Was Thomas Cromwell a Machiavellian

It is probably true to say that the unique and peculiar course taken by the English Reformation under Henry VIII, in so far as its origin can be traced to any one man, is due to Thomas Cromwell. Not that he was, as we shall endeavour to show, a theorist of church reform, still less a theologian. Nor did he, any more than any other servant of Henry VIII, at any time hold supreme power. Of all English monarchs Henry might perhaps dispute with Charles VII of France the title of le bien servi ; but he was never dominated by his ministers, and made and broke them at will. Yet Cromwell possessed two qualities without which it is hard to see how the Henrician revolution in Church and State relations could have been carried through. He was diligent and methodical to a degree. ‘The whole essence of Cromwell's personality’, says his biographer, ‘consists of different manifestations of one fundamental, underlying trait, which may perhaps be best expressed by the common phrase “a strict attention to business”.’ No man was better fitted to carry through a complicated and slow programme with unhurrying persistence to a triumphant conclusion. Equally he was a man capable of bold and novel designs which might never have occurred, at least in a practical form, to ordinary minds. For both these reasons he was indispensable to Henry VIII in the crisis of the reign. The king, at least in his younger days, was not fond of detailed business; nor, to all appearance, was he gifted with originality above the common measure. Cromwell, with his capacity for detail and his power of imagination, complemented his master. As not infrequently happens, the second-in-command was the more essential member of the working partnership; one can imagine some king other than Henry VIII capable of carrying through Henry's achievement, but it is difficult to conceive how he could have done so without a Cromwell at his elbow

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