The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #177 ｜ Thomas Cromwell： with Luca Johnson

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to this Epochs, where I should be talking all about the life and career and times of Thomas Cromwell, not to be confused with Oliver Cromwell, and I'm joined by Luca Johnson. How are you, sir?

00:00:12.380 Great. Good morning, as always. And yeah, this is going to be, I've got a feeling this will be a good one.

00:00:17.660 Great to have you back in.

00:00:18.660 Thank you.

00:00:19.140 So just to stress again for anyone, there are two important Cromwells in English history.

00:00:23.520 There's Oliver Cromwell for the Civil War in the 17th century, who had Charles Stewart's head cut off.

00:00:31.400 We're talking about Thomas Cromwell, who's much earlier. It's during the age of Henry VIII.

00:00:37.040 Right, yes.

00:00:37.780 So a good couple of hundred years earlier. A bit more even, isn't it?

00:00:42.380 Yes.

00:00:43.120 And they are actually distantly related.

00:00:45.440 Yeah, great granduncle.

00:00:47.000 Right, right.

00:00:47.820 Yeah.

00:00:48.640 But just get Oliver Cromwell out of your mind. We're talking about Thomas Cromwell.

00:00:52.860 Now, I want to let you lead the conversation, and I'll be more peeking your brain than the other way around, if anything.

00:00:59.240 However, the first thing I wanted to say, a bit of an overview first, a few opening comments and thoughts.

00:01:07.700 There are two different ways to view Thomas Cromwell.

00:01:11.220 One is sort of a baddie.

00:01:13.800 I think largely in history has been thought of as something of a baddie, particularly by Catholics.

00:01:21.280 But you could look at him as a goodie.

00:01:23.560 So, for example, there are some characters in history, aren't there, that people's perception of them are heavily influenced by how they're portrayed in fiction.

00:01:31.020 So for Thomas Cromwell, the two big ones, there's a film, A Man for All Seasons.

00:01:35.700 Yes.

00:01:36.840 Which I have seen, actually, now.

00:01:38.240 It's a brilliant film.

00:01:39.340 Awesome.

00:01:39.960 Highly recommend.

00:01:40.580 It's all about Thomas More, really.

00:01:42.240 It's all about Henry VIII and Thomas More.

00:01:44.620 And there's loads of characters in this, and we'll try and pick our way through them.

00:01:48.460 And in that film, Thomas More is the goodie, the absolute immaculate saint, literally a saint.

00:01:53.580 And Thomas Cromwell is cast as really sort of slimy and evil and just horrible, horrible person.

00:02:02.820 Then there's Wolf Hall, much more later, Hilary Mantle novels that the BBC made into some TV shows with Mark Rylance.

00:02:08.840 And in that, Thomas More is painted as a freak, sort of weirdo, horrible, untrustworthy, dark person.

00:02:19.480 Yes.

00:02:19.820 And Thomas Cromwell is the immaculate goodie.

00:02:23.040 Right.

00:02:23.460 Right.

00:02:23.860 So I thought, hopefully, what we might be able to do in this conversation is try and drill down, if we can, to the real Thomas More.

00:02:32.080 Was he that horrible baddie from the Man Full Seasons, or was he the goodie, the Mark Rylance, Wolf Hall version, or probably somewhere in between?

00:02:41.280 A little bit of both.

00:02:42.140 Right.

00:02:42.540 Yeah, a little bit of both.

00:02:43.360 Best of both.

00:02:43.860 Okay.

00:02:44.460 Yeah.

00:02:44.760 So if you've only seen one of those two things, because if you watch them both, it is remarkable how it's supposed to be the same guy.

00:02:52.020 Yeah, it's such a different depiction.

00:02:53.340 It's a completely different guy.

00:02:54.720 All right.

00:02:55.140 Yeah.

00:02:55.620 Yeah.

00:02:56.300 It's interesting how you can do that with history.

00:02:58.180 It is.

00:02:58.720 It is.

00:02:59.700 I mean, it's...

00:03:01.260 I mean, Sir Geoffrey Elton, you know, famous historian of the 20th century, he was responsible for really pushing Cromwell into being, he said that he was an underappreciated figure in terms of actually what he did to the British state as a whole and the sheer transformation that happened to the apparatus of the state during Cromwell's management of it.

00:03:25.220 But as regards to the moral question of him and what he did and his motives in life, yeah, those things even now are really hotly debated.

00:03:36.340 And, yeah, obviously, it's only natural that the Catholics would hate him.

00:03:41.100 And it's only natural that the Protestants might sort of think, well, he's kind of our guy. 0.66

00:03:46.780 But, you know, for me personally, I'm an atheist, not in like an obnoxious sort of way, but I don't have like a theological dog in the fight.

00:03:57.040 You know, I'm just trying to see his actions and see, you know, who it harmed, who it did good for and, yeah, take it from there, really.

00:04:06.560 Yeah, it's interesting you say about his overall impact on British politics.

00:04:13.440 I was reading History of English-speaking people just the other night and one of the things Churchill stressed was that he sort of came up with the idea of departments of state in a way that during the reign of Henry VII, Henry Tudor, and the earlier reign of Henry VIII,

00:04:29.720 still it was the household, the royal household, that really did nearly all of government.

00:04:36.440 And it was under Thomas Cromwell that he sort of brings in what we might call, well, I suppose it is just a bureaucracy or they wouldn't have called it a civil service or anything at the time, but...

00:04:47.800 Like a proto.

00:04:48.780 Yeah.

00:04:49.240 Yeah.

00:04:49.820 Starting up departments, really, so that all the work of government isn't done by just the royal household and friends, basically friends,

00:04:59.100 of the king.

00:05:01.320 So he was responsible for all sorts of things.

00:05:03.100 And as we've hinted out there, if anyone doesn't know anything about the man in time,

00:05:06.460 it referenced Catholicism and Protestantism.

00:05:11.700 So one of the headlines, perhaps the headline, is that Henry VIII abolished lots and lots of monasteries

00:05:18.960 and Thomas Cromwell was his man.

00:05:21.800 Yeah.

00:05:22.580 The enforcer.

00:05:23.340 He was the chancellor at the time, which is something like a prime minister.

00:05:27.020 Basically, the head minister.

00:05:30.600 Yeah.

00:05:31.500 Lord Privy Seal and, yeah, so many titles.

00:05:35.080 Yeah.

00:05:35.280 You look at the list of titles on, you know, just like in a book or on Wikipedia, it's really lengthy.

00:05:41.420 Yeah.

00:05:41.880 You know, the titles he held over his life.

00:05:43.880 So the thing of just quickly say, the thing of having a reformation, having the king become head of the church in England,

00:05:55.360 not being loyal to the Pope in Rome anymore and abolishing lots and lots of monasteries.

00:05:59.920 So if you're a Catholic, you're going to hate all of that and you're going to see, you're going to hate Henry VIII

00:06:06.080 and you're going to really hate someone like Thomas Cromwell and lots of other people in Henry's court.

00:06:11.600 There are lots of figures that we'll get to, like Archbishop Craminer, for example.

00:06:15.460 All sorts of people.

00:06:16.260 Yeah, huge, huge number.

00:06:17.320 So have you got any sort of general remarks or do you want to just start sort of chronologically with his life?

00:06:23.100 Yeah.

00:06:23.440 How do you want to do it?

00:06:24.280 Yeah, I think chronologically is great.

00:06:26.200 And then just address the big things as they come up naturally.

00:06:30.140 So it's one of those things that Cromwell had a very, you'll know this, but Cromwell had a very lowly birth.

00:06:37.820 Not absolute poverty.

00:06:39.480 You know, his father, Walter Cromwell, was both owned an inn and a brewery.

00:06:47.800 He was a brewer.

00:06:48.720 And at one point in his life, he'd also been a blacksmith as well.

00:06:52.260 So he had several businesses and also a fuller at some point.

00:06:57.480 So he had his dipping into lots of different types of work.

00:07:01.900 And he actually became, was elected constable of Putney, where Cromwell was born, in 1495.

00:07:10.140 So he was not someone of no repute.

00:07:12.680 And he clearly, it's funny, in Wolf Hall, he's depicted as a really abusive oaf of a father. 0.98

00:07:19.800 Yeah, a horrible, horrible monster of a dead. 0.58

00:07:21.800 Was he not like that then? 0.88

00:07:23.000 Is he not that bad?

00:07:24.360 Well, this is what I was going to say about the larger point,

00:07:27.500 that because of Cromwell's birth and the sort of unimportance of his upbringing,

00:07:33.340 a lot of his early life is just sort of, you have to fill it in with conjecture,

00:07:37.880 you know, because there's so little we know.

00:07:40.420 And obviously, because of his lower birth, it wasn't something that Cromwell himself

00:07:45.580 really personally liked to talk about at court, because it's not something,

00:07:50.960 they all resented him anyway, for not being one of them and for not being an actual nobleman

00:07:56.980 and, you know, not coming from the aristocracy.

00:08:00.220 And so it's not something that you really blab about.

00:08:04.200 But we do know that his mother was called Catherine,

00:08:09.860 and we know very little more about her than that.

00:08:12.740 And that Cromwell himself was born in around 1485.

00:08:16.220 So it's, and one thing he does say, recounting his own youth,

00:08:24.000 was that he was a ruffian.

00:08:25.780 Right.

00:08:26.300 So I think that lends to the idea that perhaps his dad was a bad, bad guy,

00:08:32.940 because I don't think if he was, if his father was an upstanding member of society,

00:08:38.480 that he maybe would have necessarily had a son who would have gone on to be of that character

00:08:47.040 so early on in his life, if he'd have had a strong father figure.

00:08:50.900 So I would just sort of suggest that that might be the case.

00:08:55.680 It's interesting, isn't it?

00:08:56.420 Even in the 19th century, occasionally even in the early 20th century,

00:09:01.520 we just don't know any of the details of someone's early life.

00:09:04.880 Yeah.

00:09:05.820 Right?

00:09:06.360 Yeah.

00:09:06.900 Like, one thing that nearly always springs to my mind is we don't know the exact year,

00:09:11.300 or it's not clear anyway, the exact year that Stalin was born.

00:09:14.900 Right?

00:09:15.660 Right.

00:09:15.900 So it's only like the 19th century, and we're talking about the late 15th century.

00:09:19.640 Yes.

00:09:20.060 So no wonder, especially if you're not of any real importance,

00:09:23.300 no one will have chronicled your early life.

00:09:26.040 No.

00:09:26.180 So that's it.

00:09:28.620 It's sort of lost to time.

00:09:30.300 Yes.

00:09:30.860 But then you're left with having to sort of fill in the gaps yourself.

00:09:35.820 Did he leave early?

00:09:37.660 Because in Wolf Hall, they depict that he essentially ran away from home

00:09:41.580 when he was really quite young.

00:09:44.500 Is that true?

00:09:45.180 Whether he ran away or left on amicable terms,

00:09:49.120 he absolutely did leave England at a very early age,

00:09:52.600 probably 16, 17.

00:09:55.340 Okay.

00:09:55.580 And he headed to France,

00:09:57.680 where he was enlisted as a mercenary in the French army.

00:10:03.660 Englishmen fighting for France.

00:10:04.980 It's actually much more common, that sort of thing, than you might think.

00:10:07.220 Right?

00:10:07.460 If you're a mercenary,

00:10:08.580 Yes.

00:10:09.080 You fight for France.

00:10:10.540 Next day, you fight for Genoa.

00:10:12.060 Yeah.

00:10:12.200 Next day, you might fight for a sultan.

00:10:14.040 Right?

00:10:14.640 So anyway, yeah, fighting for France, though.

00:10:16.320 Right.

00:10:16.720 Yeah, it's not a great start.

00:10:18.240 Yeah.

00:10:18.820 But one of the things to say is that, obviously, in becoming a mercenary,

00:10:23.420 the good thing about that sort of work in around 1500 is there's plenty of work to go around.

00:10:29.680 Right.

00:10:29.900 And so, from signing up for the mercenary company in France,

00:10:36.160 Cromwell very quickly found himself fighting in northern Italy.

00:10:40.460 Right.

00:10:40.760 In 50, we have the reports and documents confirming that he was at the Battle of Gringliano in 1503.

00:10:51.040 And so, I don't know, who's that?

00:10:53.080 Is that against the Papal States or something?

00:10:55.180 What's that about?

00:10:55.520 It's the French versus the Spanish, 1.00

00:10:58.280 who are all trying to chip away and take Italy, little bits of Italy, for themselves,

00:11:05.540 for their own expansion and empires, which is, of course, partly where Machiavelli's prince

00:11:13.060 and the idea of Machiavelli's dream of a united Italy,

00:11:16.920 so that these foreign powers can't just start randomly attacking us whenever they feel like it 1.00

00:11:23.220 and dipping into the wealth of the Italian states.

00:11:26.660 No, it's right in that wheelhouse, isn't it?

00:11:28.520 Yeah.

00:11:28.700 So, it's the age of, well, nearly, sort of, the age of Leonardo and Cesare Borgia

00:11:33.420 and all sorts of fascinating, interesting people.

00:11:36.280 Yeah.

00:11:37.820 It would have been an interesting time to be alive, for sure.

00:11:42.160 But was he a bowman?

00:11:45.080 Again, they sort of seem to depict that.

00:11:46.880 I don't know.

00:11:47.440 Did he actually see, do we know?

00:11:48.780 Did he actually see action?

00:11:49.860 Or is it just, we know that he was there and that's it?

00:11:52.120 We know that he was there.

00:11:53.920 There are contemporary stories, but they are just stories written at the time by an Italian writer,

00:12:01.640 whose name escapes me, who actually says that he was just a page.

00:12:05.920 Right.

00:12:06.160 But there are others who say that, yeah, he saw action, proper action.

00:12:12.020 But whether he did or didn't, the point was that at that particular battle,

00:12:17.780 it seems it's a long recorded battle that we've got of his war record.

00:12:22.940 And, you know, to quote Blackadder, he was on the wrong bloody side.

00:12:26.300 Yeah.

00:12:26.440 You know, and the French lost that confrontation, as they do. 1.00

00:12:30.360 But, yeah, so, but that actually, for Cromwell personally, was catastrophic,

00:12:35.920 because that left him, the battle had been lost.

00:12:39.860 You know, he'd lost his company.

00:12:41.040 And now all of a sudden, he's a foreigner, just wondering about Italy, homeless, penniless, 0.83

00:12:49.740 with no seeming prospects of how to dig himself out of this predicament that he's in.

00:12:58.220 And so, but the way that it does happen is that he's in Florence,

00:13:02.520 and he meets the head of one of the Florentine banking families,

00:13:11.200 Francesco Frescobaldi, who is actually a bit of an Anglophile.

00:13:16.480 Okay.

00:13:16.960 And just really likes English people.

00:13:19.440 A very sensible chap.

00:13:20.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:22.020 Man of good taste.

00:13:23.180 Yeah, impeccable.

00:13:24.660 But so he actually, off the back of finding this, you know,

00:13:28.640 young, down-on-his-look Englishman, just middling about in Florence,

00:13:32.120 he takes him in and gives him a position as a clerk within the apparatus of the banking family.

00:13:44.000 Right.

00:13:44.380 And that's such a vital leg up, of course,

00:13:46.900 because that thing of knowing the inner workings of finance,

00:13:52.420 and, you know, just getting that little bit of experience,

00:13:54.920 and very quickly because of what will be seen as a lifelong, just ridiculous,

00:14:02.040 almost Alexander Hamilton level of work ethic.

00:14:05.280 Right.

00:14:05.980 He's got that about him.

00:14:07.800 And he, yeah, so he does very well for himself,

00:14:11.120 whilst for a few years in Florence, building up actually, yeah,

00:14:14.660 some money for himself and making important connections in Florence,

00:14:17.800 and learning Italian.

00:14:19.740 So that is a very interesting transition in his life.

00:14:22.800 Lots of people in history, sometimes you're born to something,

00:14:27.140 like Alexander or Henry VIII,

00:14:29.560 and often lots of people,

00:14:31.140 fairly recently did a thing all about U.S. S. Grant,

00:14:34.820 and he was sort of a bit of a loser in life for most of his life,

00:14:38.920 and then the war happens and his career just goes astronomical.

00:14:45.860 And so, I mean, Thomas Cromwell's a little bit like that,

00:14:48.780 like he finds himself, he's run away from home,

00:14:51.300 he's been on the losing side of a mercenary war.

00:14:54.240 He's sort of, you can imagine, a very, very low ebb.

00:14:57.680 He's sort of got nothing going for him.

00:14:59.660 He hasn't caught a break yet.

00:15:01.580 And then this thing happens.

00:15:04.500 He catches the eye of a very, very important Italian banker.

00:15:07.860 And from then on, you know,

00:15:10.760 like the sliding doors nature of life and reality,

00:15:13.920 that his life takes a different turn,

00:15:17.840 which, you know,

00:15:19.320 he ends up being one of the most powerful men in Europe,

00:15:21.560 from nothing.

00:15:23.100 Yes.

00:15:23.660 Because of this.

00:15:25.160 There's a great line in Wolf Hall, actually,

00:15:28.300 and I think it's true in the early 16th century,

00:15:32.080 and it's still true today,

00:15:34.300 that a lot of people,

00:15:35.260 power doesn't reside where a lot of people think it does.

00:15:39.200 Have you heard that line in Wolf Hall?

00:15:40.740 Yeah.

00:15:41.380 You think it's your king that holds the power.

00:15:44.420 You think it's your prime minister or your chancellor

00:15:46.460 or your president or something.

00:15:47.860 No, it's some banker dude that you've never heard of.

00:15:50.640 Yeah.

00:15:51.440 Your leaders are actually in hock to some bankers somewhere.

00:15:54.720 Right.

00:15:55.120 Probably in a different country and stuff.

00:15:56.960 Yes.

00:15:57.240 That's the real, real reality.

00:16:00.260 And so, yeah, he gets this.

00:16:03.500 Yeah, you can only imagine that if that hadn't happened,

00:16:07.740 his life would have gone in just, obviously,

00:16:09.700 gone in a completely different direction

00:16:11.020 and almost certainly wouldn't have ended up where he ended up.

00:16:15.700 Maybe he would have lived longer, actually.

00:16:17.980 Maybe he would have reached old age.

00:16:20.000 But, no, so that's because the big Italian banking families of Florence,

00:16:25.640 or not just Florence,

00:16:27.180 but preeminently of Florence in the early 16th century,

00:16:31.080 late 15th, early 16th century,

00:16:32.660 they are one of the most important centers of power

00:16:38.180 in the whole of Europe, the whole of the world, really.

00:16:40.660 For sure.

00:16:41.020 Right.

00:16:41.840 So that's a great education,

00:16:43.200 an unbelievable, quote unquote, education for him to get.

00:16:46.640 Oh, yeah.

00:16:47.300 Yeah.

00:16:47.840 But also something that once he did finally return to England,

00:16:52.660 sort of set him above the rest, right?

00:16:54.520 Really, it was something that made him stand out

00:16:56.800 amongst his peers who weren't as well traveled.

00:17:01.260 But before he does get back to England,

00:17:04.380 one other just a little bit to mention

00:17:05.820 is that he also spent some time going around on business.

00:17:10.540 The Low Countries and around Antwerp.

00:17:14.160 And in that time as well,

00:17:15.640 he also picks up a competent level of Latin and French

00:17:20.660 and Spanish, I believe, as well.

00:17:23.080 So enormously multilingual.

00:17:25.180 And again, it's a matter of conjecture

00:17:27.780 because it's still not an enormously well-documented part of his life.

00:17:31.740 But somewhere in that time,

00:17:35.120 whether he was self-taught or found someone to teach him the ropes,

00:17:40.340 he also managed to understand the law.

00:17:45.240 And when he returned to England,

00:17:46.700 he did actually set up his own legal firm,

00:17:49.660 his own legal, you know,

00:17:51.960 for people to come to him if they needed a solicitor.

00:17:57.480 So he's become a man of the world.

00:17:59.540 He left Putney as a boy, really,

00:18:02.360 with no prospects, no real prospects.

00:18:06.600 But through, you can only imagine,

00:18:09.000 the gift of the gab,

00:18:09.700 some sort of great personality,

00:18:12.260 probably charisma,

00:18:14.360 he's come back now as an extremely worldly,

00:18:18.880 extremely knowledgeable person,

00:18:21.180 sort of kind of fantastically.

00:18:22.680 So that's the impression you get.

00:18:23.900 Yeah, right.

00:18:24.340 He comes back to England and people are like,

00:18:26.580 this guy's sort of incredible.

00:18:29.000 Like he sort of knows how the world works.

00:18:32.440 Yeah.

00:18:32.640 And having connections, again,

00:18:34.740 the connections in Italian banking

00:18:36.940 or in Dutch commerce,

00:18:40.360 it's sort of the centre of the world in all sorts of ways.

00:18:44.400 Oh, for sure.

00:18:44.900 If you've got connections and friends there,

00:18:47.620 the last piece of the puzzle would have to be at court.

00:18:51.320 And then, yeah,

00:18:51.860 you're sort of a titan among men, really.

00:18:54.820 Yeah.

00:18:55.200 Right.

00:18:55.880 And you don't necessarily have to be born to a blue-blooded family.

00:19:01.420 You've actually got influence and power and knowledge

00:19:04.700 that is of real, real value.

00:19:08.860 And it is interesting.

00:19:10.260 I think it's interesting when you get historical figures

00:19:12.380 where you don't know exactly what happened in their youth,

00:19:16.040 in their childhood, their youth, or their early years.

00:19:18.660 You can only really infer it.

00:19:20.840 I think Thomas Cromwell was a brilliant example of that.

00:19:23.660 But you have to infer that he was a remarkable person

00:19:28.660 and must have filled that period of his life

00:19:31.840 with loads and loads of learning.

00:19:36.440 Yeah, it must have been a very, very good work ethic

00:19:39.200 and must have had natural ability.

00:19:43.980 Again, I was in the history of the English-speaking people.

00:19:47.540 Churchill describes him as he does say Machiavellian,

00:19:50.320 but he doesn't just list off a reel of bad descriptive words.

00:19:57.040 No.

00:19:57.380 Some of them are, yeah, things like that he was charismatic

00:20:00.980 or he must have been likeable as well.

00:20:07.020 Because in A Man of All Seasons, he's not likeable.

00:20:09.740 No. 0.72

00:20:10.020 He's really, really horrible, obnoxiously horrible. 0.92

00:20:15.540 Because at some points in his life, we'll get to it,

00:20:17.540 but he essentially plays the role of not an actual Roman inquisitor,

00:20:22.140 but an inquisitor-type, prosecutor-type person.

00:20:24.840 Oh, for sure.

00:20:25.220 So he's got a gear to go into where if you're his enemy

00:20:29.360 or he wants to get you, he can do that.

00:20:31.620 But if he wants to be charismatic and likeable

00:20:33.900 and wants you on side, he can do that too.

00:20:36.100 Yeah.

00:20:37.980 Anyway, just a fascinating character.

00:20:40.400 There's no other way to think of him

00:20:41.840 than that he would have been interesting.

00:20:43.640 Absolutely.

00:20:44.400 He's one of those guys you would want to go back

00:20:46.080 and sit down and have a meal or a drink with

00:20:48.660 and pick his mind.

00:20:49.380 Yes.

00:20:49.760 I would.

00:20:50.220 Yeah, no, I think so too.

00:20:51.720 I think so too.

00:20:52.460 So on his return to England, yeah, he's also inherited

00:20:58.860 and he's got his hand in the cloth trade

00:21:03.020 that sort of had come from his family's background.

00:21:06.300 But he also has his legal firm on the go.

00:21:08.800 He's also with money lending.

00:21:11.360 And eventually further in, he also takes up work

00:21:15.860 doing land conveyancing as well.

00:21:17.800 So the cloth trade is the least profitable of those

00:21:23.040 and all those other three are things

00:21:25.020 that he's brought to the table himself.

00:21:27.320 That was just sort of the past of his family's trade.

00:21:31.900 But those other things, the profitability of land

00:21:34.800 and just lending money with interest

00:21:37.100 and all these sorts of things.

00:21:38.800 So he very quickly becomes a very wealthy man

00:21:42.160 in his own right, long before he's ever touched

00:21:44.860 the Tudor court itself.

00:21:46.820 Yeah.

00:21:47.680 That's interesting, isn't it?

00:21:48.600 That you, again, this kid from Putney,

00:21:51.260 he went out and he took himself about banking,

00:21:53.840 about commerce, about law.

00:21:55.540 And he can come back and,

00:21:56.800 because it's not like nowadays

00:21:57.600 where you have to have a degree in law

00:21:59.320 before you can call yourself a lawyer.

00:22:00.640 Or you have to pass the bar

00:22:02.160 before you can be considered any sort of lawyer.

00:22:04.340 It wasn't necessarily like that.

00:22:07.000 Or that you have to have all sorts of qualifications.

00:22:12.280 There's all sorts of bureaucracy you have to jump through

00:22:15.920 in order before you can become a buying and trading

00:22:18.880 importer, exporter.

00:22:19.820 No, if you've got the nows to do it,

00:22:22.100 if you've just got the knowledge to do it

00:22:23.520 and the ability to do it, you just do it.

00:22:26.760 So it's sort of a much more simpler world then.

00:22:29.900 But still, you need all sorts of qualities to do that.

00:22:34.780 And one of the things that people accused him of,

00:22:38.180 and it's not bad,

00:22:39.720 is that money sticks to him.

00:22:42.880 You know, there's some people,

00:22:43.960 I'm probably among them,

00:22:45.720 where you can't really keep money very well.

00:22:48.400 Not that interested in accruing a fantastic fortune.

00:22:53.440 Right.

00:22:54.760 But he obviously was,

00:22:56.480 and some people seem to do it effortlessly.

00:23:00.820 Right.

00:23:01.040 It just, money just came to him.

00:23:02.840 Yes.

00:23:03.560 And you just,

00:23:04.980 well, again, I think of him as maybe someone like,

00:23:08.180 I think there's a tipping point once you get enough money.

00:23:11.480 You know, a real sort of fortune.

00:23:13.600 You can just then start speculating in loads of different things.

00:23:17.160 And it just snowballs.

00:23:18.080 Yeah.

00:23:18.400 Yeah.

00:23:18.700 Yeah.

00:23:19.000 It's money, accrues money.

00:23:20.940 So if I've got one company that does very well,

00:23:25.040 or one law firm that's making loads of money,

00:23:27.180 I can then just take a bunch of it and invest in wool,

00:23:30.740 take a bunch of it and invest in land.

00:23:32.900 And as long as I don't ruin those things,

00:23:35.540 they're all going to be a revenue stream.

00:23:37.400 And I just become richer and richer and richer.

00:23:40.620 Again, I've never been in that position.

00:23:42.480 That would be nice.

00:23:43.380 But so he finds himself there.

00:23:46.500 And again, just to stress,

00:23:48.000 not penniless,

00:23:49.220 but just a normal kid from Putney that left home.

00:23:52.500 And now he's rich and powerful.

00:23:56.060 Yeah, truly.

00:23:56.700 Yeah.

00:23:58.220 One great anecdote from around this time as well

00:24:02.260 is that he's doing some legal work

00:24:05.500 for St. Mary's Guild in Boston, Lincolnshire.

00:24:08.320 And he goes on a business trip to Rome for them

00:24:13.580 to request for the,

00:24:16.140 I don't know something that will become important later,

00:24:18.360 but some indulgences from the Pope,

00:24:21.120 from Leo X.

00:24:22.960 Oh, right.

00:24:23.380 He's the indulgences Pope.

00:24:25.040 Yes.

00:24:25.380 And so he,

00:24:27.300 but Leo's not at home

00:24:28.740 because it's the summer.

00:24:30.320 And also there's,

00:24:33.160 you've got so many people petitioning

00:24:35.560 to see the Pope.

00:24:37.480 And again,

00:24:38.700 it's just an example of the sheer individuality

00:24:42.540 of Cromwell that,

00:24:44.600 no, I'm not waiting in the queue like everybody else.

00:24:47.620 It's like, where,

00:24:48.680 it's like, what is it?

00:24:49.660 Oh, it's like,

00:24:50.060 oh, he's gone on a hunting trip, has he?

00:24:51.760 All right, well, I'll go to that hunting trip.

00:24:53.920 And so he finds the Pope,

00:24:56.440 you know, in some-

00:24:57.680 Was Leo and Medici?

00:24:58.980 Was he and Medici?

00:24:59.740 Was it?

00:25:00.900 I think he was.

00:25:02.560 You should know that.

00:25:03.120 Sorry, carry on.

00:25:03.680 Sorry.

00:25:04.000 No, not at all.

00:25:04.580 And he has heard

00:25:09.580 that Leo's a huge fan of just sweets,

00:25:13.460 that the Pope's got a real sweet tooth, right?

00:25:16.480 And so this is something that you find that Cromwell,

00:25:20.260 not just with Leo here,

00:25:21.720 but it's also something that he later picks up from Wolsey,

00:25:24.940 and it's one of his ways to get his way with Henry as well,

00:25:29.320 that you sort of bring something up in conversation.

00:25:32.460 And, oh, by the way, I'll have this nice thing for you.

00:25:35.080 And whilst they're pondering over this thing,

00:25:37.000 then they'll just give you what they want.

00:25:38.580 And that's exactly-

00:25:39.460 Obviously, Henry didn't fall for sweets,

00:25:41.380 but the Pope did.

00:25:42.860 And that's what happened in this instance.

00:25:45.120 And Cromwell was authorized to have the indulgences

00:25:49.340 that he was seeking,

00:25:50.280 purely by getting to know how to work people, right?

00:25:56.320 No, this is this particular person's weakness.

00:26:00.120 This is what I want,

00:26:01.340 and so this is how I'm going to get it.

00:26:03.060 And he's a master of this for much of his life.

00:26:07.020 I mean, it's sort of the delicate art of manipulation, really.

00:26:12.200 I mean, maybe it's Machiavellian is-

00:26:14.400 Anyway, let's not use that word,

00:26:15.660 because it's loaded in all sorts of phrases.

00:26:17.520 But yeah, the ability to manipulate people

00:26:20.160 without them really realizing you're doing it.

00:26:24.480 It seems to have been good at that,

00:26:26.620 yeah, like raising something at just the right moment,

00:26:29.860 in just the right way.

00:26:31.160 Yes.

00:26:32.160 Just that intuition.

00:26:33.100 How to manage someone,

00:26:35.460 because when you're dealing with someone

00:26:37.300 that's much, much more powerful than you,

00:26:40.760 someone like a prince or a king,

00:26:43.100 and everything relies upon their say-so,

00:26:46.600 so then the whole ball game is getting their say-so.

00:26:52.100 And so, yeah, you even play the little games

00:26:56.600 of teeing them up, you know,

00:27:00.180 manipulating their mind and their mindset in a certain way,

00:27:03.100 at just the right moment to attempt

00:27:07.020 to get something out of them.

00:27:10.480 Yeah, I'm no good at that.

00:27:12.380 I've never really tried to do that.

00:27:13.980 I just sort of state my position on stuff,

00:27:16.420 and the world can take it or leave it.

00:27:17.920 I have no idea.

00:27:19.220 But there's a delicate, subtle art to that, isn't there?

00:27:22.380 Oh, for sure, yeah.

00:27:22.740 Well, there must be, I imagine.

00:27:24.460 Yeah.

00:27:25.740 But anyway, so mission's successful.

00:27:28.000 He goes back to England,

00:27:29.160 England, and I suppose this feels like the appropriate time

00:27:32.420 to mention his actual family.

00:27:34.440 Right.

00:27:35.040 So he marries a lady called Elizabeth,

00:27:39.540 and they have three children.

00:27:41.580 They have a boy and two daughters.

00:27:43.640 They have Gregory, Gregory Cromwell,

00:27:46.460 and they also have, yeah, two daughters, Anne and Grace.

00:27:50.780 And I suppose I should probably just mention it all in one go

00:27:54.460 as opposed to coming back to it later.

00:27:56.840 But one quite devastating thing that happens in Cromwell's life

00:28:00.160 is that in 1529,

00:28:03.120 so they've been married for about, I want to say,

00:28:06.080 nine or ten years, something like that,

00:28:08.040 Cromwell loses his wife to the sweating sickness

00:28:15.940 that just sort of comes and goes around, you know,

00:28:19.400 the Tudor period in that time,

00:28:20.860 and then in very short succession loses both of his daughters as well.

00:28:26.140 So within the space of, I think, a month,

00:28:29.020 he's lost his wife and two daughters,

00:28:31.800 just an enormously just...

00:28:33.040 And actually, his son Gregory,

00:28:36.080 though he will go on to outlive his father,

00:28:38.620 also dies quite young from sweating sickness.

00:28:41.500 So he actually loses all of his immediate family

00:28:44.640 from that disease.

00:28:47.020 That's mad, isn't it?

00:28:47.880 It's interesting what that is.

00:28:49.240 The Tudors, they called it, yeah, the sweating sickness.

00:28:52.600 We don't really...

00:28:53.840 I don't think we really know exactly what it was.

00:28:57.280 It's something that seemed to come on very, very quickly,

00:28:59.740 like one moment you're okay,

00:29:01.160 and within a day sometimes,

00:29:03.520 or less than a day,

00:29:05.120 you're dead. 0.69

00:29:05.840 You come down with a fever and a sweat,

00:29:08.220 and you feel faint,

00:29:09.160 and you sort of obviously have to lay down or go to bed,

00:29:11.320 and then you die. 0.87

00:29:13.260 But what is that?

00:29:14.200 We don't...

00:29:14.840 It could be a...

00:29:15.740 Who knows what it was?

00:29:17.140 Yeah.

00:29:18.160 But...

00:29:18.920 Terrifying thing, though.

00:29:19.980 Yeah.

00:29:20.460 Yeah, really scary.

00:29:22.520 Couldn't imagine living in a time like that

00:29:25.220 where you could be a happy family,

00:29:27.120 and then the next day it's just all come apart

00:29:29.780 because of this disease you've got no idea

00:29:32.140 how to do anything about.

00:29:34.860 So although we're going to skate over it, really,

00:29:37.260 you can imagine that that was...

00:29:40.300 You know, devastating doesn't even really...

00:29:42.740 really get anywhere close to it.

00:29:47.760 Now, his political career after that moment,

00:29:52.180 maybe it would have been anyway,

00:29:53.940 but, you know,

00:29:55.300 he's quite brutal, quite ruthless,

00:29:57.700 politically speaking.

00:29:58.880 I don't know if that made him a darker person

00:30:04.560 than he would otherwise have been.

00:30:07.060 That happens in history all the time.

00:30:09.060 Someone loses someone very, very close to them,

00:30:10.880 their favourite member of their family,

00:30:12.060 their wife, their brother,

00:30:13.820 their mother, their father,

00:30:15.180 and afterwards they go on to be...

00:30:17.400 do very dark things.

00:30:19.360 Yeah.

00:30:19.700 I think the first is an example of that,

00:30:21.780 isn't it?

00:30:21.960 He just became a harder man

00:30:23.300 after losing his wife.

00:30:25.420 When Tiberius' brother, Drusus, died,

00:30:27.460 after that he descended into darkness.

00:30:31.420 Yeah, you know,

00:30:32.600 we can only speculate on the psychology of things,

00:30:35.860 but to lose your wife and both daughters

00:30:39.580 in one go, almost.

00:30:43.900 Yeah, very sad.

00:30:45.140 Yeah.

00:30:45.680 So, obviously, I think this is a point

00:30:48.120 to start bringing it into

00:30:51.040 the actual larger sphere of the Tudor court

00:30:54.300 and the inner workings of all that.

00:30:56.900 And there's so many characters,

00:30:58.260 cast of characters.

00:30:59.260 Oh, yeah.

00:30:59.760 And the first one

00:31:01.260 that is immediately important

00:31:02.980 is Cardinal Wolsey.

00:31:06.020 So, Cardinal Wolsey

00:31:07.520 is actually a lot like Cromwell.

00:31:10.480 He's come from a lower background.

00:31:15.080 His father was an innkeeper

00:31:16.900 and a butcher

00:31:17.920 and he was from Ipswich.

00:31:19.320 But unlike Cromwell,

00:31:24.580 Wolsey, Thomas Wolsey,

00:31:26.620 had gone through the academic channels.

00:31:30.940 He went to Magdalene College in Oxford

00:31:33.540 because back then that was,

00:31:37.140 if you wanted to ascend,

00:31:39.640 going into the church

00:31:41.720 was the most sensible way to do that.

00:31:44.740 You know, it was,

00:31:46.320 and especially if you were

00:31:48.660 a second son or something,

00:31:50.120 it was just a good way to climb

00:31:52.440 and have influence

00:31:53.320 and, you know, gain a position.

00:31:55.760 But a lot like Cromwell,

00:31:58.300 Cardinal Wolsey was

00:31:59.460 an enormously effective administrator,

00:32:05.300 a true statesman

00:32:07.800 and indispensable

00:32:10.920 chief minister

00:32:14.080 in the court of Henry VIII.

00:32:16.720 Yeah, there's quite a lot of characters

00:32:18.560 around Henry VIII

00:32:19.800 who are all remarkable people

00:32:23.400 completely in their own right.

00:32:25.040 And quite a few of them

00:32:26.320 aren't from the aristocracy.

00:32:30.280 And Wolsey's one of them.

00:32:31.440 Yeah, Wolsey,

00:32:32.620 again, there's been lots written about him.

00:32:35.440 He's been depicted in TV

00:32:37.580 and film and fiction

00:32:38.980 and all sorts of times.

00:32:40.000 And, again,

00:32:41.680 you can only infer

00:32:43.080 a sort of a remarkable person.

00:32:47.820 But he's always,

00:32:50.180 I suppose,

00:32:51.860 because he's ultimate comeuppance,

00:32:55.020 he's always tainted

00:32:55.920 with the idea of

00:32:57.180 ultimate failure, though.

00:32:59.740 Right.

00:33:00.840 Which is very cruel,

00:33:03.000 given that he only ever failed

00:33:04.320 at one thing

00:33:05.480 in the entire time

00:33:07.380 that he worked for Henry.

00:33:08.360 It just so happened

00:33:09.440 that that one thing

00:33:10.660 was something

00:33:12.040 that he just simply

00:33:13.040 couldn't fail on.

00:33:15.000 I think of him

00:33:15.760 in the similar sense

00:33:17.100 as Pompey Magnus.

00:33:19.020 So he had an astronomical life,

00:33:21.360 just couldn't stop winning,

00:33:22.900 but at the very end loses.

00:33:24.980 And so he's thought of 0.97

00:33:25.640 as a bit of a loser. 0.98

00:33:26.820 It's like, well... 0.99

00:33:28.100 Well...

00:33:28.940 Yeah, hang on.

00:33:29.740 Kind of,

00:33:30.340 that's not fair, really.

00:33:31.180 Not really.

00:33:32.040 In most ways, not really.

00:33:33.740 But Henry asked him

00:33:35.400 to do something

00:33:35.920 kind of impossible.

00:33:36.960 Yes.

00:33:37.240 Right.

00:33:38.360 So I will just...

00:33:40.200 Before we get on

00:33:41.140 to that impossible thing,

00:33:42.980 Henry's great matter.

00:33:44.640 Yeah, the great matter.

00:33:45.960 Yes.

00:33:46.420 I will just say

00:33:47.740 some more general stuff

00:33:49.220 about the relationship

00:33:50.200 between Cromwell and Wolsey.

00:33:53.520 Because to begin with,

00:33:55.240 it seems that

00:33:56.260 Cromwell was brought in

00:33:59.380 by Wolsey again

00:34:00.300 because he's heard

00:34:01.140 about this great,

00:34:02.080 very capable lawyer

00:34:03.720 and very rich man

00:34:04.920 of influence.

00:34:05.700 So lawyer,

00:34:06.360 first and foremost.

00:34:06.960 Yes.

00:34:07.620 Okay.

00:34:08.000 Yeah, right.

00:34:08.220 But also,

00:34:10.880 Cromwell,

00:34:12.640 very quickly,

00:34:13.240 one of the first things

00:34:14.040 that he does

00:34:14.980 is he becomes

00:34:16.860 sort of an enforcer

00:34:18.980 for Wolsey,

00:34:20.400 to use the word

00:34:21.420 that you were saying

00:34:22.080 earlier on,

00:34:23.140 a bit of an inquisitor.

00:34:24.660 Because actually,

00:34:25.740 even though,

00:34:26.580 yes,

00:34:26.860 the later dissolution

00:34:28.500 of the monasteries

00:34:29.420 and all of that

00:34:30.580 that Cromwell

00:34:31.260 is most infamous for,

00:34:33.020 he would have

00:34:33.680 the biggest effect on.

00:34:34.840 It didn't start

00:34:36.120 with Cromwell.

00:34:36.960 It started with Wolsey.

00:34:39.180 And Wolsey actually

00:34:40.840 dissolved about 30

00:34:42.360 parishes

00:34:43.840 and abbeys,

00:34:45.920 all in the efforts

00:34:47.400 of finding money

00:34:49.180 for his two great colleges

00:34:51.700 that he wanted to found,

00:34:53.380 one in Ipswich

00:34:54.220 and one in Oxford,

00:34:56.800 Cardinals College,

00:34:57.920 which is today

00:34:58.540 Christchurch College.

00:35:01.040 And so,

00:35:01.340 yeah,

00:35:01.620 it was just,

00:35:04.080 well,

00:35:04.320 they've got loads of money.

00:35:05.760 I need loads of money.

00:35:08.160 This guy's really good

00:35:09.860 at figuring out

00:35:11.840 how to get money

00:35:12.960 out of people.

00:35:14.300 And so,

00:35:14.640 yeah,

00:35:14.880 he was actually,

00:35:15.640 he used Cromwell

00:35:16.360 as a bit of a strong arm

00:35:17.880 in that first encounter.

00:35:21.920 So there's loads,

00:35:22.800 there's so many things

00:35:23.880 we could say

00:35:25.240 about this period

00:35:26.280 and all the different people.

00:35:29.100 Hours and hours

00:35:29.980 and hours worth

00:35:30.560 of conversation,

00:35:31.800 potentially.

00:35:32.520 No doubt.

00:35:33.040 But I suppose,

00:35:34.100 quickly want to say

00:35:34.940 about the monastery

00:35:35.660 to set it up

00:35:36.360 before what happens.

00:35:37.240 So,

00:35:37.940 yeah,

00:35:38.880 monasteries had been,

00:35:40.060 or monastic houses,

00:35:41.560 as they were often called,

00:35:42.980 had been abolished

00:35:45.080 before Thomas Cromwell

00:35:46.980 comes on the scene.

00:35:48.560 So we had

00:35:49.780 lots and lots and lots

00:35:51.480 and lots,

00:35:51.880 hundreds and hundreds

00:35:52.560 of monasteries in England.

00:35:54.460 But a lot of them

00:35:55.400 were really small.

00:35:57.300 There were some big ones

00:35:58.080 where there were

00:35:58.340 hundreds of monks there.

00:35:59.820 But lots of them

00:36:00.800 where there were

00:36:01.180 sort of under

00:36:01.840 a dozen monks.

00:36:03.660 And once upon a time,

00:36:04.620 hundreds of years before,

00:36:05.380 had been big

00:36:06.180 and now there's...

00:36:07.940 So,

00:36:08.980 how to say it,

00:36:09.960 Catholicism in England

00:36:12.380 was on the wane already.

00:36:15.080 You know,

00:36:16.100 before Luther even.

00:36:18.120 So where they're in,

00:36:19.000 say,

00:36:19.400 in the 12th or 11th,

00:36:23.080 13th century,

00:36:24.880 the monastic tradition

00:36:26.460 was thriving in England.

00:36:28.340 But by the early 16th century,

00:36:30.380 it's not.

00:36:31.400 These monastic houses

00:36:32.640 are struggling

00:36:33.260 to get new people

00:36:34.860 to come and be monks.

00:36:36.040 Right.

00:36:36.540 So sometimes there's

00:36:37.600 this giant institution,

00:36:39.160 this big monastery

00:36:40.640 with loads of land

00:36:41.580 and there's like

00:36:42.040 eight monks in it.

00:36:43.020 There should be like 200.

00:36:44.600 Right.

00:36:44.840 And that's worth loads of money.

00:36:48.600 That land is worth loads of money.

00:36:49.860 The building is worth loads of money

00:36:51.620 in all sorts of ways.

00:36:53.260 And so by the time of Henry VIII,

00:36:56.260 or even before Henry VIII,

00:36:57.240 but by the time of Henry VIII

00:36:58.240 and Wolsey,

00:36:59.760 if they need money,

00:37:01.260 they say,

00:37:01.660 let's just abolish that monastery.

00:37:03.400 There's like eight monks.

00:37:04.120 We'll just move them

00:37:04.600 into a nearby monastery

00:37:06.200 that's doing well.

00:37:07.660 And we'll just take the land

00:37:09.180 and the money

00:37:09.640 and the tides

00:37:10.640 that that land generates

00:37:12.340 and all sorts of stuff.

00:37:13.220 It's just a way of getting money.

00:37:14.620 Right.

00:37:16.300 And I saw somewhere

00:37:18.220 that there was

00:37:18.680 something like 400 monasteries

00:37:21.040 in England

00:37:21.500 that had under 10

00:37:23.540 or under 12 monks in them.

00:37:25.880 So there's sort of

00:37:26.440 it's sort of money

00:37:27.200 for nothing almost.

00:37:28.460 Yeah.

00:37:28.800 If you're prepared

00:37:29.380 to just move those monks off.

00:37:31.020 Yeah.

00:37:31.700 Move them on.

00:37:34.360 Okay.

00:37:34.920 So that's just sort of

00:37:35.660 setting up.

00:37:36.340 Sure.

00:37:36.920 setting it up, really.

00:37:37.880 So I think this is

00:37:39.140 a good opportunity

00:37:40.200 to start talking about

00:37:42.220 Cromwell's moral character

00:37:45.100 as well.

00:37:46.440 Because, again,

00:37:47.480 it's that thing

00:37:48.100 to some people,

00:37:49.400 he's a scheming,

00:37:51.540 cutthroat social climber 0.98

00:37:53.100 who's willing to screw over 0.91

00:37:54.940 whoever he has to

00:37:56.140 to gain more power,

00:37:57.500 to gain more influence.

00:37:59.140 And then there are other people

00:38:00.200 who say,

00:38:00.620 no, he had genuine principles

00:38:02.100 and he had loyalties as well.

00:38:04.320 And I personally

00:38:05.480 am of the opinion

00:38:06.600 that actually

00:38:07.240 he had a very strong

00:38:08.880 personal loyalty

00:38:10.100 to Cardinal Wolsey.

00:38:13.080 I think there's a lot

00:38:14.260 of evidence for that,

00:38:15.720 such as,

00:38:16.380 most importantly,

00:38:18.260 the fact that

00:38:19.360 after Wolsey's eventual

00:38:22.120 downfall,

00:38:22.820 Thomas Cromwell took a segment

00:38:28.000 of Wolsey's coat of arms

00:38:30.540 and took it for his own.

00:38:32.240 So literally taking his colours

00:38:34.620 and pinning them to his own person

00:38:37.500 and saying,

00:38:38.420 no, I stand for this man.

00:38:40.000 I am the continuity

00:38:41.260 candidate for Wolsey.

00:38:44.060 At a time when Wolsey

00:38:46.060 is incredibly,

00:38:47.380 and his reputation

00:38:48.220 in his name

00:38:48.960 is very unpopular

00:38:50.180 at court

00:38:51.460 and Wolsey has

00:38:52.940 so many enemies

00:38:54.200 and all of those enemies

00:38:55.240 will eventually

00:38:56.140 bring him down. 0.93

00:38:57.540 So I think that

00:38:58.800 Cromwell shows

00:39:01.420 a possibly unpragmatic

00:39:04.800 level of loyalty

00:39:06.340 to Wolsey.

00:39:07.640 So just to make this clear,

00:39:10.860 Thomas Cromwell

00:39:11.800 is Wolsey's boy.

00:39:13.380 He works for Wolsey,

00:39:15.800 or very close,

00:39:16.500 very, very close

00:39:17.260 with Wolsey.

00:39:18.060 He's sort of one of his,

00:39:19.020 his right-hand man

00:39:20.020 in some senses.

00:39:21.400 He's got more than one

00:39:22.220 right-hand man,

00:39:23.160 Cardinal Wolsey.

00:39:23.960 He comes to his

00:39:24.860 personal council

00:39:25.980 in 1529.

00:39:28.280 And to make it clear,

00:39:29.200 Wolsey is,

00:39:30.740 well, he's Chancellor,

00:39:31.860 isn't he?

00:39:32.820 Yes.

00:39:34.840 So he's a cardinal,

00:39:36.180 he's a prince of the church

00:39:37.220 and the most senior

00:39:39.580 minister in the kingdom.

00:39:41.960 And Archbishop of York

00:39:43.500 with enormous revenues

00:39:45.880 and land and, yeah.

00:39:47.140 So extremely rich

00:39:48.260 and everything.

00:39:48.960 He's absolutely the guy

00:39:50.700 directly underneath the king

00:39:52.100 in England.

00:39:53.500 Yes.

00:39:54.160 Which is very much

00:39:55.160 a position that he

00:39:56.620 sort of made for himself

00:39:58.580 because at the start

00:39:59.620 of Henry's reign,

00:40:00.640 Henry inherited

00:40:02.300 a lot of his father

00:40:03.360 Henry VII's councillors

00:40:04.840 and eventually

00:40:06.360 once Wolsey

00:40:07.720 had inserted himself

00:40:08.900 into there,

00:40:10.000 he was able

00:40:11.060 to accrue

00:40:12.340 and sort of

00:40:13.820 take on

00:40:14.700 a lot of the authority

00:40:15.860 into himself

00:40:18.600 and centralise power

00:40:20.000 into himself

00:40:21.280 so that all of a sudden

00:40:22.500 he's not just

00:40:23.500 one amongst many voices

00:40:25.060 but he's an authoritative

00:40:26.440 that when he speaks

00:40:27.560 it's almost like

00:40:28.860 the king is speaking.

00:40:29.800 That's one of the things

00:40:31.680 he's criticised for

00:40:32.600 for being too ambitious

00:40:34.180 or being overly powerful. 0.97

00:40:35.440 Yeah, very arrogant, 0.93

00:40:36.380 very proud, undoubtedly. 0.71

00:40:37.800 Or sort of building

00:40:38.660 Hampton Court for himself.

00:40:40.780 The king's saying

00:40:41.100 this is the sort of place

00:40:42.540 a king lives.

00:40:44.780 You know.

00:40:45.260 Yeah.

00:40:46.160 And he does conduct himself

00:40:48.060 with quite a lot of pomp

00:40:48.980 and ceremony, doesn't he?

00:40:50.380 Which again,

00:40:50.860 other people are suspicious of.

00:40:52.700 Aren't you just a kid

00:40:55.180 from Ipswich?

00:40:56.720 You're getting above

00:40:57.420 your station a bit anyway.

00:40:59.000 So Wolsey is absolutely

00:41:01.020 the most powerful man

00:41:02.480 in the kingdom

00:41:03.040 other than the king himself.

00:41:04.200 Yes.

00:41:04.540 And Cromwell is

00:41:05.860 one of his

00:41:07.600 closest confidants

00:41:09.140 and lawyers

00:41:09.700 and right-hand men.

00:41:10.980 Yeah.

00:41:11.420 Okay.

00:41:11.640 But the problem

00:41:12.920 with centralising

00:41:15.640 all of that power

00:41:16.960 in yourself

00:41:17.920 is that it can be

00:41:19.020 extraordinarily effective

00:41:20.440 whilst things are

00:41:22.660 going well

00:41:23.320 but when things

00:41:24.480 start to go wrong

00:41:25.600 all of a sudden

00:41:26.440 there's no one else

00:41:27.720 to turn to to blame

00:41:28.980 because ultimately

00:41:30.260 the book stops with you

00:41:31.740 and this is probably

00:41:33.580 the right time

00:41:34.320 to come on to

00:41:35.080 the thing that does lead

00:41:36.400 to Wolsey's downfall

00:41:38.240 which is of course

00:41:39.100 his inability

00:41:40.100 to drive through

00:41:41.820 a divorce

00:41:42.540 between

00:41:43.560 Henry VIII

00:41:44.840 and Catherine of Aragon.

00:41:46.380 To watch the full video

00:41:47.220 please become a premium member

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - September 22, 2024

PREVIEW： Epochs #177 ｜ Thomas Cromwell： with Luca Johnson

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