Comments by "RenShiWu" (@renshiwu305) on "Rethinking Thomas Cromwell" video.

  1. The two worst periods of (pre-COVID) English tyranny involved a Cromwell: the Supremacy and the Protectorate. I've read Hillary Mantel's books of the Cromwelliad - each - a handful of times. Obviously, I like them. However, I think Mantel's need to diminish Thomas More is a bit too on the nose. She presents Cromwell as having educated his daughters, as Thomas More famously did. There is no reason to believe that Cromwell did so. Whereas More joked to the headsman as he ascended the scaffold, Cromwell, in the Tower, wrote some groveling and pathetic letters to King Henry; declaring himself a slave, and asserting that he would do all he could to aggrandize and empower the king. Indeed, Cromwell wrote that he would want the king to live forever. Mantel leaves out much of the detail of these two episodes of the men's deaths. Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell were both servants of the Crown, and they each owed their prominence and wealth to royal favor. However, they each had abilities, in the law, both, or in the fields of academia (More) or commerce (Cromwell) that gave them a measure of independence from the king. They were not nobles who owed the entirety of their success to royal patronage. I think More was superior to Cromwell, though, because he viewed government power with trepidation. Although More defended the Catholic Church to a degree that modern sensibilities would view as authoritarian, he was not uncritical in his observations of the Church's role and behavior. Cromwell was likewise forceful in imposing the - novel, inorganic - Church of England. The difference is that More was hesitant to allow the king to assume more authority for himself (religious authority, certainly, but also civil) while Cromwell wasn't. Cromwell entirely became the king's creature, while More did not.
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