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Thomas Cromwell
by Tracy Borman
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Thomas Cromwell rose from a Putney tradesman’s household through travel, commerce and law to become the most powerful minister in Henry VIII’s government. After service to Cardinal Wolsey, he used Parliament and royal administration to advance the king’s divorce, the break with Rome and the establishment of royal supremacy. Tracy Borman follows both his political ascent and the family and household networks that sustained it.
Cromwell directed the dissolution of the monasteries, helped destroy Anne Boleyn and arranged Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves, but the failure of that match gave his enemies their opportunity. His arrest and execution in 1540 ended a career built on extraordinary royal trust. The biography reassesses him as a reformer, patron and family man while accounting for the coercion and violence of the policies he enforced.
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