Cromwell Beheaded: Henry VIII Executes His Fixer

Thomas Cromwell knelt before the executioner's block on Tower Hill on July 28, 1540, and the man who had done more than anyone to reshape England was dispatched with several clumsy blows of the axe. On the same day, Henry VIII married Catherine Howard, his fifth wife, as if celebrating the disposal of the servant who had made his marital adventures possible. Cromwell had risen from nothing. The son of a Putney blacksmith and brewer, he educated himself across Europe, working as a soldier, merchant, and lawyer before entering the service of Cardinal Wolsey. When Wolsey fell from power for failing to secure Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Cromwell survived and thrived, becoming the king's chief minister by the early 1530s. Over the next eight years, he engineered the English Reformation, broke with Rome, dissolved the monasteries, and concentrated unprecedented power in the Tudor crown. His downfall came from matchmaking. After Jane Seymour died in 1537, Cromwell arranged Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves, a German Protestant princess, to forge an alliance against Catholic Europe. Henry found Anne physically repulsive and the marriage was never consummated. The king's humiliation became Cromwell's death sentence. His enemies at court, led by the Duke of Norfolk, seized the opportunity to bring charges of treason and heresy. Cromwell was arrested at a Council meeting on June 10, 1540, stripped of his honors, and sent to the Tower. He wrote desperate letters to Henry begging for mercy, addressing the king as "most gracious prince" and protesting his innocence. Henry never replied. Parliament passed a bill of attainder condemning Cromwell without trial, a legal instrument that Cromwell himself had perfected as a political weapon. Henry reportedly regretted the execution within months, complaining that his councilors had destroyed "the most faithful servant he ever had." The king's remorse came too late for the blacksmith's son who had transformed England.