Dan Snow's History Hit - The Real Thomas Cromwell

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

On this day in 1540, Thomas Cromwell was executed. On the same day Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. To mark the anniversary we've found an episode from the archives with author, historian and curator at Historic Royal Palaces, Tracy Borman.Cromwell was a man who rose to be the most powerful member of Henry VIII's court, his Lord Privy Seal, Principal Secretary and Chancellor. He was a driving force behind the English Reformation and constitutional changes that emphasised the centrality of Parliament, but his current mighty reputation depends on the fictional trilogy of the genius novelist Hilary Mantel. In this episode, hear Dan and Tracy discuss the real Thomas Cromwell.Tracy's book, Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant, is available now.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Today is the 28th of July, this podcast's first broadcast on the 28th of July, and on this day in 1540, nearly 500 years ago, some maths just short of 500 years ago, Thomas Cromwell, a statesman who served as the chief minister basically, enforcer of Henry VIII, heard of him, was executed. He was beheaded on the orders of the king. I mean, why? It's a question you often ask of. Why would anyone try and play the Game of Thrones with Henry VIII? Why would anyone try and climb that greasy pole with Henry VIII, with a capricious, all-powerful Renaissance monarch, with health problems and women problems? It's a one-way street to beheading, I'll tell you. Thomas Cromwell had

helped to organise the marriage of Henry VIII to the German princess Anne of Cleves. Cromwell hoped that marrying a Protestant German princess would re-engage Henry with a more Protestant reformation. However, Henry found Anne of Cleves unattractive and the marriage was annulled six months later. Not long after that, Cromwell was found guilty of treason and heresy and dragged out onto Tower Hill and executed. The king later expressed regret. Well you know what that's too late pal. To rub it in almost Henry VIII married Catherine Howard his fifth bride the day that Cromwell was executed. The guy did not mess about. He was 49 years old. She was 17. She was a first cousin of Amberlyn. She was from the Howard stables, the Dukes of Norfolk, one of the more illustrious aristocratic families in England at the time. The men fought the king's

enemies while the daughters provided companions for the king's bed. By the way, she didn't last long either. Within two years, she too had been executed. Anyway, this podcast is all about Thomas Cromwell, not about Catherine Howard. Thomas Cromwell is one of the more important and remarkable statesmen in English history. He transformed the way that England worshipped. He transformed the way that England was governed through reforms to Parliament as well. And he took the leading part in the dissolution of the monasteries. A dissolution that I saw evidence for firsthand last week when I was in Evesham,

looking around what was once the third biggest monastery in Evesham is now a crumbling pile of ruins. Thank you, Thomas Cromwell, for that. Who else am I going to talk to about Thomas Cromwell than Tracy Tracy Borman she is an old friend she's a wonderful historian she works at a store all at palaces she is a fantastic scholar and communicator this episode of the podcast was first broadcast a year or two ago when a Hilary Mantel's brilliant book came out but I thought it was a good time to revisit it take one out of the old archive and reshare it with you all this time around. Tracy Borman is actually this month's guest on the History Hit book club. If you haven't heard about

it, then check your inbox. If you're a History Hit subscriber, you get an invitation to the book club. We're a bit oversubscribed really. So we're starting out only with members of the History Hit community. So go and subscribe at historyhit.tv. Once you've got your subscription to our Netflix for History, all our podcasts, our TV shows, all up there on our digital channel, then you will get an invitation to join the book club as well. It'd be great to have a few more joining. We're slowly bringing more and more members into the book club. It's great. We've had Lindsay Fitzharris on this month talking about Lister and the birth of modern surgery, which is unbelievably fascinating. And then we've got brilliant Tracy Borman on next week to have a good old session on Henry VIII. It's been really

fun doing that book club. It's forcing me to read lots and lots of great history, just what I needed in my life. But no, I'm loving it. It's good fun. Join historyhit.tv, join the book club, listen to the pods. I mean, you know, basically get with the programme. In the meantime, everyone, here is Tracy Borman talking about Thomas Cromwell. Enjoy. Tracey, God, it's so good to have you on the podcast. You haven't been on yet, I don't think. I know I'm really excited to do it. So thanks for having me. You know, you're one of the first people I met in public history in the UK. I mean, it's ridiculous. But you're now like the most distinguished historian in the world. So well done on everything you've achieved. Well done on this book. People are talking about

Thomas Cromwell a bit. I mean, you've obviously done something really special. Yes. So my original biography of Cromwell came out a few years ago. And I have to say that that was completely inspired by Wolf Hall and reading the fictional account made me want to find out, okay, how much of this is true. So that's where, that was my kind of jumping off point for writing the biography. But then this new edition, which has just come out, entirely coincidentally on the same day as The Mirror and the Light, includes a whole new set of material about Cromwell's London. Because from the kind of five years since it was first published, I found people asked me about that more than anything else. What London was like, what it was like to live in the city then, the kind of London

that Cromwell would have known. And so I paint a bit of a picture of that in the latest book. Okay, well, let's talk about The Man and the City. Hilary Mantel's presentation of him is fairly friendly, I'd say. You're quite drawn to him as a character, his precipitous, basically his raw talent and ability, his extraordinary life journey, his ability to climb up the very restricted social, economic and political ladder of Tudor England. Okay, what does she get right? So I think she gets a lot right, because certainly when I was taught history, it was that Cromwell was the kind of villain he was cutthroat cynical lined his own pockets on the reformation got rid of enemies without a thought and then of course Hilary Mantel presents us with somebody completely different as

you say like real hero for our time very streetwise and funny and clever and all the rest of it I think actually the real Cromwell was closer to the Wolf Hall version than the traditional version that we had read for many years in history books and kind of people who knew Cromwell but didn't like him who left behind much of the evidence of him. He's not quite the hero that we see encapsulated in Wolf Hall and on our screens but as I say I think he is actually closer to that. He was, we know he was an incredibly clever man. We know he's very principled. He's not just using the Reformation for his own ends. He's paying out of his own pocket to get the word of God out to the people to translate the Bible into English. He sticks by his friends. He's just not that kind

of cutthroat villain that we had been told about but Henry Mantel does forgive him for a few things that perhaps she oughtn't notably the downfall of Anne Boleyn I think much as I love Cromwell I think he almost certainly was entirely responsible for that whether or not he had the order from Henry to do it I think you think Anne Boleyn's death can be laid at his door. And then in a wider sense, what is right about the Henry Sheehan court, about London, about life? I mean, I've just finished Myrna Light and I just think it's just epic. I don't understand why, I mean, I love it and I'm not surprised everyone else loves it, but I'm surprised everyone else loves it as much as I do because most of these tiny little references to the emperor, you know, the pilgrimage of grace, it's a little bit, she doesn't give it a strong loves it as much as I do because most of these tiny little references to the emperor that you

know the pilgrimage of grace that it's a little bit she doesn't explain it she doesn't give it a strong narrative arc it's just kind of weird the rebels kind of come and go and and yet because we know the history we can enjoy that but it it's just she gives that sense of what it was like to be in London at the time the the Packington assassination is a fascinating one as well what does she get right in terms of the wider societal and sort of court picture? I think she gets so much right. Her research is extensive and impeccable, but she sits quite lightly to it. As you say, some of the bigger events, you know, that you're not being lectured at when you read The Mirror and the Light, they're kind of woven in quite deftly.

like they're kind of woven in quite deftly and I think you know it really shows that she has lived and breathed this period for many years just interweaving the names of servants that she's got from his household accounts as well as the bigger events that that we know were going on at the time but I think it's it's such a masterpiece and I think it can be enjoyed both by those who know the period and those who just like good fiction her style of writing is so extraordinary it kind of draws you in and and I think obviously the thing is it's a real achievement to write a book where everybody knows how it's going to end and for it still to be suspenseful and and a huge success because of course we know sorry spoiler alert but you know Cromwell dies and not very nicely and so that's how it's bound to end. And yet the suspense, I don't know about you,

but I really felt all the way through. It's like, oh no, that's going to go wrong. And she just puts a little marker down for something else that's going to come back and bite him. And she does it just so brilliantly that even though I obviously knew the events that were going to unfold, it still somehow came as a shock.

Is the King's favour as important as she makes out? I mean, it does feel like such a capricious place, you know, Henry's favour. Does it just come down to how the king felt about it on a very human level? I think it did. I think this was the age of personality, monarchy, as well as politics. And Henry really was this great presence that and his influence was everything and his favour was everything and he was increasingly fickle during these his later years the last decade or so of his reign this covers part of that and absolutely everything revolves around who is in favour and everybody's watching who the king is taking notice of, is showing signs of approval with. And unfortunately, Henry, because he became increasingly paranoid, just as his father,

Henry VII, had been, it was increasingly difficult to predict which way he was going to go. And I think it was almost a case of divide and rule for Henry in his later years. He couldn't trust anyone. He liked to pitch people against each other and so it was a tortuously difficult game trying to win favour in Henry's court and and if you lost then you would really lose everything did he execute more people than his dad or his son or his sisters yes why does he have such a reputation not not with his wives but as a the head chopper offer of his of his servants of his statesmen. Yeah, well, he did.

I think it has been just about proven that he executed more people than any of the other Tudors. And I think that's very much bound up with what was going on with his religious and political changes, the Reformation, that actually set something up that people, if they opposed it, could be executed for. And so there were huge divisions in society, lots of opposition to Henry and his government. So I guess there was more reason to rebel than there had been before. And Henry couldn't be seen to show mercy all the time. He did sometimes, but he had to get people to toe the line. And the only way to do that was through fear in the end and hence you see the number of prisoners stacking up in the Tower of

London and the number of executions too so it was a really dangerous and brutal time. In the last book there's a lot of discussion of the remnants of the Plantagenet family that he basically systematically kind of wipes out it does a lot of it stem from his insecurity on things we think of Henry as the most secure Holbeinin standing there, legs astride, after the War of the Roses. And actually, the Tudors had, I think, you know, they have a better claim than most people make out. I think Henry VII had a half-decent claim to the throne anyway. But, and yet, did he feel this enormous insecurity? I think he did, right from the start. And I think he was made to feel that, not just because, you know because he's only the second Tudor and it's seen as still quite a fledgling dynasty. But the early death of his elder brother, Arthur, I think was a profound event in his life. And in a kind of shameless plug alert, I did explore that in some length in my latest nonfiction apart from Cromwell, which is Henry VIII and the men who made him. So all of these early influences were key. And so the death of his brother, Arthur, when Arthur was 15, really had such an impact on

Henry. And of course, he was then himself wrapped in cotton wool as the sole surviving male heir. And that sense of insecurity really accelerated from that day forwards. And so he was desperate for a male heir. And even when Jane Seymour had given him Edward then he was obsessed with having a spare heir because of what had happened to his elder brother he knew you needed a spare so even though yeah I agree with you you know their claim was pretty good

you know who didn't have something dodgy somewhere along the line their claim was good but he needed this security of not just one but ideally two male heirs. And of course, he didn't get that. The heir thing is the source of instability, I suppose. Just explain to us, why was Henry's heir situation so complicated?

And it comes through so much in this most recent Mantel book as well. Cromwell's been expected to deal with this. Well, this was not an agent. It wouldn't come for many years. When girls had equal precedence, they were seen as unfit to rule. You know, you'd only allow a girl to succeed if there was literally nobody else. And we didn't have very good precedence for this with the sort of Empress Matilda and the last woman to really hold the throne, not for very long. And so, you know, the Princess Mary henry's eldest child was was almost just discounted it's like well if we really have to we'll rely on her but but women were seen as

intellectually physically weaker weaker in every single sense so it was all about the male heirs and it was also reflected on henry's potency as a. And he didn't like it that he was having such trouble, apparently fathering male heirs. Hence, the wives get all the blame, and particularly poor old Anne Boleyn and Catherine before her. And then Anne of Cleves is, you know, famously the ugly wife. Henry couldn't bring himself to consummate the marriage. She gets all the blame,

whereas probably he was suffering from impotence by that stage. That's the frustration, is that Cromwell and then everybody else are trying to manage a very human, domestic, personal situation but that has these implications of statecraft. The best description in that book was when the king, his morning ablutions and the doctor's looking at his urine in his stool and Cromwell goes, it's a shame he's not made of glass, so you can just look inside and put it simply.

Exactly. And it was, you know, there could just look inside and put it simply exactly and it was you know there's nothing sacred in a way when you're king every single bit of you is is subject to scrutiny and Henry even though he has this reputation as you say from the Holbein paintings as being this strident self-confident king he was actually fearful incredibly fearful and a real hypochondriac more than any of the other Tudor monarchs put together. And this is in an age where people are generally quite obsessed with their health. But Henry was described, and I couldn't believe this quote, by somebody who

visited him in private as being the most timid man you could hope to meet. And you just don't often apply that word to Henry, but he, and he would have himself examined by his physicians every morning. He had a private medicine cabinet. He himself dabbled with making medicines and cures for the plague. He was absolutely obsessed with everything to do with his body, including, you know, his bowel movements, frankly. And those who served him had to be just as interested as he was. You listen to Dan Snow's History.

We're talking to Tracey Boardman about Thomas Cromwell. More after this. Hi, I'm Susanna Lipscomb, and in my new podcast, Not Just the Tudors, I'll be talking about everything from Aztecs to witches, Belefgeth to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt,

and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

we're recording this during the corona crisis of spring 2020 and i was very struck in the book by how much mention there is of the sweats of the flu of the plague of the fevers goodness me it gives you a different yeah this is a london that we've come to recognize again absolutely this gives you a very different understanding a new new understanding. And, you know, this was commonplace, really, for the Tudors. The sweat came pretty much once a year, and the plague was a regular visitor as well. And they had to get used to kind of self-isolating or moving to the country or anything else. But absolutely, you can just imagine how much more terrifying it must have been in those days of sort of rudimentary medicine and a lack of understanding about what was spreading it and how to contain the spread. So it does suddenly feel incredibly pertinent. And as you say,

that is covered quite often in Hilary Mantel's last novel. In your study of London at the time, I mean, did rich people just leave? Or were active measures taken? Was it very seasonal? It was very seasonal. It tended to be summer. So it's kind of the opposite to the situation with the coronavirus in that the heat kind of literally fanned the flames of sickness rather than extinguishing them as we hope will happen this time. Yet, if you're rich enough, you leave for the country.

That's the safest thing you can do. Get away from the crush of bodies in London. There was a sense of quarantine that that helped, even if they didn't quite understand kind of why. But there were also gross misinformation such as, OK, immediately stop washing because washing opens up the pores and enables infection to get in. So that was kind of one of the really unfortunate pieces of misinformation. But as with so many things, the poorer you were, the more at risk you were. And most of the deaths were amongst the poorer members of society who just didn't have such access to an alternative living space, really, and were kind of crowded together.

London was still a very crowded city the population was obviously much lower than today but still you know proportionately at the most crowded city if not in the world then certainly in the UK. Talk to me about that you get the sense of a nexus in Mantell's work and of course in your work about how Cromwell sat between a court, a world of finance, a world of merchants, often Northern European merchants, suffused with a bit of Protestantism, the Italian and French worlds as well. Did he sit at the centre of all these overlapping circles? I think he did as much as possible.

I think what gave Cromwell a great advantage is his upbringing because he was just this commoner who was looked down on by all the other more noble members of Henry's court. But unlike them, he'd had the sort of ultimate gap year, if you like, or gap decade. He'd taken himself off to the continent when he was very young, spent many years travelling around Italy and France and the Netherlands, picking up contacts along the way, becoming very cultured. No wonder he was able to be a successful merchant when he got back because of all of that experience that he'd garnered. And I think that gave him this cosmopolitan outlook that most other men

at Henry's court entirely lacked. They were still very kind of flag-waving, xenophobic, you know, let's wage war on the Scots and the French, whereas Cromwell seemed to have a bigger world view and this incredible network of informers and contacts and reformists. You know, he was getting all these banned books somehow smuggled in and he had them in his library in Austin Friars and his other houses. So I think Cromwell was just an incredibly impressive man. He'd had an education like no other, certainly very, very unlike he should have had as the apprentice of his father, a blacksmith. What's the relationship between Henry and his capital city, London? I mean, it feels like Cromwell is more comfortable on the streets of London than Henry ever was. Henry circulates around the edges, spends as much time as he can outside it. So in

your work on London, is it an anarchic place where the royal writ is a bit unsteady? Yeah, I mean, certainly you're right in that Cromwell's much more at home in London than Henry is. Henry is seen by his people, but only really when he's moving between his various London palaces, you know, Hampton Court, Whitehall, Greenwich, etc. He's not really a man of London in the same way as Cromwell was, even though he was born there. And of course, a lot of that is for reasons of security and to keep himself safe from disease and the riffraff and all the rest of it. But I think Henry was increasingly fearful, and certainly after the Pilgrimage of Grace, which really shook him, this first major act of rebellion among his people. And suddenly, this man who'd taken the love of his people for granted, was suddenly caused to question

everything and just how popular he was. And were there going to be assassination attempts? And so he did retreat into himself more and more. And at Hampton Court in recent years, we discovered his private apartments. Now, that might sound a bit odd. Surely we knew they were there. Well, we had actually misidentified them for years. But we have positively identified what's known as the Bain Tower as being Henry's former private apartments. And he built that towards the last decade of his reign because he was retreating more and more, not just from London, but from the public in general. He was becoming more fearful. He was becoming more sick, actually, after his jousting accident and his rapid weight gain. He

was a man in pain with his ulcerated legs. So you do get the sense that he's increasingly reclusive in a way that Cromwell never was. He's still travelling around London on his mule and up and down the river, between palaces. He never stops. He absolutely never stops, whereas Henry increasingly retreats into himself. The traditional understanding of Cromwell is, A, he is almost responsible for the lurch towards Protestantism, and Henry, who was slightly more uncertain about the direction he wanted to take his reformation. The other idea is that Cromwell massively enhances the power of Parliament and the sort of place of Parliament within the British Constitution,

English Constitution. What is Cromwell's legacy, do you think? Yeah, I think it is a twofold legacy, really. I think it is the religious aspect, and certainly his changes that he ushered in, and they are all drafted in his hand, really, the sort of reformation parliaments that were held, all of those statutes. Cromwell was instrumental in getting those drafted and pushed through. So he might not be alone responsible for the birth of Protestantism in England, but he really helped it along. And as I said earlier, just paying out of his own pocket to have the Bible translated was a huge step and it shows

his commitment. But yes, the growth of Parliament as well. And I love this fact because it is Cromwell who first realises Parliament as a force to be reckoned with, as opposed to somebody who just, you know, rubber stamps whatever the king wants, which really had been in the past by and large. Whereas now it's a real political force, thanks to the power that Cromwell gave it during the Reformation. And the reason I love this fact is, of course, that was realised to its ultimate degree by his descendant and namesake, Oliver Cromwell. And they were related. I'm often asked, were the two Cromwells related? They were, but through Cromwell's nephew, Richard, who actually was Richard Williams, but changed his name to Cromwell. So if strictly speaking, it ought to be Oliver Williams, the great Civil War leader, not Oliver Cromwell.

That's interesting. And Richard is the one who features in the books as well. Yes, exactly. He's rightly given a major role because he was in Cromwell's service and he doted on his uncle. He was very loyal to him. And that's why, you know, he chose to change his name from Williams to Cromwell as an indication of loyalty to his uncle. Of course, it did him quite a few favours personally as well. You're going to want the name Cromwell when Thomas Cromwell is at his height. But yeah, absolutely. Cromwell had this network, as I think Mantell shows very deftly, of these young men, early career, if you like, all very, very keen and eager and will work around the clock like Cromwell does.

But they're all loyal to him. And I think that speaks volumes about what sort of man Cromwell was. He wasn't only loyal to other people he served, but he inspired loyalty in those who served him, whether it was Ralph Sadler or Richard Cromwell, his nephew. There's a whole raft of servants at all levels who just really almost worshipped the grand Thomas Cromwell walked on. Well, I'm a Cromwellite now, of course, having read your book and that other little book by Hilary Mantel, which I understand. Yeah, the other insignificant one. Yours is called? Mine is called Thomas Cromwell, The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant. And that

subtitle is a quote because Henry VIII, too late realised what he'd done. When he had Cromwell executed, he thought, you know, I'll just find somebody to replace him because Cromwell had replaced Wolsey very quickly. But of course, there was nobody. There was nobody even approaching Cromwell's genius to fill his shoes. And so Henry realised as well that the whole plot against Cromwell had been totally groundless. He was innocent. But he realised it all, of course, too late. and he was heard to lament the loss of the most faithful servant he had ever had. I have to say, Henry, I'm sorry, but it serves you right. Yeah, no, I've got no sympathy on Henry Tudor.

Sorry about that. OK, great. Thank you very much. Good luck with the book, Tracey. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this episode of Danston's History. As I say all the time, I love doing these podcasts. They are the best thing I do professionally.

I feel very lucky to have you listening to them. If you fancied giving them a rating review, obviously the best rating review possible would be ideal it makes a big difference to us i know it's a pain but we'd really really be grateful and if you want to listen to the other podcast in our ever increasing stable don't forget we've got suzanne lipscomb with not just the tudors that's flying high in the charts we've got our medieval podcast gone medieval the brilliant matt lewis and cat jarman we've got the ancients with our very own tristan hughes and we've got our medieval podcast gone medieval the brilliant matt lewis and cat jarman we've got the ancients with our very own tristan hughes and we've got warfare as well dealing with all things military please go and check those out wherever you get your pods