Thomas Cromwell: The fascination with Cromwell has always been there but it has always been a hidden fascination, a repository of sly politician, a clever statesman someone King Henry VIII couldn’t do without. But Cromwell’s dramatic downfall, first dramatised in Mantel’s Wolf Hall, continued in its sequel Bring Up the Bodies and featured in hers to be published next year, The Mirror and the Light, may deserve a special mention: There is no way to see it other than his death. In reality, Thomas Cromwell dies in the Wolf Hall series… The last part: how did he really die now? Then dig a bit deeper into that and how it mentions what great works? How its sold in his tragic fate.
The Historical Context: Cromwell’s Rise and Fall
London was his birthplace and the humdrum family that brought him forth into the world saw him become probably the most powerful man to ever live in England under Henry VIII. Prince Polo was not only indispensable to the king as his lawyer and administrator; he was so brilliant at both of those things that on every question of state and of religion, he was a man of the greatest value to the Crown. Cromwell helped with the formulation of Henry’s break with Catholic Church (English Reformation — dissolution of monasteries, creation of Church of England).
Yet, shortly after trumping his peers in fortunes, Cromwell began to falter, largely due to a series of political missteps: And he helped bring about Henry’s fall of Henry’s second wife Anne Boleyn. By 1540 however, everyone and the king became hostile. As a result, because it was so easy for men more securely attached to Anne Boleyn and Henry’s perennial difficulty in establishing a firm, politically effective marriage on his own behalf, his political enemies, most especially those belonging to the fiercer enemy of the Duke of Norfolk, were all too happy to add an association with her to him. After Henry had gotten rid of him, Cromwell was arrested for treason, heresy and corruption, because he fell out with Cromwell when Henry made him fall from grace.
Cromwell’s Death in Wolf Hall: The Lead-Up
In Wolf Hall, it’s Hilary Mantel who actually brings us right into Cromwell’s thoughts and right deep in there, between his arrest and execution. Mantel paints Cromwell’s structured life — the surface of Cromwell plays out with pragmatism and vulnerability. He was a pretty clever, and even an intelligent man; very much a man at court, though his enemies were ready to bring him down.
But if I worried that one volume might lead Cromwell to punishment, it is the second, Bring Up the Bodies, which finishes in such a terrifyingly tragic consequence of Cromwell’s actions, and there is only one volume left. His downfall is rapid. All Cromwell’s best attempts at being re pardoned failed and he was eventually caught up in treason. Tudor law accuses him of plotting to overthrow the king, being a heretic and bedding the wrong chap, accusations for which the worst penalties await.
This is the third Wolf Hall trilogy, and the execution of Thomas Cromwell. It’s a chilling and heart breaking moment of Tudor cruelty: some of the ruthlessness of the Tudor court all of his herd the Duke of Norfolk ordered his death upon. It wasn’t until he was that Henry VIII trusted him, but Henry VIII was swayed by Henry VIII’s enemies.
Cromwell is meanwhile taken to London by Cabral and tried at the Tower. He is arrested. These are political motivated charges for now and he was innocent to these alleged heresies, and treason. But he doesn’t get convicted in a judicial system that’s corrupt? Not possible. This isn’t a fair trial on THIS, and it’s his fate.
The late designees in this park are Thomas Cromwell, Chief Minister to Henry in his time, beheaded at Tower Hill on Henry’s order, July 28th, 1540. In other words, it’s just super fast and extremely horrible way to go. Mantel’s majestic profile has been familiar on the bestseller lists for years, and in chilling detail it has the fragility of power in the Tudor court. One might say: There is a moment, and the next Cromwell is the most powerful man in England; the next Cromwell is a condemned prisoner without more.
The Death of Cromwell as an Emotional Fact
All of the book Mantel made Cromwell’s death tragic, but, Cromwell’s to die had to be because of historical reasons. And this is not a bloke bought low by his own hubris: It might be people colder, coldskier, more wile, more Machiavellian. If his ambition was his death it isn’t over either, but it’s a reminder of how violent Tudor politics were.
In The Mirror and the Light, and in Wolf,… It was a wonderfully complex exploration of the Cromwell’s character. But he’s just such an interesting character complete by virtue of his being so brilliant, being so morally ambiguous, and not using power or using his power, because of how it ends up, fate’s reversal. What’s tragic with these characters is so does the reader, too, without forgetting to mourn the death of Cromwell, too: all the given and all the taken away hope, all the dread accrued.
Thomas Cromwell: His Legacy
However, Cromwell’s violent, tragic death doesn’t bury his place in history. Being an important part of English history, because of his influence on English Reformation for the English Reformation state, and his statesmanship, he was an important part. Wolf Hall continues the theme of how intelligent and ambitious characters often have precarious situations: All of this, as did Iphigenia, like Odysseus and Richard in King Lear, and now Mantel does with Cromwell in Wolf Hall, nudges the envelope a little beyond where it usually sits. It’s a sobering reminder of the increasing volatility of this political environment.
Conclusion: In Wolf Hall, Cromwell’s death
In *Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell’s death is the pivot, or fulcrum, upon which everything the Tudor court will become capable of in the way of power and intrigue. Although Mantel faithfully follows the historical record, she humanizes a character who is worse, in a tragic and more truly such disintegration of the person that character becomes. I mean, the cost of ambition, the utter vulnerability, even, of the mightiest men in history, of accursed, impotent, aging, dying Cromwell in his sickbed.
