27: "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 459-474

Part VI, I, "Supremacy," 1534, concluded, from "When Fisher comes to his senses and asks pardon..."

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Elizabeth Barton is sentenced to be hanged. The councillors plead with the king to remove Thomas More from the bill, and he agrees. "Anne is not present, or it might have gone otherwise."

Pope Clement rules that Henry's marriage to Katherine is valid.

Cromwell goes to More, to try to persuade him to sign the oath supporting the Act of Succession. He fails, and tells Cranmer, "I hate to be a part of this play, which is entirely devised by him.... And what I hate most of all is that Master More sits in the audience and sniggers when I trip over my lines, for he has written all the parts. And written them these many years." More persists in his refusal, saying that it goes against his conscience, even though he won't condemn anyone who does sign the oath -- which his own family does. When he evokes the angels and saints and the church, Cromwell is enraged:

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" he says. "A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old. Your undivided church has liked nothing better than persecuting its own members, burning them and hacking them apart when they stood by their own conscience, slashing their bellies open and feeding their guts to dogs. You call history to your aid, but what is history to you? It is a mirror that flatters Thomas More." 

And he concludes by charging that More gives "comfort to every enemy of England." More retorts that Cromwell fought for the French and banked for the Italians: "No, I tell you what you are, Cromwell, you are an Italian through and through, and you have all their vices, all their passions."

Henry promotes Cromwell to Master Secretary. 

Rafe informs Cromwell that he has married Helen Barre, who is pregnant.

Anne miscarries.

23. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 372-395

Part V, I, "Anna Regina," 1533, concluded, from "The word is about town that Thomas More has fallen into poverty."

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Still concerned about the fate of John Frith, he goes to see More, who sends his daughter Margaret from the room, saying, "I won't have you in this devil's company." He's joking: "It is Reginald Pole, lying in Italy, who says he is a devil." They talk about Elizabeth Barton, whom More calls "an impostor. She does it for attention." Cromwell thinks, "So he does not like holy maids. But Bishop Fisher does. He has seen her often." When he asks More to come to Anne's coronation, he replies, "'You'll be company for each other, in Hell.' This is what you forget, this vehemence; his ability to make his twisted jokes, but not take them." Cromwell asks More to see the king -- "He will welcome you like a lost child" -- to make a case for Frith, "a pure soul, he is a fine scholar, so let him live." But More won't commit to doing so.

Back home, he tells Helen Barre that he's certain her husband is dead.

"So I could marry again. If anybody wanted me."

Helen's eyes rest on his face. She says nothing. Just stands. The moment seems to last a long time. 

He takes Frith to see Cranmer, and on the way gives him an opportunity to escape, which Frith doesn't take.

The coronation, of which Cromwell is in charge, takes place. Chapuys tells Cromwell, "I don't understand it, nothing do I understand in this benighted country. Is Cranmer Pope now? Or is Henry Pope? Perhaps you are Pope? My men who were among the press today say they heard few voices raised for the concubine, and plenty who called upon God to bless Katherine, the rightful queen."

The success of the coronation causes Cromwell to have fantasies of ambition: "If Henry lives twenty years, Henry who is Wolsey's creation, and then leaves this child to succeed him, I can build my own prince: to the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England. Because I will not be too old.... And I shall not be like Henry Wyatt and say, now I am retiring from affairs. Because what is there, but affairs?"

He goes to see Anne, where Jane Rochford says to her, "Make up your mind to it, madam -- they will never love you, any more than they love ... Cromwell here." He talks to Mary Boleyn about her role in the king's bed as a surrogate for Anne. "She will get another child by Henry, he thinks. Anne will have it strangled in the cradle."

Sitting with Henry and some French emissaries, Cromwell and the king talk to them about the theater of Guido [Giulio?] Camillo, who is now at the court of the French king. Henry says he is sending Stephen Gardiner to France. When one of the emissaries asks who will do Gardiner's job, Henry says "Oh, Cromwell will do it. Won't you?"

Wriothesley says to Cromwell, "you have done what the cardinal could not, and much more beside." Christophe comes with an urgent message from Cranmer. He visits the archbishop and is introduced to his pregnant wife, Margarete. Cromwell is aghast: "Do you know what the king will do to you when he finds you out? The master executioner of Paris has devised a machine, with a counterweighted beam -- shall I draw it for you? -- which when a heretic is burned dips him into the fire and lifts him out again, so that the people can see the stages of his agony. Now Henry will be wanting one. Or he will get some device to tease your head off your shoulders, over a period of forty days." In the end, he brings Helen to keep Cranmer's wife company.

Frith is executed, while Cromwell is out riding with the king. "He has taught Henry to call the Pope 'the Bishop of Rome.' To laugh when his name is mentioned. If it is uncertain laughter, it is better than the former genuflection." Cromwell laughs when he hears Katherine's response to the king's demand that she give him the robes in which Mary was christened for the birth of Anne's child. "Nature wronged Katherine, he says, in not making her a man; she would have surpassed all the heroes of antiquity."

He goes to Greenwich to prepare the rooms where Anne is to give birth. "Proclamations (undated) are prepared, to go out to the people of England and the rulers of Europe, announcing the birth of a prince. Just have a little gap, he suggests, at the end of 'prince,' so if need be you can squash in ... But they look at him as if he's a traitor, so he leaves off." On August 26, 1533, Anne goes to Greenwich.

22. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 359-372

Part V, I, "Anna Regina," 1533, continued, from "In March, news comes from Calais that Lord Berners has died...." through "...He opens his palm; in it a needle, tip toward her."

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Visiting Anne, Cromwell sees Jane Seymour, who is obviously bullied by Lady Rochford and Anne. They talk about Katherine's plotting against Anne with the Plantagenet claimants to the throne.

With the king, he sees Chapuys, who persists in referring to "Dr. Cranmer" rather than "the archbishop" and when he mentions "Queen Katherine," the king asks, "Who? You mean my late brother's wife, the Princess of Wales?"

The king makes Cromwell chancellor of the exchequer, which was Lord Berners' post.

Cromwell decides that Helen Barre's husband is dead and resolves to "tell her she is free."

Watching the expressions of the courtiers in the presence of Anne, he thinks, "Arrange your face, Nicholas Carew, your ancient family face. He hears Anne saying, these are my enemies: he adds Carew to the list."

The king sends Cromwell to talk to Katherine about what is to happen after the dissolution of their marriage. He suggests that Cromwell leave Rafe Sadler with him: "I can rely on him to say what Cromwell would say." Then he weeps because his sister, Brandon's wife, is so ill. He is also bothered by having to declare Mary Tudor a bastard. And he decides that Richard Cromwell should not marry Mary Boleyn. Back home, Cromwell breaks the news to Richard, saying that Henry "needs Mary for himself" because "he is afraid to touch Anne" during her pregnancy. He proposes a marriage to Frances Murfyn, daughter of the Lord Mayor, instead.

He goes to see Katherine, who refers to Cranmer as a heretic, but calls the king only a schismatic. She notes that the archbishop will be excommunicated. But she also says to Cromwell, "I shall be sorry if I don't see you again. You are so much quicker in conversation than the dukes."

21. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 343-359

Part V, I, "Anna Regina," 1533, through "...a child in the womb is not an heir in the cradle."

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Cromwell adds a young woman, Helen Barre, with two small children to his household. She has been deserted by her husband, who beat her. He has also added Christophe, a boy who worked at the tavern where he met he three old men who represented Maître Camillo.

Henry and Anne renew their Calais vows on January 25, 1533, in a chapel at Whitehall, with "a huddle of witnesses," including William Brereton, who threatens, "Keep away from my family's affairs. Or you'll come off worse, Master Cromwell, than you can imagine." The priest is Rowland Lee, a friend of Cromwell's. As the wedding party leaves, Mary Boleyn gives him a sign that Anne is pregnant: "She had always said, I will be the first to know. It will be me who lets out her bodices." He concludes that the king probably doesn't know yet. And he tells Brereton "you have made a mistake in threatening me."

Cromwell meets with the designated Archbishop of Canterbury, who still has to be approved by the Pope, Thomas Cranmer. He tells Cranmer that Anne is pregnant, and Cranmer observes that "officially" he's not supposed to know even that Henry and Anne are married. "As I am to be judge in the matter of the king's old marriage, it would not be proper for me to hear that his new one has already taken place."

Anne summons him to tell him that she wants her sister to be married off. She thinks of Richard Cromwell, his nephew, because he's related to the Tudors.

In the Tower, he meets with John Frith, who was imprisoned by More while Cromwell was in Calais. He notes that Frith is married. "The one thing the king cannot abide -- no, many things he cannot abide -- but he hates married priests. And he hates Luther, and you have translated Luther into English." So Cromwell fears he can't help keep Frith from being burned at the stake for heresy. Frith is unrepentant about his beliefs.

In discussing the prospect of Richard's marrying Mary, Rafe observes that "all our lives and fortunes depend now on" Anne Boleyn, "and as well as being mutable she is mortal."