Triumph and tragedy: Thomas Cromwell's legacy at the Tower of London

From a Putney youth to ‘the King’s ear and mind’

Cromwell’s meteoric rise to power

The son of a blacksmith from Putney, Thomas Cromwell enjoyed a meteoric rise in Henry VIII’s service. When his first prominent patron, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey fell from grace in 1529, Cromwell was one of precious few attendants who remained loyal to him. In trying to persuade the King to pardon Wolsey, Cromwell came to Henry’s attention himself.

Thanks to his brilliant mind and enormous capacity for hard work, by the end of 1530, Cromwell had been appointed to the privy council. Foreign ambassadors at Henry’s court were quick to report the prominence of this new kid on the block. Eustace Chapuys told his master Charles V that Cromwell ‘manages all his [Henry’s] affairs’ and added in another dispatch that the minister ‘now enjoys most credit with the King.’

Explore the King's House

Explore the King's House on this 360-degree image, created in partnership with Google Arts & Culture. Thomas Cromwell ordered the building (then known as the Lieutenant’s Lodgings) during his career in Henry VIII's service. The scaffold site can be seen through the window at the far end of the room.

Thomas Cromwell, Tower prisoner

The King's right-hand man is imprisoned in the Tower

Alongside his official duties in the Jewel House, Cromwell was the King's chief enforcer. As such, he visited various high-profile prisoners in the Tower, most notably Thomas More and Anne Boleyn. He had played a pivotal role in bringing down both, in 1535 and 1536 respectively.

Following his own spectacular fall from grace in June 1540 (the arrest scene for Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light was filmed at Hampton Court Palace) Cromwell entered the fortress as a prisoner.

As he arrived by barge, Cromwell might just have caught a glimpse of the scaffold on Tower Hill, the site of hundreds of executions during Henry’s reign. Public executions were the football matches of their day. Thousands of eager Londoners would surge onto the hill, hoping to catch a glimpse of the grisly spectacle. Some would even cling to the masts of ships on the Thames to get a better view.

Henry’s ‘most faithful servant’ executed on Tower Hill

A chilling twist of fate

Cromwell’s fate was sealed by a bill of attainder, passed by Parliament on 29 June 1540. This terrifying instrument of royal jurisdiction allowed for noblemen to be stripped of their lands and their lives without recourse to the normal processes of the law.

Most attainders were used to supplement a court’s decision, but in 1537 Cromwell had arranged for Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, to be convicted and executed on attainder alone. This denied her the opportunity to put her case in court, and she was executed on Tower Hill, metres from where Cromwell was now held as prisoner. In an ironic (and chilling) twist of fate, Cromwell’s doom was to be secured by his own scheme.

From his prison, Cromwell wrote a series of increasingly desperate letters to his sovereign, begging him to spare his life. The last of these ended with a plaintive postscript: ‘Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy.’ The King asked for it to be read to him three times. It looked like he was softening towards his former minister.

But the royal pardon never came.