Thomas Cromwell
The Rise And Fall Of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
The rise and fall of Henry's notorious minister - the most corrupt Chancellor in English history
'Gripping... Hutchinson tells his story with infectious relish and vividly evokes the politics and personalities of this extraordinary decade' LITERARY REVIEW
'Hutchinson tells the horrible story admirably and compellingly, acknowledging Cromwell's rare abilities, while making no excuses for his character' OBSERVER
The son of a brewer, Cromwell rose from obscurity to become Earl of Essex, Vice-Regent and High Chamberlain of England, Keep of the Privy Seal and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He maneuvered his way to the top by intrigue, bribery and sheer force of personality in a court dominated by the malevolent King Henry.
Cromwell pursued the interests of the king with single-minded energy and little subtlety. Tasked with engineering the judicial murder of Anne Boleyn when she had worn out her welcome in the royal chamber, he tortured her servants and relations, then organised a 'show trial' of Stalinist efficiency. He orchestrated the 'greatest act of privatisation in English history': the seizure of the monasteries. Their enormous wealth was used to cement the loyalty of the English nobility, and to enrich the crown. Cromwell made himself a fortune too, soliciting colossal bribes and binding the noble families to him with easy loans. He came home from court literally weighed down with gold.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rising to power with Anne Boleyn's decapitation and losing his own head over the Anne of Cleves debacle, Thomas Cromwell (1485 1540) was Henry VIII's loyal hatchet man dissolving Catholic monasteries, breaking with the pope and finding ever more loopholes to justify Henry's marital and financial whims. Hutchinson (The Last Days of Henry VIII) effortlessly explains the business side of the Tudor court in which Cromwell's legal mind excelled while giving a one-sided portrait of controversial Anne Boleyn. Of the five royal wives Cromwell knew, the "pockmarked and sadly malodorous" Anne of Cleves receives most of Hutchinson's meager sympathy. In spite of considerable research, the focus on Cromwell's professional life means that the man from humble beginnings still eludes readers as anything more than a petty and "rapacious loan shark." Unlike contemporaries More and Cranmer, Cromwell seems uninterested in religion, friends or family. But those more interested in the nuts and bolts of Henry's court rather than the monarch's soap opera antics will find this a welcome respite from fictionalized Tudor drama. 8 pages illus., 8 pages of color photos.
