for a while in the belief that he would abandon a policy so fraught with danger. But he had scarcely remained two days in this state of mind when a messenger of Satan (whom he afterwards names as Cromwell) addressed him and blamed the timidity of his councillors in not devising means to gratify his wishes. They were considering the interests of his subjects more than his, and seemed to think princes bound by the same principles as private persons were. But a king was above the laws, as he had the power to change them, and in this case he had the law of God actually in his favour; so if there was any obstacle from churchmen let the king get himself declared, what he actually was, head of the church in his own realm, and it would then be treason to oppose his wishes.
Pole confesses that he did not hear Cromwell address this speech to the king, but he had heard all the sentiments contained in it expressed by Cromwell himself; and it was owing chiefly to the impression he had formed of the man in one particular conversation that he thought it necessary for his own safety to go abroad early in 1532, when it had become manifest that the king was chiefly guided by his counsels. This conversation, which took place at Cardinal Wolsey's house, must have been in 1528 or 1529, just after Pole's first return from Italy, and was highly characteristic of both the speakers. Cromwell asked in a general way what was the duty of a prudent councillor to his prince. Pole said, above all things to consider his master's honour, and he went on to give his views as to the two different principles of honour and expediency, when Cromwell replied that such theories were applauded in the schools but were not at all relished in the secret councils of princes. A prudent councillor, he said, ought first to study the inclination of his prince, and he ended by advising Pole to give up his old-fashioned studies and read a book by an ingenious modern author who took a practical view of government and did not dream like Plato. The book was Machiavelli's celebrated treatise, ‘The Prince,’ which Cromwell must have possessed in manuscript, for it was not published for three or four years after. Cromwell offered Pole to lend it him, but perceiving that Pole did not appear to relish its teaching he did not fulfil his promise.
It was at the beginning of 1531 that Cromwell was made a privy councillor, not many weeks after the death of his old master Wolsey. The leading men about the king were at that time the Duke of Norfolk and Anne Boleyn's father, now Earl of Wiltshire; and for some time Cromwell seems only to have acted a subordinate part, though Pole must have taken alarm at his growing influence, even in 1531. All that seems to have been entrusted to him at first was the legal business of the council. There is a paper of instructions given by the king (though doubtless drawn up by himself) concerning such business to be laid before the council in Michaelmas term 1531 (Calendar, vol. v. No. 394). It relates to prosecutions to be instituted (chiefly for præmunire), exchanges of crown lands, and bills to be prepared for parliament. As a mere tool of the court in matters like these it appears that he was becoming very unpopular, and it is particularly noted that when, in the beginning of 1531, the clergy were pardoned their præmunire by act of parliament, and the House of Commons got a rebuff from the king for complaining that laity were not included in it, some of the members complained that Cromwell, the new-made privy councillor, had led them into difficulties by revealing their deliberations to the king (Hall, Chronicle, p. 775).
His rise into the king's favour appears to have been somehow connected with a violent quarrel with Sir John Wallop, just after Cardinal Wolsey's death. ‘Wallop,’ according to Chapuys, ‘attacked him with insults and threats, and for protection he procured an audience of the king, and promised to make him the richest king that ever was in England.’ A master of the art of money-making himself, he knew what might be done in that way if the crown would use its authority to the utmost. Even as privy councillor he did not feel himself debarred from taking charge of a vast number of private interests; and his correspondence grew enormously, with hints of douceurs and even very distinct promises in numerous letters, for services of various kinds. To assist him in these matters he drew up a multitude of what he called ‘remembrances,’ which by-and-by became more distinctly memoranda of matters of state, to be talked over with the king. On 14 April 1532 he was appointed master of the jewels, and on 16 July following clerk of the hanaper. In the same year he was made master of the king's wards. On 17 May he obtained for himself and his son Gregory in survivorship a grant from the crown of the lordship of Romney in Newport, South Wales. About the same time he took a ninety-nine years' lease from the Augustinian friars of two messuages ‘late of new-builded’ within the precinct of the Austin Friars, London, where he had dwelt so long; and doubtless it was at the new building of those houses that he was guilty
