Thomas Cromwell Put a Queen in Jail and I am Here for It

My love for Tudor England will never die.

Over a decade ago, I started reading historical fiction set during the Tudor times. My love for, and familiarity of that era has only grown since then and that’s in no small part due to the Wolf Hall trilogy.

Some people in history have been wrongly maligned. I think Anne Boleyn is one such person. Much of the truth surrounding her is obfuscated by time and false accounts. She wasn’t given the opportunity to defend herself, but even if she had, all her words would’ve been chalked up as witchcraft or lies because everyone was predisposed to stand with Henry, not with those he wanted gone. Maybe she was guilty of adultery, but the swift desperation with which she was disposed of speaks to me of fabrication, just one more person snuffed out because they no longer suited the current regime.

This entire book’s story is dedicated to getting her out of the way to make room for the next queen, Jane. King Henry, that pillar of patience and steadfastness, decides that Anne’s inability to give birth to a son at the drop of a hat means the marriage is a sham and cursed by God, and whatever totally legitimate reasons can be found will be used to get rid of her. Even though they just went through years of trouble to make sure it was legitimate in the first place. Yeah, don’t ask. The capriciousness and impatience of Henry is what drives so much of the court’s drama. Cromwell dances the dance to please Henry and he does it well, but let’s be real: Henry is the poster child of a walking disaster and yet it’s everyone else’s job to go around repainting and patching holes in the HMS Henry, ‘cause heaven forbid he not change his mind every few years.

[Henry] is suspicious of any plan that doesn’t originate with himself, or seem to. You can argue with him but you must be careful how and when. You are better to give way on every possible point until the vital point, and to pose yourself as one in need of guidance and instruction, rather than to maintain a fixed opinion from the start and let him think you believe you know better than he does. Be sinuous in argument and allow him escapes: don’t corner him, don’t back him against the wall. Remember that his mood depends on other people, so consider who has been with him since you were with him last. Remember he wants more than to be advised of his power, he wants to be told he is right. He is never in error. It is only that other people commit errors on his behalf or deceive him with false information.

Despite all of that, I don’t truly despise him; I just wish his mindset was a bit more consistent.

But back to Anne…a queen has never been put on trial before now and Cromwell and Co. are kinda making things up as they go along. What charges can be brought forth and is it possible that she might just quietly accept a divorce and disappear from court, perhaps to a convent? It’s a surprise, the course the investigation takes, and even with the grim conclusion, Anne still hoped for mercy as she mounted the steps to her executioner.

It’s a testament to a great storyteller when I can read a book about events long gone and hope that the ending is different. We’re presented with a lot of alternative paths here and to see them slip by unused but tangible, it hurts. I want to reach through the pages and show these people a glimpse of what’s to come and how it could be avoided. And it’s only going to get worse in the next book, which I’m dreading and yet so ready for.

These books are some of the rare instances in historical fiction where I see it as the truth; it feels like Mantel just peeled back the layers of time to stand beside Cromwell, able at any instant to look at him and see the inner workings of his thoughts. That feeling is aided by the writing style, which I know is not going to jive with a lot of readers. The style is not only old enough to fit that time, but it still is understandable and relatable and human. And on top of that, there are these images not of the story itself, but an imagining, that are so vivid and real, I almost get chills.

Once the Vatican lawyers have started a case, they don’t stop just because one of the parties is dead. Possibly, when all of us are dead, from some Vatican oubliette a skeleton secretary will rattle along, to consult his fellow skeletons on a point of canon law. They will chatter their teeth at each other; their absent eyes will turn down in the sockets, to see that their parchments have turned to dust motes in the light.

All day [Henry] chased [Anne], until the light faded, and he followed her by the light of torches: and then she turned on him, and stifled the torches, and left him alone in the dark.

But chivalry’s day is over. One day soon moss will grow in the tilt yard. The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys. 

When I read that kind of prose, I know what I want my own writing skills to achieve.

My man Cromwell is cementing himself as one of my favorite characters in literature. These quotes sum up his personality pretty well:

He has noticed this: that men who have not met him dislike him, but when they have met him, only some of them do.

He is not a man to be knocked over by a sermon, or to feel himself persecuted by figures of speech.

Look, he says: once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, once you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect. Before you even glance in his direction, you should have his name on a warrant, the ports blocked, his wife and friends bought, his heir under your protection, his money in your strong room and his dog running to your whistle. Before he wakes in the morning, you should have the axe in your hand.

I wish I could go back and be Cromwell’s student, and become something like this:

[Rafe] knows how to send a message encrypted, or a message so secret that no message appears to be there; a piece of information so solid that its meaning seems to be stamped out in the earth, yet its form so fragile that it seems to be conveyed by angels.

There’s so much to comprehend and follow in a book like this and I’ve ended up rambling instead of reviewing. This trilogy is a tapestry, each thread woven so tightly it’s hard to see where one color ends and another starts, and yet its picture is clear and everlasting to me. It’s special in a way I can’t even fully describe and I want to keep it tucked away, a memory that glows warmly in its own corner.

“God knows our hearts, madam. There is no need for an idle formula, or for an intermediary.” No need for language either, he thinks: God is beyond translation.

There is a time to stand on your dignity, but there is a time to abandon it in the interest of your safety. There is a time to smirk behind the hand of cards you have drawn, and there is a time to throw down your purse on the table and say, “Thomas Cromwell, you win.”

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

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Thanks go to

Simon Haisell

for hosting a year long read-along of the Wolf Hall trilogy.

Here are my reviews for book one and three.

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