Antwerp sits on the right bank of the Scheldt river, a gateway to the North Sea, ensuring it would surpass its rival, the city of Bruges, as a major centre of trade and commerce in Europe. Governed by bankers who were forbidden to engage in any trade themselves, Antwerp was well-organized and full of lucrative industries: breweries that would later make the city synonymous with beer; sugar refineries that imported the highly sought-after raw product from Portugal and Spain; salt imported from France and shipped abroad; diamonds bought from Indian merchants that were cut in the city by highly skilled Jews who had fled the persecutions of the Iberian peninsula. Its major activity was its tapestry workshops, which evolved into the major marketplace for Flemish tapestry. Indeed, Antwerp was the centre of the luxury market where dealers traded in exquisite tapestries, English cloth, and high-quality silks from Italy, from where Pope Leo X would commission the finest examples for his rooms in the Vatican. Antwerp was the mercantile capital of Western Europe, a financial centre that launched a stock exchange in 1531, drawing bankers from England, France, Portugal, Italy and the nations of the Holy Roman Empire; London would have to wait another 40 years for the creation of its stock exchange.
These channels of international trade and commerce also brought new religious and humanist influences, with the wind of reform in Antwerp attributable to the city’s pre-existing tensions with the Catholic Church. Cromwell worked as a clerk or secretary, possibly for English merchants, and would have been aware of all the trends and movements in the city, and is likely to have been influenced by the religious discourse flowing through the city. Mantel’s Cromwell gazes up at one of Wolsey’s tapestries and is reminded of a young woman he had loved in Antwerp. Incidentally, the woman would turn out to be the fictional Anselma as Cromwell discovers in The Mirror and the Light, but the real Cromwell would have focused on the value of that tapestry, which workshop made it (Arras or Tournai perhaps) and the going rate for a similar work.
A MERCANTILE EDUCATION
Cromwell knew the value of a practical education and contemplated sending his son Gregory to stay with Stephen Vaughan, a merchant in Antwerp. Cromwell once wrote to Vaughan, declaring ‘You think I am in Paradise, and I think in Purgatory.’ But he did have a great affection for Antwerp and a certain nostalgia for the place where he achieved so much.
Cromwell’s return to England was thought to be some time in 1513 or 1514, but the Boston Guild’s records of Cromwell in Rome place him in Italy in 1517 and 1518, so we can surmise that he travelled between England and Europe on various business trips during those years. With so many years spent in Europe, it is not surprising that Cromwell’s fluency expanded to include numerous languages, including French, Italian, German and Spanish, as well as the languages reserved for scholars and academics: Latin and Greek.
Mantel’s Cromwell overhears several conversations in a variety of languages including Flemish Latin and Greek. Not all of the conversations are useful, Cromwell says to himself, but they are to be remembered.
CROMWELL THE LAWYER
Our lesson with Cromwell is that he can be an unreliable narrator, and so historians have looked to official records to unearth his early career, particularly his time as a lawyer. We have no evidence of where Cromwell might have received legal training or if he had formal training at all, but his years in some of the most important centres of trade throughout Europe were enough to recommend him, and by the early 1520s he was well-known throughout London’s legal and mercantile spheres, both of which offered considerable opportunities for the lawyer and merchant. Cromwell was admitted to the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn, one of the four inns of court in London, which was a prerequisite should Cromwell wish to be called to the bar.
Gray’s Inn is an important element of Cromwell’s professional life in Mantel’s series and was an important stepping stone for Cromwell, allowing him to take on several high-profile clients and to cultivate a legal network. He soon entered into the service of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville and her first husband, Sir John Grey of Groby. Interestingly, Cromwell was not merely a legal advisor, but rather served in Grey’s household, in charge of conveying private correspondence between Grey and his wife as well as Grey’s younger brother George, and the matriarch of the household, Cecily Grey. This time is not alluded to in the series, but it is clear from letters written by the Marquess to Cromwell years after his service that Cromwell had been held in high esteem, and he would remain connected to the Greys throughout his life.
THE CROMWELL FAMILY AT AUSTIN FRIARS
Sometime in 1515 Cromwell married the daughter of a fellow merchant, Henry Wykys, who had served as Gentleman Usher to Henry VII. Cromwell had already established himself as a successful merchant and lawyer, and took over the reins of Henry Wykys’s business in the cloth and wool trade; marrying Elizabeth Wykys was a beneficial match. The couple lived at Cromwell’s bustling property of Austin Friars, a monastic house in London, which they rented. Several tenements were built on the western side of the precinct and the friary also owned a number of properties just outside the precinct. With its 14 rooms set across three storeys, Austin Friars features throughout the series and is full of Cromwell relatives, in-laws, nieces, nephews and wards. Over the years Cromwell’s neighbours in the building complex include the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador Eustace Chapuys, French ambassadors, and the famed scholar Desiderius Erasmus, who – allegedly – left without paying his bill due to the poor quality of the wine served. It is within its walls that we are introduced to Cromwell’s wife Liz and their children.
