



Produced by David Clarke and the Online Distributed
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                        Transcriber’s Notes


Hyphenation and punctuation have been corrected and standardised.
Cromwell’s letters, however, have been fully retained according to the
original text; no changes in spelling have been applied here.

Numbered ranges have been expanded in full, i.e. 1595-6 is now
1595-1596. Dittoes in the Table of Contents have been eliminated by
insertion of appropriate text. Internal references have been adapted
to match the numbering scheme used in this electronic version.

The following passages have been changed:

  p. 28: 'England and Francis' → 'England and France'
  Footnote 240: 'Harl. MSS 6, 148' → 'Harl. MSS 6,148'

Underscores have been used to highlight _italic_ text. The caret symbol
(^) represents superscript characters; multiple characters have been
grouped using a pair of curly brackets (^{text}).

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[Illustration: THOMAS CROMWELL

FROM A PICTURE IN THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY]




                        LIFE AND LETTERS OF
                          THOMAS CROMWELL

                                 BY
                       ROGER BIGELOW MERRIMAN
                     A.M. HARV., B.LITT. OXON.


                   WITH A PORTRAIT AND FACSIMILE


                               VOL. I
                       LIFE, LETTERS TO 1535


                               OXFORD
                       AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
                                1902

                         HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
              _PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD_
                         LONDON, EDINBURGH
                              NEW YORK




                              PREFACE


This book is an attempt to present the life of Thomas Cromwell as a
statesman, and to estimate his work without religious bias. Though it
would certainly be difficult to overrate his importance in the history
of the Church of England, I maintain that the motives that inspired his
actions were invariably political, and that the many ecclesiastical
changes carried through under his guidance were but incidents of his
administration, not ends in themselves. Consequently any attempt to
judge him from a distinctively religious standpoint, whether Catholic or
Protestant, can hardly fail, it seems to me, to mislead the student and
obscure the truth. I cannot agree, on the other hand, with those who
have represented Cromwell as a purely selfish political adventurer, the
subservient instrument of a wicked master, bent only on his own gain. It
seems to me as idle to disparage his patriotism and statesmanship, as it
is to try to make him out a hero of the Reformation. He merits a place
far higher than that of most men of his type, a type essentially
characteristic of the sixteenth century, a type of which the Earl of
Warwick in England and Maurice of Saxony on the Continent are striking
examples, a type that profoundly influenced the destinies of
Protestantism, but to which theological issues were either a mere
nothing, or else totally subordinate to political considerations.

It has been justly said that Cromwell’s correspondence is our chief
source of information for the period immediately following the breach
with Rome. To transcribe _in extenso_ the letters he received would be
almost the task of a lifetime; for they form the bulk of the enormous
mass of material with which the editors of the Calendars of State Papers
for the years 1533-1540 have had to deal. But the number of extant
letters he wrote is, comparatively speaking, extremely small; it has
therefore been possible to make full copies of them in every case, and I
trust that the many advantages--linguistic as well as historical--that
can only be secured by complete, and as far as possible accurate
transcriptions of the originals, will be accepted as sufficient reason
for editing this collection of documents, twenty-one of which have
neither been printed nor calendared before. The rules that have been
observed in transcription will be found in the Prefatory Note (vol. i.
p. 311). The Calendar references to the more important letters received
by Cromwell, where they bear directly on those he wrote, are given in
the notes at the end of the second volume.

My warmest thanks are due to Mr. F. York Powell, Regius Professor of
Modern History in the University of Oxford, who has guided me throughout
in matter, form, and style; and to my friend and master Mr. A. L. Smith,
Fellow of Balliol College, whose advice and encouragement have been an
inspiration from first to last. It is not easy for me to express how
much I have depended on their suggestions and criticism. I am indebted
to Mr. Owen Edwards, Fellow of Lincoln College, for indispensable help
in the early stages of my work. The main plan of this book is in many
respects similar to that of his Lothian Essay for the year 1887, which I
regret that he has never published. My grateful acknowledgements are
also due to Mr. James Gairdner of the Public Record Office for
information about Cromwell’s early life; to Professor Dr. Max Lenz, of
the University of Berlin, for