Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/205

 of a singularly arbitrary act recorded by Stow in his ‘Survey of London’ (ed. 1603, p. 180). He not only removed the palings of his neighbours' gardens twenty-two feet further into their ground, and built upon the land so taken, but he even removed upon rollers a house occupied by Stow's father that distance further off, without giving the occupant the slightest warning beforehand; and each of the neighbours simply lost so much land without compensation (see a letter which seems to have some bearing on this in Cal. vol. vii. No. 1617).

Influential as he was, however, he was at first but a subordinate member of the council. No mention is made of him in the despatches of the imperial ambassador Chapuys until the beginning of 1533, when the marriage with Anne Boleyn had taken place; at which time he mentions him as one who was powerful with the king (ib. vol. vi. No. 351). To keep on good terms with the imperial ambassador, and plausibly answer his remonstrances after the king had repudiated the emperor's aunt and married another woman, required more delicate diplomacy than the titled members of the council could command, and Cromwell became from this time the constant medium of communication between the king and Chapuys. The crisis, indeed, seemed at first so dangerous that English merchants withdrew their goods from Flanders, and Cromwell himself, fearing invasion, got the most of his valuables conveyed into the Tower. But the fear of war passed away and Cromwell's influence grew. He was commissioned by the king to assess the fines of those who declined to receive knighthood at Anne's coronation, and managed the matter so skilfully as to raise a good sum of money for the king. In the latter part of the year his supremacy in the council was undoubted. ‘He rules everything,’ writes Chapuys. The proud spirit even of Norfolk was entirely under his control, and the duke was fairly sick of the court (ib. Nos. 1445, 1510).

On 12 April 1533 he was made chancellor of the exchequer; in April 1534, if not earlier, he was appointed the king's secretary, and on 8 Oct. following he was made master of the rolls. According to Sanders he would have been present at the trial of Lord Dacre in July but for a fit of the gout, and believed he could have compelled the peers to bring in a different verdict from the acquittal which they unanimously pronounced. ‘Thank my legs!’ he said to Dacre in reply to an insincere expression of gratitude for imaginary intercession. And though Sanders may not be the best authority for this, the fact of Cromwell's illness at that time is confirmed by a contemporary letter (ib. vol. vii. No. 959). The fact of his brutality in similar cases is indisputable. It is shown by his own censorious letters to Bishop Fisher at the beginning of the same year, aggravating in every possible way the frivolous charge of treason brought against an old man almost at his death's door with age and infirmity, and blaming every reasonable excuse as a further aggravation of the crime (ib. Nos. 116, 136, 238).

The Act of Supremacy carried through parliament in November 1534 gave legislative sanction to that which was the keystone of Cromwell's policy, and at the beginning of the following year the king appointed him his vicar-general to carry it into effect. He received also a commission on 21 Jan. 1535 to hold a general visitation of churches, monasteries, and clergy, and he was frequently addressed as ‘general visitor of the monasteries’ (ib. vol. viii. Nos. 73, 75). On 30 Jan. he was one of the commissioners for tenths and first-fruits in London, in Middlesex, in Surrey, and in the town of Bristol (ib. Nos. 129, 149 (41, 42, 74, 80)); but his position there was perhaps merely formal, as in the commissions of the peace. The use he made of his visitation and other powers was soon made manifest. He was the king's vicegerent in all causes ecclesiastical, supreme over bishops and archbishops, commissioned thoroughly to reform the church from abuses which its appointed rulers had scandalously allowed to grow; so the preamble to his commission expressly said. Under his direction proceedings were taken against those first victims of the Act of Supremacy, Reynolds, Hale, and the Charterhouse monks. Accompanied each time by two or three other members of the council he repeatedly visited More and Fisher in the Tower before their trial, for the express purpose of procuring matter for their indictment. He defended their executions afterwards with the most audacious effrontery against the clamour raised in consequence at Rome, while at home he was made chancellor of the university of Cambridge, in the room of the martyred Bishop Fisher. He ordered the clergy everywhere to preach the new doctrine of the supremacy, and instructed the justices of the peace throughout the kingdom to report where there was any failure. It was a totally new era in the church, such as had not been seen before, and has not been since: for what was done under a later and greater Cromwell was an avowed revolution, not a tyranny under the pretext of reform.

He also appointed visitors under him for