Keeping Up with the TudorsThe Rise of Thomas Cromwell:
Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIIIby Michael EverettYale University Press, 2015“He sees you in private, not in his presence chamber,” the Spanish ambassador tells Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel's now-famous 2009 novel Wolf Hall. “He prefers if his nobles do not know how often he consults with you. If you were a smaller man, you could be brought in and out in a laundry basket. As it is, I think those so-spiteful privy chamber gentlemen cannot fail to tell their friends, who will mutter at your success, and circulate slanders against you, and plot to bring you down.”It's a great little scene, and as with so much else involving both the fictional and the factual Thomas Cromwell, it hinges on the question of the relationship between King Henry VIII and his minister. For centuries, studies of Tudor government and biographies of Cromwell have worried this question: was Cromwell merely one in a long line of blunt instruments Henry used for his own purposes, or was he the infamous manipulator of legend, controlling King and Council from behind the scenes?A characterization very close to the latter threads its way through the great body of work on Tudor England written by Sir Geoffrey Elton during the middle of the 20th Century in works like 1953's The Tudor Revolution in Government and 1955's England Under the Tudors: Cromwell the religious reformer, “moving” the king to increasingly radical religious positions – and reaping substantial advancements for himself along the way, until this man, born in obscurity in Putney around 1485, had become chancellor of the exchequer by 1533, lord privy seal in 1536, and great chamberlain (and earl) by 1540. And the fact that he was also decapitated in 1540 has made his life story an irresistibly easy parable of ambition for generations of Tudor historians.In recent years, in addition to novels, there's been a rash of Cromwell histories, from Robert Hutchinson Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister in 2007 to John Schofield's The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant in 2008 to J. P. Colby's Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Henchman in 201 to David Loades's Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII in 2013 to Tracy Borman's Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant in 2014, and just a glance a their various subtitles is enough to hint at how much theatrical titillation still plays a part in presenting the story of this man's life.2015 sees the latest Cromwell account, Michael Everett's The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in Reign of Henry VIII, which not only draws considerable energy from a kind of ongoing debate with Geoffrey Elton's interpretation of Tudor government but which is also by far the best book on the subject since Elton himself was alive and writing. This is the Cromwell book to read; it's almost impossible to believe that it's Everett's first published work.Through labyrinths of primary documents, Everett traces the path Cromwell took to prominence in the legal profession, where we ind him giving legal advice to Sir Thomas Boleyn in 1527. Only a few years later, however, as Everett describes, Cromwell is no longer toiling in legal-brief obscurity. His acumen – and perhaps his intellectual ruthlessness – has made him not only a famous man but also a very busy one:
Cromwell's position as Henry's chief minister was even more widely perceived early the following year. In January 1533 there was the first of many mistaken assumptions that the kind had made Cromwell a knight. On 15 February the Imperial ambassador mentioned Cromwell by name for the first time in his dispatches. In April he then confirmed that Cromwell was 'the man who has the most influence with the King just now'. John, Lord Scrope remarked in May the Cromwell was 'soo busye with gret matters of the the kinge' that he had 'no laysour' to finish a matter of his.
As Everett points out, the qualities that go into making a good work of history aren't necessarily the same ones that go into making a good work of biography, and his own book is a curious and ultimately very successful amalgam of the two kindred disciplines, showing us the hustling lawyer gaining the confidence of Cardinal Wolsey and gradually learning the vulpine ways of the Tudor Court while at the same time bringing us as far into the mind of the actual man Cromwell as the surprisingly copious written records will allow. At no point does Everett yield to the temptations to melodrama that have led so many novelists and playwrights to make such a memorable creation of Cromwell (though not, curiously enough, Shakespeare, who was instead busy creating a masterful tragic figure out of Wolsey himself) – and led so many historians to make such a lamentable caricature of the same Cromwell. Instead, Everett is concerned throughout with what the documentary evidence actually says, and what can be most reasonably inferred from it all.And that essential question, the nature of the relationship between Henry and his “henchman”? Everett finds no reason to make a puppet out of the king:
More often than not, Cromwell's independence was over the execution of policy, not its formulation. The significant point … is that during the years 1531-1534, Cromwell was working for, and taking his lead from, his royal master. Repeatedly, his memoranda reminded him 'to speke with the kinges highness' or 'to know the kinges pleasure' touching all manner of matters on which he was engaged. As these are private memoranda, it is hard not to conclude that they are a revealing reflection of Cromwell's actions and intent.
As its title implies, the main concern of The Rise of Thomas Cromwell is the story of how the man from Putney reached the pinnacle of power, and the book tells that story better and more thoroughly than it's ever been told before. What Michael Everett needs to do now is take a page from Hilary Mantel's book and keep going: an equally-wonderful volume on Cromwell's peak and fall would be legitimate cause for some Tudor wassailing.
