John Chekyng, who had custody and care of Gregory Cromwell, Christopher Wellyfed and Nicholas Sadler, had written to Cromwell complaining that he got the impression Cromwell was upset with the lack of progress on the boys’ education.[1] Given that Cromwell had been a widower only about six months and was clearly in a low state may have contributed to this demeanour. But the same day that Cromwell received the letter from Chekyng, he drafted his letter in his own hand, offering to send his niece Alice Wellyfed to the Chekyng household, to work alongside Chekyng’s wife. This letter has suffered mutilation and is only a partial record.
CROMWELL TO JOHN CHEKYNG, 5 July 1529 (LP iv no. 5757 ii)
… as heartily as I can, I commend me to you and marvel greatly that you have made no better speed for your chaplain, in whose favour I have written to Mr. Chancellor of Winchester (Stephen Gardiner), trusting that he will be good master to him. For my sake, I would be very loathed that you should miss your purpose.
Sir, I pray you be so good to me as to let me send my sister’s daughter to the Gentlewoman your wife, and that you will, on my behalf, convince her to take her and to bring her up, for her goodness, if she will be content so to do. I should reckon myself most bound both to you, and here (I shall) besides the payment for her board. I will so content your wife, as I trust she shall be well pleased. That I may know your answer herein, I heartily pray you, and thus heartily I fare you well. At London, the 5th day of July.
Gregory Cromwell in The Mirror and the Light. Playground Entertainment/Nick Briggs
Gregory Cromwell (c. 1520–1551) was probably the antithesis of his intelligent, well-travelled and fervent father. The character certainly got a glow-up of sorts in The Mirror and the Light.
Born around 1520, Gregory was the eldest of the Cromwell children, with Anne born c.1523 and Grace c.1527. The Cromwells lived in the heart of the Italian quarter of London on Fenchurch Street, before the family moved a few blocks north into Austin Friars in early 1523. It was a big household – Gregory’s grandmother Mercy Prior lived there, along with his paternal aunt and uncle Elizabeth and William Wellyfed and their three children Christopher, William, and Alice, and his maternal aunt and uncle Joan and John Williamson, and their daughter Joan. Also in the household were the Williams children Richard, Gregory and Walter with their father Morgan Williams, though they also had their own household as well until 1528. Added to that was Thomas Cromwell’s ward Ralph Sadler and his younger brother Nicholas. Gregory got to grow up in a large and wealthy family environment, and was away in Cambridge when sweating sickness struck London, killing his mother, and also away one year later when his sisters died. For Gregory, like his father, being away from home likely saved his life.
At age 7, Gregory, with his cousins Christopher Wellyfed and Nicholas Sadler, being similar in age were grouped together for their formal education, starting at home with John Palgrave, then moving to live with Prioress Vernon and being taught by John Chekying in Cambridge. Gregory’s years in education were largely unremarkable (except when Christopher Wellyfed was setting thigs on fire, costing his uncle a small fortune). By the time that Cromwell had got Anne Boleyn on the throne, it was obvious Gregory needed a different life away from formal education at Cambridge. Gregory began an annual routine of spending months away from home at a time, travelling the country and staying with friends of his father, visiting the countryside all around England and the Welsh marshes, a lifestyle similar to the king’s illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. He even stayed with the Duke of Norfolk for a summer when the duke and Cromwell were briefly attempting to get along in 1536.
One of the most significant events in Gregory’s life was his marriage to Elizabeth Seymour in 1537. Elizabeth was the sister of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, making Gregory the king’s brother-in-law by marriage. He had his own household set up and paid for by his father, and it included Gregory’s half-sister Jane Cromwell, who had been born in 1530 to an unknown mother. Jane had grown up in the large Cromwell household at Austin Friars, but from 1537 onwards, lived with Gregory, alongside his new wife Elizabeth.
In late 1538, Thomas Cromwell had to deal with Gregory being punished by the church for sexual crimes. The event wasn’t hushed up, rather handled by clergymen who had no interest in embarrassing Elizabeth, the king’s sister-in-law. Gregory and Elizabeth were living at Lewes Priory, where Cromwell had set up them up with lands and manors that were large enough to host the king on progress, and his reputation was destroyed. Pregnant Elizabeth Cromwell and her infant son Henry were brought close to Cromwell at Mortlake, while Gregory lived separately from his wife, though they reconciled before Edward Cromwell was born in early 1539. They could not return to Sussex.
Gregory spent no time at court or worked for his father. Cromwell kept his adoptive sons Ralph Sadler and Richard Cromwell close, yet Gregory had no part in his father’s business. The only role Gregory had was to attend Queen Jane Seymour’s funeral, ride ahead of Cromwell’s mustered troops in 1539, and later welcome Queen Anna of Cleves to England, but these roles were also minor. When Cromwell was arrested in 1540, Gregory and Elizabeth Cromwell were at Leeds Castle, where Cromwell had set up a new life for them in 1539, where baby Thomas Cromwell was born in 1540.
King Henry was not in the habit of punishing the families of traitors (the Pole family excluded obviously). Gregory’s marriage to Elizabeth secured his social standing and protected him when his father fell from grace. Elizabeth wrote to her former brother-in-law the king, denouncing Thomas Cromwell after his downfall, and she and Gregory were allowed Launde Abbey, bought by Thomas Cromwell several years earlier. Gregory was also made 1st Baron Cromwell, making him appear worthy of the position of Prince Edward’s uncle, as he could not inherit any of his father’s titles or money.
Gregory and Elizabeth stayed quietly at Launde, having two more children, Katherine in 1541, and Frances in 1542. Gregory diligently attended parliament each year but achieved nothing, though did amass a large amount of lands, enough to make a tidy living. If anything, Gregory was one of those peers Cromwell never liked; those who were rewarded for their status rather than their effort. Gregory was also given permission to not fight in France when hostilities broke out, claiming his health was poor. Gregory has no political or religious beliefs or affiliations that linked to any cause.
In the late 1540s, Gregory’s fortunes continued to improve under the reign of Edward VI, who was influenced by Protestant reformers. He maintained his position as a member of the gentry, though he did not seek high office. Gregory was made a Knight of the Bath in 1547 by his nephew King Edward, but he spent no time at court. But the disease that claimed his mother and sisters, sweating sickness, remerged in 1551, killing Gregory at age thirty, and also his son Edward, not yet a teenager.
Elizabeth quickly remarried, and young Henry Cromwell married his stepsister Mary Paulet, a granddaughter of one of the Grey sisters Cromwell once served, and produced a line of Irish Cromwells who lived with mixed success. Thomas Cromwell the younger went into English politics with Ralph Sadler and a friend, Seymour servant William Cecil, and served Queen Elizabeth with the level of skill, respect and intelligence shown by his grandfather. Thomas became a parliamentary historian, creating papers still useful in studying the Elizabethan era today. Of the Cromwellian grand-daughters, Katherine married John Strode of Devon and had six children. Frances Cromwell married a cousin of her sister’s husband, Robert Strode, but she sadly died after giving birth to her son, aged only 20.
After what happened in the mighty rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, it is not surprising his sons and grandchildren were not so prepared to stick out their neck.
Welcome to a new series about the fact and fiction of the newest series of Wolf Hall, The Mirror and the Light. Here is the real story of the marriage of Elizabeth Seymour and Gregory Cromwell.
By now you will have seen (as in the picture above) of the marriage of of Queen Jane’s sister Elizabeth Seymour to Gregory Cromwell. In the show, the character’s name is Bess Oughtred, and given the number of Elizabeths in the period, giving her a common nickname is helpful if you don’t know one Elizabeth from another.
Elizabeth Seymour had a hard early life. The eighth of the ten Seymour children, Elizabeth was married at just 12 years of age to Sir Anthony Ughtred, then aged 52. Why her father John Seymour thought this a good idea remains a mystery. By 1530, John and Margery Seymour had lost two of their children to illness, but their three surviving sons, Edward, Thomas and Henry, had been sent to court. The younger two were put in backroom middling roles, while Edward Seymour was already circling the higher privy chambers as an attendant. But Edward’s wife Catherine had given him two sons whose parentage was dubious to say the least, so marriage prospects may have been a concern for the unmarried Seymour girls. Jane Seymour was already at court too, a lady for Queen Katharine of Aragon. Elizabeth and Dorothy Seymour were only children in 1530. Dorothy Seymour was married off at 13 in 1533, fortunately to someone only a few years older than herself, and began a state of regular pregnancy. Jane Seymour remained unmarried at court. Middle sister Elizabeth was the most unlucky of all.
The marriage of Elizabeth Seymour and Sir Anthony Ughtred surely raised eyebrows, given the bride was 40 years her husband’s junior. Even King Henry wasn’t that lecherous. Anthony Ughtred had a similar military background to Elizabeth’s father, so they were likely friends or at least court acquaintances of similar rank. After losing his first wife without children, Anthony Ughtred acquired Elizabeth Seymour, and she was styled as Lady Ughtred, and joined Anne Boleyn’s court around the same time Jane Seymour was transferred there in 1533. In late 1533, aged 14, Elizabeth gave birth to her son, Henry Ughtred (given the two-year gap between marriage and pregnancy, Ughtred may have not touched his child bride for a couple of years. We can only hope). Anthony Ughtred was the Captain and Governor of Jersey, and Elizabeth and baby Henry lived with him at Mont Orgueil Castle in Jersey, instead of returning to the royal court.
By early 1534, Elizabeth was already pregnant again, but illness came to Jersey, and Sir Anthony Ughtred died in October 1534, aged approximately 56. Elizabeth left her baby son Henry in Jersey and returned to mainland England to serve at court until she needed to retire to give birth to Margery in early 1535, at one of her late husband’s estates in Hexby, Yorkshire, 150 miles north of London. Her son Henry was moved north, and Elizabeth went back to court, leaving the children as head of the household.
Given that by age 16, Elizabeth was a widow with two children, and her sister Jane had been at the royal court without such misery, whether they were close can’t really be measured. But both sisters had to endure the fall of Anne Boleyn, and the rise of their own family, after their father died in late 1535 (his death is mislabelled 1536), and Jane Seymour caught the king’s eye. Elizabeth became one of her sister’s ladies at court, but life was not suddenly simple. In 1537, Elizabeth was 19, had two children to feed, and no money of her own. Hexby Manor, her late husband’s Yorkshire estate, was no glorious money-maker. No official grant of the lands had passed the estate from father to son after Anthony Ughtred’s death. Elizabeth needed to make a bold move. She was young, rumoured beautiful, and the pregnant queen’s sister, but that wasn’t enough to raise children.
Portrait probably of Elizabeth Seymour, c1542 by Hans Holbein
Lady Elizabeth Ughtred sent a letter from York on 18 March 1537 to Lord Cromwell. She explained that her husband had left her with next to nothing, leaving her as a ‘poor woman alone’ and begged to be granted an abbey once it was dissolved, somewhere to live with her children. It’s wild to think that despite being the queen’s sister, Elizabeth had nothing. Given that her late husband had been in service to King Henry and Cromwell, she wrote:
‘I am the bolder to sue herein, and will sue to no other. When I was last at Court you promised me your favour. In Master Ughtred’s days I was in a poor house of my own, but since then I have been driven to be a sojourner, for my living is not sufficient to entertain my friends.’
Elizabeth was resorting to moving between friends’ homes with her children to keep them alive. It is not surprising Cromwell promised to help her at court, he always helped widows and orphans, and paying favour to the queen’s sister would be an obvious courtesy at court. Cromwell likely went to speak with her brother Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp. The pair regularly gambled together and Cromwell had lost 45l (£19,000 today) to him just weeks before the letter arrived. Elizabeth soon returned to the London area, likely without her children. Baby Margery goes completely unmentioned in records, except for a note about her marriage up in Yorkshire. Henry Ughtred doesn’t feature anywhere until the 1560s either, so he was likely also north in Yorkshire.
A deal was struck between Thomas Cromwell and Edward Seymour, that Elizabeth would marry Gregory Cromwell, who was approximately 17 at the time. By 1 June, preparations for the wedding were underway as Cromwell ordered a wedding cape and dagger for his son, worth £4,000 today. There was no mistaking who the groom would be at the wedding. Cromwell held a glorious party at Mortlake Manor, the grand castle-like on the Thames usually reserved for the Archbishop of Canterbury (confiscated from Cranmer in 1536 for supporting Anne Boleyn, and given to Cromwell as a gift), Mortlake was to be Gregory and Elizabeth’s home for the time being, lavish, fully staffed, great location, and safe from passing illnesses. Cromwell order a porpoise for the dinner, minstrels to entertain, new uniforms for the staff, and various costs for both Lady Elizabeth and her brother, Sir Edward Seymour, who brought along artichokes, and even Princess Mary sent a gift of quinces. The wine alone at Mortlake for this one party would cost £170,000 today. It may have even been the wedding itself, given Mortlake had a chapel, though the news of the marriage wasn’t made public until 3 August, so that is the generally accepted date of the occasion.
If this June 1537 event was only an engagement party to seal the betrothal, Elizabeth must have felt very pleased with her position, as by the 3 August date, she was already pregnant. Henry Cromwell was born in March 1538, likely at Cromwell’s home Great Place in Stepney, and Princess Mary was his godmother. Cromwell held enormous parties at Hampton Court though February and March 1538 with the king, spent the equivalent of £20,000 today to make sure Elizabeth gave birth in comfort, for her son was the first cousin of baby Prince Edward. Cromwell spent twice as much on outfits, choreographers, horses and and performers at Hampton Court to celebrate in style with the king.
Cromwell soon took on Lewes Priory in Sussex to have it rebuilt as a manor home for his son and daughter-in-law, who got pregnant again almost immediately after giving birth. But by mid-June 1538, Gregory Cromwell was sent to be punished by Bishop Richard Sampson of nearby Chichester for a sexual crime. The Bishop wrote to Richard Cromwell about Gregory’s punishment and told him:
‘the young man has been with me this morning and scornfully refused this penance. Wherefore, I advertise you of it, praying you to weigh it as a matter that touches much the honesty of your friend. For surely if there be any business for it, I will advertise the King’s Majesty of the whole. And I doubt not but when my Lord Privy Seal shall hear the truth, he will assist me in it’.
Sampson was amid having his Chichester cathedral dissolved and its relics stripped, including the shrine of St Richard. Given Sampson needed to give out punishment to Gregory Cromwell, and Richard knew of the situation by the time this letter was written, suggests only two crimes; heresy or sexual assault. Eighteen-year-old Gregory had been
left to enjoy the high life since childhood, given everything without having to earn it, so it is not reasonable to think he may have made an off-hand comment that could have been insulting or even sound heretical to the Catholic bishop. But Gregory was no scholar, no politician like his father, and never showed any interest in religion. Also, that a heretical comment could receive a small punishment but provoke his father in such a wild manner is at odds with reality, leaving only sexual crimes. The church tended to turn a blind eye to (men’s) adultery, equally seduction or coercion without consent. Whatever Gregory did, Sampson said it would affect Gregory’s ‘honesty’, which in turn would harm the ‘reputation’ of Elizabeth, sister to late Queen Jane. Whatever sexual assault Gregory committed (and it cannot have been against Elizabeth), it was enough to potentially make a scandal of the Cromwell family. Given that sexual crimes are rarely punished even today, particularly by the Catholic church, Gregory must have done something especially heinous.
Cromwell had nurtured his only son, given him the world, gained him a noble bride, and had just finished spending countless thousands on Lewes Priory. Suddenly, the young Cromwell household needed to be broken up, Gregory whisked out of Sussex entirely. Sir John Gage nearby offered to lease the Lewes lands so Cromwell could get out at once, and now Cromwell was the largest landowner in Kent, he had somewhere to hide his useless son. Gregory was shipped up to Mortlake Manor, probably at Edward’s Seymour’s nearby home, and a letter from Elizabeth Cromwell arrived, stating she would stay half a mile from Mortlake Manor. Elizabeth wrote, ‘this letter from you is more pleasure to me than any earthly good, for my trust is now only in you … your humble daughter-in-law’. Cromwell needed to pay for Gregory at Mortlake for Christmas and pay servants to attend Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant while she cared for ten-month-old Henry.
The young couple had reconciled by May 1539 when Edward Cromwell was born at their new home at Leeds Castle, and Thomas Cromwell was born around May 1540, Katherine Cromwell a year later, and then Frances Cromwell in 1542, named after Richard Cromwell’s wife who had recently passed away.
So while The Mirror and Light shows Bess Oughtred looking to marry a man close to the king, it was probably lucky she didn’t, though the early years as Lady Cromwell were not happy ones either. She continued to sign her name Elizabeth Ughtred until 1540 when Gregory was made a baron, but she was safe from her brother-in-law King Henry after writing him a groveling letter, disavowing her father-in-law when he was executed. When Gregory Cromwell died in 1551, Elizabeth married Sir William Paulet, Earl of Wiltshire, and after her death in 1568, Her eldest son, Henry Ughtred, married his stepsister Elizabeth Paulet.
The eldest son of the couple , Henry Cromwell, carried on the family name as part of a string of quiet Cromwell MPs who eventually gained power in Ireland. Edward Cromwell died of illness around the same time his father Gregory died. The third son of Gregory and Elizabeth Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell, went on to be an archivist in parliament and created the first ever English-Italian dictionary, continuing his grandfather’s love of the country and language, and remained close to Ralph Sadler, while Katherine and Frances Cromwell married politicians and lived quiet lives. None of these children are ancestors of genocidal maniac Oliver Cromwell; he was the great-great-grandson of their cousin, Richard Cromwell.
All sources come from The Private Life of Thomas Cromwell. My publisher might come for you if you plagiarise.
CAROLINE ANGUS 