Behind the Scenes: 12 Historical Figures in Wolf Hall

Cromwell’s origins were humble, a circumstance that set many of the aristocrats against him from the outset. His rise began with his service to Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, who could not get Pope Clement VII to annul Henry’s first marriage. Cromwell lost his wife and daughters probably to “sweating sickness,” an epidemic disease of unknown cause that struck England six times—once in 1485 and five times in the 16th century. After distancing himself a bit from Wolsey, Cromwell entered Parliament, eventually (about 1532) working his way to the top, becoming second in power only to the king. He oversaw the vesting of monastic properties in the crown. In a fatal slipup he insisted that Henry make a political marriage to Anne of Cleves. Henry did. With clear evidence of the king’s extreme dissatisfaction with his new wife, Cromwell’s enemies pounced. In June 1540 Cromwell was arrested on charges of heresy and treason, and on July 28 he was executed, incompetently, as a heretic and traitor.

In Wolf Hall the cardinal is seen nearing the end of his ascendancy (1515–29) in Henry VIII’s court, and for him, too, the viewer feels some sympathy. The real Wolsey was a worldly man of great power (both secular and ecclesiastical). With it he amassed wealth second only to that of the king. However, he also made many enemies. Among other things, the lowborn churchman raised taxes to finance England’s campaign against France, and he suppressed 29 monasteries to get the money to found what is now Christ Church, Oxford. He was ultimately stripped of all his offices and preferments except York, for which he left London in 1530. But the immediate cause of his downfall was his inability to help Henry get what he wanted: out of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

After serving as secretary to Cardinal Wolsey (1525–29) and as the cardinal’s ambassador to Pope Clement VII in regard to Henry VIII’s desire for annulment of his first marriage, Gardiner was made Henry’s principal secretary in 1529 and bishop of Winchester in 1531. He failed to gain the king’s trust, however, and was bested by Thomas Cranmer for the position of archbishop of Canterbury. Cromwell in 1532 eased Gardiner out of his secretaryship as well. Thus, Cromwell joined Cranmer on Gardiner’s enemies list. The king kept Gardiner on his royal council to counteract some of the Protestant sympathizers there, but he would not allow the bishop to bring Cranmer to trial on charges of heresy. Gardiner, together with Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Suffolk, helped bring about Cromwell’s downfall. Gardiner would have his full revenge with the accession (after the six-year reign of Edward VI) of the very Catholic Mary I, when he was restored to his see and made lord chancellor of the realm.

Thomas Howard was the brother-in-law of Henry’s father, Henry VII. He headed the faction of nobles opposed to Cardinal Wolsey, and he supported the marriage of his niece Anne Boleyn to the king. By the time of Anne’s fall in 1536, Norfolk’s relationship with the king had already been weakened by Cromwell. When Anne was brought to trial, it was Norfolk who had to preside at her trial and execution. A religious conservative, he became a leading opponent of both Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Cromwell. After Cromwell’s execution, Norfolk gained power and himself became the second most powerful Englishman. But Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was also Norfolk’s niece and, alas, was also beheaded. Four years later Norfolk was accused of being an accessory to treason and was condemned to die, but Henry himself died before the sentence could be carried out.

By a chance visit he made to Essex (in order to escape contact with the “sweating sickness”), Cranmer was introduced to Stephen Gardiner and ultimately to the king. Henry, who wanted all hands on deck to achieve divorce from Catherine, commissioned Cranmer—by then a noted theologian interested in the issues raised by Martin Luther—to use Scripture, the words of the Church Fathers, and anything else he could marshal to make a cogent argument for Henry’s position. In 1532 he was sent as Henry’s ambassador to Germany and instructed to make contact with the Lutheran princes. That mission changed his way of thinking. That same year, Gardiner being out of favor, Cranmer was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. The following year he declared the king’s first marriage void from the beginning and his marriage to Anne Boleyn valid. Cranmer pretty much acted as the king wished him to regarding the various queens. Cranmer freed Henry from Anne Boleyn in 1536, from Anne of Cleves in 1540, and from Catherine Howard in 1542. As the archbishop turned ever more steadily toward a belief in Protestantism, Cranmer’s enemies attempted to unseat him in Henry’s graces, but they were not successful. Henry died protecting him and enjoying his counsel.

Trained as a lawyer and highly self-educated as well, More had already published his History of King Richard III—in both Latin and English, the source used by Shakespeare for his play—and his groundbreaking Utopia and had performed a number of distinguished acts of public service by 1517, when he was called into the king’s service. He became the king’s “intellectual courtier,” secretary, and confidant, and he gained much power. In 1527 the king argued his case to More about annulment, but More could not agree. That disagreement was not a big deal until More was appointed to replace Wolsey as lord chancellor. More indicted Wolsey in his opening of Parliament in 1529, but he did not sign the letter pressuring Pope Clement VII to annul the marriage. More tried to resign when the clergy accepted the king as their supreme head. Further, he did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as queen. With his refusal to deny papal supremacy under oath, he sealed his fate. He was tried in 1535 and found guilty of charges by a group that included Anne Boleyn’s father, brother, and uncle. His sentence—to be drawn, hanged, and quartered, was too much even for Henry, who changed it to beheading. For another take on More, see Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons.

A minor figure, but a player nonetheless, was Charles Brandon. Though he had fought well in the 1513 campaign against France, he proved to lack leadership qualities. Sent to France to arrange a marriage of Henry’s sister Mary with Francis I of France, Suffolk married her himself, a treasonous act. It was none other than Wolsey who calmed Henry’s anger and eased Suffolk’s way back into Henry’s good graces. Nevertheless, Suffolk helped engineer Wolsey’s overthrow.

Between 1510 and 1518, Henry’s first wife bore six of Henry’s children, including two males, but all except her daughter Mary (queen of England 1553–58) were stillborn or died in early infancy. She was in many ways Henry’s intellectual equal, and their marriage seemed a good one. However, Henry became obsessed with the notion that he must have a male heir, rejected Catherine, and sought an annulment. Henry ultimately had the archbishop of Canterbury pronounce his marriage to her null and void. Somewhat surprisingly, though she publicly denied his position about the illegitimacy of their marriage, she managed to die a natural death. Much loved by the English people, the real Catherine was merely forced to retire from public life. And to endure the events that followed.

The second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had supplanted a popular queen. That fact and her arrogant behavior made her unpopular at court. She was unable to produce the male heir that Henry sought. She bore a female child—the future Elizabeth I—and then a stillborn male. Though Henry (through Wolsey) had stopped her marriage to Harry Percy and had fought against papal authority for nine years to marry her, he soon tired of her. After three years of marriage, she was discarded and beheaded, charged with adultery and incest, both charges considered unlikely by historians. She was the apparent victim of a temporary court faction supported by Thomas Cromwell.

Henry married Jane Seymour a mere 11 days after Anne Boleyn’s beheading. Seymour’s refusal to become the king’s mistress, though she was willing to be his wife, may in fact have hastened Anne’s death. She was instrumental in restoring Mary (Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, the future Mary I) to the king’s good graces. In any case, Jane succeeded where Henry’s other wives had failed. She bore a son, Edward (the future Edward VI), but 12 days after his birth and only 17 months after her marriage she died.

Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves was strictly a political one, born of the fear that France and the Holy Roman Empire—the two major Roman Catholic powers—were on the verge of uniting to attack England. Cromwell arranged the marriage to Anne because her brother was a leader of the Protestants of western Germany. On January 6, 1540, Henry and Anne were married. Henry’s disappointment with his new wife was immediate, and, when the expected Catholic alliance failed to materialize, the marriage was annulled. On July 28, 1540, the date of Henry’s marriage to Catherine Howard (like Anne Boleyn, also a niece of Thomas Howard and also later beheaded), Cromwell—who had been arrested and condemned without a hearing—met his fate at the hands of the executioner.

Clement VII, the pope who ironically helped accelerate the Protestant Reformation, was born Giulio de’ Medici. As his birth name indicates, he was a Renaissance prince, reared by his uncle Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was unable to influence the battle between Francis I of France and Charles V for domination of Europe, and so his loyalties vacillated between them. He could not initiate reform measures in the church, and the longer he waited, the stronger the Protestant revolt grew. When Henry VIII split from Rome over Clement’s refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon—Clement ultimately (in 1533) declared the marriage to be valid—the die was cast.