The Last White Rose by Desmond Seward Read Free Book Online Page A

him and regarded him as a friend. In 1523 he was elected to a fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which provided him with yet further funds, supplemented by a clutch of benefices, such as Harting rectory in Sussex. In 1525–6 he made a lengthy visit to Rome, where he acquired influential friends.
    In 1527 he returned to England, to live in a little house (built by Dean Colet of St Paul’s) in the garden of the Carthusians at Sheen. Here, by his own wish, he led a solitary, studious life that was dedicated to scholarship, concentrating on theology and adding Hebrew to his languages. Further signs of royal favour followed – the deanery of Exeter and a canonry of York Minister.
    Despite his seclusion, Pole sometimes visited Cardinal Wolsey’s palace of York Place, where one day he was accosted bya vulgar-looking, middle-aged man with a round, thin-lipped, porcine face and sharp, very watchful, eyes. This was Thomas Cromwell, who in those days was just one of Wolsey’s minor officials. Reginald always remembered their conversation. Cromwell asked him what qualifications were needed by men who advised rulers, but Pole guessed that the real object was to discover what he thought about the king’s divorce, which was still dividing the Privy Council.
    Cromwell had been born near Putney during Richard III’s reign. His father was said by some to have been an armourer although Chapuys believed he was a blacksmith, while Pole records contemptuously, with more accuracy, that he was‘a man of no pedigree; and that his stepfather earned his living as a fuller [cloth-maker]’. Yet the great nobleman with royal blood and the upstart from the back streets had at least something in common, which was Italy. As a young man Thomas had worked in Venice as a bookkeeper for a merchant of Reginald’s acquaintance and, after a spell as a clerk at Antwerp, he returned to fight as a mercenary. (One source says he was serving with the Duke of Bourbon’s army when it sacked Rome.) He then came home to be a scrivener, a combination of solicitor and money-lender, without much success, before entering Wolsey’s service.
    In answer to his enquiry about what advice a counsellor should give a king, Reginald was carefully noncommital, replying that it must be to act honourably. Cromwell then gave him the benefit of his own ideas on the subject. If he really wanted to succeed, a prince should concentrate on getting exactly what he wanted, without letting himself be hampered by scruples – although outwardly, of course, he should make a show of being absolutely devoted to religion and virtue. Years after, Pole told Charles V that had Thomas Cromwell been Nero’s adviser he would certainly have approved of the emperor’s decision to murder his own mother.
    Seeing the horrified look on Pole’s face, Cromwell told him he was handicapped by his lack of experience of the real world,having wasted too much time studying philosophy. He recommended a book by a modern writer who did not fool about like Plato by describing dreams, but provided rules for politicians that worked. Cromwell offered to send him a copy if he promised to read it. (This was Machiavelli’s Il Principe , which Reginald later read, observing that it must have been ‘written by the Enemy of the human race himself’ – meaning Satan.) They said goodbye amiably, remembered Pole, who commented that Cromwell only survived Wolsey’s fall by buying friends with money he had made from dissolving some small monasteries for the cardinal, adding, ‘He was certainly born with an aptitude for ruin and destruction’.
    It has been suggested that this meeting with Thomas Cromwell was a figment of Pole’s imagination, yet there is no reason for doubting his account in his Apologia to Emperor Charles V. Admittedly, he is rather unfair to Cromwell, who had his own ideals – such as blind loyalty to his sovereign. 2 It is significant that Cromwell, the political opportunist looking for