“You are
now entered into the service of a most noble, wise, and
liberal prince. If you will follow my poor advice, you shall, in your
counsel giving unto his Grace, ever tell him what he ought to do, but never
what he is able to do. For if the lion knew his own strength, hard were it for
any man to rule him."—English statesman, lawyer, author, and Roman
Catholic martyr Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), with advice to Henry VIII’s new
adviser Thomas Cromwell, quoted by William Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More (1626)
An initial
instinct of a historian, let alone an inveterate skeptic, would be to question possible
bias in the source of this quote: a biography of Sir Thomas More by son-in-law William
Roper.
But this
sounds exactly like the kind of thing that More would say,
demonstrating loyalty to King Henry VIII while
increasingly conscious that the monarch, in his single-minded pursuit of a
divorce from Catherine of Aragon to wed Anne Boleyn, was anything but a “most noble, wise, and liberal prince.”
It was
also carefully phrased wisdom for Thomas Cromwell, the rising power in the nation
because of his support of the king in Parliament. It reflected how More—resigning as
Lord Chancellor and desiring to be left alone in retirement—knew that anything
negative he said would be reported immediately to Henry—more likely than not,
by Cromwell himself.
With Hilary
Mantel’s Wolf Hall novel trilogy and its PBS adaptation, Cromwell has
emerged as a revisionist hero of sorts, with More depicted as a religious
fanatic bent on persecuting heretics.
To be
sure, More did prosecute heretics. But, for all his energy, intelligence, and administrative ability, Cromwell was not only no improvement but
worse than More, torturing and putting to death Catholics who opposed Henry’s break from Rome (a
rupture motivated by dynastic and libidinal reasons rather than by theology).
In
transforming this ruthless minister into a sympathetic figure, Mantel
engineered one of the more successful historical hijackings in recent memory.
(See my prior post on how Simon Schama, Eamon Duffy, and other historians persuasively
argue that, despite Mantel’s considerable skill as a novelist, “Just because
More hardly qualifies as a perfect man does not make Cromwell a remotely good
one.”)
Moreover,
while More abstained from the perks of power, Cromwell relished them—not just
from all the offices and titles that Henry bestowed on him (for a time), but also from
confiscations related to the dissolution of Roman Catholic monasteries. Self-interest—the acquisition of power and wealth—guided his actions.
In the
end, did it really profit him? More’s warning proved prophetic. In his anxiety
to do the king’s bidding, Cromwell met with disaster, as—a couple of the
king’s wives later—he arranged a match with Anne of Cleves, a woman the monarch
found so homely that he had his counselor beheaded.
Current
events should make those who look kindly on Cromwell think again on this Machiavellian
counselor who pioneered the modern police state. Appeasing a capricious leader
with a voracious appetite for power (“I run the country and the world”) offers
only initial benefits.
Conscience
may or may not be dead among his enablers. But they will continually dread the
possibility that, as More warned, it may no longer be possible to persuade or “rule”
their mad leader about what constitutes his real interest anymore—and he may
even turn on them in the end.
