The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, by Michael Everett

Abstract

Michael Everett’s welcome new study of Thomas Cromwell traces his career in the years preceding 1535 and, in doing so, offers a new interpretation of how Cromwell emerged as Henry’s chief minister in the mid-1530s. Everett has set himself no easy task. Information about Cromwell’s early life is scarce, but Everett has managed to add to our knowledge of Cromwell’s early career. If there is further evidence to be found, it will not be for want of trying on Everett’s part. This meticulously detailed study first outlines Cromwell’s early life as a merchant and lawyer in London and recounts what can be traced of his travels on the Continent. For Everett, the key to Cromwell’s rise to power lay in his legal abilities. More particularly, Cromwell made a name for himself in property transactions, including (as is well known) helping Cardinal Wolsey dissolve several religious houses for his collegiate foundations at Ipswich and Oxford in the 1520s. By 1529, Cromwell was sufficiently associated with the cardinal to be viewed as an important intermediary. After the cardinal’s fall, the king turned to Cromwell to help him bring the lands associated with the colleges under Crown control. It was Cromwell’s success in doing so efficiently, Everett argues, that brought entry into royal service at some point in the summer of 1530 (several months after Elton had supposed), and a place on the king’s council at the end of that year. Everett sees Cromwell’s wide-ranging work on the Crown lands and involvement in Henry’s building programmes (such as the new palace of Whitehall) as a hallmark of his early years on the council. This was also the source of many of the early requests for favours that reached him in the early 1530s. His ability to deal efficiently and effectively with a wide range of business is, for Everett, the key to understanding how Cromwell emerged as Henry’s right-hand man in 1533. Overall, Everett paints a picture of a much less ambitious, dynamic and influential figure than has previously been supposed. One consequence is that a more consensual picture of Henrician politics emerges than the work of scholars such as Eric Ives, David Starkey or Rory McEntegart would permit. Everett also plausibly suggests that the survival of Cromwell’s papers makes him seem more unusual than he perhaps was.