43 Facts About Thomas Cromwell

1.

Thomas Cromwell, briefly Earl of Essex, was an English statesman and lawyer who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charges for the execution.

2.

Thomas Cromwell helped to engineer an annulment of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that Henry could lawfully marry Anne Boleyn.

3.

Thomas Cromwell subsequently charted an evangelical and reformist course for the Church of England from the unique posts of Vicegerent in Spirituals and Vicar-general.

4.

Thomas Cromwell duly played a prominent role in her downfall.

5.

Thomas Cromwell later fell from power, after arranging the king's marriage to German princess Anne of Cleves.

6.

The marriage was a disaster for Thomas Cromwell, ending in an annulment six months later.

7.

Thomas Cromwell lived in Putney in the house of a local attorney, John Welbeck, at the time of her marriage to Walter in 1474.

8.

Thomas Cromwell had two sisters: the elder, Katherine, married Morgan Williams, a Welsh lawyer's son who came to Surrey as a follower of King Henry VII when he established himself in the nearby Richmond Palace; the younger, Elizabeth, married a farmer, William Wellyfed.

9.

Thomas Cromwell returned to Rome again in 1518, this time on behalf of the St Mary's Guild, Boston, looking to gain Pope Leo's continued approval for the sale of various profitable indulgences.

10.

Thomas Cromwell's reading made him, for the first time, doubt the legitimacy of the practice he was advocating.

11.

Tracy Borman goes further, suggesting that it was at this point Thomas Cromwell developed his strong contempt for the papacy, because he had so casually manipulated Pope Leo into granting the Boston petition without proper consideration.

12.

Thomas Cromwell was the widow of Thomas Williams, a Yeoman of the Guard, and the daughter of a Putney shearman, Henry Wyckes, who had served as a gentleman usher to King Henry VII.

13.

Thomas Cromwell's wife died in 1529 and his daughters, Anne and Grace, are believed to have died not long after their mother.

14.

Thomas Cromwell's records show him paying Elizabeth for clothing and expenses for Jane.

15.

Thomas Cromwell was known to be one of the few men at court without mistresses and tried to keep this indiscretion secret.

16.

Thomas Cromwell prepared a daring speech against King Henry's declared intention of leading an invasion of France, although it was expressed tactfully in terms of concern for the king's safety while on campaign and fear of the costs such an overbold policy would entail; it was the latter point that embodied Cromwell's true concern.

17.

Thomas Cromwell assisted in the dissolution of nearly thirty monasteries to raise funds for Wolsey to found The King's School, Ipswich, and Cardinal College, in Oxford.

18.

Thomas Cromwell had made enemies by aiding Wolsey to suppress the monasteries, but was determined not to fall with his master, as he told George Cavendish, then a Gentleman Usher and later Wolsey's biographer:.

19.

Thomas Cromwell successfully overcame the shadow cast over his career by Wolsey's downfall.

20.

Early in this short session of Parliament Thomas Cromwell involved himself with legislation to restrict absentee clergy from collecting stipends from multiple parishes and to abolish the power of Rome to award dispensations for the practice.

21.

Thomas Cromwell held numerous offices during his career in the King's service, including:.

22.

Thomas Cromwell favoured the assertion of royal supremacy over the recalcitrant Church, and he manipulated support in the House of Commons for the measure by resurrecting anti-clerical grievances expressed earlier, in the session of 1529.

23.

Two days later, Sir Thomas Cromwell More resigned as Lord Chancellor, realising that the battle to save the marriage was lost.

24.

Thomas Cromwell immediately took steps to enforce the legislation just passed by Parliament.

25.

Neville Williams explains that as Vicegerent in spiritual affairs, Thomas Cromwell held sway over church doctrine and religious policy, while from the Vicar General title, he drew his authority over monasteries and other church institutions.

26.

Thomas Cromwell never declared that this visitation was ever complete, so he retained its extensive powers in his own hands.

27.

Thomas Cromwell set himself to devise and conspire the said affair.

28.

Regardless of the role Thomas Cromwell played in Anne Boleyn's fall, and his confessed animosity to her, Chapuys's letter states that Thomas Cromwell claimed that he was acting with the King's authority.

29.

Thomas Cromwell orchestrated the Dissolution of the Monasteries and visitations to the universities and colleges in 1535, which had strong links to the church.

30.

Thomas Cromwell had passed on to Henry some exaggerated claims of Anne's beauty.

31.

When Henry's humiliation became common knowledge, Southampton, or possibly Wriothesley's close friend Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, made sure that Thomas Cromwell was blamed for the indiscretion.

32.

Thomas Cromwell was taken by barge to the Tower and imprisoned.

33.

The King deferred the execution until his marriage to Anne of Cleves could be annulled; Thomas Cromwell was being spared for the time being in case he was needed to give evidence of the king's distaste for Anne.

34.

Thomas Cromwell made a prayer and speech on the scaffold, professing to die "in the traditional [Catholic] faith" and denying that he had aided heretics.

35.

In 1535 Thomas Cromwell succeeded in having clearly identified reformers, such as Hugh Latimer, Edward Foxe and Nicholas Shaxton, appointed to the episcopacy.

36.

Thomas Cromwell encouraged and supported the work of reformers, such as Robert Barnes; and he obtained the licence to publish the Matthew's Bible, providing significant funding for the printing of this English translation of the Bible and sending one to every parish in England.

37.

When Thomas Cromwell fell from favour in 1540, his alleged support for Anabaptism was cited.

38.

Until the 1950s, historians discounted Thomas Cromwell's role, stating he was little more than the agent of the despotic King Henry VIII.

39.

Elton wrote that Thomas Cromwell had been responsible for translating royal supremacy into parliamentary terms, creating powerful new organs of government to take charge of Church lands, and largely removing the medieval features of central government.

40.

Thomas Cromwell strengthened royal authority in the north of England, through reform of the Council of the North, extended royal power and introduced Protestantism in Ireland, and was the architect of the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, which promoted stability and gained acceptance for the royal supremacy in Wales.

41.

Thomas Cromwell introduced important social and economic reforms in England in the 1530s, including action against enclosures, the promotion of English cloth exports and the poor relief legislation of 1536.

42.

Thomas Cromwell was a patron of Hans Holbein the Younger, as were Thomas More and Anne Boleyn.

43.

Thomas Cromwell has been portrayed in a number of plays, feature films, and television miniseries, usually as a villainous character.