Ropes, Racks, and Reputations Ruined.

One of the biggest blots on the name of Thomas Cromwell is his alleged role in the downfall and execution of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. It had been my intention to write up, (eventually), one large blog post that dealt with the issue in one fell swoop. However, several months on into the life of this humble blog, and I have remained silent on the Boleyn issue. This, I can assure you, has not been deliberate. Nor am I going to gloss this issue over. Several times, I have sat in front of my laptop, word document open, making numerous efforts to write about these momentous events in a decisive, coherent, and a readable manner. All soon ended in dismal failure.

 So now, I am breaking the incident down, and building up from there, to try and form a picture of what happened in the violent and bloody month of May, 1536. To begin at the beginning, this blog post will be looking at the arrest, and alleged torture, of Mark Smeaton (a young musician in the Queen’s household), who was the first of Anne’s alleged lovers to be arrested.

 This is a story that many of us will be familiar with. On the day of his arrest (April 30^th), Smeaton was summoned to Austin Friars (Cromwell’s private home), and there subjected to a barrage of questions, before being gruesomely tortured for information. After being grilled about the monies obtained by Smeaton for liveries and horses, a knotted rope was produced and wrapped tightly about his head, over his eyes, and tightened to push his eyes back, or even burst them. According to Alison Weir, (The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p314) Smeaton was “Grievously racked” upon his arrival at the tower, on May 1^st.

Mark Smeaton on the rack (The Tudors, Showtime/BBC)

 In his account of what happened, David Starkey (Six Wives, the Queens of Henry VII, p 568), casts doubt on the use of torture at Cromwell’s private home, but concurs with Weir that Smeaton was racked upon his arrival at the Tower:

“Probably, he was put to torture as soon as he arrived. His ordeal lasted four hours, as ‘it was 10 of the clock that he was well lodged in his cell’”.

In his biography of Thomas Cromwell, Robert Hutchinson, also concurs with the use of torture. However, although he is rather vague on the details, he does go further to implicate Cromwell in his personal torture of the musician. In his book, “Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister,” he has this to say:

“Mark Smeaton, a groom of the Privy Chamber and a musician and dancer who was probably a covert homosexual*, was lured from Greenwich and tortured, probably by Cromwell, into a stammering confession that he had been Anne’s lover.” (p86).

So, consensus on the use of torture is wide across the spectrum, and it all fits very snugly. Smeaton was a low born musician who could be legally tortured, unlike his noble co-accused. He was the first to be arrested, thus perfect to implicate the others. However, what is the actual primary source evidence of the arrest and interrogation of Mark Smeaton?

 The first thing I wish to address is the issue of the knotted rope. This is almost certainly a myth, and a myth that gets’ repeated in several dramatisations, novels, and later historical accounts. First of all, the only primary source for this story is the notoriously inaccurate Spanish Chronicle. For not only does the Chronicle (who’s author remains unknown) get this wrong, but he gets the names of Anne Boleyn’s alleged lovers wrong (and one man, Francis Weston, is omitted altogether). Other glaring errors in the Spanish Chronicle include Thomas Cromwell interrogating Queen Katherine Howard about her alleged adultery, including a word for word conversation that was said to have taken place between them. Despite the fact that by the time Howard’s adultery had been brought to light, Cromwell had been dead for almost two years. To get around this, the Chronicle places Katherine as Henry VIII’s fourth wife, and Anne of Cleves his fifth. So, is the Chronicle making genuine mistakes, or is it a deliberate effort to blacken Cromwell’s name by placing him at the centre of controversies that happened long after his own demise through manipulation of the facts? Certainly, in his biography of Thomas Cromwell, John Schofield has hinted at exactly that:

“Then leafing through the pages of the Chronicle the reader is puzzled to find Cromwell, who died in 1540, investigating adultery allegations against Catherine Howard, which were not uncovered until the following year. The solution – and it takes a moment or two for this particular penny to drop – is that the chronicler has been engaging in some rather radical historical revisionism.”

Further to later accounts of Smeaton’s arrest, there is no mention of torture in any other account. For instance, Smeaton was perfectly capable of walking to his place of execution. Meaning that the use of the rack was highly unlikely (it, after all, dislocates every bone in the body). There is no mention anywhere in any primary source that Smeaton bore sign of any injury at the time of his trial. Surely, if he had been “grievously racked”, walking unaided, or standing up at all, would have been nigh on impossible. None of this is mentioned in Hall’s Chronicle, for instance (one of the key primary sources for the era). No eye witnesses to the trial or executions mentioned injury, and Smeaton certainly did not have to be carried to the scaffold.

In the account of George Constantine, a personal servant of Henry Norris who was lodged at the Tower with his master, he reports rumours that Smeaton had been racked, stating:“I could never know if this is of a truth”. In other words, they were rumours, and not actually stated as fact. This is something that few historians care to point out in their endless renderings of what occurred at that time. They also fail to note that there were many rumours flying. Others suggesting that Smeaton freely confessed in a fit of shame at his “indecent” thoughts of the Queen, and his jealousy of her other “lovers”.

Of course, no one can state for sure that Smeaton was not tortured. I, personally, would never presume to do so. Nor is it my intention to whitewash the dreadful events of April-May, 1536, or in any way imply that Anne Boleyn was guilty. All I intend to do here is point out that there are many causes for doubt about the perceived wisdom and common thought that surrounds this episode. To point out that perhaps, just maybe, Thomas Cromwell is not quite the bogeyman that many have branded him. After all, that is what this whole blog is about.

Eye eye, Captain!

* Hutchinson claims that Smeaton was “probably a covert homosexual”. Actually, this theory dates only to Retha M Warnicke’s “The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn”. There is no primary source documentation, or prior academic work to back this assertion up. The percieved wisdom is that Mark Smeaton, nor any of the other men implicated in Anne Boleyn’s downfall, were anything but heterosexual.

Sources:

British History Online.

Hall’s Chronicle (on line edition).

Hutchinson, Robert: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister (Phoenix, 2008).

Schofield, John: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant. (the History Press, 2009)

Spanish Chronicle.

Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens’ of Henry VIII (Vintage, 2004).

Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Vintage, 1997 edition).

A Ragged And Butcherly Miser: The Myth of Cromwell’s Death.

One of the most talked about aspects of Thomas Cromwell, besides the Reformation and his alleged role in the downfall of Anne Boleyn, is the end he met. From hapless apprentices, to drunken headsmen; all have been blamed for Cromwell’s “botched” execution. However, as grisly as the subject is, it is time to have a look at what actually happened on the morning of 28^th July, 1540.

In one recent article, published in “The Mail Online” just recently, there is recounted an old, gory, myth that:

“Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, sent to walk the same, well-trodden path to the scaffold as his victim, Anne Boleyn, implored the young executioner to dispatch him with a single stroke. But the novice made a butchery of Cromwell’s decapitation, hacking and sawing at his thick neck and causing even the bloodthirsty crowd on Tower Hill to protest.”

There is no source cited in the article, but sounds very similar to an account that dates back to the Victorian times, and has two headsmen hacking at Cromwell’s neck for nigh on half an hour before finally managing to sever his head. It is all lurid, gratuitous stuff, indulged in by those who relish the idea that Cromwell, in some way, “deserved” his death.

In more recent accounts of Cromwell’s death, namely Robert Hutchinson’s recent biography “Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Minister”, the idea that a novice was deliberately chosen by Henry to make Cromwell suffer even more. In answer to this, you have to wonder why Henry would do this. If Henry really wanted Cromwell to suffer, would he not just let the mandatory sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering stand? Also, Cromwell had been convicted of Sacramental heresy, the sentence for which was burning. I daresay, like others, that if Henry wanted Cromwell to suffer that much, he would not have commuted Cromwell’s sentence to beheading in the first place. Again, this is another rumour that just doesn’t ring true.

Then there are the dramatic accounts of Cromwell’s execution. In the 2003 film, Henry VIII, staring Ray Winstone as the King, and Danny Web as Thomas Cromwell, we see a teenage executioner haphazardly swinging around an axe, taking three attempts to sever Cromwell’s head, as a jeering crowd looks on.

Thomas Cromwell, as played by Danny Web, faces the teenage executioner.

In the recent TV show, “The Tudors”, we see James Frain’s Thomas Cromwell despatched by an executioner who’d been deliberately taken out for a night on the tiles before the big day. A “joke” played on him by Sir Francis Bryan, the Seymour brothers, and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in the hope that it would affect his performance.

According to "The Tudors", Thomas Cromwell (James Frain), faced a drunk executioner.

So, how much truth is there in these accounts of Cromwell’s demise? We have just one first hand account of Cromwell’s execution, and it comes from the London Chronicler, Edward Hall. He simply has this to say:
“He bore patiently the stroke of a ragged and butcherly miser.”

And that’s it! From that one, small sentence, people have inferred all sorts of gruesome horrors being heaped upon Thomas Cromwell, as he met his end at the age of approximately fifty five. You can make of the expression, “ragged and butcherly miser”, what you will. It does seem, to myself personally, that something did go wrong. However, this was more than likely plain, old, human error. There is no evidence of drunkenness, malicious monarchs exacting last minute revenge, or even teenage apprentices. The age of the executioner is not mentioned anywhere. One can only conclude that these tales and embellishments have come from those glorifying in the death of a man who’s reputation as a Machiavellian plunderer has preceded him throughout history.