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Welcome to week 23 of Wolf Crawl
This week, we are reading the second part of ‘The Black Book, London, January – April 1536.’ This runs from page 223 to 255 of the Fourth Estate paperback edition, ending with the line: ‘One day he will give in and invite it to stand by the hearth.’
You will find everything you need for this read-along on the main Cromwell trilogy page of my website, including:
Weekly updates, like this one
Online resources about Mantel’s writing and Thomas Cromwell
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Last week’s post:
This week’s story
As proposed, Cranmer invites the Duke of Norfolk to dinner. It is Cromwell’s peace offering with jellies. But Thomas Howard’s peculiar son, the Earl of Surrey, comes too. He doesn’t like base men like Cranmer and Cromwell, and he lets them know it.
At home, Cromwell listens to Gregory’s stories and then shuts himself in his room with a piece of paper. He lists the combatants in this war: the Boleyns and their foes. In his mind’s eye, he sits the Boleyns’ enemies down to talk.
In the real world, he talks to the Seymours. He must manage their expectations but make sure they don’t sell Jane cheap. ‘You must not give in to the king,’ Edward tells his sister.
Chapuys interrogates Cromwell about Jane Seymour at Austin Friars: currently a building site. The ambassador wants to know who she is and whether Cromwell will turn on the queen. ‘Anne is desperate and dangerous,’ he says. ‘Strike first, before she strikes you.’
When Anne appears at court, she is much changed. She is ‘light, starved,’ and doleful. Cromwell believes it is a ruse. ‘She is on the offensive,’ he thinks.
In Parliament, the nation’s business goes forward. The Commons rejects his poor law despite the king’s support. And a Court of Augmentations is set up to manage the dissolution of the monasteries. Meanwhile, Cromwell’s income is augmented by bribes and fees. ‘It’s the way business has always been done.’
He gets Anne’s cousin Francis Bryan drunk. One-eyed Francis has fallen out with George Boleyn and seems ready to dish the dirt on Anne. But for now, the only name he gives Cromwell is the one he doesn’t want to hear: Thomas Wyatt.
Promotions. Edward Seymour to the Privy Chamber. Rafe Sadler to the king’s side. Helen his wife is bereft, but Cromwell is delighted. He need not prep Rafe for the job: ‘All his life has been training for this.’
He, Cromwell, manages Henry’s courtship of Jane. He helps write Henry’s love letters, making sure they are not too subtle. And he tells Jane what to talk about with the king: Horses. Dogs. Cannon. ‘He feels irredeemably sad,’ and at the same time, has the impulse to ask Jane’s sister Bess to marry him. In a half-world of stories and myth, she alone seems to ‘understand his life.’
This week’s characters
Click on each link for more details and plot summaries for each character:
Thomas Cromwell • Thomas Howard • Earl of Surrey • Thomas Cranmer • Gregory • Henry Courtenay • Lady Gertrude • Henry Pole • Margaret Pole • Edward Seymour • Thomas Seymour • Bess Seymour • Jane Seymour • Eustache Chapuys • Anne Boleyn • Lady Rochford • Richard Riche • Francis Bryan • Helen Sadler • Rafe Sadler • Henry VIII • Master Sexton • Anthony
This week’s theme: Supping with the devil
He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.
14th century proverb. First recorded in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale (1390). Erasmus included the idiom in his collection of proverbs. William Shakespeare makes reference to the proverb twice in his plays, in The Comedy of Errors and The Tempest.
Last week, Thomas Cromwell sat down at the low table with William Paulet, Comptroller of the Household. Paulet will go on to have a remarkable career, serving under every Tudor monarch up to Elizabeth I. While other ambitious men went to the scaffold, Paulet’s star kept rising. He changed his religion five times, persecuting Catholics under Edward VI and Protestants on behalf of Mary Tudor. When asked how he had survived so long, he replied, ‘By being a willow, not an oak.’
Right now, Cromwell must ‘do a Paulet’ to save his skin and stay in the game. He rose with the Boleyns but nothing good comes of standing by them now. ‘Anne is desperate and dangerous,’ warns Chapuys, ‘Strike first, before she strikes you. Remember how she brought down Wolsey.’ And the cardinal’s shade volunteers a different lesson from the grave: If the king wants a new wife, fix him one. ‘I didn’t, and I am dead.’
His past lies about him like a burnt house. He has been building, building, but it has taken him years to sweep up the mess.
Which is to say, everything comes back to the cardinal. When Cromwell was raised to the king’s council, Thurston, the cook, turned down his offer of hanging up his apron, giving Cromwell a warning from the kitchen: ‘Remember the cardinal, though.’ In that moment, a saying came to him: homo homini lupus. Man is wolf to man.
Today, Thurston is serving jelly crenelations to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the man who once threatened to tear the cardinal apart with his teeth. Supping with the devil, who yesteryear ate your old master for breakfast.
He remembers Jane Rochford saying to him, it must be two years back: 'The queen has boasted she will give Katherine's daughter a breakfast she will not recover from.' Merry at breakfast, dead by dinner. It was what they used to say about the sweating sickness, that killed his wife and daughters. And unnatural ends, when they occur, are usually swifter than that; they cut down at a stroke.
Like the stroke of an axe. At Tower Hill. Cromwell’s only friend is the king, and the king wants rid of Anne Boleyn. So he, Cromwell, needs to sit down with all those malcontents who oppose the new dispensation. The devils who stood against the new England that Cromwell built.
These people are not necessarily friends of each other. They are just, to one degree and another, friends of the old dispensation and enemies of the Boleyns. He closes his eyes. He sits, his breathing calm. In his mind, a picture appears. A lofty hall. Into which he commands a table.
Cromwell begins to arrange a banquet of co-conspirators. Katherine loyalists: The Courtenays and Montagues with their old Plantagenet blood. Papists like Nicholas Carew. Would-be Boleyn Butchers like Suffolk and Francis Bryan. They call hard-drinking Bryan ‘The Vicar of Hell’. Cromwell gets him drunk and prepares a very long spoon.
‘You must study your advantage, Master Secretary,’ said Anne Boleyn. ‘Those who are made can be unmade.’ So he does, and he notices that William Fitzwilliam, household treasurer, seems to be making overtures to him. ‘Fitz is close to the king.’ He is disgusted by the Boleyns shouting their name ‘like cuckoos’. He leans in and tells Crumb: ‘You are not without support, you know.’ Cromwell makes a note and saves a seat for Fitz at the banquet in his mind’s eye.
All of this comes naturally to the prince of Putney. Stephen Gardiner once described Cromwell’s mind as ‘infinitely flexible’, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Master Secretary’s capacity to bend the truth to his will frightens his other self, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘A man of vigorous invention’ is our Crumb, who treats the Gospel like ‘a book of blank sheets on which Thomas Cromwell imprints his desires.’
This does not make him a man without principles. Or a man without belief. He comes to the table with that long, slender spoon so that no one can get too close to his true way of thinking. As he said of More and More’s family, he will not let them think ‘they understand me.’
And where is Thomas More now? In his mind’s eye, he looks up above this table prepared for devils:
He glances up at the beams. Up there are carved and painted the faces of the dead. More, Fisher, the cardinal, Katherine the queen. Below them, the flower of living England. Let us hope the roof doesn't fall in.
It’s a shame the cardinal won’t be eating. He’d enjoy the sweetmeats and the malmsey. More would say he had lost his appetite. But, dead or not, everyone is here. Knives out and ready to sup.
Footnotes
1. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Surrey is a young man with a great conceit of himself as handsome, talented and lucky. But his face is lopsided, and he does himself no favours, in having his hair cut like a bowl. Hans Holbein admits he finds him a challenge.
Here is a new character to the cast of the Cromwell trilogy: Uncle Norfolk’s brat, Henry, Earl of Surrey. He’s around twenty at this point in the story, and he owes pretty much everything he is, and he has, to his father’s title and position at court. He’s a loose cannon with a short fuse, and he hates the ‘new men’ about the king.
He’s best mates with Henry FitzRoy, the king’s bastard, who is married to his sister Mary. At one time, Anne Boleyn attempted to marry Surrey to Lady Mary, the king’s daughter. But in the end, Surrey married Frances de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford.
'Thomas Wyatt says you are studying to write verse. I am fond of poems, as I passed my youth among the Italians. If you would favour me, I would like to read some.' 'No doubt you would,' Surrey says. 'But I keep them for my friends.'
Cromwell counts Thomas Wyatt as his friend, but there is no love lost between Crumb and the Earl of Surrey. ‘Study to write verse’ has a condescending tone about it. Wyatt and Surrey pioneered the sonnet form in English, but there are no prizes in guessing which of these two poets our Cromwell prefers.
Further reading:
Tudor Dynasty podcast: a brief history of Henry Howard. (warning: spoilers!)
2. A cobnut conspiracy
Here is Gregory Cromwell:
‘Have you heard what the queen is doing? She has risen from her childbed and things incredible are spoken of her. They say she was seen toasting cobnuts over the fire in her chamber, tossing them about in a latten pan, ready to make poisoned sweetmeats for the Lady Mary.’
Much is made of the difference between father and son. But Hilary Mantel keeps reminding us of Gregory’s love of stories and his willingness to believe them. Cromwell is sceptical, but he, too, is in the business of telling tales and making others believe them too.
Cobnuts are a variety of hazelnuts grown in Kent. Unlike almonds, I cannot find any reference to them being used as poison. Perhaps Gregory is lax on detail, or maybe Anne, the witch, has a secret ingredient or incantation that does the trick.
‘In France witches can fly, latten pan and cobnuts and all. And that is where she learned it. In truth the whole Boleyn affinity are become witches, to witch up a boy for us, for the king fears he can give her none.’
You can get away with a lot when you pack it into a fantastical rumour: Anne is worse than demonic, she is foreign, French in her influence! This an irony because Christophe has already assured us that in England, ‘there is a witch in every street.’ And smuggled into this story is a far more dangerous accusation: ‘the king fears’ he cannot give Anne a son. That would make Henry the problem, and not his witch wife.
The accusations of witchcraft and poison stuck fast to many powerful women in medieval and Renaissance Europe, including Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine de' Medici.
Further reading:
3. The old families
He adds the names of two grandees:
The Marquis of Exeter, Henry Courtenay.
Henry Pole, Lord Montague.These are the old families of England; they draw their claims from ancient lines; they smart, more than any of us, under the pretensions of the Boleyns.
These are the surviving Plantagenets almost wiped out during the Wars of the Roses and the reign of Henry VII, the king-that-was. We came across the Courtenays briefly in Wolf Hall when they came too close to Elizabeth Barton, the fraudulent prophetess of Kent. We will see more of them in due course.
Like our present king, Courtenay’s mother was a daughter of Edward IV. So, the two Henrys are cousins and were close friends in childhood. Nevertheless, anyone looking to replace the Tudor, might look no further than Courtenay for a potential claimant.
Henry Pole is the son of Margaret, the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence. George was the younger brother of Edward IV and Richard III, and one or both were responsible for his ‘private execution’ in the Tower in 1478. His son and Henry Pole’s uncle, Edward Plantagenet, was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1499 on the order of our current king’s father, Henry VII. His execution was demanded as dowry by Katherine of Aragon’s parents to clear the realm of threats to the dynastic union of the Tudor Rose and the Spanish Pomegranate. The rest is recent history.
The Plantagenets were kings once and they think they will kings be again; they think the Tudors are an interlude. The old families of England are restless and ready to press their claim, especially since Henry broke with Rome; they bow the knee, but they are plotting. He can almost hear them, hidden among the trees.
4. Gone fishing
'Ah, Eustache, I see you do not understand the sport. Have no fear, I will teach you. What could be better for the health than to be out from dawn to dusk, hours and hours on a muddy bank, with the trees dripping above, watching your own breath on the air, alone or with one good companion?'
For our non-English readers, this is a bit of an in-joke by Dame Hilary Mantel. He, the fisherman, is a feature of the English countryside, sitting motionless on the riverbank, with his line on the water and his bucket of bait by his boots. Why they do it is a mystery to many, including their own countrymen, but at a certain age, a certain type of man runs away from all his city cares and responsibilities to meditate on the black waters and await the bite of a fish beneath.
It seems unlikely Cromwell ever found the time to go fishing. But the suggestion is worth it just to see the look on the ambassador’s face.
Angling has medieval roots, and the name derives from the Old English word angol, meaning hook. In Cromwell’s time, he could consult The Treatyse on Fysshynge with an Angle by Juliana Berners, a medieval prioress with much to say and write on heraldry, hawking and hunting. But Master Secretary will be long gone before Shakespeare’s fishing companion John Dennys will furnish us with The Secrets of Angling (1613), the first modern treatise on the sport.
Pike are notoriously aggressive freshwater fish that turn to cannibalism when food grows scarce. Here is another sporting metaphor to add to our collection. For the fisherman, hunting pike must have infinite patience, the right bait and the nerve to handle a big fish with formidable teeth.
‘Could we not fish for it in the summer?’ Chapuys asks despairingly. No, ambassador. ‘A summer pike would pull you in.’ And I, Cromwell, cannot wait that long.
5. Matthias the Apostle
Anne Boleyn comes up to Whitehall to celebrate the feast of St Matthias with the king. She has changed, all in a season.
St Matthias was the only apostle not chosen by Jesus, appointed after his death to replace Judas Iscariot. Like Anne, Matthias is your handy replacement when your old apostle turns out bad. His feast day is 24 February. Peter Paul Rubens painted him with an axe because that was apparently the instrument of his martydom in Jerusulem in AD 80.
Matthias is your go-to patron saint of carpenters and tailors. But if you are a noblewoman fighting a lost cause, you could do worse than the patron saint of hope and perseverance.
6. A Promise by Thomas Wyatt
The king sings some lines from one of Thomas Wyatt’s poems. We have met Wyatt a few times so far: the court poet tortured by his love of Anne Boleyn. He’s Cromwell’s friend, and Cromwell will do his very best to protect Wyatt from any accusation of improper behaviour with the current queen of England. We will see much more of him to come. And the irony here? Anne is Wyatt’s muse but Henry is singing about Jane.
Once as methought Fortune me kissed,
And bade me ask what I thought best,
And I should have it as me list,
Therewith to set my heart in rest.
I asked nought but my dear heart
To have for evermore mine own;
Then at an end were all my smart,
Then should I need no more to moan.
Yet, for all that, a stormy blast
Had overturned this goodly day,
And Fortune seemed at the last
That to her promise she said nay.
But, like as one out of despair,
To sudden hope revived I;
Now Fortune sheweth herself so fair
That I content me wonderly.
My most desire my hand may reach,
My will is always at my hand;
Me need not long for to beseech
Her that hath power me to command.
What earthly thing more can I crave?
What would I wish more at my will?
Nothing on earth more would I have,
Save that I have, to have it still.
For Fortune hath kept her promise,
In granting me my most desire;
Of my sufferance I have redress,
And I content me with my hire.
7. The Court of Augmentations
An act to set up a Court of Augmentations, a new body to deal with the inflow of revenue from these monasteries: Richard Riche to be its chancellor.
As Diarmaid MacCulloch writes, the name of this new government department ‘perhaps too frankly defined its purpose'. The dissolution of the monasteries has begun in earnest and the king’s councillors are setting up the structures to ‘augment’ the crown’s income with church treasure.
But note one important detail at this point in the story: Cromwell is in charge of the suppression of the monasteries, while Richard Riche manages the transfer of income. Riche is just as ambitious as Cromwell and has now carved out a new lucrative job for himself outside of Cromwell’s immediate control. Riche is one to watch.
8. Poor Laws
To everything there is a season: a time to starve and a time to thieve.
England is in the midst of a great transformation. For centuries, people asserted their right to use common land for growing crops and grazing livestock. Across the country, monastic intuitions provided work, education and healthcare to those who may otherwise have gone without.
Now, landowners are enclosing common land for the sole purpose of their flocks of sheep. And the crown has begun to dissolve the monasteries. The result is a growing problem of poverty and vagrancy.
In 1536, it is a rather novel idea that this should be the government’s responsibility. ‘If Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality: well, are there not hangmen enough?’
Cromwell’s attempts at reform fail. ‘Perhaps we can bring it in again,’ Henry says. ‘In a better year.’ Better years would come, but not until the very end of Elizabeth I’s reign, when Parliament finally agrees to a parish-level system of tax and poor relief.
9. Though some Saith that Youth Ruleth me
Henry used to sing a song, in his Katherine days:
This is another of the king’s own compositions. ‘I hurt no man, I do no wrong, / I love true where I did marry.’ Brazen in its lack of truth, dazzling in its earnest insincerity. How do you serve a man who is a monster but believes he is ‘Henry the Beloved’?
Remember he wants more than to be advised of his power, he wants to be told he is right. He is never in error. It is only that other people commit errors on his behalf or deceive him with false information. Henry wants to be told that he is behaving well, in the sight of God and man.
This is why Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince is of no use to Thomas Cromwell. Machiavelli says it is better to be feared than to be loved. But Henry expects both. And the consequence of this is something as mesmerising as it is utterly terrifying:
You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.
And now, no more for lack of time
Before I wrap things up, I must note how fabulously Cromwell’s story is woven into the king’s courtship of Jane Seymour. Henry notices ‘her halcyon sleaves’ cut from a cloth ‘some admirer gave her once.’ These are no doubt the kingfisher sleaves she called her Cromwell sleaves back in Wolf Hall. Jane’s sister Elizabeth has come to court. Her family call her Bess. ‘He is glad, though he doesn’t know why.’ He doesn’t want another Liz in his life, to disturb the dust on the stairs of Austin Friars, where his dead wife sits in her white cap.
The Seymours will look for a new husband for Bess. Cromwell tries his best not to look at her, but his condition is ‘irredeemably sad.’ He writes the king’s love letters, and they talk about horses and dogs. Is this my life? he thinks. He says perhaps when they have time, he and the king ‘will have a day out together’, to see the Kent ironmasters. Or one day, he and Chapuys will walk out with a worm on a hook, down to the river. Gone fishing.
Quote of the week: Invite in the truth
Last week, Thomas Cromwell mused that truth will only be let in when it is ‘pleasing, personable and easy to like.’ This week, his jester Anthony says the king’s jester Master Sexton has foretold a future when the king will see Anne for who she really is:
‘Henry kicks out the truth and Master Sexton with it. But these days it has a way of creeping under the bolted door and down the chimney. One day he will give in and invite it to stand by the hearth.’
Next week
Thank you for reading and joining me on this slow read of the Cromwell trilogy. Next week, we will be reading the final part of ‘The Black Book, London, January – April 1536.’ This runs from page 255 to 287 of the Fourth Estate paperback edition, starting with the line: ‘William Fitzwilliam comes to the Rolls House and sits down with him.’
Before I go, a quick reminder that this book group is entirely funded by its readers. So, if you have enjoyed this post and found it helpful, please consider a paid subscription to access the bonus posts on The Haunting of Wolf Hall and start your own discussion threads in the chat area. You can also donate to my tip jar on Stripe. Thank you so much for all your support.
Until next week, I am your guide,
Master Simon Haisell
I thought those must be Cromwell's sleeves too! And am finally catching on to the word choice of "king-fisher".
Just thank you to Simon and this thoughtful, intelligent and curious community which has furnished me with such welcome diversion during my most stressful time of year. I am so grateful to plop down after a long work day and read what Simon has to say about each section of these extraordinary books, and the subsequent comments from the Wolf Crawlers. Cheers to you all!