Gregory Cromwell
Son of Thomas Cromwell
Son of Thomas and Liz Cromwell.
The story so far…
Week 2: At Austin Friars / Visitation
In 1527, we learn that Cromwell has sent his son to study in Cambridge. He is almost thirteen, and his Latin is bad. He writes terse little notes back home wishing everyone well. Cromwell says “he’s busy growing” and doesn’t mind his academic failings. At least he’s not growing up like his father, or grandfather. “He likes to be told stories, dragon stories, stories of green people who in in the woods.” When he was born, Cromwell kissed his “fluffy skull” and promised to be “tender to you as my father was not to me.”
Week 3: An Occult History of Britain (Part 1)
Liz embroiders his shirts. His younger sister Anne is already faster than him with the pen. Cromwell desires to “protect his own son from a quarter of what he knows.” His sweet nature is the result of Liz’s prayers because it sure enough doesn’t come from Tom. When Cromwell comes home on that fateful day in 1527, he thinks first it is Gregory who is dead. But no.
Week 4: An Occult History of Britain (Part 2)
There is something terribly earnest and serious about Gregory. When his aunts joke about Johane Williamson marrying his father, with a dispensation from the pope, he says, ‘why is that funny? You can’t marry your wife’s sister, can you?’
Week 5: Make or Mar / Three-Card Trick
The first day of 1530 and Gregory goes to see his father. He enters Cromwell’s study as a gentleman, with a gentleman’s hands. He leaves the room as a child, without mother or sisters. He sorts his father’s papers and sweeps up his father’s counters with no regard for their purpose. Cromwell marvels at what he has created. And the boy asks about a giant called Marlinspike.
And one day, his father brings home a kitten born in the cardinal’s own rooms. “Gregory, look. I am a giant, my name is Marlinspike.”
Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)
In 1530, Gregory is fifteen. He is worried people in Cambridge are laughing about his black dogs. When Cromwell was fifteen, he had bigger things to worry about. Gregory has a new copy of Le Morte d’Arthur. ‘Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.’
Cromwell thinks of the plain noblewoman in Anne’s court. He should find out her name and family, and see if Gregory can marry her.
Week 8: The Dead Complain of Their Burial / Arrange Your Face (Part 1)
“When I was small, I dreamed of demons. I thought they were under my bed, but you said, it can’t be so, you don’t get demons our side of the river, the guards won’t let them over London Bridge.”
Cromwell: “Gregory, those Merlin stories you read - we are going to write some more.”
Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)
Glimpses of Gregory, playing with his dog on a cushion. Waking his father up on New Year’s Day to tell him that they have arrested Thomas Wyatt.
Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)
The king calls Gregory “a very fine young man”, and Gregory almost dies of happiness. “How do you manage to speak to him every day?” he asks his father.
Cromwell is sending Gregory to the household of Rowland Lee. “I think Cambridge has done all that it can for him. And I admit that Gregory has done nothing for Cambridge.”
Week 14: Devil’s Spit / A Painter’s Eye
Gregory writes from Kent: “And now no more for lack of time.” Cromwell writes back: “come home and spend the new year with us.”
He is conscious that his son is taller than he is: not that it takes much. He steps sideways, though only in his mind, to see his boy with a painter’s eye: a boy with fine white skin and hazel eyes, a slender angel of the second rank in the fresco dappled with damp, in some hill town far from here. He thinks of him as a page in a forest riding across vellum, dark curls crisp under a narrow band of gold; whereas the young men about him every day, the young men of Austin Friars, are muscled like fighting dogs, hair cropped to stubble, eyes sharp as sword points. He thinks, Gregory is all he should be. He is everything I have a right to hope for: his openness, his gentleness, the reserve and consideration with which he holds back his thoughts till he has framed them. He feels such tenderness for him he thinks he might cry.
Week 15: Supremacy
Gregory goes with Cromwell to Hatfield to see Princess Elizabeth and Lady Mary. He compares the princess to a changeling spirit, commenting that, “She could be anybody’s.” People have gone to the Tower for saying less.
Gregory seems surprised by how mild his father is to Mary Tudor, “as if he has never heard this softened tone.” Gregory is shocked by what he sees of this “sneery girl,” and his father tells him not to talk about it to anyone. He explains that if the king dies tomorrow, Mary is best place to succeed him, whatever Parliament says.
Arguing with Thomas More, Cromwell loses his temper:
‘I would rather see my own son dead, I would rather see them cut off his head, than see you refuse this oath, and give comfort to every enemy of England.’
More replies: “Gregory is a goodly young man. Don’t wish him away. If he has done badly, he will do better. I say the same of my own boy. What’s the use of him? But he is worth more than a debating point.”
Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1)
Christmas, 1534. Gregory comes home from Rowland Lee, who calls him a treasure.
“Rafe says I am being brought up like a prince.”
”For now, you are all I have to practice on.”
Cromwell shows him a map of the Scots border and explains how he will punish Harry Percy. “Is this because of the cardinal?” Gregory asks. “Go and play,” says Cromwell.
Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall
Gregory’s new haircut: “Your mother would have wept over your baby curls.”
“Would she? I hardly remember her.”
Week 18: Falcons
At Wolf Hall, Gregory defends his dead sisters from an attack by Francis Weston: “You insult my sisters and their memory, sir, and you never knew them.” Later, he and Rafe throw Weston’s ghost out the window.
In the evening, he asks his father whether he is to marry Jane Seymour. “They say you liked Jane yourself.”
Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous period of the gread authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones… Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted."
Week 19: Crows (Part 1)
Gregory admires Call-Me. He has been hunting all summer and now is with William Fitzwilliam, learning how to be a gentleman. He calls him “Fitz.”
Gregory is unobservant. When Jane avoids the king’s gaze, Gregory says: “Doesn’t Mistress Seymour eat a lot?”
Week 21: Angels
At Christmas, Gregory asks, ‘Where do the dead live now?' Do we have Purgatory or not?… I take it very hard if I cannot pray for my mother.’
At Stepney, he and the other Cromwell boys are building papist snowmen to knock down. ‘We only did it for the better setting forth of the king’s supremacy.’
Week 22: The Black Book (Part 1)
What happened to Anthony’s teeth?
To Gregory: They were sucked out of his head by a great worm that crawled out of the ground and ate his wife. This was in Yorkshire, last year.
Gregory knows it is not true. ‘He sounds regretful.’ But it makes people happy when he believes in tall tales.
Cromwell asks the king not to ‘unhorse’ Gregory in the jousts. Cromwell: ‘I don’t want him to be Achilles. I only want him not to be flattened.’ In the event, Gregory never competes, as Henry falls from his house and the tournament is suspended.
Week 22: The Black Book (Part 2)
Gregory tells his father about a story that Anne is making poisons to kill Lady Mary. ‘Do not spread this about the household,’ Cromwell says. ‘Too late, the household has spread it about me.’
Week 28: Master of Phantoms (Part 4/5)
At Austin Friars, after the trial, Cromwell finds his son still in his riding coat. Gregory says he has learned the art of public speaking. His father chastises him for riding without proper protection.
Gregory wants to know whether the men are guilty and whether they will die. He wonders whether he should be there to pray for them; he is unsure whether he is strong enough to see men die.
Week 29: The Book of Phantoms (Part 5/5) / Spoils
Cromwell takes his son to witness Anne’s beheading. He says it will be the hardest thing he will ever do, but it will be remarked on. ‘You need not look. When the soul passes, we kneel, and we drop our eyes, and pray.’
Week 30: Wreckage (I)
Gregory is full of questions. He has never seen anyone die before and cannot believe anyone has an appetite afterwards. He asks Kingston whether a queen of England has ever been executed before. He asks the Earl of Richmond why he did not kneel, and when Norfolk says Kingston is past it, he reminds Thomas Howard that he is just as old. He tells Norfolk of a revel at the Cromwell house, and Cromwell has to silence his son before he says anything really stupid.
Later, Gregory is in the garden at Austin Friars trying to catch the cat with a net.
Week 31: Salvage (Part 1/3)
Gregory: ‘Do not talk about severed heads at a wedding.’ What do we talk about? Affairs, apparently. Gregory is stunned to learn that the king has slept with Carew’s wife, and he reminds his father that they are saying he, Cromwell, has slept with the Earl of Worcester’s wife.
Week 32: Salvage (Part 2/3)
Gregory insists that it is no treason to say all men are mortal. His father says it isn’t his best idea either. When Richard Riche shows them his speech for the opening of parliament, Gregory wonders whether their balding king would not like to be compared to Absalom, with his luxuriant hair.
Week 33: Salvage (Part 3/3)
Gregory and Richard assist Cromwell in writing a letter to the king on Mary’s behalf. At Hackney, Gregory is in the garden. Inside, he helps tell Helen the story of Atalanta.
Week 35: Wreckage (II) (Part 2/2)
When rumours come of a marriage between Cromwell and Lady Mary, he advises his father to marry and marry quick.
His son is in demand. From Somersert to Kent, from the midlands to the northern fells, castles and manors compete to entertain him: a pleasant youth of competent good looks, never over-familiar but at ease with great men, discrreet with servants and gentle with the poorer sort; able to play upon the virginals and lute, to sing his part, converse in French, and to take his hand at any game of skill or chance, indoors or out. On the hunting field he is tireless and without fear. He practices daily in the butts, giving example thereby – only modesty prevents his being as sharp as his father with the longbow.
Week 36: Augmentation
Gregory spends a summer with the Howards. He returns with stories of a surly Surrey insulting him in Italian and Norfolk, who says he should spend less time with the Seven Wise Men of Greece and more time hunting.
Week 37: The Five Wounds
Gregory asks to go with Richard and Fitz to fight rebels. Richard Cromwell tells him to stay home and study. ‘And look after your father.’
Week 38: Vile Blood (1/2)
The king sits with Gregory, ‘working through the score sheets from old tournaments.’ He compliments him on his muscles and recommends wearing armour every day. Gregory asks him about Merlin’s prophecies and recommends that the king ‘Offer Merlin an abbey. It could not hurt.’
Week 39: Vile Blood (Part 2/2)
Gregory is with Cromwell while the king sits in melancholy. His father hopes Gregory will not laugh and the king will not see him smile.
Gregory says, 'Father, when the king sent me to look for Merlin books, I lifted up the lid of a chest, and what did I see? I saw three volumes, on their binding the badge of the falcon, and the letters "AB". I ask myself, does the king know they are there?'
Week 40: The Bleach Fields
Gregory says to Jenneke:
‘When my father is king … and wed to Latimer’s wife Kate, and to Meg Douglas and Mary Tudor, you will be the Princess Jenneke, and you and I shall harness a gold chariot with white horses, and speed like Phoebus through Whitehall, and throw buns to the populace. The populace will say, “They are plain-looking folk, but see how their faces shine!” And eat up their buns, and bless us as we hurtle past. Surely you will stay with us? What can Antwerp offer, next to the prospects here?’
Week 41: The Image of the King (Part 1/2)
Cromwell arranges a marriage between Gregory and Bess Oughtred.
Week 42: The Image of the King (Part 2/2) / Broken on the Body
When the Earl of Surrey learns of Gregory’s marriage to Bess Seymour, there is a confrontation at court. Surrey calls Gregory a ‘squat little clod.’
At his wedding, Gregory wonders whether the king will pardon Surrey as a wedding gift. Cromwell hopes not, since he wants the king to gift Gregory an abbey instead. In this exchange, Gregory issues his father with a request:
'So many words,' Gregory says, 'So many words and oaths and deeds, that when folk read of them in time to come they will hardly believe such a man as Lord Cromwell walked the earth. You do everything. You have everything. You are everything. So I beg you, grant me an inch of your broad earth, Father, and leave my wife to me.'
He tells his father that Bess is already pregnant. ‘He wants to stand up and embrace his son, but perhaps not. They have never had a harsh word till today, he thinks, and perhaps what has passed is less harsh than sad: that a son can think evil of his father, as if he is a stranger and you cannot tell what he might do…’
After Jane has died, Gregory says to him: ‘My lord father, who will you let the king marry next?’
Week 43: Nonsuch
Gregory says, ‘He is a king after all, he does not think as we think, he does not know what we know. I would be afraid to argue with him as you do, father, lest God strike me dead.’
In March, Gregory’s son Henry is born and Cromwell becomes a grandfather.
Week 44: Corpus Christi (Part 1/2)
Cromwell goes down to Lewes to see his son and grandson.
Father and son ride out together in the evening, the sun a perfect crimson orb above the line of the downs. The sky has become a mirror, against which the sun moves: light without shadow, like the light at the beginning of the world. Gregory’s chatter stills; the creak of harness, the breathing of the horses, seems to muffle itself, so they move in silence, outlined against silver, tall against the sky; and as the upland fades into a pillowy distance, he feels himself riding into nowhere, a blank, where only memory stirs.
Week 47: Ascension Day (Part 2/2)
Gregory visits his sick father on his way to Parliament. Cromwell thinks him too young and tells his son to bring him ink and paper. ‘I must use my time. I have less than twenty-four hours.’ He returns later: ‘Gregory Cromwell, member of Parliament: grass-green velvet with a curling black feather in his cap.’
In May, Gregory and Richard Cromwell lead their family procession of troops through London. His father watches from the back gate at St James’s.
Week 48: Twelfth Night
Cromwell tells his son to go with the welcome party to Calais to meet the new queen. He will be able to converse with Anna in the Latin his father made him learn. He tells his father that, ‘I was afraid of you' and ‘You were too busy to strike me.’
In November, Gregory comes to Austin Friars for his final instructions. He sees the leopard arrive and asks whether it was meant for the king.