Welcome to part 2 on The Mirror and the Light, checking out the details behind some of the major plot points in Wolf Hall’s second installment. Today is Jane Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell surviving daughter. In the book trilogy and the tv series, Thomas Cromwell is confronted with Janneke, an adult daughter born in Antwerp, to a woman Cromwell once loved and left behind to return to England. But the truth about the real Jane Cromwell is significantly different.
Cromwell had made (at least) one slip-up in his otherwise reserved, virtuous, and quiet private life, as his daughter Jane was born in late 1530. Some scholars have suggested Jane was born before Gregory, a way of suggesting Cromwell never cheated on his wife, but this is unlikely. Cromwell did not cheat on his wife, at least, no suggestion ever came of this, and Jane was likely conceived after Elizabeth Cromwell’s death in October 1528.
But in 1530, Mistress Jane was born into a household of a man about to be propelled into a position of power no commoner, or layman, could ever expect to achieve in England. An illegitimate child was usually paid for and squirrelled away, but Cromwell took in his daughter, suggesting she was a soothing presence after years of distress, as Anne and Grace Cromwell had died in September 1529. Another other theory for Jane’s parentage is that she was the illegitimate daughter of twenty-year-old Richard Cromwell, and she was taken into the Cromwell household, as Richard had no household of his own. But Jane believed herself Thomas Cromwell’s daughter (and her judgemental father-in-law later believed the same). Had Jane been a daughter of a Cromwell relative, she would have been recorded as such, but perhaps the lack of detail on her birth was beneficial for all involved.
Mistress Jane Cromwell took her father’s surname, suggesting her mother never featured in her life, or because her mother wanted the girl to bear her father’s name as proof. In Cromwell’s will appears a most curious name; an Elizabeth Gregory listed as ‘sometime my servant’. Elizabeth’s role is undefined, is not connected to any family member or other servant. She bore the first name of Cromwell’s wife, and her surname is the name of Cromwell’s son, which, if a coincidence, is remarkable. Elizabeth was listed at the bottom of the list of relatives given something in the will, just above the list of friends and servants. Elizabeth Gregory’s inheritance higher was than all other Austin Friars servants, with 20l (£about 10,000) and a household’s worth of items. Given that Cromwell’s illegitimate daughter Jane was born around 1530, Elizabeth Gregory is perhaps Jane’s mother, who officially remains unknown to this day. Sadly, Elizabeth Gregory’s entire paragraph is crossed out, meaning she died after the 1529 will but before the new draft was created in 1532.
Jane lived in the Cromwell household during her early life, most likely in the care of Joan and John Williamson, who ran Austin Friars for their brother-in-law. When Gregory Cromwell married Elizabeth Seymour in 1537, Jane was approximately seven, old enough to leave home and start life in a new household, but stayed with Ralph and Ellen Sadler for a time. Ralph and Ellen Sadler needed all the help they could get. By 1539, they had three sons, Thomas, Edward and Henry, and a newborn daughter, Anne, all barely surviving a measles outbreak in Hackney. Jane left with Gregory in May 1539, moving to Leeds Castle when Gregory and Elizabeth reconciled in time for the birth of their second son, Edward. Gregory and Elizabeth Seymour has been estranged for a time in 1538 after the birth of their son Henry after Gregory’s punishment for sexual crimes. Cromwell sent his daughter to Leeds with a new wardrobe worth 12l 14s 6d (almost £5,500 today), and soon after, Prioress Vernon, who had helped care for Gregory when he was still very young, wrote to Cromwell saying, ‘I hear there is a little gentlewoman with Master Sadler which I would very fain have the governance and bringing up, as it were to my comfort now in mine age.’ Having Prioress Vernon as a carer likely would have been the same care Anne and Grace Cromwell would have received had they survived their illnesses.
Jane Cromwell’s life after her father’s death remained quiet, not showing up in records until her marriage. She could stayed in the multiple homes of Gregory and Elizabeth, or with the Sadlers throughout the 1540s. Jane Cromwell married William Hough, son of Richard Hough, a gentleman from Cheshire, and a lacklustre servant to Cromwell. Richard Hough was most upset his son had married the bastard child of Cromwell without his knowledge or blessing, and while Jane is listed as the ‘base daughter of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex,’ Hough tried to deny any association with Cromwell, which was impossible given that he had worked for Cromwell for years. William Hough had been to Oxford University, and studied under Nicholas Sander, who is now known as the man who tried his very best to blacken the name of any reformer, including all sorts of extra-fingered lies about Anne Boleyn. William Hough became a Catholic at Oxford, lived in Oxfordshire with his wife Jane, who also became a staunch Catholic, putting her at odds with the Cromwell/Sadler families.
William and Jane had a daughter, Alice in 1559. As late as 1574, Richard Hough was still mad at his son and daughter-in-law and their Catholic beliefs under Queen Elizabeth. In September 1578, Jane and William Hough, who had been threatened with excommunication from the church, were given absolution by the Archbishop of York in Neston, Chester, stating ‘It is ordered and decreed that the said Mr William Hough and his wife shall resort, once a month, to Mr Goodman or Mr Lane, preachers of the word for the better resolution in matters of religion (wherewith they are entangled), and if they be not, before Easter next, resolved in conscience by the travail, persuasion, and conference to be abided, such further order as shall be thought good to the Lord Archbishop of York and his associates.’ People who refused the Church of England and continued to be Catholic could be excommunicated, and suffer punishment from simple fines through to the death penalty under Queen Elizabeth, though Jane and William clearly saw no issue with flouting the law.
Jane died on 3 November 1580, and was buried at Neston, just months after being listed in the Hough family tree, as the uncontested daughter of Thomas Cromwell, the only document that confirms Jane’s parentage. William Hough died in 1585 after being called to be punished for his Catholic beliefs multiple times after Jane died, with his will showing that he and Jane had long left their Catholic Oxfordshire home to live permanently in Cheshire ten years earlier, living at Thorton Hough manor.
Their sole child Alice Hough was the heiress to Thorton manor and Leighton, with extensive lands and fisheries in 11 townships. Her date of birth was listed as 1550, rather than 1559 in the will. Alice married William Whitmore in 1585 and they soon had ten children – three sons, William (surviving son and heir), Richard, John (died young), and seven daughters, Jane, Elizabeth (died young), Christen, Katherine (died young), Eleanor (died young), Katherine, and Mary (died young).
Alice’s death is not recorded, though was in approximately 1600, and her husband died in 1620. Alice, like her mother Jane Cromwell, was a recusant, refusing the Church of England and continued to be Catholic despite the laws of Elizabethan England until her death. Ironic for the daughter of the man who created the English church in the first place.
All sources come from The Private Life of Thomas Cromwell. My publisher might come for you if you plagiarise.
Ahead of the release of 
Ahead of the release of 
Thomas Stuckeley
Henry Lee 
CAROLINE ANGUS 