Corpus Christi (Part 2/2) / Inheritance

Wolf Crawl Week 45: Monday 4 November – Sunday 10 November

📖 This is a long post and is best viewed online here.
👆 To get these updates in your inbox, subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents and turn on notifications for 2024 Wolf Crawl.
🎧 This post is now available as a podcast. Listen on Spotify, YouTube, Pocket Casts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Note: I am unwell this week. This is a shorter piece than usual. I hope you will be more forgiving than our lord and sovereign, Henry Tudor.

Welcome to Week 45 of Wolf Crawl

This week we are reading the second half of ‘Corpus Christi, June–December 1538’ and ‘Inheritance, December 1538’. This runs from page 599 to 625 in the Fourth Estate paperback edition. It begins: “In the first week of November he arrests Lord Montague and the Marquis of Exeter.” It ends: “He is afraid it will answer back.”

You will find everything you need for this read-along on the main Cromwell trilogy page of my website, including:

• The reading schedule

• Weekly updates, like this one

• Plot summaries for each character

• Online resources about Mantel’s writing and Thomas Cromwell

Give someone the gift of Cromwell in 2025

Wolf Crawl will run again next year for paid subscribers. All my posts will be revised and updated so that more readers can savour these extraordinary books in a slow year-long read. If you know someone who would enjoy this experience, consider a gift subscription so they can take part in Wolf Crawl 2025. Paid subscribers can also join the War and Peace readalong, read any of my book guides, or take part in any of the other 2025 slow reads.

Last week’s post:

Corpus Christi (Part 1/2)

‘For who can deny baptism? Before St Christophe was baptised, he was a dog’s-head cannibal.’ Landscape with St Christopher, Lucas Gassel, 1570. Source.

This week’s story

Early November, 1538. He arrests Henry Pole and Henry Courtenay, co-conspirators in a plot to put Reginald Pole on the throne of England. Pole’s mother, Margaret, packs her bags and knows it is all over. ‘They are down, the great families.’

Bess Darrell provides evidence. Cromwell will not send her back to the Courtenays because the Courtenays ‘will not exist’ for much longer. He, Cromwell, tells Bess he’d take up a sword to protect the new religion. ‘Against Henry?’ she asks.

Mid-November, John Lambert takes up weapons of straw against the mirror of all princes. ‘You will ruin us all,’ Robert Barnes tells him, as Lambert states plainly what all these bishops believe but cannot say: the bread of Christ is but bread. Corpus Christi is a puppet show.

Lambert will debate the king at Westminster. All the bishops assemble. Barnes excuses himself, Cranmer whispers, and Stephen Gardiner sweeps in, to talk, trip and goad the priest ‘into the flames where he will scream and bleed.’ He, Cromwell, says nothing.

Lambert’s death is slow. ‘An hour dying.’ Thomas Cranmer consoles his friend but Master Secretary knows there is no consolation. He failed Lambert and he failed himself. He writes to Wyatt, leaving out everything that matters. Leaving out the truth. ‘We shall prosper,’ he tells Rafe. ‘Never fear.’

December, 1538. His strongrooms and cellars are filling up with relics. The Thames is swollen and at Tower Hill, they bring up the bodies and lead the Marquis of Exeter and Lord Montague to the scaffold to die. The sons are locked away; the womenfolk spared. Nicholas Carew is arrested. In his cell, he reads the gospel and laments his life.

As the year goes out, the King of England is officially excommunicated from the mother church in Rome. ‘For a man doomed to Hell, Henry keeps a merry court.’ He, Cromwell, ‘keeps a waxen Henry in the corner of his imagination.’

He lives with it but he doesn’t talk to it. He is afraid it will answer back.

This week’s characters

Click on each link for more details and plot summaries for each character:

Thomas Cromwell • William Fitzwilliam • Lord Montague • Henry Courtenay • Constance Pole • Gertrude Courtenay • Margaret Pole • Richard Cromwell • Bess Darrell • John Lambert • Henry VIII • Lady Lisle • Rafe Sadler • Christophe • Stephen Gardiner • Cuthbert Tunstall • John Stokesley • Robert Barnes • Thomas Cranmer • Hugh Latimer • Chapuys • Richard Riche • Nicholas Carew • Mathew

This week’s theme: ‘Goodnight, Master Cromwell’

   'You have said, the king and Cromwell are alike, they disdain the whole realm to get what they want ... Have you not said, "When Henry dies, then goodnight Master Cromwell"?'

Another bloody week. Two stories entwine: the charge of treason brought against the old families, on flimsy, circumstantial, evidence; the trial of a Gospeler, condemned from his own mouth. At the Tower and at Smithfield, these sad stories end.

Traitors and heretics. What unites the two plotlines is the king, who holds the sword above us all. ‘He is not satisfied with any of us,’ so we must not deceive ourselves. There is no place of safety now.

Treason and heresy. Look closely and Cromwell is implicated in both. As he tells Bess Darrell, he is the only man in England not to have ‘voiced a dislike of the king or his proceedings.’ But moments later he speaks plain treason:

‘And even if Henry does turn, I will not turn. I will make good my cause in my own person. I am not too old to take a sword in my hand.’

He tries to walk the words back, but they have been said. And we understand why he said them. Because what is the point of ‘Thomas Cromwell, alias Harry Smith’ if not to stop men burning for speaking the truth? He had called himself Harry the day he saw Joan Boughton die. But for all that has been said and done in England, Lord Privy Seal, Vicegerent in Spirituals, has been powerless to protect his people:

He thinks of those who he has known who have died by fire, as if they have fallen into the sun. Little Bilney; the sour and obstinate Tyndale; the young and tender John Frith.

And now John Lambert. Another man on his conscience. ‘I sat in the cockpit among those eager hard-eyed men, with the taste of blood in their mouths, and I did not lift a finger.’

Why did he not? ‘It is too late now for a speech.’ Rafe says. He accused Lord Montague of cowardice. ‘They sicken me. They are cowards.’ They did not believe in their cause enough to join Reginald and take up arms. But he knows that he too is a coward. ‘I believe, but I do not believe enough.’

I said to Lambert, my prayers are with you, but in the end I only prayed for myself, that I might not suffer the same death.

It is understandable. He is no martyr. We have seen how much he wants to live. He reaches out for that future now at Lewes, through his son and grandson. ‘Riding into nowhere, a blank, where only memory stirs.’ His grandson’s name appears on deeds. He may grow old and see Henry Cromwell grow up. Or he may die tomorrow.

It all depends on the king. ‘Henry and Cromwell, Cromwell and Henry.’ His judgement, his mercy. At Westminister, John Lambert addresses his sovereign:

‘I commend my soul into God’s hands. My body, into your Majesty’s. I submit to your judgement. I rest in your clemency.’
   Don't, he thinks. Not there.

Stephen Gardiner is back and I am not OK. Source.

Footnotes

Early on the morning of the hearing, he receives Lisle’s wife, over from Calais. There is no one, other than Stephen Gardiner, whom he would less like to see before breakfast.

As I said up top, I’m unwell this week. It might be Stephen Gardiner’s fault. It might be Lady Lisle. Given more time and better health, I would like to talk to you about both. I also have a few notes on the Exeter conspiracy. I chaired a panel with Diarmaid Macculloch on this very topic at the

Wolf Hall Weekend

. We might also want to consider that letter to Thomas Wyatt, the bull of excommunication, and that verse by François Villon that closes this week’s reading.

We can chat about these in the comments and I’ll update this post at some point for Wolf Crawl 2025. But forgive me if that is the best I can do this week.

Quote of the Week: If the light moves

He closes his eyes. What does God see? Cromwell in the fifty-fourth year of his age, in all his weight and gravitas, his bulk wrapped in wool and fur? Or a mere flicker, an illusion, a spark beneath a shoe, a spit in the ocean, a feather in a desert, a wisp, a phantom, a needle in a haystack? If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone.

Last winter, they dug up a wax doll with the likeness of Prince Edward. Nails had been driven into it to harm the real body of the future king. A wax doll is not a person, so why does it feel like some violence has been done?

The same sympathetic magic applies to the Eucharist. The bread is the body of Christ. ‘Corpus Christi is a miracle. It is a mystery … You cannot hope to understand it but you must believe it.’ Belief can save you; disbelief will get you killed.

Cromwell knows what he believes. But he fears he does not believe it enough. When he writes that Henry is ‘the mirror and light of all other kings’ he is not being cynical. He is willing it to be true. He had meditated on the images of martyrs in Italy, and taken them into himself, ‘as some kind of prophecy or sign.’ Of what? That he, Cromwell, could turn a monster into a Christian king?

But it cannot be done. The wax doll will not hurt Edward. Corpus Christi is but bread. And no magic will turn Henry Tudor back into a man:

   They say the cardinal in the days of his power had a wax image of the king, which he talked to and bent to his will. He keeps a waxen Henry in the corner of his imagination, painted in bright colours and fitted with gilt shoes. He lives with it but he doesn't talk to it. He is afraid it will answer back.

Next week

Thank you for reading and joining me on this slow read of the Cromwell trilogy. Next week, we are reading the first half of ‘Ascension Day, Spring–Summer 1539’ This runs from page 629 to 651 in the Fourth Estate paperback edition. It begins: “Call-Me wants a picture of the king” It ends: “When you look at him these days you think of Jupiter, planet of increase.”

If you are enjoying this slow read, please consider recommending it to others so they can take part in Wolf Crawl 2025. You can now give your friends, or your enemies, the gift of Cromwell with an annual subscription to Footnotes and Tangents.

Until next week, I am your guide,

Master Simon Haisell