The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII.
McCandless, Amy Thompson
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of
Henry VIII, by Michael Everett. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2015. ix, 362 pp. $40.00 US (cloth).
By focusing on the career of Thomas Cromwell in the decade before
he became Henry VIII's secretary in April 1534, Michael Everett
concludes that Cromwell was not the evangelical reformer of A.G.
Dickens, the administrative innovator of Geoffrey Elton, or the
factional politician of John Guy and David Starkey. In fact,
"Cromwell was the conventional Tudor man-of-business, distinguished
from his peers perhaps only by his aptitude and skills... who was less
central to the momentous events surrounding the break with Rome than has
previously been claimed" (247). Everett's study goes beyond
the standard printed summaries of the State Papers to mine
Cromwell's private correspondence--over 350 of his own letters and
hundreds more sent to him during the 1330s. The result is a fuller and
more nuanced picture of Cromwell's life and legacy.
Everett, a visiting fellow at the University of Southampton, begins
his study of Cromwell's life in the 1520s, sketching out his early
career as a London lawyer and merchant. Although Cromwell was bom
sometime around 1485, Everett finds only tangential evidence of his
early life: "by 1520 he was married, settled in England, and had
established himself at the heart of London's legal and mercantile
communities" (17). Cromwell's legal training was probably
obtained through self-study rather than at the Inns of Court; his
mercantile interests were possibly connected to work with his
father-in-law, a wealthy fuller. Cromwell's correspondence suggests
that his early legal work dealt primarily with disputes concerning land
and property. He drew up bills of complaint and acted as an arbitrator
for cases before Chancery and the Star Chamber. Cromwell's
reputation as an industrious and efficient lawyer caught the attention
of Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Wolsey, and in 1524 Cromwell
entered the cardinal's service. Wolsey had received permission to
suppress a number of religious houses to establish a college at Oxford
and a grammar school in Ipswich, and Cromwell seemed the perfect person
for the detailed surveying and legal work necessary to effect these
transfers. As well as providing legal services for Wolsey, Cromwell
remained active in the cloth trade, engaged in money lending, invested
in land, and obtained a seat in the parliaments of 1523 and 1529. Here
he drafted a number of bills "on behalf of the merchant and
professional circles that he lived among" (45). Everett contends
that Cromwell's view of Parliament was not
"revolutionary" as Elton asserted but rather quite typical of
men from his background.
Everett also disagrees with Elton's claim that Cromwell's
ambition from the first was to rise as high as he could in the
king's service. Instead, he argues that "Cromwell's entry
into the royal service was unexpected, unintended and wholly dependent
on fortune and circumstance" (49). The circumstance was
Wolsey's failure to get Henry's marriage to Catherine of
Aragon annulled so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Wolsey was accused
of praemunire, and all his lands and properties were to revert to the
Crown. Henry VIII needed someone to manage the details of this
conveyance, and Cromwell had done this exact type of work for the
cardinal. Cromwell's attainments subsequently led the King to grant
him increasing responsibility over other Crown lands and royal works.
An examination of Cromwell's interactions with the Catholic
Church before 1534 similarly challenges the view of historians A.G.
Dickens, B.W. Beckingsale, and others, that Cromwell was a leading
Lutheran reformer. Everett maintains that even in the suppression of the
monasteries, Cromwell was merely carrying out the king's wishes.
His 1529 and revised 1532 wills show that he possessed orthodox beliefs
in the intercession of the saints, the importance of good works, and the
power of religious images. Everett concludes that "between the
years 1485 and 1534 there is little to suggest that Cromwell held
evangelical views or that he used his increasing influence to promote or
protect religious radicals" (143).
Likewise, Everett disagrees with those who see Cromwell's rise
to power as connected to his ability to manipulate court factions to his
advantage. Instead, he sees him "more a councilor than... a
courtier" (148), and credits his rise to his "protean skills
and sheer hard work which ensured he amassed more and more
responsibilities" (170). Cromwell gained the king's favour
much as Wolsey had by his success in doing the king's bidding.
Wolsey fell from power because he was unable to obtain the king's
"divorce"; Cromwell rose in royal estimation because he was
able to "devise and put in place the necessary legislation which
would help Henry VIII to end his marriage to Catherine" (246).
In his introduction, Everett credits Hilary Mantel's novels
and their television serialization--especially Wolf Hall and Bring Up
the Bodies (London, 2013)--for reawakening popular interest in Cromwell.
But he critiques their reliance on traditional printed sources and
conventional interpretations of Cromwell. It is doubtful, however, that
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell will appeal to a public mesmerized by
historical fiction. Instead, the monograph, an outgrowth of
Everett's own master's and doctoral studies, provides an
excellent model of historical research and analysis and would be an
ideal assigned reading for baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate
history/historiography classes.
Amy Thompson McCandless, College of Charleston
