our present lord; and with this growing power he grows more evil, and arrogant, and selfish every day." ”

“ What sayest thou, Hodge? wilt thou bear me company?
HODGE. Will I bear thee company, Tom? What tell’st me of Italy? were it to the furthest part of Flanders, I would go with thee, Tom. I am thine in all weal and woe, thy own to command. What, Tom! I have passed the rigorous waves of Neptune’s blasts; I tell you, Thomas, I have been in the danger of the floods; and when I have seen Boreas begin to play the Ruffin with us, then would I down of my knees and call upon Vulcan.
CROMWELL.
And why upon him? ”

“ Sincere hero hearts do not sink in this miserable manner. The Sun flings forth impurities, gets balefully incrusted with spots; but it does not quench itself, and become no Sun at all, but a mass of Darkness! I will venture to say that such never befell a great, deep Cromwell; I think, never. Nature’s own lion-hearted Son! Antæus-like, his strength is got by touching the Earth, his Mother; lift him up from the Earth, lift him up into Hypocrisy, Inanity, his strength is gone. We will not assert that Cromwell was an immaculate man ”

“ Were he and his tongue in this speaker’s head,
Alive he wins me not; then, tis no conquest dead.
[Enter Cromwell like a Neopolitan, and Hodge with him.]
CROMWELL.
Sir, are you the master of the house?
HOST.
I am, sir.
CROMWELL.
By this same token you must leave this place,
And leave none but the Earl and I together,
And this my Peasant here to tend on us.
HOST.
With all my heart. God grant, you do some good.
[Exit Host. Cromwell shuts the door.]
BEDFORD.
Now, sir, what’s you will with me?
CROMWELL.
Intends your honour not to yield your self? ”

“ Will you not let us work for you?
CROMWELL.
You fret my heart, with making of this noise.
HODGE. How, fret your heart? Aye, but Thomas, you’ll fret your father’s purse if you let us from working.
SECOND SMITH.
Aye, this tis for him to make him a gentleman. Shall
we leave work for your musing? that’s well, I faith;
But here comes my old master now.
[Enter Old Cromwell.]
OLD CROMWELL.
You idle knaves, what, are you loitering now?
No hammers walking and my work to do!
What, not a heat among your work to day?
HODGE.
Marry, sir, your son Thomas will not let us work at all. ”

“ Thus Cromwell succeeded in clearly enunciating the main principles of the policy by which he was so soon to guide the affairs of England, while he so flattered King, nobles, and people, that he made many friends, and avoided the enmity of those opposed to him. The man who could make such a speech as this, would not be likely to escape the notice of such an astute man as Henry VIII. It was probably within the walls of this Parliament, that Cromwell laid the first stone of his future greatness as servant and counsellor of the King. ”

“ Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed up into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act; casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction small,—the whole dark element of his existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning? It were a true ambition this! And think now how it actually was with Cromwell. ”

“ But when Cromwell made him his favourite and his extraordinary valour met with extraordinary success, and when he had been awhile most conversant with those that in religion thought the old puritan ministers were dull, self-conceited men of a lower form, and that new light had declared I know not what to be a higher attainment, his mind, aim, talk and all were altered accordingly. ”

“ Our Secretary at Antwerp, sir, is dead,
And the Merchants there hath sent to me,
For to provide a man fit for the place:
Now I do know none fitter than your self,
If with your liking it stand, master Cromwell.
CROMWELL.
With all my heart, sir, and I much am bound,
In love and duty for your kindness shown.
OLD CROMWELL. Body of me, Tom, make haste, least some body get between thee and home, Tom. I thank you, good master Bowser, I thank you for my boy; I thank you always, I thank you most heartily, sir. Ho, a cup of Beer there for master Bowser. ”

“ But give it him, and to the best of his power he will yield it to no one else.’ [1] Cromwell’s labour, however, was not wholly in vain. During five years, by the mere force of his instinct of settlement, his commanding energy, and that absorbing sympathy miscalled hypocrisy, which enabled him to hold the hearts of the sectaries even while he disappointed their enthusiasm, he at least kept the peace between the saints and the world, secured liberty of conscience, and placed it on ground which even the flood of prelatical reaction was not able wholly to submerge. ”

“ Nay, good master Cromwell; be not angry, sir.
I know full well you are no such man;
But if your conscience were as white as Snow,
It will be thought that you are other wise.
CROMWELL.
Will it be thought that I am other wise?
Let them that think so know they are deceived.
Shall Cromwell live to have his faith misconstered?
Antwerp, for all the wealth within thy Town,
I will not stay here not two hours longer.
As good luck serves, my accounts are all made even ”

“ Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex in Henry Eighth’s time, is in like manner called always ‘the son of a Blacksmith at Putney’;—and whoever figures to himself a man in black apron with hammer in hand, and tries to rhyme this with the rest of Thomas Cromwell’s history, will find that here too he has got into an insolubility. ‘The splenetic credulity and incredulity, the calumnious opacity, the exaggerative ill-nature, and general flunkyism and stupidity of mankind,’ says my Author, ‘are ever to be largely allowed for in such circumstances. ”

“ Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. ”

“ Cromwell was certainly shrewd enough to see that he could never hope to marry into a reigning house himself, but he was none the less anxious that his son Gregory should wed such a wife as would enable him to found a noble family. In April, 1533, Gregory had been taken from Cambridge, and sent to live with his father’s friend Dr. Rowland Lee, with whom he appears to have spent a summer in hunting [318] . In 1535 he came out into public life, and in 1539 he was summoned to Parliament as a peer of the realm. ”

“ A
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A.* * * *
. . . .
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'Ffor if your boone be askeable,
Soone granted it shalbe:
'If it be not touching my crowne,' he said,
'Nor hurting poore comminaltye.'
'Nay, it is not touching your crowne,' shee sayes,
'Nor hurting poore cominaltye,
'But I begg the death of Thomas Cromwell,
For a false traitor to you is hee.'
'Then feitch me hither the Earle of Darby
And the Earle of Shrewsbury,
'And bidde them bring Thomas Cromawell ”

“ CROMWELL.
The Bandetti.
HODGE.
The Bandetti, do you call them? I know not what they are called
here, but I am sure we call them plain thieves in England. O
Thomas, that we were now at Putney, at the ale there.
CROMWELL.
Content thee, man; here set up these two bills,
And let us keep our standing on the bridge:
The fashion of this country is such,
If any stranger be oppressed with want,
To write the manner of his misery,
And such as are disposed to succour him,
Will do it. What, hast thou set them up?
HODGE. Aye, they’re up ”

“ CROMWELL, OLIVER (1599–1658) , lord protector of England, was the 5th and only surviving son of Robert Cromwell of Huntingdon and of Elizabeth Steward, widow of William Lynn. His paternal grandfather was Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, a leading personage in Huntingdonshire, and grandson of Richard Williams, knighted by Henry VIII., nephew of Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, Henry VIII.’s minister, whose name he adopted. ”

“ I am now over head and ears in Cromwellian Books; studying, for perhaps the fourth time in my life, to see if it be possible to get any credible face-to-face acquaintance with our English Puritan period; or whether it must be left forever a mere hearsay and echo to one. Books equal in dulness were at no epoch of the world penned by unassisted man. Nevertheless, courage! I have got, within the last twelve months, actually, as it were, to see that this Cromwell was one of the greatest souls ever born of the English kin ”

“ There’s few such men within our climate bred.
How say you now, Hodge? is not this good fortune?
HODGE. How say you? I’ll tell you what, master Thomas; if all men be of this Gentleman’s mind, let’s keep our standings upon this Bridge: we shall get more here with begging in one day, than I shall with making Horseshoes in a whole year.
CROMWELL.
No Hodge, we must begone unto Bononia,
There to relieve the noble Earl of Bedford:
Where, if I fail not in my policy,
I shall deceive their subtle treachery. ”

“ Sir Thomas would not have the subject named in his presence. Cymlin did not like Neville, and would probably "talk down" all her fears and efforts. It would be cruel to tell Jane,—but there was Cromwell. There was the Protector. It was his business to look after Englishmen, else what was the use of a Protector? And if any man had power to question the Bastile, Cromwell had it. Mazarin was just at this time seeking his aid against the Spaniards, who were on French soil, and Cromwell was about to send his own famous troop of Ironsides to help the French. Besides which, Cromwell loved Neville. ”

“ Thomas Cromwell, whom Henry the Eighth, when he erected himself into head of the English church, constituted his supreme vicar in all ecclesiastical matters, was a man extremely false, cruel, and avaricious. ”

“ What’s the reason the Lord Cromwell’s men
Wear such long skirts upon their coats.
They reach almost down to their very ham.
FIRST MERCHANT.
I will resolve you, sir; and thus it is:
The Bishop of Winchester, that loves not Cromwell,
As great men are envied, as well as less—
A while ago there was a jar between them,
And it was brought to my Lord Cromwell’s ear,
That Bishop Gardiner would sit on his skirt ”

“ But of two evils, tis best to shun the greatest,
And better is it that he lives in thrall,
Than such a Noble Earl as he should fall.
Their stubborn hearts, it may be, will relent,
Since he is gone to whom their hate is bent.—
My Lord, have you dispatched?
[Enter Bedford like the Clown, and Hodge in his cloak and his Hat.]
BEDFORD.
How doost thou like us, Cromwell? is it well?
CROMWELL.
O, my Lord, excellent: Hodge, how doost feel thy self?
HODGE. How do I feel my self? why, as a Noble man should do. ”

“ He finds two entries in the Court Rolls concerning Thomas Smyth, and assumes that they refer to Thomas Cromwell. These entries occur in the records of Feb. 26, 1504, and of May 20 in the same year. The first states that ‘Richard Williams came to the court and surrendered into the hands of the lord two whole virgates of land in ‹Roe›hampton, one called Purycroft and the other called Williams, to the use of Thomas Smyth, his heirs and assigns’ ”

“ Cromwell had yet to learn that the providence on which he waited wrought by a longer method, because it had a wider comprehension than was dreamt of in the puritan philosophy.
In the following spring Cromwell was appointed to the command of the army that was to conquer Ireland. Thence he was recalled in the summer of 1650, and shortly afterwards was sent into Scotland. Thus till his return from the battle of Worcester in September 1651, he had no chance of pressing his projects of conciliation and reform at the headquarters of government. ”

“ The bequests to Cromwell’s daughters ‘Anne and Grace’ and to his ‘litill Doughter Grace’ are our only proof that he had other children than Gregory; and the fact that both these items were crossed out after the year 1529 possibly indicates that the daughters died when young. We also learn that Cromwell’s nephew Richard, the son of Katherine Cromwell and Morgan Williams, had followed in his uncle’s footsteps, and was ‘seruaunt with my lorde Marques Dorssett’ at the time that the will was first composed ”

“ Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his splendid administration, [Pg 117] we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. ”

“ From the pedigree in Clutterbuck’s ‘Hertfordshire’ (ii. 95–8) it will be seen that he was lineally descended from the Protector, being the great-grandson of Henry Cromwell [q. v.] , lord-deputy of Ireland and M.P. for Cambridge, fourth son of the Protector. For many years he practised as a solicitor in Essex Street, Strand, and was also clerk to St. Thomas’s Hospital. By the wills of his cousins, Elizabeth, Anne, and Letitia, daughters of Richard Cromwell, he became possessed of the manor of Theobalds and estate of Cheshunt Park, Hertfordshire. ”