This week’s post took my breath away, Simon! So very well done. This whole chapter has felt like a boulder rolling downhill and gathering everything it crushes into itself, getting bigger and faster with each tumble and bump. The anticipation and dread of reaching the bottom grows ever more present. Crumb can feel it, and so can we.
Reading all these behind the scenes moments to such a momentous event (even if they didn't happen exactly like it's told) has made me wonder what would've happened if Anne went quietly to a convent? Or if she agreed to divorce Henry when she saw how things were going? Or, bigger still, what would've happened if she'd had a son? I find myself wanting to reach through time and nudge things in a different direction.
That's something that these books really invite you to do, don't they? The future hasn't happened yet and it could work out differently. Every time I read them I almost expect something different to happen. Although it is hard imagining Anne settling for a convent.
My stomach churns reading this chapter and I can only imagine what it was like reading the documents Bea read. I can't at this moment read Mark Smeaton's confession, for all his strutting and boasting he is only a young man and I feel a sickening feeling that Cromwell is able to condemn him and the others to their fate. Thinking of how it must feel to be sat waiting for death chills me. And yet I can in part understand how Cromwell is able to reason with himself, how he can claim it is the right thing and I still feel there is a man with a heart underneath this. Sometimes in our lives, in our jobs, we have to make decisions that those looking in could not understand and it does hurt but we put up a facade.
Right! Far more interesting to see how a man with a heart and a family, hopes and ambition, wrestles with his conscience. Mantel was so right to devote a whole book to this story, as you can see how pivotal in must be for his character.
Excellent entry Simon, there's really not much one can add. "It is a good story; some days we even believe in it." Cromwell is working the facts to ease his conscience: he's not in the wrong because the king made him do it, because ~technically the law is on his side, because Anne Boleyn is not a good person anyway. He wants to be like Wyatt and weave a tale crafty and mysterious enough to make for plausible deniability, but Wyatt is a Michelangelo working with hammer and chisel, Cromwell is going at it with a bloody axe. Despite his gentle courtier mask, the mirror and Han's portrait show him what he is, and despite his carefully impartial narrative, we've looking at his actions from across the centuries and recognizing them for what they are.
The moment where he, Cromwell, almost believes Anne rather broke my heart. He knows and yet can’t know she is not guilty of these exact accusations. Just as he knows and yet can’t know that the king is something of a monster. Anxiety producing to read for sure.
I really like the perspectives you've shared on Cromwell & Wyatt here, thank you.
I noticed an ambivalence running through this chapter. On the one hand, Cromwell is ruthless and powerful (the outcome of the trial is not in doubt, "once you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect"), but he is also frequently portrayed as having only limited control. As well as the times when, as you pointed out, he's trying to sell an image of himself ("this is all the mercy I can deliver", "I could not save them if I tried"), I also got a sense of a situation that had gathered momentum beyond his power to direct (first failing to get Harry Percy's co-operation, & then his reflection on the design against Anne, "you nourished it, but you did not know what you fed").
The words of the jester Anthony hit home for me: "I hear that your new comedy was very well received. And everybody laughed except the dying." (A little glimpse of fool as truth teller speaking truth to power there perhaps? This reads to me as: the trial was scripted and the charges ludicrous, but you got away with it and now real people are going to die.)
The King's presence is attenuated in these pages. Cromwell is serving the King, but it's as if he is embodying the King and feeling that burden. Cromwell had intellectual sport setting the table, but now that everything is real, that there is no exit but the scaffold, he can hardly bear the weight of it all.
There is a trial going on in Cromwell and part of both the prosecution and the defense is More's fate. Cromwell tried to save More says the defense, but you failed, says the prosecution.
I don't like this part. I don't like being forced to look on at this play of murder dressed as justice for a man who casts people aside like dolls he's finished playing with. But Crumb wouldn't have survived if the accused had walked free and I don't like that either. Feelings...
I’m so glad I had no knowledge of Mark Smeaton’s existence in history—it has been a ride from Cromwell overhearing his comments in the kitchen to his confession and condemnation. At first he felt like a pebble in a shoe, an annoyance, but he becomes central and tragic here. Mantel is a wizard of her craft.
I’m celebrating being caught up this week after a couple of months behind. But oh, this story is rough. On a straightforward level, good service to a bad king turns one bad. And so many additional layers. It’s painful as it unfolds.
Kailani, above, wished to give the events a little shove and have it come out different this time. I agree and the feeling is like when I watch Hamilton. Every time, I think, “Don’t do it. You don’t have to go down this path.” And then he breaks my heart again.
My other recurring thought (as an American outsider) is that this is an insane pile of corruption to serve as the foundation of a church! I probably need to read some more about Cranmer and get some sense of the virtuous reformers.
The Henrican Reformation is a rather ugly and complicated thing – Diarmaid MacCulloch who wrote the Cromwell biography has also written a biography of Cranmer, which may be worth picking up. The angel to Crumb's butcher.
I guess the story Mantel tells is a very modern one: those who do good things often have to get their hands dirty (even bloody) and need to be pragmatists as well as idealists.
I think he is ambitious – which is something we British feel a bit conflicted about. That ambition manifests itself in all kinds of ways, including a ruthless survival instinct which is terrifying to watch.
It sometimes seems the entire history of this country is built on the bloody ruins of religious wars. In Scotland it feels stronger still. I find myself wishing Hilary had kept going and written us all the way through Mary and Elizabeth to the Jacobites and the Act of Union.
There some bitter irony of Anne being housed for her final days in a room decorated with “a white doe peeps through foliage, while the hunters head off in another direction”. She was always sharp eyed not doe eyed, and the hunters have already captured her. She will not be spared in the King’s hunt…
This week’s post took my breath away, Simon! So very well done. This whole chapter has felt like a boulder rolling downhill and gathering everything it crushes into itself, getting bigger and faster with each tumble and bump. The anticipation and dread of reaching the bottom grows ever more present. Crumb can feel it, and so can we.
That's it exactly!
Wonderful analogy.
Reading all these behind the scenes moments to such a momentous event (even if they didn't happen exactly like it's told) has made me wonder what would've happened if Anne went quietly to a convent? Or if she agreed to divorce Henry when she saw how things were going? Or, bigger still, what would've happened if she'd had a son? I find myself wanting to reach through time and nudge things in a different direction.
That's something that these books really invite you to do, don't they? The future hasn't happened yet and it could work out differently. Every time I read them I almost expect something different to happen. Although it is hard imagining Anne settling for a convent.
My stomach churns reading this chapter and I can only imagine what it was like reading the documents Bea read. I can't at this moment read Mark Smeaton's confession, for all his strutting and boasting he is only a young man and I feel a sickening feeling that Cromwell is able to condemn him and the others to their fate. Thinking of how it must feel to be sat waiting for death chills me. And yet I can in part understand how Cromwell is able to reason with himself, how he can claim it is the right thing and I still feel there is a man with a heart underneath this. Sometimes in our lives, in our jobs, we have to make decisions that those looking in could not understand and it does hurt but we put up a facade.
Right! Far more interesting to see how a man with a heart and a family, hopes and ambition, wrestles with his conscience. Mantel was so right to devote a whole book to this story, as you can see how pivotal in must be for his character.
It certainly is. This is a Cromwell I have not come across before. Thank you for your guidance Simon.
Nervous for book 3.
I had a physical response reading this week too. Anxiety / adrenaline
Excellent entry Simon, there's really not much one can add. "It is a good story; some days we even believe in it." Cromwell is working the facts to ease his conscience: he's not in the wrong because the king made him do it, because ~technically the law is on his side, because Anne Boleyn is not a good person anyway. He wants to be like Wyatt and weave a tale crafty and mysterious enough to make for plausible deniability, but Wyatt is a Michelangelo working with hammer and chisel, Cromwell is going at it with a bloody axe. Despite his gentle courtier mask, the mirror and Han's portrait show him what he is, and despite his carefully impartial narrative, we've looking at his actions from across the centuries and recognizing them for what they are.
The moment where he, Cromwell, almost believes Anne rather broke my heart. He knows and yet can’t know she is not guilty of these exact accusations. Just as he knows and yet can’t know that the king is something of a monster. Anxiety producing to read for sure.
This is such an excellent section- tense and fraught- thank you for guiding us through it.
High drama indeed. Can't believe we have almost finished Book Two!
I really like the perspectives you've shared on Cromwell & Wyatt here, thank you.
I noticed an ambivalence running through this chapter. On the one hand, Cromwell is ruthless and powerful (the outcome of the trial is not in doubt, "once you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect"), but he is also frequently portrayed as having only limited control. As well as the times when, as you pointed out, he's trying to sell an image of himself ("this is all the mercy I can deliver", "I could not save them if I tried"), I also got a sense of a situation that had gathered momentum beyond his power to direct (first failing to get Harry Percy's co-operation, & then his reflection on the design against Anne, "you nourished it, but you did not know what you fed").
The words of the jester Anthony hit home for me: "I hear that your new comedy was very well received. And everybody laughed except the dying." (A little glimpse of fool as truth teller speaking truth to power there perhaps? This reads to me as: the trial was scripted and the charges ludicrous, but you got away with it and now real people are going to die.)
The King's presence is attenuated in these pages. Cromwell is serving the King, but it's as if he is embodying the King and feeling that burden. Cromwell had intellectual sport setting the table, but now that everything is real, that there is no exit but the scaffold, he can hardly bear the weight of it all.
There is a trial going on in Cromwell and part of both the prosecution and the defense is More's fate. Cromwell tried to save More says the defense, but you failed, says the prosecution.
A trial inside Cromwell. I like that metaphor!
I don't like this part. I don't like being forced to look on at this play of murder dressed as justice for a man who casts people aside like dolls he's finished playing with. But Crumb wouldn't have survived if the accused had walked free and I don't like that either. Feelings...
I’m so glad I had no knowledge of Mark Smeaton’s existence in history—it has been a ride from Cromwell overhearing his comments in the kitchen to his confession and condemnation. At first he felt like a pebble in a shoe, an annoyance, but he becomes central and tragic here. Mantel is a wizard of her craft.
I’m celebrating being caught up this week after a couple of months behind. But oh, this story is rough. On a straightforward level, good service to a bad king turns one bad. And so many additional layers. It’s painful as it unfolds.
Kailani, above, wished to give the events a little shove and have it come out different this time. I agree and the feeling is like when I watch Hamilton. Every time, I think, “Don’t do it. You don’t have to go down this path.” And then he breaks my heart again.
My other recurring thought (as an American outsider) is that this is an insane pile of corruption to serve as the foundation of a church! I probably need to read some more about Cranmer and get some sense of the virtuous reformers.
The Henrican Reformation is a rather ugly and complicated thing – Diarmaid MacCulloch who wrote the Cromwell biography has also written a biography of Cranmer, which may be worth picking up. The angel to Crumb's butcher.
I guess the story Mantel tells is a very modern one: those who do good things often have to get their hands dirty (even bloody) and need to be pragmatists as well as idealists.
I do keep thinking of Crumb as a pragmatist, a particularly British trait. But then I wonder if I'm just trying to excuse him.
I think he is ambitious – which is something we British feel a bit conflicted about. That ambition manifests itself in all kinds of ways, including a ruthless survival instinct which is terrifying to watch.
It sometimes seems the entire history of this country is built on the bloody ruins of religious wars. In Scotland it feels stronger still. I find myself wishing Hilary had kept going and written us all the way through Mary and Elizabeth to the Jacobites and the Act of Union.
There some bitter irony of Anne being housed for her final days in a room decorated with “a white doe peeps through foliage, while the hunters head off in another direction”. She was always sharp eyed not doe eyed, and the hunters have already captured her. She will not be spared in the King’s hunt…
Oh yes, that's a great image floating in the background.
Perhaps the white doe is Jane or, more fittingly, the truth?
Wonderful notes Simon !