Henry VIII's Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell

On the 26th of August 1537,

the son of a Putney brewer came here

to St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle

to be initiated into England's highest order of chivalry

by Henry VIII.

As the King's chief minister and now a Knight of the Garter,

Thomas Cromwell was at the pinnacle

of one of the most notorious careers in British history.

This was the man who pillaged and destroyed hundreds of monasteries...

..drove a lasting wedge between England and Rome...

..thought nothing of betraying his friends and allies...

..and conspired to execute a queen - Anne Boleyn.

While he was Henry VIII's chief minister,

Thomas Cromwell was the second most powerful man in England.

Historians have often seen him merely as cynical, corrupt,

and manipulative, spreading fear and suspicion

through the English court and across the nation.

In many accounts, Thomas Cromwell is one of the nastiest people

ever to hold power in England.

But I don't think Cromwell's dark reputation is justified.

Certainly, it's not the whole story.

He was a pioneering and principled statesman,

who set the country on the road to parliamentary democracy.

A religious reformer, who persuaded the King to introduce

the first authorised English translation of the Bible.

And he risked his own life

to smuggle the radical forces of the Reformation into the English Church.

I believe that Thomas Cromwell,

far from being just a cynical power-broker,

was motivated by genuine religious zeal

and a yearning to serve his country.

This much-maligned brewer's boy from Putney

was a self-educated visionary,

who in his six years as chief royal minister,

helped to lay the foundations of the modern British state.

Thomas Cromwell was born in obscurity, here in Putney.

There isn't even a record of when he was born,

but the year was probably 1485.

This is Brewhouse Lane where his family lived

and ran a small brewery.

It's only six miles up the Thames

from the centre of power in Westminster,

but young Thomas might as well have been a universe away.

Cromwell grew up in an England where everyone knew their place.

Ordinary people looked up to a hereditary nobility.

The nobility supported a divinely appointed monarch.

And even the monarch deferred to the Pope in Rome on religious matters.

Cromwell's family was near the bottom of this hierarchy.

His father, Walter,

was a scoundrel who always seemed to be looking for trouble.

I wouldn't have recommended drinking from Walter Cromwell's beer barrels.

He ran the sort of pub you don't go to twice.

I have here some copies of the court records

of the manor of Wimbledon,

and here, under Putney, for 17 October 1501,

I see, "Walter Cromwell, common brewer of beer,

"fined for breaking the assizes of ale." In other words,

he is watering his beer. Fine eight pence.

There's another one here - "Putney, Walter Cromwell,

"breaking the assize of beer, six pence."

And if you look through the rolls, there are at least 48 entries

of fines for Walter Cromwell.

And he is also fined for assaulting his neighbours,

so, he is clearly handy with his fists.

I think young Thomas Cromwell

had some hard lessons in life here in Putney.

He later boasted to his old friend, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer,

what a ruffian he was in his young days.

He even told his eminent friends that he had spent some time in jail.

It all added to the colourful reputation.

Around 1502, aged about 17 years old,

with no prospects or education,

Cromwell left Putney - and England - behind.

What he did next is a bit of a mystery.

The great Elizabethan historian, John Foxe,

reveals Cromwell serving as a mercenary in the French army,

which was utterly defeated in battle against the Holy Roman Emperor.

But the future politician was already developing a useful skill -

making friends in high places.

According to an Italian author, Cromwell popped up in Florence

and somehow got employed by a wealthy financier,

Francisco Frescobaldi, in one of Europe's biggest banks.

14 years later, a very different Thomas Cromwell came back to London.

Somehow, mysteriously,

the Putney ruffian was now as well-educated as any Tudor nobleman,

in languages and the law.

He was accepted into London society and was now respectable enough

to marry the wealthy widow of a financier, Elizabeth.

He was on his way up.

Here in Boston, in Lincolnshire,

Cromwell was to make his reputation as a skilled operator and fixer

who could get things done.

This wealthy town was controlled by trade associations of merchants,

called guilds.

In 1517, they had a problem

and Thomas Cromwell was sent in to sort it out.

The guilds had made their money from sheep's wool,

but by the 16th century,

most of their revenue came from a different flock -

church congregations.

The Boston merchants had built one of the greatest parish churches

in the land. It's known locally as the Boston Stump.

Many of the guilds had their own chapels here.

The place of honour went to the richest and most powerful -

the Guild of St Mary, and it's here that they made their money.

This was the guild chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary

in the parish church in Boston.

Successive popes had granted the guild

the right to offer a special spiritual pardon, an indulgence,

called the Scala Coeli, the stairway to heaven.

And it did what it says on the tin.

You pay your money, and the soul of your dear old deceased mother

flies out of purgatory into heaven.

Look! Here is the Pope with SC, for scala coeli, on his vestments.

And this is part of a great, luxury tomb, which is carefully placed,

prime position, near the altar where the guild masses are said.

And there are the three seats

where the priests who'd sing the mass would sit.

Now the chief wealth of the guild

came from the sale of this indulgence.

But in 1517, the licence for the indulgence was about to expire,

which threatened the guild's revenues.

From their Guildhall, the merchants and Cromwell hatched a plan

to renew and extend the indulgence and so save the guild.

Cromwell would lead an impressive delegation, on an ambitious trip

to Italy, to negotiate directly with Pope Leo X himself.

Well, this is a copy of the guild accounts for that trip to Italy,

and I see Cromwell's expenses, Calais to Rome,

three weeks, £47,

I think that's about £28,000 in our money.

But then you look at the scale of the whole project,

it's £1,200 they are spending on this,

that's around £600,000 in modern money.

And that is the mark of the trust which the merchants of Boston

were placing in Thomas Cromwell.

Once in Rome, Cromwell set to work.

Instead of observing protocol

and joining the long queue of petitioners at the Vatican,

he arranged a chance encounter with the head of the Roman Church(!)

As Leo X finished a day's hunting,

he came across Cromwell and his entourage.

He was transfixed by the sound of English singers

performing a beautiful three-note harmony.

The Pope was on the hook.

Now Cromwell started to reel him in.

The Pope was well known for his sweet tooth, so Cromwell tempted him

with various English delicacies and dainty dishes.

You might call them indulgences for indulgences.

But the Pope granted the renewal of the licence for the guild,

and their future was secure.

It was a triumph for Cromwell's strategy.

He had shown just what an extraordinary fixer he could be.

When he returned to England,

Cromwell's reputation continued to grow.

The man who'd successfully negotiated with the Pope

was offered legal work in London

and given the opportunity to sharpen his fixing skills in the City.

And he soon came to the attention of the men

with power and influence in the court of Henry VIII.

Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509.

He wanted all the power and glory of a great European monarch,

but it quickly became apparent

that he wasn't prepared to do the legwork

of running the kingdom himself.

What he needed was a close adviser to get things done.

And he found just the man in Cardinal Thomas Wolsey,

who became the King's principal minister.

His cardinal's hat and initials

still grace the great palace at Hampton Court,

which he built and where he kept a household to rival the King's.

Cromwell was called here to serve Henry's powerful first minister.

Like Cromwell, Wolsey had a humble start in life,

but his intelligence and energy quickly made him

the servant that Henry couldn't do without.

Cromwell watched and learned.

Wolsey was a self-made man of the Renaissance.

On his way up he'd benefited from an Oxford education.

Now he wanted other boys from poor backgrounds to get the same opportunities.

He decided to set up a college at Oxford University

and a school in his home town, Ipswich in Suffolk.

Both would be named Cardinal College as a twin memorial to Wolsey.

For three years,

Cromwell had been rising through the ranks of Wolsey's household,

now he was given the chance to show that he could make things happen.

As Wolsey's lawyer,

Cromwell was in charge of setting up the new school and college.

And to finance Ipswich School,

he dissolved 12 monasteries and priories.

The biggest of which was here, the Augustinian Canons of St Peter and St Paul.

And their church became the new school chapel,

with a few improvements like these Tudor roses round the door.

And behind, six acres of buildings and fields,

just right for school sports.

Cromwell evicted the canons and used the wealth of the monastery

to create the first Cardinal College.

The school opened with a grand ceremony in this church in 1528.

And this letter from the dean of the college to Wolsey describes it all.

"Upon our lady's even, I, with all the company of your grace's college,

"sung evensong as solemnly and devoutly as we could.

"And there accompanied by Master Cromwell.

"Also all the honourable gentlemen of the shire were there,

"and took repast at dinner in your grace's college

"and, as I trust, were entertained with good fare."

To finance Cardinal College Oxford,

Cromwell dissolved another 12 monasteries.

An object lesson in what you could do with the Church's wealth.

He got a taste for dissolving monasteries.

Now he became fixer-in-chief to the King's fixer.

In 1523 he had been elected to Parliament as an MP,

possibly with the Cardinal's help.

But the Cardinal was fast being embroiled in the defining royal crisis of the age.

It was known as "the King's Great Matter".

Henry had been married to Catherine of Aragon since 1509.

But as she was already the widow of his elder brother Arthur,

many lawyers believed the marriage to be illegal.

It only went ahead after a special dispensation from the Pope.

But now there was a problem.

After 18 years, the marriage had only produced one living child,

and that a daughter, Mary.

Henry, a pious man,

decided that the supposed marriage was against God's will.

And he also had his eye on a lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn.

This was a job for the Cardinal.

Wolsey had to persuade the Pope that the royal marriage was illegal

and should be annulled.

In Church law there were arguments both for

and against marrying your dead brother's wife.

Henry's case wasn't bad,

but international politics were poisonously against him.

Catherine of Aragon was very well connected.

Her nephew was Emperor Charles V, the most powerful monarch in Europe.

With his support, she appealed against the annulment to the Pope.

Henry's cause looked hopeless.

Still Wolsey kept trying.

His best shot was to find a subtle legal technicality

in the original dispensation to marry.

That would have saved the Pope's face

if he declared the marriage void.

It could have worked. But it was Henry who scuppered that plan.

Playing around with legal detail wouldn't make God any less angry.

Henry's new love, Anne Boleyn,

taunted the King for his failure to solve the problem.

And she managed to convince him that Wolsey was in league

with the Pope, that he was deliberately slowing proceedings.

Henry was losing faith in his cardinal.

In 1529 Wolsey was arrested, charged with exercising

a foreign authority against the King,

purely because he was doing his job

as the Pope's representative in England.

It was hugely unfair.

Thomas Cromwell has a reputation for being selfish and treacherous,

but when Wolsey fell from grace

and most of his household disowned him, Cromwell stayed loyal.

And at the Ipswich School, he went on to defend his patron's

educational legacy, despite the personal risk.

When the King threatened to destroy both Cardinal Colleges,

Cromwell stepped in to make sure that the good folk of Ipswich

still had some sort of school, even if it wasn't the mega-college that Wolsey had planned.

And he persuaded the King not to destroy Cardinal College Oxford.

Later Henry renamed it Christ Church,

and that's what it's still called.

But they've not forgotten the Cardinal there.

Thomas Cromwell's own position was also in jeopardy.

As a man of humble birth, he knew he was entirely

dependent on the Cardinal for support and career advancement.

Another member of Wolsey's household, George Cavendish,

described how he found Cromwell quietly crying by a window.

And Cavendish asked,

"Why, Master Cromwell? What meaneth all this sorrow?"

"Nay, nay," replied Cromwell "It is my unhappy adventure.

"I am like to lose all I have toiled for all my life,

"for doing my master true and diligent service."

Wolsey's fall meant Cromwell's fall.

Cromwell's future looked bleak.

His wife Elizabeth died in the same year,

leaving him with three children - two daughters and a lacklustre son

called Gregory, who never showed a talent for anything.

But a year later,

the King was still searching for a solution to his "Great Matter"

and Cromwell would use this as a way to claw his way back to favour.

The crisis that destroyed Wolsey, now opened the door for Cromwell

to show the King what a valuable operator he could be.

The King was trying to find a way to prove that English monarchs

were beyond papal authority.

He'd sent researchers to libraries across the land

to find evidence in support of a startling new history of the English monarchy.

And one of the chief books they used was the 12th century

"History of the Kings of Britain" by Geoffrey of Monmouth,

and it was actually a series of myths.

No historian anywhere else in Europe believed Geoffrey.

This is a finely decorated Medieval copy.

In it Geoffrey invents the story of King Arthur,

Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table.

And here is one of those myths.

Arthur, the king of ancient Britain,

was involved in an epic struggle against the Roman Empire.

One of his followers reminds him of an ancient Roman prophecy.

"For a third time one born of British blood

"will rule the Roman State.

"You stand before us as the third,

"to whom that title has been vouchsafed."

In other words, King Arthur was an emperor

and so was his successor, King Henry.

In fact, England was an empire and emperors are beholden to no-one,

not even the Pope.

After 1,000 years of obedience to Rome,

the King was asking his people to reject the papacy.

Only King Henry could have come up with this extraordinary idea,

not even Cromwell would have had the gall to rewrite European history like this.

But Cromwell's unique contribution was to show the King

how to sell this idea to nobility and the rest of the English people.

Cromwell's proven skills as a fixer,

would now be deployed on behalf of the King.

Thomas Cromwell was back in the game.

Cromwell knew there was only one institution that could

galvanise enough support for Henry's revolution, Parliament.

By 1532, it was nine years since he had first sat as an MP.

He knew how to work the system from the inside and how to change it.

Until now, Parliament's main role had been to pass on petitions

from the people and raise taxation.

Cromwell set out to persuade Parliament that it had the power

to change the nature of the constitution

and create laws that would destroy the Pope's power over the King.

Only Parliament could convince the people that England

had always been an empire and the King an emperor.

And it could pass the legislation to make the fiction a reality.

All surviving Acts of Parliament since 1497 are stored here,

in the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster.

This includes a key bill written by Thomas Cromwell.

In it he persuaded Parliament to begin the legal process

of setting up the Empire of England.

This is the Act in Restraint of Appeals.

It forbids legal appeals from England to Rome.

That was purely to stop Catherine of Aragon appealing to the Pope

but we are still living with the consequences.

This document creates the breach

between English monarchs and the papacy.

And bizarrely, it justifies it through the patriotic fantasies

of authors like Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Now it claims, "By divers sundry old authentic histories

"and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed

"that this realm of England is an empire and so hath been

"accepted in the world, governed by its one supreme head and king."

What had once been myth was now law.

For the first time in English history,

Thomas Cromwell had given Parliament the power to intervene

in the fundamental constitutional affairs of the nation.

This power has never been surrendered.

Over the next few centuries, most European monarchs

came to rule without their ancient parliaments,

with fewer and fewer restraints on their power.

But from now on English kings and queens

had to include Parliament in all the great decisions of state.

Thomas Cromwell would not have understood the meaning of parliamentary democracy,

but if you want to see where our democracy has come from, you start here.

In 1532, Cromwell was rewarded for his work by a grateful king.

He was granted the honorary title

Master of the Jewels and invited to enter the royal court.

This portrait of Cromwell, painted in 1533 by Hans Holbein,

shows a serious and attentive man.

His determination to transform the relationship between Church and State

was motivated by much more than just a desire to please the King.

At this time a religious revolution was sweeping through Europe...

..the Reformation.

It had been ignited by the German cleric Martin Luther

and it would overturn centuries of Christian belief.

Luther's followers called themselves Evangelicals

because they turned to the Gospels, "Evangelia" in Latin.

They sought a simpler Christianity, based on God's word in the Bible

and they rejected any other church teaching as superstition.

They said, "Away with the wealth and corruption of the Church hierarchy."

And that threatened the power of the Pope,

political, as well as religious.

Merchants from Germany and the Low Countries were among the first

to bring the ideas that fuelled the Reformation in England.

It's highly likely that Cromwell was introduced to Protestantism

here in Boston and that turning point didn't just change his life,

it transformed the future of this country.

In 1533 Cromwell was starting to reveal his Reformist credentials.

And he found a growing number of powerful Evangelical allies in the royal court.

Cromwell's most important ally was the new Queen-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn.

In 1533, she persuaded the King to appoint an obscure clergyman,

Thomas Cranmer, as Archbishop of Canterbury.

He was another Evangelical Reformer.

Immediately, he agreed to annul Henry's marriage to Catherine.

Five days later he married the King to Anne Boleyn.

Both the King and his Chief Minister were getting what they wanted.

Cromwell had now made sure that the King was recognised as supreme head

of the Church of England, with power to determine all religious matters.

That same year,

Cromwell was promoted again to be the King's principal secretary.

Only Henry himself had more political power.

And he was given new powers over the Church and its monasteries.

He knew from dissolving monasteries for Cardinal Wolsey

that they were a source of great wealth.

Places like Hailes Abbey, in Gloucestershire,

had dominated people's lives for centuries.

Their combined annual income

was double that of the King's own estates.

And they were influential centres of papal power.

Cromwell could now raise vast revenues for Henry

and advance his own Evangelical agenda in a single stroke.

This monastery was once one of the greatest pilgrimage centres of the

West Country because it housed the shrine of the Holy Blood of Christ.

Look at these foundations, an extraordinary ring of five chapels,

so that crowds of pilgrims could come down the north side,

hear a mass, and then out the south side.

They had come to see the Blood of Christ,

said to have been taken as he died on the cross.

Verified by the Pope himself, the relic was displayed

in a two-foot high shrine which stood on this mound.

What I have got here is one of the souvenir brochures

that you would have bought in Hailes in the 1520s.

It's actually got the precious blood on the front cover,

in its little glass display case, being opened by angels.

And when you open it up there are the stories of all the miracles done at the shrine.

And my favourite is John Marshall and his mates,

they were merchants who had been miraculously

released from prison in France, at Mont Saint-Michel.

So they came here to give thanks.

And it's the ending which is good because they went in procession around the church and then it says,

"The men had little to spend, when they had offered up

"with good devotion their candles that they had borne in procession."

You see the point that you come here,

you leave as much money as possible in offerings.

In return, the pilgrims were assured by the Church

that their eternal souls' entry into heaven would be guaranteed.

Reformers like Cromwell saw these relics as unholy

and superstitious,

and another form of Church corruption.

So Evangelicals would not just see this shrine as an abomination -

they would also see the wealth that had been

produced by the likes of John Marshall.

Cromwell wanted to discredit the monasteries.

In 1538, he sent the Holy Blood to be examined.

After centuries of veneration, it was then publicly denounced as,

"honey clarified and coloured with saffron."

A year later, the monastery at Hailes was closed down.

Overall, Cromwell was responsible for dissolving

up to 800 monasteries and religious houses across England and Wales.

Their wealth poured into the royal coffers.

Many people have never forgiven

Thomas Cromwell for the dissolution of the monasteries.

He's often portrayed as a mindless thug, trashing the Catholic Church

and looting the monasteries simply for material gain.

But he was also proving himself to be a committed

religious reformer, driven by deeply-held principle.

He closed the monasteries to end what he saw

as the superstitious practices and corruption of the Church.

And he made sure that the monks got pensions.

The buildings, themselves, had various fates -

stripped of anything valuable, yes - but sometimes deliberately

left as ruins, just to show that the Reformation had won.

The dissolution of the monasteries will be

remembered as Cromwell's most destructive act.

His radical reforms reveal the King's Fixer-in-Chief to be

both evangelical reformer and merciless politician.

There's no denying that Cromwell's politics

could get dirty and ruthless.

He fell out with his evangelical ally, Queen Anne Boleyn.

They clashed bitterly

because she wanted the money from the monasteries used for

good causes rather than filling the King's coffers.

But the Queen was losing her value as an ally.

After three years of marriage, Henry had fallen out of love with her.

When she miscarried her second child,

he'd decided Anne wasn't going to produce his longed for son.

And now he wanted to discard her.

Cromwell was only too willing to help

by intimidating those nearest to her.

He even tortured false confessions out of them.

He cooked up evidence for Anne's treason,

and incest with her own brother, and so Anne was beheaded, leaving

the King to marry the latest beauty who had caught his eye,

Jane Seymour.

This does seem to me to be the darkest deed of the man.

It's good evidence for the prosecution.

Cromwell is always remembered for conspiring to kill a Queen

and looting the monasteries.

And this has overshadowed the legacy of his evangelical principles

and statesmanship.

For Cromwell was also a great defender of what was

known as the "common weal" - you might say "public good."

Monasteries like Hailes had been served by lay brothers, who

lived in this West Range here, but also had a swarm of other servants.

The dissolution just added to an already growing problem

of homelessness and unemployment, right across the realm.

This was new and frightening.

And the growing poverty also offended Cromwell's

evangelical ideals.

So he set up a sort of think tank of young reformers to dream up

ideas for improving the "common weal".

With their help, he was able to bring a parliamentary bill to

require local communities to force

able-bodied, homeless beggars to work.

Well, it was tough love - but you might see it as coming from a man

of principle who had started with nothing, got on his bike and made it,

and was now determined that the state should look after the poor.

Cromwell's Act was the first step towards

a comprehensive poor law plan,

which was finally passed in 1597 by an Elizabethan Parliament.

This national system of poor relief was not replaced

until the 19th century.

You might not like the sound of it, but you can't deny that

Thomas Cromwell showed the way to a new kind of welfare state.

Cromwell's evangelical convictions have also had a long-lasting,

unforeseen impact on our ideas of public morality.

He regarded the monasteries as centres of homosexuality,

and so, as part of his campaign against the monasteries,

he persuaded parliament to pass an Act for the punishment

of the vice of buggery.

The Act was no more than 16 lines long,

but it represented the first time that the state had tried to

control private sexual behaviour or morality.

Before that, the Church had a monopoly on deciding what was

moral or immoral.

Now Cromwell had paved the way to a huge extension of state power.

And the results are still at the heart of our politics.

Here at St John's College, Cambridge,

we can see further evidence that Thomas Cromwell was more than

just a cynical manipulator.

It proves that he was prepared to risk his hard won place

at the side of the King to follow his principles

and take England down the path of evangelical Protestantism.

Of course, the very term "evangelical" means "getting back to the gospel",

but the Bible in use in Henry's England was still in Latin -

and you need education to understand Latin,

so the Bible wasn't there for ordinary people to read,

it was there for the clergy to interpret for them.

Evangelicals demanded that the Bible should be in English,

so that everyone could read the Word of God for themselves.

It was a revolutionary idea at the time

and it was certainly a step too far for King Henry.

There had been various efforts to translate the Bible into English.

The most successful was by William Tyndale.

But Henry hated the idea of translation.

He forced Tyndale into exile and colluded in his arrest

and execution as a heretic in 1536.

Despite Tyndale's fate,

Thomas Cromwell had the courage to stick his neck out...

though it must be said that his timing was perfect.

Henry had just married Jane Seymour and she was pregnant -

with what he hoped was the longed-for male heir.

Henry was in a generous mood, and Cromwell seized the moment.

He took the enormous risk of giving the King

a copy of the Bible in English.

And within ten days, Henry had approved it,

one of the greatest royal U-turns of the reign.

Now Cromwell had the opportunity.

He issued an order that every parish in the land should get

a copy of the Bible in English.

And in St John's College library in Cambridge, there it is -

Thomas Cromwell's own copy.

And this great title page is like a Tudor strip cartoon

of what's just happened.

We've got King Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England

on his throne.

I notice he is rather bigger than the figure of God above him.

And he's handing out copies of the English Bible, on the one hand, to

Archbishop Cranmer and the bishops,

and on the other, to Thomas Cromwell.

And Cranmer then hands the English Bible to his clergy below.

Thomas Cromwell hands a copy to lay people in England.

Now, the clergy have got to preach the message of obedience to King Henry out of the Bible.

And the congregation has got the message

because they're all shouting loyally, "Vivat rex, vivat rex",

except for one little boy down here,

who hasn't learnt his Latin, so he loyally shouts,

"God save the King".

And then in the corner, there is a little dark note,

because it's a prison.

And in the prison are all the people

who don't listen to King Henry's Bible

either because they are papists

or because they are protestants who have gone too far.

With a copy of the Bible in English in every parish church, everyone

now had the chance of reading the Bible in their own language.

Cromwell had cemented the great divide between the Church of England and the Church of Rome.

But Cromwell didn't stop there.

He was prepared to risk his own life for the evangelical cause.

His greatest contribution to reforming the Church of England started in Switzerland.

As the Reformation swept through Europe, Martin Luther was

joined by other more radical voices.

One of the most extreme lived here in Zurich -

he was called Huldrych Zwingli.

Zwingli was pastor of Zurich's greatest church, the Grossmunster.

And like Luther in Germany,

he preached against the corruption of the Pope and his Church.

Zwingli went one step further.

He rejected the Church's teaching on the most sacred Christian ceremony - the mass.

Catholics believe that in the mass,

bread and wine become the living body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Zwingli said they didn't.

The layout of the Grossmunster demonstrates his beliefs.

Zwingli removed the high altar

where the transformation of the bread and wine traditionally took place, and replaced it with a table,

in the middle of the church among the people.

That's because Zwingli's church celebrated not a mass,

but a Holy Communion.

The bread and wine were purely a sacred sign that Christ

died for all our sins - they are not the body and blood of Christ,

but remain bread and wine still.

It's difficult, in our secular age, to imagine the fury that this

unleashed in the 16th century.

Henry VIII thought it the worst sort of blasphemy.

He burned at the stake,

people who had taken up Zwingli's ideas in England.

Until this time,

England had no official connections with Switzerland.

But this changed in 1537,

when a group of talented young Oxford graduates arrived at this

house in Zurich, to meet Zwingli's successor, Heinrich Bullinger.

They seemed to be an official delegation from the Church of England.

But who really sent them? Certainly not the King.

And Archbishop Cranmer,

if anything, shared Henry's opinion that Zwingli was a heretic.

But all the Oxford visitors had close links to Cromwell.

Only Cromwell had both the power

and the motivation to authorise a mission like this.

And the link to Zurich would make sure that the breach

between Rome and England would never be healed.

I am certain that Thomas Cromwell had accepted Zwingli's

radical reformist teaching.

He knew the King wouldn't change his mind about the Mass, and that if his

Swiss connections were discovered, he would be burned as a heretic.

But ever the strategist, Cromwell was playing a long game.

The Oxford graduates returned to England as devout and determined protestants -

evangelical time-bombs in the Church of England.

We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.

Five years after Henry's death, the Church of England adopted

Zwingli's symbolic interpretation of Holy Communion.

This theological revolution, which enshrined

the divide between England and Rome,

is Thomas Cromwell's greatest legacy.

Cromwell must have felt unstoppable.

He'd already been well-rewarded with wealth and property.

And now his great patron was to give him

a prize no money could buy -

social status.

St George's Chapel, Windsor,

is the mother chapel of the most ancient and honourable

of the English chivalric orders - the Knighthood of the Garter.

Only 24 people, personally chosen by the monarch,

can hold the honour at any one time.

To this day, the banners of the Knights hang high

in this chapel and you see the great families of the realm.

There, the Duke of Westminster, there, the Duke of Wellington,

and below them their helms complete with family crests.

In 1537, Henry invited the publican's son from Putney

to join this noble circle.

He created Cromwell a Knight of the Garter.

The upstart had used royal patronage to force his way into this

rigid hierarchy.

Many people would have been satisfied with this honour -

but not Thomas Cromwell.

This is the stall in which Thomas Cromwell eventually

took his place as Knight of the Garter.

On it is a plaque.

It's for Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex.

Henry Bourchier was the holder of one of the most ancient

titles in England, but he died without an heir.

The King took the opportunity to bestow this Earldom

on his Chief Minister, who now became Earl of Essex.

Thomas Cromwell had now joined the hereditary nobility.

Intelligence and ruthless determination had brought him

huge wealth and great status.

He must have felt invincible.

But the political skill and evangelical drive which had

taken Thomas Cromwell so far, would also tear him down.

In 1537, Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife, had died,

just after giving birth to Edward, the long-awaited heir.

Now the King was in need of another wife.

Cromwell came here, to Archbishop Cranmer's country palace

at Croydon, to perform his fixer's magic one more time.

He wanted to arrange a marriage for the King which would ally

England with the forces of the Reformation.

He hoped to enlist the Archbishop's support in persuading Henry

to marry a German princess - Anne of Cleves.

But the Archbishop wasn't convinced.

This manuscript is a 17th century summary of a lost contemporary

account of the conversation between Cranmer and Cromwell.

It's a fascinating glimpse into the relationship between

these two most powerful men in Tudor England.

Cranmer, ever mindful of King Henry's happiness, bless him, said

that he "thought it most expedient the King to marry where that he had

"his fantasy and love, for that would be most comfort for his Grace".

And Cromwell, furious at this political naivety,

snapped back that there was "none meet for him within this realm".

And Cranmer replied that it would be

"very strange to be married with her that he could not talk with".

In other words, speak English to.

Anne of Cleves might not speak much English, but Cromwell was

determined to show the King she possessed other virtues.

He dispatched his favourite artist, Hans Holbein,

to paint a portrait of the 24-year-old German princess.

Well this is rather lovely, isn't it?

This is the actual miniature which Hans Holbein sent to England.

So you and I are in the same position as King Henry

viewing his bride to be.

Portraits of this date would often have the face slightly

turned away, but this is full face

so that he could be sure there were no blemishes.

And the headdress is painted to be in the English fashion,

not the German style she'd actually have worn,

so that the King could compare her with the ladies he knew.

Standards of beauty do change over time, but we can be pretty sure

that the King saw a beautiful lady staring back at him.

So he agreed to Cromwell's choice.

A great ceremony for Henry to meet Anne was planned for January 3rd 1540.

But the King couldn't wait

and impatiently rushed off three days early to surprise her.

Henry burst into his future wife's chambers.

But the King didn't like what he saw.

The Princess failed to live up to her painted image.

When Henry got back to London he rounded on Cromwell.

"Is there no remedy but that against my will,

"I must put my neck in the yoke?"

And the wedding night only compounded his misery.

He said to Cromwell, "I liked her before not well,

"but now I like her much worse".

The management of royal marriages

and annulments had been the making of Cromwell.

This one would prove to be his unmaking.

There was no longer any need to appeal to the Pope for this annulment.

Instead, Henry, the Supreme Head of the Church of England, was

required to appear in a church court in front of his subjects

and present intimate evidence of his failure

to consummate the wedding night.

For a proud monarch who gloried in his virility, to be forced into

a public admission of impotence, was a dreadful humiliation.

Henry needed someone to blame.

Cromwell fell from the King's favour -

and he had such a long way to fall.

He was a self-made man with no noble, ancient lineage.

Without the King's patronage he was nothing.

Cromwell had seen what had happened to Thomas Wolsey -

he could have tried to retrieve the situation.

But Cromwell couldn't stop himself.

The priory here at Thetford, in Norfolk,

was the scene of Thomas Cromwell's worst act of self-destruction.

It was one of the last monasteries remaining in England.

And that's because it had been protected by one of the most

influential figures at the royal court -

Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

This was the great church of the Priory. We've just got one

pillar standing to full height to show you how grand it all was.

In a chapel over there was the tomb of the first Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

And in front of the high altar here is one of the main vaults which

housed the bodies of the Earls and Dukes of Norfolk and their families.

This was a very special place for a very important, noble family.

In 1539, the Duke of Norfolk tried to save the priory from dissolution.

He lobbied the King for it to be converted into a secular college,

which would preserve the sanctity of the family tombs.

Thomas Cromwell was determined that it should all be destroyed.

He let his evangelical zeal overcome his political nous.

On 16th February 1540, the prior was forced to surrender his monastery.

It was one of the last two to be dissolved in all England.

There would be no college.

Eventually, the Norfolks were forced to dig up

and move the bones of their ancestors.

It was the ultimate humiliation.

The Duke of Norfolk returned to his family castle at Framlingham,

in Suffolk.

He would rebury the remains of his ancestors in the local parish church.

He was already plotting his revenge.

Throughout the 1530s,

Cromwell's enemies had resented his extraordinary rise,

but the King's patronage meant that they were powerless to stop him.

Now, Henry was smarting from the fiasco of the Cleves marriage,

while the whole nobility would loathe Cromwell

parading around with the ancient title of Earl of Essex.

The desecration of Thetford Priory had now infuriated

the Duke of Norfolk.

Lying here next to his wife is the man who was determined to

destroy the mighty first minister.

Cromwell knew better than most that the King had always been

easily swayed by those closest to him.

Now it was the Duke of Norfolk who whispered in Henry's ear.

The King was easily persuaded that his chief minister was

a heretic and a traitor.

On 10th of June 1540, Cromwell was attending the King's Council.

The Duke of Norfolk strode up to him and said,

"Cromwell, do not sit there. That is no place for you.

"Traitors do not sit amongst gentlemen."

Cromwell replied, "I am no traitor."

Then the Duke himself tore the insignia of the Garter

from Cromwell's neck.

"That's for Thetford Priory."

The chief minister was arrested

and taken straight to the Tower of London.

Cromwell's enemies had waited years to strike.

Within a week, the House of Lords passed a Bill of Attainder,

stripping him of his rights and property and accusing him

of treason, heresy and corruption.

Cromwell made one final attempt to work his magic on the King.

Sitting in the Tower of London, Cromwell wrote the King

one last letter, and this is a copy of it, in his own handwriting.

And he says, "Consider that I am a most woeful prisoner

"and the death when it shall please God and you".

What he's asking is, what sort of death - burning, beheading,

hanging, drawing and quartering?

And then he goes on, "And yet the frail flesh inciteth me

"continually to call on your grace for mercy and pardon".

And then pathetic postscript -

"Most gracious prince I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy".

And the signature - "Thomas Cromwell".

Cromwell would have expected to see the King one last time,

and then he could look him in the face and persuade him to save him.

But it was not to be.

Henry did show SOME mercy.

He ordered that his former principal minister should simply be beheaded.

On 28th July 1540 on Tower Hill, in front of a large crowd,

Thomas Cromwell walked to the block.

He asked the Axeman, "Pray, if possible,

"cut off my head with one blow, so that I may not suffer".

But the man botched the job. It took several blows.

One account suggests that he hacked away for up to 30 minutes.

Cromwell's head was displayed on a pike on London Bridge.

His body was buried here in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula,

inside the Tower.

The graveyard of traitors.

It was yards away from the tomb of Anne Boleyn,

the woman he had made sure died as a traitor...

just like him.

Within months, Henry was lamenting the death of the most

faithful servant he ever had.

But it's Cromwell's reputation as a ruthless thug that has

endured for centuries.

Thomas Cromwell was a supreme politician, and a ruthless operator

who didn't shrink from using violence to achieve his ends.

But we should also think of him as a great statesman

and a man of principle.

He used his talent to cut England off from 1,000 years

of Roman obedience, forge a religious revolution,

and lay down the foundations for our constitutional monarchy.

This pub landlord's son from Putney reshaped our history for good.

Not just a thug, not just even a Protestant thug.

I give you Thomas Cromwell, re-maker of this realm.

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