All women who have a daughter but no son. All women who have lost a child. All women who have lost any hope of having a child. All women who are forty.
Cromwell and his wife had three children, Gregory, Anne and Grace. Cromwell also had an illegitimate daughter, Jane (or Janneke in Mantel’s series), following the death of his wife, but we know very little about her circumstances, or of her mother. Jane may have resided in the Cromwell household as she had contact with the Cromwell family because she spent some time living with Gregory Cromwell at Leeds Castle in 1539. There has been speculation about Cromwell’s relationship with his wife, but evidence suggests a happy and close marriage.
When we need evidence to substantiate a claim, there is nothing better than correspondence. One surviving letter reveals a dutiful husband, not only requesting news, but also providing meat for the family, a ‘fat doe’ which he had killed himself while out hunting. Cromwell also bought his wife expensive jewellery, including a sapphire ring and a gold bracelet worth £80 – or approximately £40,000 in today’s currency. Both Cromwell and his wife corresponded with various merchants and hosted many suppers at their imposing home, all providing intimate glimpses of the couple, which Mantel brings beautifully to life as she conjures joyful family gatherings, loving and warm conversations between Cromwell and his wife in their bedchamber, and business meetings with his son Gregory, nephew Richard and Rafe Sadler, a young boy who Cromwell had taken as a ward.
Austin Friars was home to Liz’s father and stepmother, Henry and Mercy Wykys; Liz’s sister Johane Williamson and her husband John, and their daughter, Johane, who is often called Jo; Cromwell’s niece, Alice; and the son of his sister Kat, Richard, who would later adopt the Cromwell surname. Cromwell sought educations for all three children as well as his son and ward.
... it’s not a dynasty, he thinks, but it’s a start.
Following Liz’s death in 1529, Cromwell never remarried, despite the advice of friends who urged him to do so. At the very height of his power, it seemed that matrimony was never on the cards, and while one might imagine that dealing with Henry’s endless matrimonial woes was enough to deter him, it is more likely that his choice to remain widowed was personal – perhaps he could not bear the thought of another wife living within the walls of Austin Friars.
CROMWELL AND THE CARDINAL
It is not clear how Cromwell, merchant and lawyer, moved from the Grey household to that of Cardinal Wolsey, but historians have several theories. Wolsey had a strong connection to the Greys: Thomas had met Wolsey while at Oxford and Thomas Grey’s father had given Wolsey his first benefice. But there were others in the Grey circle, such as John Allen, a family friend, who appointed Cromwell conveyancer to handle the sale of a property in York to Wolsey in 1524, and by January 1525 Cromwell was leading several complex projects for the Cardinal. Mantel’s Cromwell notes: ‘Wolsey cannot imagine a world without Wolsey’, but nevertheless, Wolsey had already begun to plan his legacy: twin Cardinal Colleges and his tomb.
Such projects required vast sums of money but Wolsey had targeted six monasteries in decline, some around Ipswich and Oxford, which could be converted to colleges. Wolsey appointed Cromwell to survey the properties, and when the plan proved feasible, he was appointed to do the same for 30 more religious houses, which would go towards the college precinct, or if they could be sold, the proceeds could fund building works.
Wolsey had commissioned the Italian Renaissance sculptor Benedetto da Rovezzano to design and construct his final resting place. Wolsey must have considered his legacy, having attained the position of the most important person in England next to the king. Working with a team of Italian sculptors, this would be a monument to Wolsey’s status and power: a black stone surrounded by copper pillars, decorated by bronze statues. Cromwell’s mastery of Italian made him indispensable. Wolsey’s trust in Cromwell now accelerated as he oversaw every financial and artistic element of these tasks. At the time of his death, the tomb was incomplete, the location undecided, and his legacy lay in tatters.
RICHARD FOX
But to understand Wolsey, we need to go back. Before Thomas Cromwell, before the brilliant Wolsey, there was another political mastermind: Richard Fox.
Richard Fox was an Oxford-educated lawyer from Lincolnshire who had loyally served Edward IV but could not support Richard III’s claim to the throne, and fled to the young Henry Tudor’s side in Brittany. The two men forged an immediate rapport, a collaboration that would endure for the next 25 years, with Fox becoming indispensable to Henry VII. Fox masterminded and engineered the highly ambitious alliance between England and the power couple of Europe, Spain’s Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, through the marriage of their daughter, Katherine of Aragon, to Prince Arthur. Following Arthur’s untimely death in 1509, Fox ensured that the royal coffers retained the dowry by arranging her marriage to his younger brother, Henry VIII. Fox also negotiated the famous Anglo-Scottish alliance between Princess Margaret and James IV in 1503, one that decades later would see a Scottish king on the throne of England.
Following the death of Henry VII and the accession of Henry VIII, Fox continued to be counsel the young, pleasure-loving king and his wife. But Fox was a pragmatist and could be a ruthless and unscrupulous opponent, as evidenced by his involvement in the infamous downfalls of Henry VII’s old councillors and hatchet men, Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson,
