Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant

4 and 1 / 2 starsThis is a very good book about the life and times of Thomas Cromwell. It chronicles the period of time from his birth through his death. Contrary to historical opinion, Thomas Cromwell was not wholly bad, but had many good qualities as well. He was generous, kind and funny to his friends. He loved his family and was caring and very loyal to his friends. He was pious and abstemious and did not buy into the fanciful clothes or possessions of the day. While the public part of his house was decorated and very nice, his private quarters were ordinary. But he was also ambitious, driven and could be ruthless. This was especially true where matters of dissolving the monasteries and religious houses were concerned.Cromwell was both brilliant and determined to achieve his aims. Those were ones of making Henry VIII the richest king in all the land and achieving prominence at court. He was a very astute lawyer, accountant and moneylender. He also had a rather cruel side, especially when dealing with the dissolution of the monasteries and abbeys. He rose in the eyes of Henry and his court very quickly. He brought about the divorce from Queen Catherine and engineered both Anne Boleyn’s rise and her downfall. During his tenure in office, Cromwell created the first bureaucratic state. This made the country run far more efficiently than ever before. England had become a modern state.The book outlines in detail the power behind the scenes of the English throne. His relationship with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, his relationship with King Henry VIII, Queen Catherine, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and their friends and relatives and various nobles and courtiers are discussed in depth and with clear detail. The book is written linearly and in easy (with the exception of the olde English quotations), English. It is an easy and enjoyable read.This is not my first Tracy Borman book, and I was just as pleased with the level of competence and depth of scholarship with which she approached her subject.

This was a good biography although it dragged in places. Cromwell is a man of contradictions and reading Hilary Mantel’s novels about him led me to this, In comparison, this is obviously not a novel, and it is hard to get a real grasp of who he was because so many of his actions seemed to negate others. Poor boy made good, hard worker, a formidable enemy but generous to many, intelligent but apparently unable to see where his own trap laid. Henry VIII was a hard boss, probably even a worse boss than he was a husband, and that’s saying something.

Writing a compelling biography is a high art form. This is why I value the works of able authors, such as David McCullough (“John Adams”), Richard Ellmann (“Oscar Wilde”), and Jean Edward Smith (“John Marshall: Definer of a Nation”). Their tasks can become even more daunting, when their subject lived hundreds of years ago and research material is scant at best. That’s why a new first-rate historical biography: “Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s most Faithful Servant” by British author, Tracy Borman, is such a treasure. Her tale is set in mid-15th Century in England, in the age of the Tudors, and before the British launched their massive global and imperial empire. It’s full of riveting narratives of heroes and villains, reminding me of Will Durant’s classic - “Story of Civilization.” In one sentence, Borman’s book, is about the political intrigues of the Court of Henry VIII. Its star player, the Henry Kissinger of his era, is Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith. Like Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, the brainy Cromwell knew how to exercise the levers of state power in a cutthroat setting, on behalf of his often demented King. Life, limb and property were at risk if you ended up in the gunsight of Master Cromwell. Cromwell was born in the village of Putney, near London, in 1485. His father had a rough edge to his character. In addition to being a blacksmith, he was also into brewing ale. He got caught for “watering down the beer,” on forty-eight different occasions! Cromwell, later in his amazing career, admitted that he, too, was a “ruffian in his younger days.” Putney was way too small for the ambitious, self-educated Cromwell. When he was about 18 years of age, he made his way to Italy and joined an expedition to serve a short stint in the French army. After that mostly dreary experience, he ended up working in Italy for a Florentine’s merchant banker, Francesco Frescobaldi. He then moved on to the Netherlands, where he became a successful “cloth merchant.” The next important venue for the daring Cromwell was England’s capital city - London. Cromwell’s rise from the underclass is close to unprecedented. Europe had been “an extraordinary training ground for him.” In his mid-30s, he became a lawyer in London and a later, a member of the Parliament. His legal and mercantile skills, political savvy, and international connections, brought him over time to the attention of a quintessential Court insider - Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Like Cromwell, Wolsey, was a commoner. He had battled his way to the top of the clerical ladder to become the King’s “closest confidante,” in a court dominated by landed gentry, blue bloods and wannabe aristocrats. When he couldn’t, however, obtain a divorce for the monarch from his then wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, he fell out of favor. Cromwell, not only replaced his mentor, in 1532, but he got the King’s marriage annulled, so that he could marry his conniving mistress - Anne Boleyn. For nearly a decade afterwards, the wily Cromwell was literally “second only to the King” in power in the realm. He became very rich and had all kinds of titles bestowed on him. Cromwell married and had three children as he began his climb to fame and fortune. Sadly, his wife, Elizabeth, and two of his children had died in 1528, in an “epidemic of sweating sickness…which decimated London.” Cromwell knew the impetuous King, becoming more obese everyday, lusted after not only women, but fortune. He promised “to make him wealthy,” and indeed he did. The duo conspired successfully to target the immense riches of the Roman Catholic Church in the UK. It was estimated that its “600 or so monasteries,” then held “two-third of the nation in land and estates.” It was a huge robbery pulled off under the cover of naming the King the supreme head of the English Church and supposedly “reforming” the institution. There is much more lethal chicanery in this book. As Cromwell, daily growing more ruthless, moved to do away with Sir Thomas More, (a future saint) and Anne Boleyn. Hundreds of Catholics, who opposed the emerging Protestant church, were also executed at his instigation. Borman has done a masterful job bringing a villainous henchman, Thomas Cromwell, and the blood-stained court of Henry VIII, center stage. -30- Note: Bill Hughes is a photojournalist and author. His book, “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party,” can be found at http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000079633/Saying-No-to-the-War-Party.aspx

Good enough information, but I found it difficult to get a reading rhythm going with this book. Way too many quotes in archaic English for me. I found these a giant interruption and would have been just fine if the author would have paraphrased these in readable modern language.

. . . but a few leaving a strange aftertaste. Surely Borman knows her subject: the book was exquisitely researched, and it's a fascinating read.But it's not a light read; to the contrary, as the book progresses and Borman descends more and more into what seems to be actual excerpts from Middle English, as used and written in the 16th century, it becomes necessary to slow one's reading process almost to a crawl to be sure of one's understanding. It can get tedious (hence the multiple layers). Don't let that put you off, however: Cromwell was certainly one of the most fascinating characters in the history of that era (and therefore, of ours), and Borman does a truly wonderful job in bringing him, and those who were a part of his life and times, to life on paper. Layered, then, but delicious. Buy the book. Read th book. I bet Hillary Mantel did . . .

Well written and well researched. I found it difficult to put down once I started reading. The author has a accessible style that both entertains and informs. There have been some previous reviews commenting on the inclusion of 'olde' English quotations, but I found them initially challenging, but eventually I got to grip and thought they added to the atmosphere the book recreates of this Tudor period. My knowledge of Cromwell previously had been through the various screen adaptations and more recently Wolf Hall (Book and T.V.), so I was interested in a more non-fictionalised account of the man. It did not disappoint and I would recommend to those who wish to discover a more objective account of one of the most intriguing characters in British history.

By the time I got to half way through this book I was really struggling. Not with the history or the research. It's absolutely fascinating and really well done. No. What I struggled so badly with was the Olde English that was used with regards to letters and documents.I freely admit to not being an academic or a historian. I'm just someone who enjoys history. But this business with using olde English drove me potty. Half the time I found it almost incomprehensible. Trying to work out what was said or meant made reading this book a chore instead of a pleasure.I was so looking forward to this book and am so disappointed that I ended up giving up half way through it. Why not put the olde English version in the footnotes for the scholars amongst us??

Thomas Cromwell - erudite humanist, distinguished lawyer, consummate counsellor and first minister to Henry V111's court was by any reckoning, a colossus who bestrode the world of Tudor politicsThat Cromwell rose from the obscurity of a blacksmiths forge in Putney, to possess all these attributes and become the most important minister in Henry's court is astounding. A self made man extraordinaire in an age of rigid hierarchy when 'the king was in his castle and the poor man at his gate', his meteoric rise to the first rank of Tudor politics was probably the first example of social mobility centuries ahead of its time.The case for the prosecution - he was the evil counsellor who sought to amass his fortune by dissimulation and venality in Henry's court, a divisive force who challenged the orthodoxy of Catholic practice in England. Resented and reviled by Henry's aristocratic counsellors as a vulgar parvenu who had risen above his station; a devil incarnate to sought to introduce the English Reformation as the modernist project to enrich himself with the loot amassed from the sale of monasteries; and a final count of lese-majesty by allegedly seeking a betrothal with Henry's daughter Mary; and this hubris merited its nemesis on the executioners block at Tower Hill in July 1540; hoist by his own petard his detractors would add for good measure.The case for the defence is formidable. Tracy Borman has written this lucid and compelling detailed account with meticulous research to revaluate the case against this man. Evidence is adduced which suggests Cromwell was a gifted man of phenomenal physical and intellectual firepower, whose indefatigable capacity for sustained hard work found him with no equal in the Tudor court; it suggests a man of high intelligence, inexhaustible ability for work; a self taught lawyer who became the most sought after barrister of his day by very distinguished clients from those of noble birth; an ironic thread was his increasing use of Parliament as a constitutional legislative institution that ultimately diminished and broke royal arbitrary power in the 17th century by his namesake; this perhaps was his most unwitting legacy; moreover a man of unimpeachable integrity towards his friends; a man who reached out to the dispossessed; and who sought to raise up any man of merit; an astute counsellor and loyal servant to the King; these qualities went some way to mitigate some of his more ruthless qualities of statecraft.Cromwell was enlisted by Henry to become his chief minister/treasured counsellor holding the most important offices of state during his eleven year tenure ; it was Henry's voracious appetites, concupiscence and infidelities plus his disaffection with Katherine of Aragon, that called on Cromwell with his 'lateral thinking' remedy: if his counsellors couldn't persuade the Papal authority in Rome for the annulment to Katherine of Aragaon, then Henry should circumvent this Papal authority and pronounce himself judge and jury as head of the church to give him the solution. This mercurial and capricious Royal patron was overwhelmed and evidently pleased with this novel solution and raised his status accordingly; and so began the process that excited the pique and envy of his fellow noble counsellors'.....principally the 3rd Duke of Norfolk and his circle, who regarded him as a vulgar arriviste to be discredited and destroyed. The point however, is much of the work undertaken was with the express and winning approval of Henry.....until the winds of fortune at court turned ugly against Cromwell. He was yet another victim of the dangerous shifting quicksand alliances and machinations of the Tudor Court....the losers in this game, always seemed to head to one place: Tower Hill which then was a terminal stop before it became a London tube station on the District Line.So what does the evidence here adduced in Ms Borman's biography enable us to put forward as a tenable view? That he helped to alleviate any suffering and poverty among the poorest where his assistance was sought is unquestionable. He was a man of learning with polished cultural understanding of the age in which he lived. It's also suggests he was a magnanimous man ...despite his cold pragmatic realpolitik of dispatching victims who stood in the way of his Reformed church project; a project let it not be forgotten....that was started from practical necessity from Henry's need to rid himself of Katherine; it later morphed into a doctrinal policy away from the orthodoxy of Rome to a more Lutheran protestant faith and religion for England; a move fully countenanced by Henry when it suited him as it did for a while; a combination of circumstances came together the need to dispense with his 4th wife Ann of Cleves and punish Cromwell who'd been instrumental in this ill starred love match!Cromwell's ultimate fall was a result of the nobles at court, acting with very little 'noblesse oblige' towards their perceived social inferior upstart from Putney. And so the denouement was set in motion; a bill of Attainder - dispensing with judicial proceedings, by a series of spurious allegations of treason and heresy, a Tudor version of a 1937 Stalinist show trial...whose outcome was preordained. Cromwell sought to appeal to his Royal patron for mercy, mercy; but Henry was 'not in the giving vein' having no 'quality of mercy' in his cold heart. He would later lament not saving him from his false accusers however. The nobles at court couldn't have this accomplished man of low birth, outshine and outwit them with status above his station. They couldn't stand in the light of this most able man of his generation, so they had to kill him. I'd submit on the evidence of this book, he was more sinned against than sinner. An extraordinary man, for whom even the psychopathic Henry later lamented the loss of this outstanding man and loyal servant. More a hero than villain I'd submit. He was the victim of the brutal world of Tudor politics; a game in which he excelled but ultimately lost by aristocratic pique and envy.

I bought this because I enjoyed The King's Witch by Tracy Borman so much. She writes intelligently but so engagingly about history that she really captures your interest and you are gripped by her retelling of history. I also feel she really gets inside the skin of her characters and makes Thomas Cromwell in particular a really sympathetic character, which is no mean feat, given he was the chap who had Anne Boleyn's head chopped off.Borman makes Cromwell into a survivor, and I can empathise with that. He was living in a very dangerous world and he game played to perfection.A gripping, page turning account. I was really sad when I finished reading it.

This is a really interesting and informative history of Thomas Cromwell and the time in which he lived. It's great how the author has systematically peeled away the centuries of lies and bad propaganda to reveal the truth about this much maligned statesman. Just like his later relation, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas was the victim of the established nobility who were jealous of his intellect and success and therefore sought to blacken his name and reputation. However, the truth will always find a way and this book is must for anyone interested in the Tudor period. When you read this, you will see Cromwell in the same light as his later relation wanted to be seen, warts and all, and realise that their greatest crime as far as the ruling aristocracy was concerned was to be a commoner. My only criticism of the book is where the author has insisted on retaining the original old English spelling when quoting letters etc. Why? Some quotations have been changed to modern English and this really helps maintain the flow of the story, whereas the original old spelling simply slows things up and leaves the reader frustrated and struggling are times. Apart from that, the history is well worth the effort. Well done!