The Fall of Cromwell

Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves 

Reasons for the marriage 

1. Henry’s privy councillors had started the search for a new wife for Henry only days after Jane Seymour died. Henry needed more sons, and England needed allies.  

2. By 1539, Anne of Cleves had emerged as a favourite – she was gentle, virtuous and obedient. She was not Henry’s first choice, but many families would not allow someone to marry someone who had a reputation for mistreating his wives.  

3. Cleves was a small kingdom in the north of the Holy Roman Empire, and Anne was the second daughter of its leader, the Duke of Cleves. The marriage offered him a chance to make an alliance with a great European power.  

4. England, meanwhile, felt like the threat of invasion was real: at the start of 1539 it was feared that Francis I of France and Charles V of Spain were about to launch a Catholic crusade to invade England, and so Cromwell thought a good way of saving England would be to marry Henry to a potential ally against them.  

5. Cleves was a good choice because, like England, it had expelled the authority of the Pope but not replaced it with Protestantism.  

6. Cromwell also had a private motive: he did not want Henry to marry a Catholic, as Cromwell himself wanted to make more Protestant-style religious reforms. A foreign princess would also lack connections to the great English noble families, and so was less likely to be used against him.  

7. The choice was still very much Henry’s. He had seen a portrait of Anne by Hans Holbein and considered her very desirable. A treaty confirming the match was signed in October 1539.  

8. However, Cromwell had played a key role in bringing about this marriage: his future would now partly depend on how successful it was.  

The failure of the marriage 

1. Henry had never seen Anne in person when he signed the marriage treaty. He first saw her in December 1539 and took an instant dislike to her, famously shouting at Cromwell, ‘I like her not! I like her not!’.  

2. The wedding was postponed for two days as Henry desperately tried to get out of the marriage. However, he had little choice, as he needed an alliance and invasion seemed imminent; Cromwell persuaded him to go through with it.  

3. The couple were married on 6 January 1540; the next day Henry reported that he had been unable to consummate the marriage.  

4. It also soon became clear that Anne would not fit into sophisticated court life; she was shy, and her education had centred on needlework and household management. She did not have the skills of singing, dancing, and languages, which were expected of an English noblewoman.  

5. Henry had also now fallen in love with Catherine Howard, a young lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, and was pursuing her seriously by the spring of 1540.  

6. It had also become evident that an alliance with Cleves was no longer needed, as relations between Francis I and Charles V had broken down.  

7. By the start of July 1540, Henry’s marriage had been annulled on the grounds of non-consummation, and by the end of the month, Catherine Howard was Henry’s fifth wife.  

8. In return for Anne of Cleve’s quiet acceptance of the annulment, she was richly rewarded with several manor houses and a sizeable income, and granted the official status of the ‘king’s sister’. This made her a relatively rare thing in Tudor England – an unmarried woman with significant personal wealth.  

Cromwell’s fall from power in 1540 

1. Henry blamed Cromwell for the failure of his marriage to Anne of Cleves.  

2. Henry was losing faith in Cromwell as a result of his religious policies, which were too Protestant for Henry’s taste, who was now demanding a return to traditional Catholic values.  

3. While Cromwell was weakened by these events, his fall from power was not certain: in April 1540 he was awarded the title of Earl of Essex. For someone with no aristocratic blood this was a rare honour, and suggests a significant degree on ongoing support from Henry.  

4. Cromwell might have survived if it had not been for the actions of the Duke of Norfolk 

The role of the Duke of Norfolk 

1. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk was from a long-established noble family. He was Anne Boleyn’s uncle, but fell out with her because of her Protestants views (he was a committed Catholic), and presided over her trial.  

2. He was also Catherine Howard’s uncle, and this meant his power was on the rise again once Henry had fallen in love with her.  

3. He was extremely ambitious and was bitter that he had failed in his aim to become Henry’s chief minister.  

4. He hated Cromwell for three main reasons:  

1. Norfolk was a Catholic, while Cromwell supported Protestant ideas;  

2. Norfolk believed that Cromwell should not be allowed to advise the King because of his low birth;  

3. Norfolk was angry when Cromwell was made Earl of Essex, which Norfolk believed was too high a title for a commoner.  

5. Early in 1540, Norfolk instructed Catherine Howard to spread rumours that Cromwell was not putting enough effort into securing the divorce from Anne of Cleves.  

6. They then claimed that Cromwell was plotting to introduce Protestantism to England.  

7. Both accusations were untrue, but Henry was angry and chose to believe them.  

8. Cromwell retaliated by ordering the closure of Thetford Priory in Norfolk. This was the family burial place for the Howards, and Norfolk had to arrange for his ancestors’ bones to be dug up and reburied elsewhere.  

9. Cromwell also tried to have Norfolk exiled from court, claiming that he had been in contact with someone with sweating sickness, but this plan failed.  

10. On 10 June 1540 Cromwell was arrested on charges of treason and heresy, and taken to the Tower of London.  

11. On 29 June parliament passed on Act of Attainder (which meant he could be declared guilty without a trial) and condemned him to death.  

12. Cromwell wrote to the king and begged for mercy. Henry ignored the letter, and Cromwell was executed on 29 July 1540, on the same day as Henry married Catherine Howard.  

The significance of Cromwell’s death 

1. His death was greeted happily by many in England who saw him as responsible for the destruction of the monasteries.  

2. Religious reformers had lost a significant ally and the Catholic faction in court, led by the Duke of Norfolk, became more influential.  

3. Within months Henry regretted the decision, and accused his councillors of bringing about Cromwell’s downfall through false charges.