finement Although to later generations acts such as these appear as virtues, not as crimes, the King could not anticipate the larger wisdom of posterity. An English sovereign could know no guidance but the existing law, which had been manifestly and repeatedly broken. Even if he had himself desired to shield his minister, it is not easy to see that he could have prevented his being brought to trial, or, if tried, could have prevented his conviction, in the face of an exasperated Parliament, a furious clergy, and a clamorous people. That he permitted the council to proceed by attainder, in preference to the ordinary forms, must be attributed to the share which he, too, experienced in the general anger.[1]
Only one person had the courage or the wish to speak for Cromwell. Cranmer, the first to come forward on behalf of Anne Boleyn, ventured, first and alone, to throw a doubt on the treason of the Privy Seal. 'I heard yesterday, in your Grace's council,' he wrote to the King, 'that the Earl of Essex is a traitor; yet who cannot be sorrowful and amazed that he should be a
- ↑ 'The King is so exasperated that he will not hear him speak, and is only anxious to put away the very memory of him as of the vilest wretch that ever was born in the realm. The public criers have gone through the City, proclaiming that he is not to be called Lord Privy Seal or by any other title of honour, but solely Master Thomas Cromwell. His privileges and prerogatives of nobility are taken from him. The less valuable of his effects are distributed among his servants, who are forbidden to wear their master's livery, and it is thought he will not be admitted to trial as a peer of the realm,[*] or be executed with a peer's privilege by the axe. He will be hanged like any common villain.'—Marillac to the Constable, June 23, 1540. MS. Bibliot. Impér. Paris.This is, perhaps, the explanation of the process against Cromwell being by attainder. The lords would not acknowledge him as their peer.
