Notes from Wolf Hall: the flow of information

Slowly spreading news, rumours, and secrets

For me, one of the great joys of historical fiction is becoming immersed in a society that operates differently from my own, and briefly glimpsing how life might have felt. One of the themes in the Cromwell trilogy that keeps upending my basic assumptions about how the world works is the flow of information. I’ve grown up being able to count on near-instant global updates - when something shocking happens on the other side of the world, people tend to know what I mean if I mention it an hour or so later - but in Cromwell’s time, the sharing of news was slow and unreliable, making timely knowledge a powerful thing.

This pamphlet, a “trewe encounter” of the 1513 Battle of Flodden, is one of the oldest recorded printed news reports. (Image taken from a 19th century reprint.)

Delays

Significant news gradually rippling out to a wider audience is a recurring motif in the Cromwell trilogy, as in this description of Queen Jane revealing her pregnancy: 

“She counts on her fingers. ‘It seems a long time to October.’ There is a rustle that spreads from where she sits, through the room, through the court, through England and across the sea. At last, the news is public.”

The time it took for these ripples to spread first struck me when reading the account of Catherine's death in Bring Up the Bodies. She “resigns from life” at 2pm on 7th January; “Before they have washed her, Bedingfield has put his fastest rider on the road.” But it is a new day before the news reaches the king:

“8 January: the news arrives at court. It filters out from the king’s rooms then runs riot up staircases to the rooms where the queen’s maids are dressing, and through the cubby holes where kitchen boys huddle to doze, and along lanes and passages through the breweries and the cold rooms for keeping fish, and up again through the gardens to the galleries and bounces up to the carpeted chambers where Anne Boleyn sinks to her knees and says, ‘At last God, not before time!’”

Similarly, when Henry’s long-awaited legitimate son finally arrives, it is implied that it is impressive that the report only takes a few hours to spread:

“Jane gives birth on 12 October, at two in the morning. The courier makes good time and they wake him with the news. ‘Man or maid?’ he asks, and they tell him. By eight o’clock all London knows it. At nine o’clock they sing Te Deum at Paul’s.”

Royal birth announcements didn’t get much faster than this until 1844, when an early telegram was sent to The Times to announce the arrival of Queen Victoria’s fourth child. Without such technological leaps, people frustrated by the typical slow routes for passing messages had to resort to ingenious short-cuts, such as this one for sending news from Calais:

“Hans says, ‘If she has a boy Lord Lisle will shoot off cannon, so if it is a still day they will hear it in Dover and put a rider on the road. I hope the walls of Calais do not fall down.’”

One of the things I most appreciate about Mantel as a writer of historical fiction is how subtly she weaves in these atmospheric details through people's assumptions and concerns. A lesser writer might labour the point that her characters are living at a time when travel was slow and dangerous and lines of communication unreliable; Mantel instead brings it to our awareness by showing the measures they take to speed it up, or slips it into the background of a passage like this one about Cromwell's (non-)relationship with Jenneke, where Cromwell feels the need to reassure himself that there would be no delay:

“He thinks, I may not be much of a father but she knows where to find me. If she sends a message it will reach me. Vaughan’s people will send it on the shortest route.”

In the absence of efficient public channels for broadcasting news, personal contacts were essential. Cromwell is careful to maintain close links with the imperial ambassador Chapuys even when their interests are not aligned - as he points out to Anne Boleyn in Bring Up the Bodies when she suggests that Chapuys should be banished:

“We can’t go throwing ambassadors out. Because then we don’t get to know anything at all.”

Rumours

In a society where news is mostly spread through word of mouth, rumours have huge power. We have already seen the price paid by Anne Boleyn’s inner circle when her ladies in waiting started to share confidences with Cromwell in Bring Up the Bodies. Cromwell is clear on the real threat posed by the rumour started by Chapuys that he might marry Henry’s daughter Mary, quickly shutting down Bess Oughtred when she alludes to it during their excruciatingly awkward misunderstanding:

“‘I think you have no idea, my lord, how much your single state is talked of. How much the whole court looks to you to change it. How they speculate, men and women both, that a great and dangerous honour will come your way.’ ‘It is all just gossip,’ he says. ‘And you are right that it is dangerous. Dangerous to me, dishonourable to the Lady Mary.’”

When Chapuys wonders whether Cromwell might be “one of those who oppose the baptism of infants” (like the Anabaptists whose rebellion in Münster had provoked such fear and outrage), Cromwell recognises the danger there too:

“This is the rumour young Surrey has spread, and other ill-wishers; it is the way to ruin him with Henry, and the ambassador knows it.”

(There seems to be a theme here: even when I found an example of someone else starting a rumour, it was still Chapuys who repeated it… “Luckily for Chapuys, gossip is not a capital crime.”)

In a world where “the first news is always wrong,” the distinction between news and rumour is often blurred. “Rumours of Tyndale’s death seep through England as smoke leaks through thatch,” but for a long time it is impossible to prove one way or the other. News arrives from France that the dauphin has died of a fever, but this is “soon corrected” - “his death was in no way natural”. And most dramatically, the rising in Lincolnshire that paved the way for the Pilgrimage of Grace is said to have begun after a rumour started that Henry was dead:

“All the east believes it. He died at midsummer. A puppet lies in his bed and wears his crown.”

(My initial assumption was that modern technology had taken the impact out of these types of rumour, but of course the ongoing support for even the most extreme conspiracy theories proves me wrong. This may be becoming even more true in a world where alternative versions of events could be backed up by convincing faked videos, or any attempt at providing evidence could be explained away as a fake…)

Knowledge is power

When Reginald Pole’s explosive manuscript is delivered to Henry, he expresses surprise that Cromwell is not amazed. Cromwell later boasts that “I have entered into the mind of Reginald like a worm into an apple.”

“And yet, when a travelling scholar calls upon him, or a noble young Italian wishing to improve his English, Pole never thinks to ask, ‘Could this be an emissary of Satan, alias Cromwell?’”

He has kept his knowledge up his sleeve throughout the dangerous game he has played with the old families of England, allying with them to bring down the Boleyns but aware that they might turn on him once his purpose has been served. This foreknowledge of the book (which will decisively turn Henry against a return to Rome and a restoration of their power) is his trump card, as Margaret Pole grimly concedes:

“‘You owe us a debt,’ she says, ‘and now you do not have to pay it. You knew the book was in preparation. You knew all that would occur.’”

Rivals gaining the upper hand through superior access to information is an ongoing theme in these books. For example, the Boleyn family’s slipping grasp on power is signaled in Bring Up the Bodies by their lesser knowledge of events, in this case a growing hostility between France and the Empire:

“These things swing in about a week, and the Boleyn reading of any situation, he has noticed, is always a little behind the times, and influenced by the fact that they pretend to have special friends at the Valois court.”

Spying

As I noted in my first post here, about languages in Wolf Hall, early on in Cromwell’s career we hear of him using his language skills to gather information from Queen Katherine’s household for Wolsey. Of course, the collection of incriminating information about Anne’s inner circle, with help from Jane Rochford and the other ladies of her household, is a key part of the plot of Bring Up the Bodies, and Rafe’s placement in the privy chamber is a huge asset too:

“Those gentlemen who are less in the queen’s favour are keen to talk to the newcomer and give him all the gossip. And some things he doesn’t need to be told, he can see and hear for himself.”

Back in Wolf Hall, after advising Henry to show mercy to those implicated by the Holy Maid’s prophesies, he visited Margaret Pole to demand gratitude, making it clear to her rather chillingly that her family has no secrets from him:

“The boy who carried in the dish of asparagus, that was my boy. The boy who sliced the apricots was mine too. They talked about the Emperor, about the invasion, how he might be brought to it. So you see, Lady Margaret, all your family owes much to my forbearance.”

We see several examples of these infiltrators, such as the boy Mathew who is often to be found at “some household under suspicion, where he waits at table or carries coals: hands clean or dirty, working for the safety of the realm”, and Bess Darrell, who has joined the Courtenay household and has already explained to him how the symbolism of the pansy and the marigold indicates support for the goal of marrying Reginald Pole to Lady Mary.

With this level of eavesdropping going on, it is not surprising that some communication is attempted secretly. When Cromwell meets the Emperor’s new envoy, he immediately notices that something is amiss:

“It is obvious that Don Diego is carrying something of which he is painfully aware: as you might be aware if someone slid a hot iron under your shirt. No doubt it is a second letter, perhaps in code.”

When Cromwell obtains the letter, he may have a chance of extracting its contents. Cristophe’s threatening boast to Chapuys that ‘Master Call-Me’ is able to break ciphers - “None may stand against his wit” - may be bravado, but Wriothesley does have some knowledge of the subject. He deciphers Tom Wyatt’s dispatches even though they make his head ache, and mentions admiringly that “In Venice they have men who spend every day working at ciphers. The more they do it, the better they get”. (Perhaps a reference to Giovanni Soro, who was appointed as Venice’s first official cipher secretary in 1505?¹)

What are they saying on the street?

Right from the start of the trilogy, Cromwell is enthusiastic about hearing potentially useful gossip from all kinds of sources. The first time we read about his wife Liz in Wolf Hall, she has information for him, which turns out to be an early hint of how serious Henry’s relationship with Anne is becoming:

"Would you like the news? A big emerald was ordered and a setting commissioned, for a ring, a woman's ring."

Cromwell was surprised then to hear from Liz that the rumour of Henry wanting to cast off his first wife is already spreading, and even more surprised to learn from her how unpopular it would be among the women of England:

“So this morning - waking early, brooding on what Liz said last night - he wonders, why should my wife worry about women who have no sons? Possibly it’s something women do: spend time imagining what it’s like to be each other. One can learn from that, he thinks.”

This image of Cromwell as a listener and someone who was open to perspectives outside of the typical court circles was reinforced repeatedly in Wolf Hall. He gave children outside York Place a coin and stopped to learn their opinion of the “evil lady” who has “bewitched the king,” and he shocked Gregory by tipping the boatman who first shared the scurrilous rumours about Anne and her brother. (“It’s worth anything, to be reacquainted with the Putney imagination.”)

We are told that this habit of Cromwell’s goes way back. When the arrival of Jenneke prompts him to reminisce about Antwerp, Cromwell remembers how he made himself useful by keeping his ears open and using his language skills to gather information:

“The English merchants would say, go out, Thomas, and hear the gossip. Tell us what our neighbours are saying; when they put their heads together and use Antwerp expressions, what are we missing?”

Many of us have become quite attached to Cromwell’s cook Thurston, enjoying the kitchen scenes where Cromwell shows his more down to earth side away from the pressures of his high-profile work. But their continued informal connection also has a practical value for Cromwell the information gatherer, as he repeatedly uses Thurston as a way to understand what the ‘common people’ are thinking. Back in Bring Up the Bodies he asked who the Londoners (with their “minds like middens”) thought might be Anne’s lover, and after her execution he asks again: “What are they saying on the street? About Anne?”

Silences and similarities

Many of the examples I’ve used here involve Cromwell using his superior access to information to gain power over his enemies at court. From our recent reading of The Mirror & the Light I was tempted to throw in a few examples where things may be working the other way around, and it’s Cromwell who lets too much slip or isn’t fully informed, but I decided against it to avoid spoilers.

Another thing I avoided discussing, although not consciously: I mentioned the role played by rumours and gossip in the fall of Anne Boleyn, but I noticed that I left out something that plays an uncomfortably large part in this story, the extraction of information from unwilling individuals. I do not have Cromwell’s stomach, so I will not consider this topic further…

What I notice most on re-reading this is how I started writing with a view to exploring a facet of life that was very different in Cromwell’s time, but most of the themes I’ve mentioned are still relevant today. Technological advances have revolutionized the speed and accuracy of information transmission, but leaks, gossip, and espionage still play a huge part in modern power struggles. Ultimately this seems to be another example of how a good historical novel can illuminate the constants of human nature through the specifics of another time and place.

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All thoughts or feedback very welcome!

1. The Merchants of Venice—In Code - JSTOR Daily