See Thomas Cromwell’s Palatial London Estate | Smart News

[ad_1]

In the mid-1530s, at the height of his political career, Thomas Cromwell – the chief minister of Henry VIII, the Tudor King, known for his many wives and who initiated the English Reformation – began building a new house in London in Austin Friars. According to BBC News, the 58-room mansion is one of the “largest and most splendid private residences in the city”. entertains powerful visitors.

Cromwell’s estate burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. But thanks to new archive research, history buffs (and fans of Hilary Mantel’s award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, which offers a more personable portrayal of the controversial Tudor statesman) can now imagine what the property may have looked like at the height of its owner’s power.

As reported by BBC News, Nick Holder, historian and research fellow at English Heritage and the University of Exeter, has searched letters, surveys, title deeds and other records in order to identify both the mansion and the more humble house where Cromwell lived before it was founded reconstruct. The results, including an artistic impression of the estate by illustrator Peter Urmston, will be published in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association.

“These two houses were the home of this great man, they were the places where he lived with his wife and two daughters, where his son grew up. It was also the place he returned to at night after meeting Henry VIII. “Nobody has looked at these two houses in such detail and compared all the evidence available. This is about as close as you will walk down these 16th century corridors. “

Hans Holbein’s 1532-34 portrait by Thomas Cromwell

(Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Known for his role in the overthrow of Anne Boleyn and his own dramatic fall just four years after the execution of the Tudor Queen, Cromwell was arguably Henry’s “most loyal servant”. As historian Tracy Borman wrote for History Extra in 2014, he served as the king’s “ruthless fixer” and led the English Reformation on behalf of Henry, overseeing the dissolution of the monasteries and the transition of the kingdom to Protestantism. Interestingly, the new research suggests that Cromwell’s Protestant views were slowly evolving, as a 1520s inventory of his home identifies him as “more of a traditional English Catholic” than a “religious radical,” Holder said in the statement.

“He has various religious paintings on the wall, he has his own holy relic that is very much associated with traditional Catholics, not the new evangelicals, and he even has a home altar,” adds Holder. “In the 1520s he seems much more of a conventional, early Tudor Catholic gentleman.”

Work on Cromwell’s second home began in July 1535 when the Minister was renting a comparatively modest 14-room townhouse for about £ 4 a year. He spared no expense in building the property: he spent at least £ 1,600 (around $ 1.9 million today) on the project, including around £ 550 on land purchases, according to Grace Hammond of the Yorkshire Post.

The mansion, which was probably inspired by Italian Renaissance architecture, featured heated halls with tapestries, specialized drawing rooms, a personal armory stocked with enough weapons to equip a small army, a large garden (possibly with a tennis court and a bowling alley) and staff quarters. The guests slept on gold, damask and velvet sheets.

Holder tells CNN’s Jeevan Ravindran that Cromwell, who was born the son of a blacksmith but experienced a meteoric rise to fame primarily because of his cleverness and skill, had high hopes for the new property: impressive gates and bay windows that somehow overlooked protrude from the street. “

An 1887 map depicting Cromwell's home of the Austin Friars
An 1887 map depicting Cromwell’s home of the Austin Friars

(Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Construction on the estate was delayed, especially in October 1536 when the uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace took place in the northern counties of England. According to the statement, all 80 workers on the site were dispatched to quell the revolt that saw tens of thousands unsuccessfully rebel against Cromwell’s policies of the Reformation. The work was not completed until 1539, so that the statesman “hardly” [any] Time to enjoy the finished house before it goes down ”in the summer of 1540, as Holder writes in his study.

In another History Extra article, Tracy Borman argues that Cromwell’s disfavor was caused in part by the Pilgrimage of Grace, which shattered Henry’s faith in his chief adviser and his radical reforms. Although Cromwell tried to regain the king’s grace by arranging his marriage to the Protestant Anne of Cleves, Henry quickly became dissatisfied with his new bride; About six months after the couple married in January 1540, the king notoriously had the marriage annulled – and Cromwell arrested for high treason.

Exactly 481 years ago, on July 28, 1540, the disgraced minister was beheaded in the Tower of London. In the words of a contemporary chronicler, Cromwell suffered three ax blows from a “ragged and butchery” executioner. The Crown took control of Cromwell’s property and sold his popular Austin Friars estate to the Drapers’ Company in 1543.

For his part, Henry benefited from Cromwell’s foresight long after his death.

After the mansion was sold, the king “sent a note to the Drapers’ Company requesting that Thomas Cromwell’s prized plum tree be shipped from the garden,” Holder told CNN. “After the seizure of armories, tapestries, and quality beds, it’s almost as if Henry suddenly remembered a few months later, ‘Oh, there are some decent fruit trees. I could get my hands on them. ‘”

[ad_2]