Notes from Wolf Hall: Vile Blood
The perils of social mobility in a world where status was everything
‘There is a proverb,’ she said, ‘the truth of which is hallowed by time. “He who climbs higher than he should, falls lower than he would.”’
In our last few weeks of the Wolf Crawl read-along, Cromwell has been a particular target of the northern revolt known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. As well as a restoration of the rights of the church, they are demanding "to have vile blood drained from the king’s council, and the nobility of England set up again"1. As a commoner usurping the traditional right of the nobility to advise the king2, and the Vicegerent in Spirituals overseeing the suppression of the monasteries, Cromwell is an obvious focus of discontent for those horrified by the recent changes.
Rags to riches?
Thomas Cromwell naturally attracts jealousy and resentment: he has come a long way from his starting point as the runaway son of a Putney blacksmith, and is now Baron Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, “the second man in England”. This meteoric rise is a fascinating aspect of the Cromwell trilogy: from the beginning the reader is drawn into cheering on the underdog, even as his moral ambiguity becomes more visible. We admire the boldness and skill of his ascent while sharing Charles Brandon's bemusement at how it could possibly be achieved:
“‘You do everything, Cromwell. You are everything now. We say, how did it happen? We ask ourselves.’ The duke sniffs. ‘We ask ourselves, but by the steaming blood of Christ we have no bloody answer.’”
Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography provides a minor reality check to this rags to riches story: he suggests that from birth Cromwell did have “some claim to straddle the contentious border between yeoman and gentle status,” particularly through his mother, who came from a Staffordshire gentry family called the Meverells. However, although this would put the real Cromwell a step or two up from the lowly ruffian we might imagine, he was still born firmly on the ‘wrong’ side of the distinction between commoners and nobles such as the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. In Bring Up the Bodies, before Cromwell received a title, we were shown how this difference was marked at court: at dinner, there is a top table (for nobility), and also “there is a table, somewhat lower in status, but served with due honour, for functionaries like himself, and for the old friends of the king who happen not to be peers.”
Mushroom men
Cromwell is not alone in rising to great heights from relatively humble origins. His beloved master Cardinal Wolsey was born the son of an Ipswich butcher; Archbishop Cranmer, his better self, was from a relatively poor gentry family (“some petty clerk Henry found in the Fens one year” in Norfolk’s view). Even Norfolk himself, who boasts of “the best blood this nation affords” (and perhaps “would prefer if there had been a special Adam and Eve, as forbears to the Howards”) is said to be descended from merchants. As Henry himself says, “there have always been mushroom men” whose rise is so dramatic that they appear to have grown up overnight. But the danger of such a position is made ominously clear. Henry reminisces happily about Reginald Bray, who “came from nothing” but was “a wise and expert man in my father’s cause,” but the rebels are spreading scurrilous rumours linking Cromwell to Edward II’s favourite Piers Gaveston, who eventually met a violent death at the hands of his rivals at court. Cromwell accepts the comparison: “it is not for any unnatural vice that the people hated Gaveston; it was because he was base-born, and the king made him an earl.”
Going into crimson
As I'm sure
could explain better than me, the world of Wolf Hall is filled with meaningful fabrics. A whole book could be written just on Mantel’s many uses of the word crimson. From our first glimpse of Cardinal Wolsey, he is a swirl of crimson magnificence, symbolizing the power of the church in England (or his own excessive pride, depending on your perspective). In this context it is a very big deal when Anne Boleyn declares in Bring Up the Bodies that Cromwell himself must go into crimson for her coronation. Even after his first big step up, taking his place on the King's council, commoner Cromwell was previously seen to dress "not a whit above his gentleman's station". Although he goes along with her plans, Anne complains that he chooses "a very black crimson", making him look like "a contusion on the body politic" - an act of caution, perhaps? This was, after all, a society so rigidly stratified that Henry VII passed multiple sumptuary laws during his reign, restricting certain colours and fabrics to people above specific ranks. Cromwell himself is aware of his conflicting desires to carefully blend in and proudly stand out, questioning himself when his new-found daughter later comments on his ‘very fine’ person:“He wants her to know, I was happy in my lawyer’s black. But is that true? He thinks, I used it for concealment. That does not mean I was content. Did I not have a doublet of purple satin, long before the cardinal came down?”
A sphere apart
Cromwell is playing a dangerous game when he jokes (in response to Rafe’s teasing about Kate Parr) that “I swear I will not marry below royal degree”. Charles Brandon got away with marrying the king’s sister (Wolsey complained back in the first book that having “dried her tears and got himself up to a dukedom” this “king’s horsekeeper” now “talks as if he’d held his title since the Garden of Eden”), but Tom Truth has been less fortunate, languishing in the Tower after being attainted and sentenced to death for his secret marriage to Margaret Douglas.
Cromwell advises Queen Jane to thank the king for raising her to “a sphere apart,” emphasizing the distance between the royals and even their courtiers. Anne Boleyn surprised everyone by managing to cross the divide between subject and queen, but to the ancient families, the Poles and Courtenays, “the Boleyns were a crass blunder, an error now cancelled by the headsman“. In some people’s eyes, even the Tudors themselves appear upstarts - Margaret Pole points out to Cromwell that when Henry VIII’s father shut away her brother it was “to secure the throne. Our blood being so near it, and so much nearer, in truth, than his.” Despite Henry’s generous attempts at reconciliation, their claims have not been forgotten: whether or not the northern rebels know it, “they serve the pride of Gertrude Courtenay and Margaret Pole - the young woman who would like to be queen of England, the old woman who deems she already is.”
Go lower, Tom
“There are now three kinds of people in the world. There are those who give Lord Cromwell his proper title. There are flatterers, who called him ‘my lord’ when he wasn’t. And there are begrudgers, who won’t call him ‘my lord’ now he is.”
Margaret Pole is one who deprives Cromwell of his title, although she delivers a blatantly insincere apology: “I am elderly and it takes one a while to become accustomed to new usages. We think of you as plain Master Cromwell.” In an earlier meeting her discomfort at dealing with Cromwell was also made plain: “In her time, men like him knelt down to speak to women like her”.
All of this may sound like petty snobbery to modern ears, but this type of regard for status made more sense in a society where a person’s position in the social hierarchy was generally thought to be fixed at birth. (Rafe’s wife Helen, for example, does not feel able to come to court or accept the chance to be presented to the king, standing instead with the servants when helping to arrange the dinner where he and Mary are reconciled.) Those at both ends of the social scale express this belief openly to Cromwell. Norfolk’s son Surrey makes his disdain known even while using the correct address: “I note your title, my lord. It does not change what you are.” Wolsey’s old jester Sexton goes further and uses the licence granted to fools to taunt Cromwell in the king’s presence:
“Go lower, Tom. Which is the table for shearsmen? Which is the table for the blacksmith’s lad? Go lower. Keep walking. Trot on until you get to Putney.”
Limits
In defiance of the rebels’ demands, Henry angrily insists that the will of the king can remake a man’s status: “When I choose a humble man for my councillor, HE IS NO MORE HUMBLE.”
“I made my minister, and by God I will maintain him. If I say Cromwell is a lord, he is a lord. And if I say Cromwell’s heirs are to follow me and rule England, by God they will do it, or I shall come out of my grave and want to know why.”
However, Henry may be speaking in anger rather than stating his truly held beliefs. Although his low birth has not prevented Cromwell from rising to take the lead in almost all aspects of domestic government, it is noticeable that his ability to steer foreign policy is limited by the king’s tendency to sidestep him: “some matters should lie between princes only, and I cannot ask my fellow kings to deal with you, because …’ The king looks into the distance, perhaps trying to imagine Putney. ‘Not that you can help it.’”
Cromwell’s background is also limiting his ability to support the king at home. He finds it humiliating that he can only muster one hundred men against the rebels (“his builders from Austin Friars, and his cooks”3) when Norfolk boasts of having “six hundred armed and ready to ride” and being able to “whistle up another fifteen hundred in short order”. Chapuys sums the situation up with his usual pointed politeness: “‘I sympathise with you. At such a time you must feel the inferiority of your birth - which at other times’ - a courtly nod - ‘is not evident.’”
Perhaps Cromwell’s reflections are closer to the truth, and in this social context his ‘vile blood’ is an immutable fact which cannot be overcome.
“Nor prayer nor Bible verse, nor scholarship nor wit, nor grant under seal nor statute law can alter the fact of villain blood.”
The world turned upside down
I was struck by Mantel’s use of the phrase "At this signal, the world turns upside down" in her description of the outbreak of the northern revolts. This echoes the title of a popular ballad from the time of ‘our’ Cromwell’s great, great grand-nephew Oliver Cromwell (& of Christopher Hill's classic study of the radical ideas of that period). These days it also makes me think of a song from the musical Hamilton, based on the (probably untrue) story that the British army band played this tune after their defeat at Yorktown. Seeing it used in the Tudor context has clarified a thought that's been hovering at the edge of my consciousness for a while now, about how much our collective fascination with this period is based, not just on the many wives, beheadings, and scandalous court intrigues, but on the massive social upheavals that were taking place. Although Henry’s reign avoided an all-out civil war, Mantel makes it clear throughout these books - particularly in moments like Henry’s ‘death’ at the tournament ground - that it always felt like a close possibility, and the disruptions of the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries must have been utterly destabilising for those living through them. In its own quieter way, the Reformation deserves to take its place alongside the dramatic historical moments such as civil wars and revolutions that typically capture our attention.
Another evocative phrase that keeps popping up is the question “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” As
pointed out in a recent post, this verse originates from the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, and has been echoed by radical protestors through the centuries. But in these books, it is Cromwell himself who identifies with it.“The Cromwells – father, son and nephew – are of an ancient breed too. Were we not all conceived in Eden? When Adam delved and Eve span / Who was then the gentleman? When the Cromwells stroll out this week, the gentlemen of England get out of their way.”
The revolts may seem to be turning the world upside down, but when examined closely, it becomes clear that those who oppose Cromwell are trying to reassert the old order, not to reverse it.
“The Pole family and their allies dream of a new England: which is to say, an old one, where they rule again.”
The quote is from The Mirror & the Light, but is almost word for word what the rebel leader Robert Aske is said to have told a herald attempting to read a royal proclamation.
Although Magna Carta is often cited as the foundation of our ancient liberties, it was only the barons who benefited from its protections and were granted the right to be consulted.
“Cooks are belligerent men, they are worth two.”
This is great Nikki, thank you! As you point out, Cromwell positions himself as "turning the world upside down" but at this point in the story he is the focus of a rebellion. And there is always the shadow of Oliver, who will really turn everything on its head.
Cromwell's always been proud of his vile blood, but there's so much doubt running through these chapters: he is the sinner who does the dirty work, he imagines other lives he could have led, and has he even got what he wanted? What does Cromwell want?
"The grandees of England claim descent from emperors and angels. To them, Henry Tudor is the son of Welsh horse-thieves: a parvenu, a usurper, a man to whom oaths may be broken."
(I left this lovely quote out as we hadn't got to it yet...)