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Mark Rylance, center, stars as Thomas Cromwell in “Wolf Hall.” In this photo from episode three, he is flanked by Tom Mothersdale, left, playing Richard Rich, and Harry Melling as Thomas Wriothesley. Nick Briggs/Playground Television (UK) Ltd Enchanted by the new episodes of “Wolf Hall” now showing on PBS? Wondering how much is true? These four books provide detailed, and dramatic, documentation concerning the life of Henry VIII’s chief minister and machinations at the Tudor court where he thrived — until his precipitous fall.
‘The Tudor Revolution in Government,’ by G.R. Elton “The Tudor Revolution in Government” by G.
R. Elton. Cambridge University Press About the book: For centuries, scholars took a dim view of Henry VIII’s chief minister – he was the despotic king’s Machiavellian fixer, a cynical henchman who ruthlessly pursued power and wealth.
In 1953, Geoffrey R. Elton, professor of history at the University of Cambridge, upended the field with this book, proclaiming Thomas Cromwell “the most remarkable revolutionary in English history.” Elton argued that before Cromwell, England was run as if it were the monarch’s private estate.
Cromwell, as Henry’s right-hand man, installed proper machinery of state: hiring bureaucrats, establishing departments, improving administrative practice — including requiring parishes to keep registers of baptisms, marriages and burials. In the process, Cromwell lay the foundation for functioning constitutional rule and set up England to become a world power. The Cromwell of the “Wolf Hall” trilogy, and novelist Hilary Mantel’s admiration for what she called his “massive, imperturbable competence,” owes much to Elton.
About the author: Elton, born Gottfried Ehrenberg, in Tübingen, Germany, had a family connection with one of King Henry’s descendants, the likewise mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II, who attended high school with the historian’s maternal grandfather, Siegfried Sommer. Thanks to this friendship, Sommer became the first Jewish civil servant elevated to chief regional judge in the German Empire. Sommer’s daughter Eva married classics professor Victor Ehrenberg.
Forced to flee after the Nazi takeover, the family settled in Britain. Elton was ordered to Anglicize his name while serving in the British army during World War II. Ben Elton, the comedian, is the historian’s nephew.
‘Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant,’ by Tracy Borman “Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant” by Tracy Borman. Grove About the book: In the first scene of “Wolf Hall,” Thomas Cromwell is receiving a fierce beating from his blacksmith father. In truth, as this lively 2014 biography reveals, very little can be verified about Cromwell’s early life.
No one knows where – or exactly when – he was born (best guess: somewhere west of London, in Putney or Wimbledon, sometime in the mid-1480s). His father’s profession has been variously described as brewer, landlord and “cloth-dresser.” What is certain is that Cromwell left home, and Britain, while still a teenager, a bold and unusual move in those days.
In 1503, he pops up in the historical record for the first time, serving in the French army, campaigning in Italy. The very next year he’s working for a powerful merchant banker, Francesco Frescobaldi, in Florence, then the cultural center of Europe. How he managed this is unknown, but as author Borman observes: “That he had clawed his way out of obscurity and stood on the cusp of a brilliant career was entirely thanks to his own merits.
” About the author: In an interview with The Washington Post, Borman confessed that she found Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” so compelling and the novelist’s take on Cromwell so at odds from traditional views of the man, “I was inspired to write a nonfiction biography so that I could find out where the truth lay.” Borman, author of 15 other books and Historic Royal Palaces’ chief historian, delved into the archives and found that despite taking artistic license at points in her narrative, Mantel’s portrait of a clever, witty and enterprising royal councillor is fundamentally accurate. “Perhaps, however, Cromwell’s story should also be read as a warning,” Borman told The Post.
“For all his staggering ability and confidence, like Icarus he flew too close to the sun.” ‘Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford,’ by Julia Fox “Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford” by Julia Fox. Random House About the book: The noblewoman born Jane Parker, who married George Boleyn, later Lord Rochford, most likely in 1525, has long been implicated in the downfall of her sister-in-law Anne Boleyn.
In her second Tudor novel, “Bring Up the Bodies,” Mantel generally hews to the legend that Cromwell sought out Jane, an ill-treated and jealous wife, to help him in removing Anne, persuading her to falsely accuse her husband of sleeping with his own sister. George was one of the five men executed with Anne in May 1536 on charges of adultery. In this rigorously researched book, Fox demonstrates that the trajectory of Jane’s life — and reputation — was very different.
No contemporaneous evidence has Cromwell linking Jane to the case against Anne Boleyn, but after Anne’s death, Jane remained at court as a lady of the bedchamber. When working for Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, she covered up that queen’s affair with courtier Thomas Culpeper. Convicted of treason, Jane was beheaded in February 1542 alongside Catherine.
Later, during the reign of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth I, various writers eager to curry royal favor set out to decisively refute the Anne Boleyn adultery charges. They chose Jane as a convenient scapegoat — she had no children to defend her, and she was already disdained at court for her collaboration with Catherine. About the author: Fox earned a special mention from Mantel in the author’s note at the end of “Bring Up the Bodies.
” Acknowledging that she may have “thrown more blame on Jane ...
than perhaps she deserves,” in her account of Anne Boleyn’s fall, Mantel directs her audience to Fox’s 2007 biography for a “more positive reading of Jane’s character.” Fox has recently co-authored, with her husband, John Guy, a Tudor historian at Clare College at the University of Cambridge, a fuller account of the king’s second marriage, the fascinating “Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and the Marriage That Shook Europe.” ‘Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life,’ by Diarmaid MacCulloch “Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life” by Diarmaid MacCulloch.
Viking About the book: This lengthy, authoritative and much-praised biography, published in 2018, represents a fundamental reset in Cromwell studies. MacCulloch, an Oxford professor and a one-time student of Geoffrey Elton’s, challenges his teacher’s view of a reformer committed to good government, arguing that Cromwell was a committed Protestant and that his overarching goal was to push the English church in an evangelical direction. The rise of the man they probably called “Crummel” in 16th-century pronunciation, was “complex and crabwise” in MacCulloch’s words, and his talents were broad.
But during his years at court, he took great risks to cultivate connections with the evangelical movement in Zurich and pay out of his own pocket to have the Bible translated into English. Cromwell kept this hidden from King Henry, who remained attached to Catholic doctrine. In fact, as long as Cromwell delivered for the king, he was safe to operate, sometimes quite cruelly, as he wished.
He tripped up only after having arranged a fourth marriage for Henry, to Anne of Cleves, and then he was on the hook when the king found her unattractive. About the author: Mantel called MacCulloch’s book “the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years,” and before the novelist’s death in 2022 from a stroke, Mantel and MacCulloch often appeared on panels together. While an admirer of his friend’s work, the historian often finds himself urging readers to remember that the “Wolf Hall” novels are fiction.
“It’s not exactly Tudor England but rather like ...
a parallel universe which tells you a lot of things about the reality,” he said in an interview. He criticizes Mantel only for downplaying the role of religion in Cromwell’s life and times, adding: “Perhaps for a modern novel-reading audience you simply can’t do [religion].” Ordained as a deacon in the Church of England, MacCulloch has also written an acclaimed biography of Thomas Cranmer, appointed archbishop of Canterbury by Henry VIII, and one of Cromwell’s allies in “Wolf Hall.
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