Anti-hero, or Asshole? The life and times of Thomas Cromwell. ONE
"I'm not a tiara, I simply bedazzled my horns,"
(most likely from) "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,
After a moment I pushed my chair back and went over to the french windows. I opened the screen and stepped out on to the porch. The night was all around, soft and quiet. The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find.
― Raymond Chandler, The High Window
The anti-hero has become something of a thingie in the 20th and 21st centuries. Main characters of books and life are understood through a series of grey shades, rather than the evangelicalized black and white paradigm.
I rather liked this treatment of the modern anti-hero: https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a8699/noir-antihero-david-l-ulin/
If you use a type of 'weight scale', where good and bad are measured, I think Thomas Cromwell might come out in the middle somewhere. Of course, if you talk to any architectural or art historians out there (Cromwell destroyed hundreds of lovely Catholic churches in England during his tenure), they may just shoot me for writing that. Don't worry, we'll get to the destruction of religious communities in time.
That's the finished Holbein, but I kinda like this one better:
I know, I know: total bureaucrat. But, he was a hell of a lot more than that. I can't help it: I like his face--its' a strong one.
So, in my discussion of Thomas Cromwell, I'm gonna go with anti-hero, OK?
Now, you may be asking yourself, who in the H E double hockey sticks was Thomas Cromwell? Well, he was the chief minister to England's Henry VIII. If you're asking yourself who Henry VIII was, then I guess you won't care who Thomas Cromwell was, or the essential role he played in a key era of Henry's reign (Henry was the guy who married six rather unfortunate women, two of whom had their head's chopped off. THWACK).
We actually don't know all that much about the early life of Cromwell, largely due to the fact that he belonged to the lower middle class of Tudor society. This was a time where the existence of people of lower-than-noble rank were hardly recognized, or officially recorded.
I think the best sources are modern, one of them being Hilary Mantel's WONDERFUL trilogy. Let me provide you with some links, Dear Reader:
Mantel's trilogy:
And a wonderful treatment by one of my favorite historians, Tracy Borman:
Yes, there are other biographies, but they were so mind-numbingly boring I can't in good conscience recommend them. Oh, alright, here's one more:
There's this one (but after reading it I wanted to stab out my eyeballs with a dull knife):
https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cromwell-Revolutionary-Diarmaid-MacCulloch/dp/0670025577
If you want to search further, you can go from the books I've provided above, Dear Reader.
For documentaries:
https://youtu.be/99su9mrIU9g?si=61xz8V9Nm3fbrHzR
https://www.bbcselect.com/watch/henry-viiis-enforcer-the-rise-and-fall-of-thomas-cromwell/
So! Let us open our book of faery tales, yes?
ONCE UPON A TIME, in Tudor England, there lived the son of a blacksmith (Walter Cromwell) in the small town of Putney (now a suburb of London). It was most likely that Thomas was an unhappy boy, who had a rather fractious relationship with his Dad (well, that's how the mythology about Cromwell plays out, anyway. We actually know almost next to nothing about his early life). When Thomas was a pre-teen (probably somewhere around 12 or 13), he ran away from home, eventually landing on the continent, where he then embarked on a series of adventures. He was a soldier, an accountant (sort of), finally ending up as a lawyer.
Cromwell was especially lucky (at least I think so) to spend a considerable amount of time in Florence during the age of Niccolo Machiavelli (i.e. "The Prince"). I think this is where Cromwell must have garnered a great deal of his political acumen. Guilt by association, eh? Here's a link to the book, free and online, if you're at all curious:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1232/pg1232-images.html
Thomas lingered on the continent for little over a decade, eventually returning permanently to England a gifted and successful lawyer (yeah, I'm compressing an eventful life, Dear Reader, I know). Well, he had to be, because eventually he found himself coming to the attention of Henry VIII's top minister, Cardinal Wolsey. A man infamous for 'sniffing' out talent, Wolsey most likely hired him on the spot. Apparently, our Thomas was very, very good, because he blossomed under the Cardinal's wing, quickly gaining a name (and perhaps influence) in the Tudor court.
Alright, so why was that such an accomplishment? Let's agree, that any court's culture is, at best, cut-throat (crap, take a look for two shakes of a lamb's tail at the House of Windsor). So, just like the others, Henry's court was fraught with danger--one misstep and...
No thank you! Let's try some delaying tactics, yes?
Ah, Uhura.
Thomas' tenure with the cardinal was successful: as I said, he quickly gained a reputation at the Tudor court for being Wolsey's 'fixer.' Cromwell's work for Wolsey began, just as the king's "Great Matter" was heating up.
I know, you're thinking: 'what Great Matter'? Well, this is how the courtiers of Henry VIII generally referred to his quest in getting his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled by the Vatican, so that he could instead marry his sweetheart Anne Boleyn. Ah, now you know whereof I write, eh?
This is the gal--I'm sure you remember her:
_-_(MeisterDrucke-1101129).jpg)
Actually, we don't know what she looked like. Most of her 'portraits' were done after her death. However, one thing we do know, is that she had marvelously dark eyes: a Venetian diplomat named Francesco Sanuto, described her in this way: "Not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck...a bosom not much raised and eyes which are black and beautiful." In nearly every portrait of her, the eyes are what consistently grab you, but perhaps that's just the artist's perception.
Anne and Cromwell had much in common: they both spent their formative years on the continent, both embraced the reformed religion, and each didn’t belong to the upper echelons of England’s nobility. To put it succinctly, each was, in their own way a variation of the Roman ‘Magnus Homo.”
If you're interested to learn more about Cromwell, then please tune in next week,Dear Reader--next, there's the adventure of Anne's downfall and subsequent execution.
ewww.
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