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Who was the real Thomas Cromwell?

Henry VIII's fixer was as complex as Hilary Mantel's fictional portrayal

by Rhodri Lewis / November 15, 2018 / Leave a comment
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Published in December 2018 issue of Prospect Magazine
Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell that hangs in the Frick Gallery

Holbein’s portrait of Thomas Cromwell that hangs in the Frick Gallery

Thomas Cromwell lived an astonishing life. Born into obscurity in 1485 (the year the Tudor dynasty began), he was Earl of Essex when executed 55 years later. Between times he served as the right hand of Cardinal Wolsey and as Henry VIII’s chief minister, directed the dissolution of the monasteries, was touted as a royal match (for the future Mary I), and acquired a reputation for ruthlessly Machiavellian omniscience.

Posterity has not been kind to Cromwell. In the 20th century, he was the brutal counterpoint to Thomas More’s principled sophisticate; the zealot who tortured and killed to prosecute a revolution that had as much to do with greed as doctrinal purity.

The publication in 2009 of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall began to change this, and it is fitting that Diarmaid MacCulloch’s spectacular new biography pays tribute to her accomplishments. Cromwell the man is hard to gauge: though his archive is voluminous, it is notably impersonal. In addition to industry, his biographer therefore needs moral, historical, psychological and political imagination. MacCulloch has these in spades, and his book is a triumph.

Formidable and occasionally cruel, but driven by personal loyalties, religious belief, bookish curiosity and commitment to his family, this Cromwell is also a pragmatist just as concerned with the old-fashioned politics of patronage as with the bureaucratic centralisation of state power.

MacCulloch’s writing is lucid throughout and the narrative never gets lost in the painstakingly interrogated documentation on which it depends. My onl…

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  1. NR_BUCHSBAUM
    November 15, 2018 at 21:25
    Now that this modern biography has been written, it would be wonderful if Hilary Mantel would finally complete the third volume in her trilogy. Many of us have been awaiting this for some years now and hope it will be of the same great quality and the two first volumes.

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About this author

Rhodri Lewis
Rhodri Lewis teaches at Princeton. He is the author, most recently, of Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness (Princeton)
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