



Produced by David Clarke and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)






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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