CROMWELL, THOMAS, EARL OF ESSEX (1485 English politician, the only son of Walter Cromwell, alias Smyth, a brewer, smith and fuller of Putney. He is said to have quarrelled with his father, who had a bad local reputation, and fled to Italy, where he served as a soldier in the French army at the battle of Garigliano (Dec. 1503) . He escaped from the battle-field to Florence, where he was befriended by the banker Frescobaldi. He is next heard of at Antwerp as a trader, and about 1510 he was induced to accompany a Bostonian to Rome in quest of some papal indulgences for a Boston gild ; Cromwell secured the boon by the timely present of some choice sweetmeats to Julius II. In 1512 there is some slight evidence that he was at Middelburg, and also in London. About the same time he married Elizabeth Wykes, daughter of a well-to-do shearman of Putney, whose business Cromwell carried on in combination with his own.
In 152o we find him advising Wolsey on legal points and from that date he occurs frequently, not only as mentor to the cardinal, but to noblemen and others when in difficulties, especially of a financial character ; he made large sums as a money lender. In 1523 he emerges into public life as a member of parliament. In 1524 he was admitted at Gray's Inn. In 1525 he was Wol sey's agent in the dissolution of the smaller monasteries which were designed to provide the endowments for Wolsey's foun dations at Oxford and Ipswich. For these he drew up the deeds, and was receiver-general of cardinal's college, constantly super vising the workmen there and at Ipswich. His ruthless vigour and his accessibility to bribes made him exceedingly unpopular, but he grew in Wolsey's favour until his fall. On Wolsey's disgrace many of the cardinal's servants had been taken over by the king, but Cromwell had made himself particularly obnoxious. However, he rode to court from Esher to "make or mar," as he himself expressed it, and offered his services to Norfolk. Cromwell could indeed be most useful to the government in parliament, and the government, represented by Norfolk, un dertook to use its influence in procuring him a seat. This was on Nov. 2, 1529; the elections had been made, and parliament was to meet on the morrow. A seat was, however, found or made for Cromwell at Taunton. He signalized himself by a powerful speech in opposition to the bill of attainder against Wolsey which had already passed the Lords. The bill was thrown out, possibly with Henry's connivance, though no theory has yet ex plained its curious history so completely as the statement of Cavendish and other contemporaries, that its rejection was due to the arguments of Cromwell.
Cromwell's influence over the government from 1529-1533 has been grossly exaggerated. It was not till 1531 that he was ad mitted to the privy council nor till 1534 that he was made secre tary though he had been made master of the jewel-house, clerk of the hanaper and master of the wards in 1532, and chancellor of the exchequer (then a minor office) in 1533• It is not till 1533 that his name is as much as mentioned in the correspondence of any foreign ambassador resident in London. Cromwell, in fact, was not the author of Henry's policy, but he was the most efficient instrument in its execution. Even in this capacity, his power has been overrated, and he is supposed to have invented those parliamentary complaints against the clergy which were transmuted into the legislation of 1532. But the complaints were old enough ; many of them had been heard in parliament nearly 20 years before, and there is ample evidence to show that the petition against the clergy represents the "infinite clamours" of the Commons against the Church, which the House itself re solved should be "put in writing and delivered to the king." The actual drafting of the statute, as of all the Reformation Acts be tween 1532 and 1539, was largely Cromwell's work, and the success with which parliament was managed during this period was also due to him. It was not an easy task, for the House of Commons more than once rejected Government measures, and members were heard to threaten Henry VIII. with the fate of Richard III. ; they even complained of Cromwell's reporting their proceedings to the king. There was, of course, room for manipu lation, which Cromwell extended to parliamentary elections; but parliamentary opinion was a force of which he bad to take account, and not a negligible quantity.
From the date of his appointment as secretary in 1534, Crom well's biography belongs to the history of England, but it is neces sary to define his personal attitude to the revolution in which he was the king's most conspicuous agent. He was included by Foxe in his Book of Martyrs to the Protestant faith; more recent his torians regard him as a sacrilegious ruffian. Now, there were two cardinal principles in the Protestantism of the z 6th century— the supremacy of the temporal sovereign over the church in mat ters of government, and the supremacy of the Scriptures over the Church in matters of faith. There is no room for doubt as to the sincerity of Cromwell's belief in the first of these two articles; he paid at his own expense for an English translation of Marsig lio of Padua's Defensor Pacis, the classic mediaeval advocate of that doctrine ; he had a scheme for governing England by means of administrative councils nominated by the king to the detriment of parliament; and he urged upon Henry the adoption of the maxim of the Roman civil law—quod principi placuit legis habet vigorenn ("what is the pleasure of the ruler has the force of law") . He wanted, in his own words, "one body politic" and no rival to the king's authority, and he set the divine right of kings against the divine right of the papacy. There is more doubt about the sincerity of Cromwell's attachment to the second ar ticle ; it is true that he set up a Bible in every parish church, and regarded them as invaluable, and the correspondents who un bosom themselves to him are all of a Protestant way of think ing. But Protestantism was the greatest support of absolute monarchy. Hence its value in Cromwell's eyes. Of religious con viction there is in him little trace, and still less of the religious temperament. He was a polished representative of the callous, secular middle class of that most irreligious age. Sentiment found no place, and feeling little, in his composition.
In 1534 Cromwell was appointed master of the rolls, and in 1535 chancellor of Cambridge university and visitor-general of the monasteries. The policy of the Dissolution has been theoret ically denounced, but practically approved in every civilized state, Catholic as well as Protestant. The need for reform was ad mitted by a committee of cardinals appointed by Paul III. in 1535, and it had been begun by Wolsey. Cromwell was not af fected by the iniquities of the monks, except as arguments for the confiscation of their property. He had boasted that he would make Henry VIII. the richest prince in Christendom. He had learnt how to visit monasteries under Wolsey, and the visitation of 1535 was carried out with ruthless efficiency. During the storm which followed, Henry took the management of affairs into his own hands, but Cromwell was rewarded in July 1536 by being knighted, created lord privy seal, Baron Cromwell, and vicar general and vice-regent of the king in "spirituals." In this last, offensive capacity he sent a lay deputy to preside in Convocation, taking precedence of the bishops and arch bishops, and issued his famous injunctions of 1536 and 1538; a Bible was to be provided in every church; the Paternoster, Creed and Ten Commandments were to be recited by the incumbent in English ; he was to preach at least once a quarter, and to start a register of births, marriages and deaths. During these years the outlook abroad grew threatening because of the alliance, under papal guarantee, between Charles V. and Francis I. ; and Cromwell was allowed to proceed with his one independent essay in foreign policy. Under these circumstances Henry acquiesced in Crom well's negotiations for a marriage with Anne of Cleves. Anne herself was the weak point in the argument. Henry conceived an invincible repugnance to her from the first ; he was restrained from an immediate breach with his new allies only by fear of Francis and Charles. In the spring of 154o he was reassured on that score ; no attack on him from that quarter was impending; there was a rift between the two Catholic sovereigns, and there was no real need for Anne and her German friends.
From that moment Cromwell's fate was sealed; the Lords loathed him as an upstart even more than they had loathed Wol sey ; he had no church to support him; Norfolk and Gardiner detested him from pique as well as on principle; his only friend in the council was Cranmer, and the royal favour now failed him. Cromwell did not succumb without an effort, and a desperate struggle ensued in the council. In April the French ambassador wrote that he was tottering to his fall; a few days later he was created earl of Essex and lord great chamberlain, and two of his satellites were made secretaries to the king; he then despatched one bishop to the Tower, and threatened to send five others to join him. At last Henry struck as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey ; on June 10, Norfolk accused him of treason; the whole council joined in the attack, and Cromwell was sent to the Tower. A vast number of crimes was laid to his charge, but not submitted for trial. An act of attainder was passed against him without a dissentient voice, and after contributing his mite towards the divorce of Anne, he was beheaded on Tower Hill on July 28 repudiating all heresy and declaring that he died in the Catholic faith.
In estimating C romwell's character it must be remembered that his father was a blackguard, and that he himself spent his forma tive years in a vile school of morals. Yet he civilized himself to a certain extent, and his atrocious acts were done in no private quarrel, but in what he conceived to be the interests of his mas ter and the State. Where those interests were concerned he had no heart and no conscience and no religious faith ; no man was more completely blighted by the 16th century worship of the State. The authorities for the early life of Cromwell are the Wimbledon manor rolls, used by Mr. John Phillips of Putney in The Antiquary (188o) , vol. ii., and the Antiquarian Mag. (1882) , vol. ii. ; Pole's Apologia, i. i 26 ; Bandello's Novella, xxxiv.; Chapuy's letter to Granville, 21, Nov. 1 535 ; and Foxe's Acts and Mon. From 1522 see Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vols. iii.—xvi.; Cavendish's Life of Wolsey ; Hall's Chron.; Wriothesley's Chron. These and practically all other available sources have been utilized in R. B. Merriman's Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (19o2). For Cromwell and Machiavelli see Paul van Dyke's Renascence Portraits (1906), App.