Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (part 1)
Monday 5 February – Sunday 11 February
Pages 198 – 236 (39 pages) (section ending: “Wolsey is a merciful man, but surely: only up to a point.”)
Lessons In Writing
Opening this chapter, I am once again struck by how Hilary Mantel so meticulously builds this world for us, the reader. There is so much detail, historical, yes, but also every day detail, the right sort of detail, to expand and bind us to this world and bring it to a modern reader. It is truly astounding.
He arrives early at York Place. The baited gulls, penned in the keeping yards, are crying out to their free brothers on the river, who wheel screaming and diving over the palace walls. The carmen are pushing up from the river goods incoming, and the courts smell of baking bread. Some children are bringing fresh rushes, tied in bundles, and they greet him by name. For their civility, he gives each of them a coin, and they stop to talk. ‘So, you are going to see the evil lady. She has bewitched the king, you know? Do you have a medal or a relic, master, to protect you?’
Cromwell is arriving for a meeting with Anne Boleyn at York Place, once so familiar to him as Wolsey’s, now Boleyn’s. York Place was traditionally the London townhouse of the Archbishops of York since 1241, closely placed to the King’s seat of power and inherited by Wolsey in 1514. He extensively modernised and enlarged the building turning it into an effective palace. Henry aquired it in 1530, even though it wasn’t Wolsey’s personal property and renamed it Whitehall Palace
Anne is now First Lady of the kingdom but most are not happy about this, the high ranking women all furious that she takes precedence over them. However, Henry still returns to his actual wife when it’s Lent. Anne is not happy either, her cause has withered as Wolsey was put down, Cromwell makes his point, he winds her up a little which I like, I think trying to make her realise that she needs him to succeed.
‘Very well. Make his case. You have five minutes.’
‘Otherwise, I can see you’re really busy.’
Take down.
The verbal jousting between the two is sublime, each getting the measure of the other. I think Crum wins, just.Plus I love the fact that when he gets home, the women of the house want to know everything about her, some things never change, and as usual the man has not got answers to the right questions!
To York
He wants to get Wolsey to York, away from those who would have him gone completely. Brandon, Gardiner, Norfolk, and finally the King. The king is caught between his head and heart. He wants Anne and has to have Wolsey gone but he misses him and can’t have anyone know. What a child he is. But it is a glimmer for Cromwell.
And so the Cardinal leaves, with a parting gift to be opened when he has gone. Cromwell does not think he will see him again.
Conversing with a King
‘May I speak?’
‘Oh for Gods sake,’ Henry cries. ‘I wish someone would.’
How do you speak to a King, when he just wants a chat. It seems you can manipulate things to your own needs, he can be led, tell him what he wants to hear and you can find yourself in a new role.
JOOS VAN CLEVE (D. 1540/41)
Henry VIII (1491-1547) c. 1530-35
He is on the rise
Everyone seems to want to chat to Cromwell, Brandon about his wife, ‘you’re a useful sort of man.’ Harry Norris ‘pick a ditch.’ Master Wriothesley ‘call me Risley.’ -Gardiners spy, Thomas More; ‘do come, come and see my new carpet.’
So he goes and is greeted by a portrait, the original now missing to us
Thomas More and his Family (Nostell Priory version, 1592)
‘The favorite, Meg, sits at her father's feet with a book on her knee. Gathered loosely about the Lord Chancellor are his son John; his ward Anne Cresacre, who is John's wife; Margaret Giggs, who is also his ward; his aged father, Sir John More; his daughters Cicely and Elizabeth; Pattinson, with goggle eyes; and his wife, Alice, with lowered head and wearing a cross, at the edge of the picture. Master Holbein has grouped them under his gaze, filed them forever: as long as no moth consumes, no flame or mould or blight.’
Mantel uses details from this portrait and a second version to flesh out these people until they are blown up, life size.
‘Just as in the painting, Alice has a little monkey on a gilt chain. In the painting it plays about her skirts. In life, it sits in her lap and clings to her like a child.
We meet them in person and I still find that I detest More, he is abusive and unpleasant to his wife Alice and adoring of his daughter Meg. He prefers them in the painting, fixed, not wanting to know what More is thinking. I don’t want to either, I don’t think he’s kind or good in any shape or form.
‘One must keep them employed,’ he says. ‘They cannot always be at their books, and young women are prone to mischief and idleness.’
It clearly angers Cromwell, who I think or we are led to believe has a more modern outlook on women. More is cruel, showing off and taking every opportunity to belittle the women in his household. ‘Shall I tell them my dear?’ Perhaps the abuse is also physical ‘he takes her wrist, shakes her a little.’ I want to slap him frankly.
The end of this weeks reading has left a bad taste in my mouth, I’ve found it unsettling, perhaps this is what Mantel intends, do not trust the ‘saintly’ More, there are two sides to a story.
It is Summer 1530
I feel the same about More, I dislike and distrust him and feel fir the women who have to suffer his company.