Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII by Loades David

Author:Loades, David [Loades, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2013-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

7

THE FALL OF THOMAS CROMWELL, 1539–1540

Master Cromwell … you are now entered into the service of a most noble, wise and liberal prince … you shall in your counsel given unto his grace ever tell him what he ought to do, but never what he is able to do … for if a lion knew his strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.

Sir Thomas More

From the beginning of his service to the king, and indeed before, Cromwell had been associated with those wishing to reform the English Church. As early as 1524 he had been acting for Thomas Somer, a citizen and stockfishmonger of London. who was one of the penitents paraded in the city in November 1530 for having imported heretical books.1 In particular Somer had brought in and sold copies of Tyndale’s New Testament, which he was required to burn as a part of his penance. The unfortunate man was returned to the Tower after his penance, and died there two years later. His friendship with the up-and-coming royal councillor proved of no avail, however sympathetic Cromwell may have been to the cause of his imprisonment. This was dangerous political territory because the Lord Chancellor, Thomas More, was adamantly opposed to the translation of the scriptures, and the king was backing his campaign. It was only after More’s resignation in the summer of 1532 that it began to be possible to exploit Henry’s vision of himself as being responsible for the spiritual well-being of his people, to encourage him in the direction of approving an English Bible. This discreet pressure eventually paid off and by 1535 the king was prepared to authorise the Coverdale version, which as we have seen was printed in Southwark in 1537.2 The reformers hailed Cromwell as God’s special instrument and assured him that if ‘for the zeal which he bore’ to the truth ‘the pure word of God may once go forth’ then ‘the whole realm … shall have … you more in remembrance than the name of Austen that men say brought the faith first into England’. Richard Taverner praised him for his ‘godly circumspection’ in promoting the true faith, and that was fair because he was extremely careful never to go beyond the parameters which Henry laid down.3 The difficulty lay in the king’s own mind, because although he came down on the side of an English Bible, in other respects he remained extremely conservative. He never abandoned his belief in transubstantiation, for example, and although he was prepared to outlaw pilgrimages, he never ceased to believe in prayers for the dead. He steered a delicate course, and the more robust reformers felt that they never quite knew where they stood with him. Tyndale was invited to return to England under safe conduct, and was then repudiated and left to his fate as a heretic in the Low Countries, having been betrayed by one Henry Philips, in whom he had confided.4 Nor was Cromwell left in any doubt that, in encouraging the reformers, he was running many risks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.