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Profit and Purpose in the Development of Thomas Cromwell's Landed Estates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Mary L. Robertson
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Extract

Despite the very considerable scholarly attention focused on Thomas Cromwell in recent decades, surprisingly little is known or written about his private financial affairs and, in particular, about the acquisition and management of his landed estates. His principal but badly outdated biographer, R. B. Merriman, was content with a few sweeping generalizations about immense ill-gotten wealth; the only modern biography devotes to this topic barely two paragraphs; and G. R. Elton, who began and sustains the Cromwellian renaissance, is concerned primarily with the public man.

Yet at the time of his arrest in 1540, Cromwell was one of the biggest landowners in the southeastern home counties, the end result of an active decade of buying and selling lands, augmented by large monastic and other royal grants. With Cromwell's creation as earl of Essex, his appointment as lord great chamberlain, and his son Gregory's marriage into the Seymour family (becoming thereby uncle to the future Edward VI), the uninitiated might well be pardoned for seeing here the origin of still one more powerful landed political dynasty which, like the Seymours themselves, the Russells, the Paulets, and the Cecils, owed its beginning to political skill and the opportunities of a fluid sixteenth-century land market.

Certainly this new style of service aristocracy, founded first on office in the central government and concentrating on London and the court, with landed wealth frequently coming later as a reward rather than first as a birthright, was perfectly consistent with the major realignment of relations between king and nobility which characterized the reigns of the first two Tudor monarchs and their leading ministers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1990 , pp. 317 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1990

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References

1 Merriman, R. B., Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902), 1:12Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Life); Beckingsale, B. W., Thomas Cromwell, Tudor Minister (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1978), pp. 4–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the best account of Cromwell's private life and character is still Elton, G. R., “Thomas Cromwell Redivivus,” reprinted in his Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974–1983), 3:373–90Google Scholar.

2 This paragraph and the next are much indebted to the following works: Elton, G. R., “Tudor Government: The Points of Contact. III. The Court,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., vol. 26 (1976), pp. 211–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slavin, A. J., The Precarious Balance: English Government and Society, 1450–1640 (New York: Knopf, 1973), esp. pp. 94–157, 329–31Google Scholar; Smith, Alan G. R., The Emergence of a Nation State: The Commonwealth of England, 1529–1660 (London: Longman, 1984)Google Scholar; Loades, D. M., Politics and the Nation, 1450–1660: Obedience, Resistance and Public Order (Brighton: Harvester, 1974), esp. pp. 12–13, 141, 175 ff.Google Scholar; and to studies of individual peers such as Gunn, S. J., Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, c. 1484–1545 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar; Harris, Barbara J., Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478–1521 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; James, Mervyn, “A Tudor Magnate and the Tudor State: Henry Fifth Earl of Northumberland,” reprinted in Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Willen, Diane, John Russell, One of the King's Men (London: Royal Historical Society, 1981)Google Scholar. We need a study of the territorial role of the early Tudor peerage, for Miller, Helen (Henry VIII and the English Nobility [Oxford: Blackwell, 1986])Google Scholar deals primarily with their service at court and in council and elsewhere at the center of government.

3 The will is printed in Merriman, , Life 1:56–63Google Scholar, and calendared in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1547, ed. Brewer, J. S.et al., 21 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1862–1910), IV, 5772Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Letters and Papers [arabic numerals are document numbers]). Both Merriman and the editors of Letters and Papers accept as simple clerical error the original date of 1528, changed by Wriothesley to 1529. Some of the lands mentioned, e.g., Temple Dartford and Sutton-at-Hone, were not acquired until July 1529. Lehmberg, Stanford E. (“The Religious Beliefs of Thomas Cromwell,” in Leaders of the Reformation, ed. DeMolen, Richard L. [London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1984], pp. 135–36)Google Scholar properly cautions that the revised will may have been made at any point up to 1536 when Cromwell's style, as a newly made baron, would have changed. (I am grateful to an anonymous reader for this reference.) The increase in wealth between the first version of the will and the second, some £600 (excluding only ten marks left to each of an indeterminate number of his brother-in-law Williamson's children), seems relatively modest and suggests that the revision was made not long after the original.

4 London, Public Record Office (PRO), Exchequer (E) 179/69/8. Assessments were made on either lands or goods but not both, depending on which category yielded the larger amount. The reliability of subsidy assessments in determining real wealth is questionable. For a general discussion of the problem, see Schofield, R. S., “The Geographical Distribution of Wealth in England, 1334–1649,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., vol. 18, no. 3 (1965), pp. 491–92Google Scholar. The figure quoted above for Cromwell does at least offer some basis for comparison. The highest assessed value among those in Wolsey's household assessed on the basis of their goods was £300 for Richard Warren.

5 Letters and Papers, IV, 6336Google Scholar.

6 Letters to Cromwell and Others on the Suppression of the Monasteries, ed. Cook, G. H. (London: Baker, 1965), p. 205Google Scholar.

7 Pugh, T. B., The Marcher Lordships of South Wales, 1415–1536 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1963), pp. 249–50Google Scholar; Merriman, , Life 1:63Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, V, 1065Google Scholar(33). Cromwell's accounts for 1534 and 1535 (Letters and Papers, VII, 1610, IX, 478Google Scholar) record 100 marks and £70, respectively, in annual income from Rompney. The section of the 1529 will mentioning the property was written on different paper and in Cromwell's hand rather than Wriothesley's; if it belongs to the time of the other revisions, which must have been after February 1530, perhaps Cromwell had no interest in the manor until it had reverted to the crown at the death of the duchess.

8 Letters and Papers, IV, 3535Google Scholar, but Darcy was still in possession “late in Henry VIII's reign,” Victoria History of the County of Essex, 8 vols. (Westminster, 1903–), 2:618Google Scholar (hereafter cited as V.C.H. Essex; general title is The Victoria History of the Counties of England, with each county having its own multivolume subset); Letters and Papers, IV, 4295Google Scholar; an ostensible purchase of lands from John Fleming of Crofton, Yorkshire, in 1523 fell through when Fleming failed to fulfill the conditions of the performance bond. This may have been a legal friction covering Cromwell's money-lending activities, for no further record of the transaction appears in Cromwell's papers. Letters and Papers, IV, 995(3)Google Scholar.

9 Letters and Papers, V, 1028Google Scholar.

10 In addition to the Austin Friars and Canonbury House, Cromwell had at least temporarily a house at Stepney, whence he removed in the summer of 1533. Elton, G. R., Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge, 1973), p. 27Google Scholar, n. 63. In October 1534, as newly appointed master of the rolls, he took possession of the Rolls House in Chancery Lane; his successor, Christopher Hales, was still trying to evict Cromwell's staff a year after his own appointment. Letters and Papers, VII, 1352(3)Google Scholar, XII(2) 638, 677, 688, 873. The king granted him Hackney in 1535 (which he left the following year) and Mortlake and Wimbledon in Surrey in 1536. Letters and Papers, IX, 504(12)Google Scholar, V.C.H. Surrey 4:70Google Scholar. Henry VIII also loaned him two small houses near the court, the Nete and St. James-in-the Field, during an outbreak of plague in London in 1537 so that he could avoid the contagion in the city; he would of course also have had chambers at the court itself. Letters and Papers, XII(2), app. 44. For Cromwell's building program at the Austin Friars, see Robertson, Mary L., “Thomas Cromwell's Servants: The Ministerial Household in Early Tudor Government and Society” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1975), pp. 52, 73–74Google Scholar (cited hereafter as “Thomas Cromwell's Servants”). A description of the finished mansion, drawn up at the time of its sale to the Drapers Company in 1543, is printed in Sawyer, W. P., “The Drapers Company,” Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, vol. 7, pt. 1 (1888), pp. 60–61Google Scholar, in London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, app., vol. 6 (1890)Google Scholar. Some of the property had, however, been granted to Wriothesley in July 1540, immediately after Cromwell's fall. Letters and Papers, XV, 942(113)Google Scholar. For Cromwell's peripatetic existence in and around London and the dispersal of his household in various locations, see Robertson, , “Thomas Cromwell's Servants,” pp. 75–79Google Scholar, and the itinerary in Merriman, , Life 2:278–82Google Scholar. For the numerous reports on his building program in London, see, e.g., Letters and Papers, IX, 66, 339–40, 413–15Google Scholar.

11 Feet of Fines for Essex, vol. 4, 1423–1547, ed. Reaney, P. H. and Fitch, Mark (Essex Archaeological Society, 1964), p. 188Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, V, 1028, 1339Google Scholar.

12 Letters and Papers, VI, 251Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., VI, 1056ii, 1108, 1337, 1687.

14 Ibid., VII, 944, 1542; V.C.H. Surrey 4:112Google Scholar; Lysons, Daniel, The Environs of London, 2 vols. (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1811), 1:380Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, VII, 771, 863, 1136, 1253, 1660, 1207Google Scholar.

15 Baker, George, The History and Antiquities of the County of Northampton, 2 vols. (London: Nichols & Son, 1827–1842), 1:493–95Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, VIII, 962(22), IX, 1148Google Scholar; PRO, State Papers (SP) 1/105/97–101; Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 190(31)Google Scholar; and Finberg, H. P. R., “The Gostwicks of Willington,” Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 36 (1956): 46–138Google Scholar.

16 See below, pp. 337–38, 340.

17 Letters and Papers, VII, 1610Google Scholar, dated by the editors in 1534.

18 According to Baker, Cromwell bought Eggecote in September 1535; he bought Donton also in that year (Letters and Papers, VIII, 962[22]Google Scholar). Thus the dating of the document. The manors Cromwell bought from Sir Richard Carnaby and his wife Dorothy in 1536 were Westwood, Tyrlingham, Newenton, Rokesley, and Bertram in Kent (Letters and Papers, X, 775[24]Google Scholar).

19 PRO, E 179/69/8.

20 The Lay Subsidy Rolls for the County of Sussex, 1524–25, ed. Cornwall, Julian, Sussex Record Society, vol. 56 (1956), esp. pp. 8, 12, 26, 146Google Scholar.

21 Robertson, , “Thomas Cromwell's Servants,” pp. 104–29Google Scholar; also Letters and Papers, VI, 1457Google Scholar.

22 Letters and Papers, X, 1051Google Scholar, XI, 102.

23 Ibid., X, 254.

24 PRO, SP 1/105/97–101, calendared in Letters and Papers, XI, 135Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, X, 775(24), IX, 1148Google Scholar, and see below, pp. 342–43.

25 PRO, SP 1/105/97–101; Letters and Papers, X, 1256(1)Google Scholar, IX, 504(12); Feet of Fines for Essex, p. 203.

26 Letters and Papers, X, 1256(26)Google Scholar; V.C.H. Surrey 4:69–70Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., XIII(1), 1520; V.C.H. Lincolnshire 2:53Google Scholar. Letters and Papers, XI, 214Google Scholar, X, 20, 95. Two of Cromwell's men, John Bellow and John Milsent, were taking possession of Legborne when the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out; they were incorrectly reported to have been murdered by the angry mob at the site. Letters and Papers, XI, 567, 854, 959Google Scholar.

28 Hasted, Edward, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 12 vols. (Canterbury: W. Bristow, 1797), 5:378Google Scholar; 7:116.

29 Letters and Papers, XII(2), 689, 1008(26), XIV(2), 782; Huntington Library, Hastings Collection, Deeds. HAD 2742; V.C.H. Warwickshire 3:30, 89Google Scholar, 5:28.

30 Letters and Papers, XII(2), 1008(3)Google Scholar; V.C.H. Sussex 2:59Google Scholar; Hasted (3:204) claims that parts of Michleham were soon afterward exchanged with the crown, but some of the manors clearly remained in Cromwell's possession until his attainder; Letters and Papers, XV, 503(32), 878(93)Google Scholar.

31 Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 384(74)Google Scholar; Great Britain, Record Commission, Valor Ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII, 6 vols. (1810–1834), 1:331–32Google Scholar; V.C.H. Sussex 2:65Google Scholar. A separate evaluation of Cromwell's possessions in Sussex alone, which formerly belonged to Lewes, drawn up early in 1538, listed lands worth £313.7.7, rectories of £97.13.3, and pensions of £116.18.0, for a total of £527.18.10 per annum. Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 290Google Scholar.

32 Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 190(11, 12), XIV(2), 782Google Scholar.

33 Letters and Papers, XII(2), 1030, 1154Google Scholar, XIII(1), 291. And see below, pp. 335–37.

34 Letters and Papers, XIV(1), 9, 191(1)Google Scholar; his accounts for that year record £3,490 paid to Dudley in two installments for the entire deal (Letters and Papers, XIV(2), 782Google Scholar).

35 Letters and Papers, XIV(2), 782Google Scholar, XV, 1027(30); “Sussex Manors, Advowsons, etc. Recorded in the Feet of Fines, Henry VIII–William IV (1509–1833),” ed. Dunkin, Edwin H. W., Sussex Record Society, vol. 19 (1914), vol. 20 (1915), p. 228Google Scholar.

36 Letters and Papers, XIII(2), 967(54)Google Scholar; V.C.H. Kent 2:207–8Google Scholar; Hasted, 5:326–28, 9:196; Letters and Papers, XIII(2), 491(10)Google Scholar, XIV(2), 782. Presumably Cromwell had only leased Waltham earlier, and now bought it outright (Letters and Papers, VII, 1610Google Scholar). The Kent manors bought from Dudley were Little Halden, Lambyns, Magna and Parva Pepinbury, Howseney, Kentyshylde, and Petylsden (Letters and Papers, XIV[1], 9, 191[1]Google Scholar). Hasted, 7:191–92.

37 Letters and Papers, XIII(2), 577, 971Google Scholar.

38 Hasted, 7:208, 8:180–81; Letters and Papers, XIV(2), 782Google Scholar, XVIII, 285(3), XX(1), 846(17).

39 V.C.H. Surrey 1:367Google Scholar, 3:477.

40 Letters and Papers, XIV(1), 191(17)Google Scholar, XIV(2), 782, V.C.H. Surrey 3:482Google Scholar.

41 Abstracts of Surrey Feet of Fines, 1509–1588, ed. Meekings, C. F., Surrey Record Society, vol. 19 (1946), nos. 45–46, p. 39Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, XV, 498(36)Google Scholar; V.C.H. Surrey 4:70, 98Google Scholar.

42 Letters and Papers, XV, 611(8, 37)Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., XIII(1), 1519(2).

44 Ibid., XIII(1), 190(31), 312; V.C.H. Buckingham 3:459Google Scholar, V.C.H. Bedfordshire 2:219–21Google Scholar. There were two manors commonly called “Donton.” First, Dunton Chamberlain, which belonged to Cromwell's ward Thomas Rotherham until he sold it to Gostwick in 1535; second, Donton Goyes, which Cromwell bought from Rotherham in 1535 and himself sold to Gostwick three years later. See Finberg (n. 15 above); Letters and Papers, XIII(2), 581Google Scholar, 567, XIV(2), 782. The Dudley negotiations were unusually complex. See below, p. 339.

45 Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 1519(5)Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., XII(2), 1101, XIII(1), 384(74).

47 Ibid., XII(2), 1062, 1101(2), XIII(2), 1060 (almost certainly misdated by the editors), XIV(2), 782.

48 Ibid., XIII(1), 421.

49 Ibid., XIII(1), 554, 590, the latter printed in full in Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, ed. Wright, Thomas, Camden Society, vol. 26 (1843), pp. 180–82Google Scholar.

50 Letters and Papers, XIV(2), 782Google Scholar, shows payments to Portinary as late as July; ibid., XIII(1), 291–93 (but see als on. 57 below), 574.

51 Ibid., XII(1), 678, XII(2), 269, 423, 881, XIII(1), 549, 646(33), XIV(2), 782. Gregory was born by 1516. The House of Commons, 1509–1558, ed. Bindoff, S. T., 3 vols. (London: for the History of Parliament Trust, 1982) 1:727Google Scholar (hereafter cited as House of Commons).

52 Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 734Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., XIII(1), 549, 786, 1281.

54 Ibid., IV, 4560, 5757, V, 359, VII, 618, 967, 1576, XVI, 578. The last, Richard Hilles to Bullinger, ca. 1541, printed in Original Letters relative to the English Reformation …. Chiefly from the Archives of Zürich, ed. Robinson, Hastings, Parker Society, vol. 53, pt. 1 (1846), p. 203Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Zürich Letters).

55 Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 786Google Scholar. Particularly as the case was more comic than critical: two local men sitting around the alehouse in Willington recalled a legend that buried treasure was often found at the foot of crosses. They collected two companions and proceeded to dig up the nearest cross, finding nothing but trouble.

56 Ibid., XIII(1), 1059, 1281, 1519(36), XIII(2), 1091. During the plague in Lewes, Cromwell forced the infection-free parish of Saint Anne's to accept for burial those victims of the neighboring parish in which his house stood (V.C.H. Sussex 7:16Google Scholar). When commissions were issued for securing coastal defenses early in 1539, Gregory is listed for Kent but not for Sussex (Letters and Papers, XIV[1], 398Google Scholar).

57 Letters and Papers, XIV(1), 191(2)Google Scholar, 1049, XIV(2), 782. Polsted's undated letter (XIII[1], 292), concerning the leases and livestock at Lewes, assigned to 1538, may, in fact, refer to the dissolution rather than the establishment of the household there and so belong to early 1539. Either date would fit in with his known movements.

58 Ibid., XIV(2), 12, 782. The relevant Kent commissions are in ibid., XIV(1), 1192(25), XIV(2), 619(39), XV, 144(1).

59 Kent in any event looks unlikely for future development along these lines: the Leeds Castle tenure was official, not personal, and Cromwell was already selling off as much land as he bought in the area. Nor did Gregory seem to be involved in Essex, where Cromwell held such extensive lands after he was created earl, but the short time between this event and his arrest makes any lack of evidence here inconclusive.

60 The act of attainder confiscating Cromwell's lands is 31 Henry VIII c.62, not printed in Statutes of the Realm but printed in full in Gilbert Burnet's History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 1 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1865), 4:415–23Google Scholar (hereafter cited as History). Cromwell's letter to the king is Letters and Papers, XV, 824Google Scholar; Elizabeth Cromwell's is in ibid., XV, 940. Richard Hilles, in a letter to Bullinger, (Zürich Letters, 203)Google Scholar, thought that Cromwell's title and some of his lands had been given to Gregory while his father was still in the Tower, “that he [Cromwell] might more readily confess his offenses against the king at the time of execution, and that his majesty might not be provoked to take back the presents and estates that he had bestowed.” Burnet repeats this suggestion (History 3:258Google Scholar), but I can find no evidence of any grant to Gregory during Cromwell's imprisonment. It may have been a verbal agreement relayed to Cromwell by his interrogators, of which the later grant to Gregory was the conclusion.

61 Letters and Papers, XVI, 379(34), 580(49)Google Scholar, House of Commons 1:727–28Google Scholar.

62 The best hope for Cromwell's line was not Gregory but his cousin, the minister's nephew Richard Williams who adopted his uncle's surname and was active in his service throughout the 1530s. He moved into Huntingdonshire, acquired monastic lands, married the daughter of a lord mayor of London, appeared at court, and, in 1539, represented his county in Parliament as a knight of the shire and was appointed to the Privy Chamber. He survived Cromwell's fall with barely a ripple, and his modest but solid career was cut short only by his death in the French wars of 1544. His family remained in Huntingdonshire, and Oliver Cromwell was a descendant (Robertson, , “Thomas Cromwell's Servants,” chaps. 2–3 and pp. 474–75Google Scholar; House of Commons 1:734–35Google Scholar).

63 The analysis of Sussex politics in the following paragraphs is much indebted to Swales, R. J. W., “The Howard Influence in Sussex Elections, 1529–1558,” Sussex Archaeological Collections 114 (1976): 49–60Google Scholar, although I disagree with him about the degree of amicable cooperation between Norfolk and Cromwell. See also House of Commons 1:199–209Google Scholar, for a survey of Sussex parliamentary boroughs.

64 Elton, G. R., Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 84–90Google Scholar; Mayhew, G. J., “The Progress of the Reformation in East Sussex, 1530–1559: The Evidence from Wills,” Southern History 5 (1983): 38–67Google Scholar; Mayer, Thomas F., “A Diet for Henry VIII: The Failure of Reginald Pole's 1537 Legation,” Journal of British Studies 26, no. 3 (July 1987): 315–16, 324–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar (I am grateful to a reader for this last reference).

65 Swales, p. 49; Bean, J. M. W., The Estates of the Percy Family, 1416–1537 (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 17, 147–52Google Scholar.

66 Swales, p. 49, quoting Letters and Papers, XIII(2), 732Google Scholar.

67 House of Commons 1:519–20Google Scholar.

68 House of Commons 2:179–81Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, XV, 804Google Scholar.

69 V.C.H. Sussex 7:5Google Scholar; Virgoe, R., “The Recovery of the Howards in East Anglia, 1485–1529,” in Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays Presented to S. T. Bindoff, ed. Ives, E. W., Knight, R. J., and Scarisbrick, J. J. (London: Athlone, 1978), pp. 1–20Google Scholar.

70 Letters and Papers, X, 816Google Scholar, dated 1536 by the editors but more probably belongs to 1539; Swales, p. 53, n. 2. Gatton was not a parlimentary borough but Bramber (which the duke certainly controlled) was—perhaps he confused the two? House of Commons 1:199–209Google Scholar.

71 Letters and Papers, XII(1), 252, 336, 439, 777, 846, 1162Google Scholar, XII(2), 101, 229, 206, 291, 479.

72 Ibid., XII(2), 847, 1008(3).

73 Ibid., XII(2), 1030, 1154, XIII(1), 505.

74 Ibid., XII(2), 1030, 1062, 1101, 1119, 1153-54, 1311(30), app. 45, XIII (1), 291, 384(74), XIV(2), 782. Neither grant was free, of course: Norfolk's annual rent was £44.19.0 3/4, and Cromwell's was £77.14.5. 3/4, but the values of his Sussex holdings alone from Lewes (i.e., excluding the lands in other counties) was over £500 per annum. Letters and Papers, XIII(1) 290Google Scholar; Blaauw, W. H., “On the Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras at Lewes, Its Priors and Monks,” Sussex Archaeological Collections 3 (1850): 205Google Scholar.

75 House of Commons 1:205Google Scholar, V.C.H. Sussex 7:45–50Google Scholar.

76 Letters and Papers, XIV(1), 520, 570Google Scholar. Unfortunately the borough returns for Sussex for 1539 have not survived. House of Commons 1:199–209Google Scholar.

77 Swales (p. 53), believes the document was intended to show Cromwell where he might place men in the king's interest.

78 Robertson, , “Thomas Cromwell's Servants,” chaps. 2 and 3, and pp. 544–45Google Scholar. There is no record of Polsted's formal education in the law, and he does not appear to have been admitted to any of the Inns of Court, but there must have been some connection to the Inner Temple, for in 1552 he was called to the bench there with the provision that such an action should be taken as a precedent since he had never exercised any office in that house. The Inner Temple: Its Early History as Illustrated by Its Records, 1505–1603, ed. with an introduction by Inderwick, F. A. (London: Steven & Sons, 1896), p. 163Google Scholar.

79 PRO, Special Collections (SC) 6/Henry VIII/5971; SP 1/105/97–101, calendared in Letters and Papers as IX, 478Google Scholar and XI, 135, respectively.

80 Letters and Papers, VIII, 962(22)Google Scholar, IX, 914(5), XIII(2), 967(54). Parry's later career as client of Sir William Cecil and steward for the Princess Elizabeth's Marian household provides a neat link between the two greatest Tudor secretaries.

81 For example, Letters and Papers, IX, 1148Google Scholar, XII(2), 847, app. 28, XIII (1), 291–93, XIII(2) 28.

82 The situation was further complicated when Dudley sold another manor to Thomas Pope despite Cromwell's expressed interest in getting it himself. Pope pretended innocence but Polsted charged them with deliberate deceit. Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 1310, 1472–73, 1488, 1498–99Google Scholar, XIV(2), 302, 348, 586, 680, 782. For a view of the larger picture in which these negotiations took place, see Bush, M. L., “The Lisle-Seymour Land Disputes: A Study of Power and Influence in the 1530s,” Historical Journal 9, no. 3 (1966): 255–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 271, n. 160.

83 This experience was too valuable to waste without reason, and after Cromwell's attainder, Polsted was appointed overseer of his forfeited possessions. Letters and Papers, XV, 1027(43)Google Scholar. Cromwell's estates were not treated as an integral unit after confiscation. The act of attainder declared forfeit those lands he had held since March 31, 1539 (Letters and Papers, XV, 498[I, 60]Google Scholar). Most of the negotiations still in progress, or recently concluded, were reaffirmed (Letters and Papers, XV, 942[120]Google Scholar, 1027[3, 16]). John Ryther, another of Cromwell's men, was appointed receiver of all his possessions, and Milsent surfaced eventually as collector on some of the Norfolk lands (PRO, SC 6/ Henry VIII/5972). The Austin Friars house was sold to the Drapers' Company (see n. 10. above), and other lands were given out or sold piecemeal by the crown.

84 PRO, E 36/256, calendared in Letters and Papers, XIV(2), 782Google Scholar.

85 Some of these practices were common, e.g., in the Northumberland household. For a useful discussion of various types of household accounts, see The Household Papers for Henry Percy Ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564–1632), ed. Batho, G. R., Camden Society, 3d ser., vol. 93 (London, 1962)Google Scholar.

86 The itinerary worked out for him by Merriman, (Life 2:279–82 [n. 1 above])Google Scholar is imperfect but complete enough to account for most of his time, and none of it was spent in residence on his own lands. He was at Lewes for at least one night in August 1538, and with the king received the French ambassador at another of his manors near Arundel. Letters and Papers, XIII(2), 226, 232Google Scholar.

87 PRO, Chancery (C) 1/1018/14–15, C 1/835/18–19, C 1/1019/9. For other cases involving Kemys, see PRO, C 1/837/4, C 1/1018/13.

88 Letters and Papers, IX, 486Google Scholar, printed in full in Merriman, , Life 1:425–26Google Scholar. PRO, E 136/12/21b. For further details of Rompney and Kemys, see Robertson, , “Thomas Cromwell's Servants,” pp. 114–16Google Scholar.

89 Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 907Google Scholar, XIII(2), 199.

90 The act is 31 Henry VIII cap. 3, printed sessionally (e.g., in STC, revised ed. 9398; the copy seen by me is Huntington Library RB 28069), in Statutes of the Realm, ed. Luders, A.et al. (London, 1810–1828), 3:719Google Scholar. Of course, Cromwell's support would doubtless have eased the bill's passage (he was present in the Lords at each of the readings [Journals of the House of Lords 1 (London, 17–): 107–10])Google Scholar, and he may have been responsible for its status as a public, and therefore fee-free, act.

91 Letters and Papers, X, 20Google Scholar, XIII(1), 293.

92 Most of the cofferer's disbursements for this purpose were to Cromwell's household comptroller, Thomas Thacker, and averaged between £100 and £130 per month (excluding servants' wage). Thacker was also active in the dissolution of the monasteries and so was occasionally assisted in household matters by Francis Cave. For more on the domestic side of the household, see Robertson, “Thomas Cromwell's Servants,” chap. 2.

93 Letters and Papers, XIV(1) 398, 652, 940–41Google Scholar. John Stow described Cromwell's men in this procession in his Survey of London, reprinted from the 1603 text with introduction and notes by Charles L. Kingsford, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1908), 1:91. Avery was still paying the livery bills: £59 for coats and jerkins, in July; in September he paid another £185.3.6 in related expenses. Letters and Papers, XIV(2), 782Google Scholar.

94 For a case study of this involvement, see Robertson, Mary L., “‘The Art of the Possible’: Thomas Cromwell's Management of West Country Government,” Historical Journal 32, no. 4 (1989): 793–816CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Letters and Papers, VII, 1136Google Scholar, IX, 478, XIV(1), 359, XVI, 379(33).

96 Ibid., VII, 1253, X, 996, XIII(2), 82, XI, 487.

97 I find little evidence, e.g., of Cromwell exercising the “seigneurial influence of a large landowner” in Kent, as Clark, Peter suggests in his English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent, 1500–1640 (Hassocks: Harvester, 1977), p. 51Google Scholar; many of his admittedly extensive Kent estates were held for only a short time.

98 Letters and Papers, XIII(1), 581, 802Google Scholar.

99 V.C.H. Hertfordshire 3:453Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, XIII(2), 734(37), XIV(2), 782Google Scholar. Cromwell received a further £100 from him in December 1538, through Polsted, as well as £10 to buy a cape. Dacres was an official at the Counter prison in London, and one of the king's creditors, so it is possible that the payments pertained to either of these matters instead, but the timing is suspiciously apt. A note in Cromwell's remembrances about the end of 1536 says simply “Signature of Robt. Dacre's bill.” Letters and Papers, XI, 1419Google Scholar, XII(2), 1151(3).

100 Ibid., XIV(1), 962.

101 Ibid., XIV(2), 782; V.C.H. Surrey 3:482Google Scholar, and see text at n. 40 above and also n. 40.

102 See n. 35 above.

103 Letters and Papers, XIV(2), 782Google Scholar. Figures rounded to nearest £10.

104 Ibid., XV, 804.