Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 3.djvu/577

 CROMWELL 557 same day made Great Chamberlain. The disgust of the King with this wife was the ruin of the Minister who had introduced her, so 'that, being no longer sheltered by Royalty-, and being exceedingly unpopular,' as an upstart, among his fellow nobles, he was accused of treason lo June following, at the Council table, by the Duke of Norfolk, and sent a prisoner to the Tower. On 29 June 1540 a bill oi attainder passed both houses whereby all his honours wqvc forfeited.(f) He w., about 1513, Elizabeth' widow of Thomas Williams, Yeoman of the Guard, da. of Henry Wyk.es' of Putney, Surrey, shearman. Usher of the Chamber to Henry VIl. She d. 1 527, at Stepney, before his advancement to honours. He was condemned to death without trial, and executed 28 July 1540, on Tower Hill, declaring that he died "in the catholic faith." Will dat. 12 July i^K^.Q-) BARONY. I. Gregory Cromwell, only s. and h. of the above was, 1528, ed. at Cambridge. ("=) He (being then in the II. 1540. King's service) was, some 5 months after his father's death, under the designation of "Gregory Crumwell," cr., 18 Dec. 1540,^ BARON CROMWELL.C) He was one of the 40 Knights (made as K.B.'s) 20 Feb. i^^6/-],{^ at the Coronation of (*) He is called therein "a man of very base and low degree," and it was publicly proclaimed that none should call him by any title of honour, but merely "Thomas Cromwell, cloth carder." (^) A copy of this will (query whether his last will) is printed in Letters and Papers, Henry fill, vol. iv, part 3, pp. 2573-4. V.G. ('^) Probably at Pembroke Hall, whence his tutor, John Chekyng writes, 27 July 1528 to his father, that Gregory "is rather slow but diligent." V.G. {^) Dugdale's statement that he was v.p. sum. 28 Apr. 1539, by writ directed Gregorio Cromwell chFr, which has led astray Professor Gairdner in Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. xiii, p. 201, is pure myth. No writs at all were issued 28 Apr., which was the day of the meeting of Pari., and Gregory was never sum. at all till he was cr. a peer by patent. A similar misstatement by Dugdale with regard to Gregory's father having been sum. by writ before he was cr. a peer by patent has already been exposed on the preceding page. The list of persons given in Dugdale's Summonses, pp. 501-502, is neither a copy of the Pari. Pawn in the Petty Bag Office nor an extract from the Lords' Journals. The genesis of Dugdale's error is doubtless that he found in the Journals of the House that both the Earl of Essex and Lord Cromwell were sitting at the same date, and wrongly assuming that the former was Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex (whereas in fact it was Bourchier, Earl of Essex), inferred that the latter must relate to Thomas Cromwell's son; accordingly, after his manner, ht fabricated writs to suit a condition of things which he imagined to have occurred. It is really comic that some 60 years afterwards a lady should have walked as a peeress {see post, p. 559) at the funeral of Queen Mary in consequence of this misstatement of Dugdale. V.G. (') See Creations, 1 483-1 646, in App., 47th Rep., D.K. Pub. Records. (') See note sub Henry, Earl of Derby [1572].