Thomas Cromwell

Thomas Cromwell (/ˈkrɒmwəl, -wɛl/; c. 1485 – 28 July 1540) 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.

Cromwell was one of the most powerful proponents of the English Reformation. As the King's chief secretary, he instituted new administrative procedures that transformed the workings of government. He helped to engineer an annulment of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that Henry could lawfully marry Anne Boleyn. Henry failed to obtain the approval of Pope Clement VII for the annulment in 1533, so Parliament endorsed the King's claim to be Supreme Head of the Church of England, giving him the authority to annul his own marriage. Cromwell subsequently charted an evangelical and reformist course for the Church of England from the unique posts of Vicegerent in Spirituals and Vicar-general (the two titles refer to the same position).

During his rise to power, becoming Baron Cromwell, he made many enemies, including Anne Boleyn, with his fresh ideas and lack of inherited nobility. He played a prominent role in her downfall. He fell from power in 1540, despite being created Earl of Essex that year, after arranging the King's marriage to the German princess Anne of Cleves. The marriage was a disaster for Cromwell, ending in an annulment six months later. Cromwell was arraigned under an act of attainder (32 Hen. 8. c. 62) and was executed for treason and heresy on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540. The King later expressed regret at the loss of his chief minister, and his reign never recovered from the incident.

Thomas Cromwell is thought to have been born by or around 1485 in Putney, then a village in Surrey providing a ferry service across the Thames upstream from London. His grandfather, John, had moved to the area from Nottinghamshire to run a fulling mill (for wool processing) leased to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had a mansion further upstream at Mortlake and was lord of the local manor of Wimbledon. His father, Walter (c. 1450 – c. 1514), was an ambitious yeoman landowner who plied various trades, operating as a sheep farmer and wool processor ("fuller" and "shearman"), while also running a tavern and a brewery. A popular tradition that he was also a blacksmith is plausible, although the association could have arisen from his use of the alternative surname of Smith (as in "Cromwell alias Smyth"). As a successful tradesman, Cromwell's father was regularly called upon for jury service and was elected Constable of Putney in 1495. He had frequent brushes with the law himself in the local manorial court, often on relatively minor matters, but also for assault and, ultimately, in 1514, for "falsely and fraudulently" removing evidence from the court roll regarding his manorial tenancy, a judgement that led to confiscation of all his accumulated lands.

Little is known about Cromwell's mother, even though she came from a recognised gentry family, the Meverells of Staffordshire. Generally referred to as "Katherine Meverell", her first name is uncertain. She married Cromwell's father in 1474 while living in Putney in the house of a local attorney, John Welbeck.

Cromwell is assumed to have been the youngest of three children. He had two sisters: the elder, Katherine, married Morgan Williams, a Welsh lawyer's son who came to Putney as a follower of King Henry VII when he established himself in the nearby Richmond Palace; the younger, Elizabeth, married William Wellyfed, a sheep farmer. Katherine and Morgan's son, Richard, was employed in his uncle's service and by the autumn of 1529 had changed his name to Cromwell. Richard was the great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell.

No record survives of Cromwell's childhood days in Putney, and it is unknown whether he was ever sent to school or had to serve an apprenticeship. Various people from Putney crop up in his adult life, and he maintained close relations with his two sisters and their extended families.

Cromwell acknowledged to Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that he had been a "ruffian ... in his young days". Around the start of the 16th century, for reasons which remain unclear, he left his family in Putney and crossed the Channel to continental Europe, allegedly after spending some time in prison. Accounts of his activities in France, Italy and the Low Countries are problematic. The tradition that he quickly became a mercenary and marched with the French army to Italy, where in 1503 he fought in the Battle of Garigliano, stems from a novella by the contemporary Italian writer Matteo Bandello in which Cromwell is portrayed as a page to a foot-soldier, carrying his pike and helmet. This account was treated as fact by many later writers, including John Foxe in his Actes and Monuments of 1563. Despite the obvious exaggerations contained in Bandello's novella, MacCulloch points out that the "picaresque" narrative provides the best available clues to shine some light on the obscurity of Cromwell's first Italian trip.