A Tale of Two Toms: When Wolf Hall became alternative history

Judging from the comments of the fandom of Wolf Hall (and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies,) about 70% of its readers believe the book portrays true events. They perceive Thomas Cromwell as a good person who struggled to avenge his friends and who maintained a perpetual war against his wicked queen and the infamous Thomas More. Four chapters of a six-episode TV adaptation have been devoted to the Cromwell-More feud, thus summarizing Mr. Secretary’s life into a tale of Good Tom vs Bad Tom. Was all that libelous mud-slinging necessary to upgrade the villain? This goes beyond literary license; Dame Hilary Mantel has written alternative history, but has failed to advertise it as such.

Granted, Anne Boleyn fought against the Lord Chancellor, and Thomas More became a big pain in King Harry’s fat arse.  Cromwell had to “fix” them, but until the very end, there was no personal animosity there. And yet “Wolf Hall”—and the books that inspire the series— depict Anne and More to be scum, deserving to be boiled alive like crabs. We are meant to clap when they finally get their comeuppance. “The Tudors,” while not turning a blind eye to Anne and Thomas More’s flaws and dark records, still managed to show us their virtues, and their humanity. In the book Wolf Hall, Anne lacks qualities and More’s achievements are transferred to Cromwell!

A Different TomKat

In the series, when Cromwell’s wife mentions that Queen Catherine is still sewing shirts for her unfaithful husband, Good Tom mutters that if he were the queen he would leave the needle stuck on the cloth. Later, there is a scene where Cromwell tells Henry he opposes the king’s divorce. This is all very nice, but there is no historical evidence that Cromwell gave two hoots about Catherine. He was instrumental in the Spanish queen’s downfall and degradation. He did everything in his power to push Catherine and her daughter away from the throne, the court and Henry’s good will. I can admire and respect Dame Hilary’s attempts to portray Cromwell as somewhat sympathetic to Catherine and Mary’s plight, but I abhor that in doing so, she pulls off feathers from More’s tail to pin them on her protagonist’s backside.

There is no mention in” Wolf Hall” of Saint Thomas’ devotion to Catherine of Aragon. Among the charges against him, in real life, was keeping contact with her and favoring an imperial invasion of England. By the time of Bad Tom’s arrest, Queen Catherine was kept incommunicado, not even allowed to see her only child. ‘But it could be possible that More did correspond secretly with her.

Part of More’s refusal to accept the Oath of Supremacy was to protect Catherine and to uphold the rights of her only daughter to the throne. Although I would not go as far as the “TomKat” shipping and think there was a secret romance between the mistreated Catherine and her most loyal supporter, Saint Thomas felt great sympathy towards a woman he recognized as his only queen. He had seen Catherine when she arrived in England, still an adolescent, to marry the Prince of Wales. In his writings, he praises her beauty and charm. Like most Britons of his day, he grew to admire a sovereign that was not only charitable to the people, but a vigorous regent as well.

Catherine in her adolescence

 By legitimizing Henry’s new marriage to Anne Boleyn, both The Oath of Supremacy and The Act of the Succession nullified the king’s previous union. We must not see this as a modern divorce, its repercussions were much too weightier. The acts were a declaration of Catherine’s mendacity and whorish ways. To marry Henry, she had falsely affirmed to be a virgin, she had indulged in carnal relationships with a man who was not her husband, she had given birth to a bastard daughter. Thomas More could not abide by such injustice so he refused to accept that Catherine’s marriage to Henry had been annulled.

Catherine pleading to Henry 

The Family Men

Cromwell kitty-lover

In real life, the two Toms shared much in common, but Wolf Hall goes through pains to show their circumstances are different. They were both self-made men, shrewd lawyers, polyglots, believers in the education of women, doting fathers, animal-lovers and worried about the corruption of the Catholic Church. All these traits were stressed by Mantel in her conception of Good Tom, but shadowed or adulterated for the fabrication of Bad Tom.

More, bunny-lover

I’m fond of Anton “Qyburn” Lesser, but he was Thomas More’s antithesis, even in looks. Most people think of St. Thomas as the likeness Holbein has given us and that I have seen from close range at The Frick Collection. There is another portrait of More in his youth. Even by today’s standards, he was an attractive man.

By the time, Holbein got hold of More, the sitter was in his fifties, had acquired some facial lines, and put on weight, but you can still see a strong face, intelligent gaze, split chin, long sharp nose, and large dark eyes. This is a far cry from Lesser’s wrinkled face, unkempt appearance, and stringy hair. Lesser plays the saint as cackling old woman, a pedantic bigot, a hypocritical shyster who uses his craft to acquire power and honors and his position to harm others just out of blind fanaticism and sadistic glee. His odious personality affects even his family life.

In “Wolf Hall”, there is a description of a dinner Cromwell shares with the Mores that is an essay in chaos. Even More’s love for animals is used against him. We are subject to a spectacle of bad food, poor company, a buffoon spewing nonsense, pets wandering over the table upsetting the diners, and the drunk hostess embarrassing Cromwell with questions about his sexual life. This revel contradicts the image of Thomas More that we get from his contemporary’s accounts, his own writings and personal correspondence.

It pains me that Cromwell is shown as such an affable man whose house is open to everyone and who cultivates plenty of friends. It pains me more when “Wolf Half” watchers comment that, obviously, Thomas More was a disagreeable man who had no friends. It’s a matter of reading Erasmus’ words describing whom he called “sweetest Thomas”:  "He seems born and framed for friendship,” writes the Dutch philosopher, “and is a most faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all.” Not only did More enjoy the friendship of important people in the Continent, his home in England was lionized by all classes. In fact, King Henry had an unsavory habit of dropping by Beaufort House unannounced (with his entourage in tow) and leave after raiding the Mores’ pantry.

Thomas More reproved the evils of his church but he wished reform to come from within the institution. His distance from Wolsey was motivated by his disapproval of the cardinal’s lax morals not out of opportunism as Cromwell stated in Wolf Hall. At some point in his life, Sir Thomas was attracted to the idea of an English Bible because it would come in handy for his dearest ambition, the education of women. Much has been written of Thomas More’s efforts to educate his brilliant daughter Meg, but they did not stop there.

Aside for tutoring Margaret More Roper, who was one of the brightest women of her age, her father also promoted the learning of languages and other disciplines among his other daughters, Elizabeth and Cicely More; his stepdaughter Alice Middleton, his ward Anne Cresacre who would become his daughter- in-law, and Meg Giggs Clemens, Margaret’s milk sister. He was very close to all of them, particularly to both Megs. Margaret Clemens was the only relative permitted to accompany Saint Thomas to his execution, and she was the one to whom his headless body was given to bury. Of course, none of these intimate details were included in that disastrous depiction of Bad Tom in Wolf Hall.

The "Megs"according to Holbein

On the other hand, although Cromwell is devastated by the death of his legitimate daughters, his paternal love does not reach, Jane, his illegitimate child. While aware of her existence, Mantel refuses to make Jane part of her tale. Would it be because Cromwell’s bastard was a staunch Roman Catholic?

The Heretic Chaser

Michael Hirst was courageous in depicting St. Thomas More as persecuting heretics, but he made a mistake in “The Tudors” when he places Saint Thomas at the burning of Simon Fish. There is no record of the Lord Chancellor attending any execution and Simon Fish died in jail, victim of the bubonic plague. Still there is historical evidence, written accounts by More himself, where he rejoices at the execution of heretics.

Shocking as such accounts are, we must place them in historical context. Prosecution and execution of heretics was state policy. More worked within the perimeters of his country’s legal system. Since 1401, English law considered heresy the worst form of sedition, one punishable by death at the stake.  We cringe at the idea of humans roasted, but it was a time of horrible methods of execution. Heretics and adulteresses were burned, poisoners were boiled alive, and traitors were hanged, drawn and quartered (the latter consisting of castration and removal of bowels and hearts while victims were still conscious.)

Six people were burned under Thomas More’s watch.  Thomas Hitton, Thomas Bilney, Thomas Benet, James Bainham, Richard Baysfield and John Tewksbury. More’s personal involvement in the burning of the last three is a proven fact. He did approve the burning of Hitton, England’s first Reformist martyr, but wrote of Bilney that he was “good, faithful, and virtuously.” More was not beneath recognizing decency in those he sought to repress.

Let us concentrate on More’s main victims:  Tewksbury, Baysfield and Master Bainham, who does figure prominently in “Wolf Hall.” The three men had recanted, fled to the Continent, and then returned to England to continue their public preaching.  To Saint Thomas they represented the worst sort of heretics, those who faked repentance just to go on repeating their offences. They had been shown mercy once and had mocked it. As he said of Baysfield: “He is a dog that returns to his own vomit!”

The burning of Richard Baysfield

Why was Thomas More so vehemently opposed to heresy? Until recently (and not only in Christianity) heresy was considered to imperil the soul of those who upheld it. But, also in the Renaissance, the Protestant heresy could undermine the strength of a nation. As a pacifist, More feared that a religious schism would divide English society and lead to civil war as it happened in the German States and France.

More believed that it was right to extirpate heretic ideas and to put to death those who persisted in preaching them, but he also believed in atonement. While waiting for his trial, he composed A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, praising the relief of penance to avoid Hell. Of the forty heretics arrested during his period as Lord Chancellor, only six went to the fire and three of them had being absolved after recanting.  What about the other 34? Some died, like Simon Fish; John Frith and Thomas Harding went to the stake after More's resignation;  others publicly repented and never relapsed again.

It says a lot about More’s eloquence and convincing powers that so many recanted (even if it was done half-heartedly). And yet there were those like William Roper, Thomas More’s own son-in-law, who sincerely reverted his apostasy, thanks to his beloved father-in-law’s intervention. There is a very odd scene in “Wolf Hall.”  After relapsing into heresy, James Bainham (that Mantel turns into Cromwell’s lawyer and friend) has been rearrested. Good Tom goes to Bad Tom and begs him to intervene by talking to Bainham into recanting again. For the first time, in the story, Cromwell grants More some respect. He praises his convincing powers. We don’t know if More talked to Bainham or refused to do so. All we know is that Bainham was burned and Cromwell held More responsible. This is evident in the most annoying monologue in the series, that unique occasion when Rylance casts aside Cromwell’s poker face and vents out his rightful wrath.

Cromwell and Bainham

Angered by More’s “I do nobody harm” assertion, Cromwell labels him a hypocrite.  “What about Bilney? What about Bainham?” Good Tom roars.  He accuses Bad Tom of racking his barrister so severely he had to be dragged to the scaffold. There seems to be some sequential problems here. According to the series’ chronology, after being tortured (allegedly in More’s home), Bainham recanted and went home. A month later, while attending mass and in full health, he rose and began reading Tyndale’s Bible out loud. He couldn’t have been tortured again, since the procedure for relapsed heretics was to execute them almost immediately. So why accuse More of racking him furtherly?  Simon Bilney did recant after threat of torture, but was never mistreated, His questioning and execution took place in Norwich and was conducted by Bishop Nix. More had little to do with that case.

Dame Hilary Mantel has claimed that a serious historical fiction author should always rely on two different versions of a historical event, yet to fabricate More’s Black Legend she’s trusted only one source:  John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. It is a known fact that Foxe’s report was full of inexactitudes. The author himself recognized that many of his chronicles were based on word of mouth. The mouth in this case belonged to a scoundrel priest named George Constantine who sold protestant books in what we may call today, black market. More apprehended him and kept him prisoner in his gatehouse.

Constantine, who despite his many fibs never accused his jailor of hurting him, spilled the beans on all those he knew to be preaching the New Faith. He denounced Tewksbury, Bayfield and Bainham. Constantine managed to escape from More’s home eliciting from the saint some jocose comments. More said that that obviously, the prisoner had been well fed and treated to have enough energy to break free from the stocks and jump over the garden’s wall.

The fugitive went to the Continent and returned to England after More’s death. He got a job with wretched Henry Norris (one of  Anne Boleyn's alleged lovers). By Elizabeth’s reign, the former priest had become a Catholic denouncer and eventually died on his own bed. In his continental days, Constantine circulated rumors that Thomas More had a tree in his garden where he tied and flogged prisoners. He claimed to have seen Tewksbury and others whipped and tortured. Strange since Constantine had already escaped by the time other prisoners arrived. Bainham and Tewksbury were racked, but this was done at The Tower, and More was not present. Nevertheless, Mantel has her readers believe that Bad Tom had a veritable torture chamber built in his cellar, like we, modern people, have gyms. Let’s grant her that she is good at slandering.

In More’s days, his enemies did spread the story of the flogging tree. Although More was boastful of his execution of heretics, and knew that torture was a proper legal procedure, he refuted such accusations. In his Apology, he explained that on two occasions he had servants caned in his house for misdemeanors dealing with religion That was the extent of physical pain he had inflicted in his life.

Blurring the line between the real and the imaginary, “Wolf Hall” convinces its audience that the real Saint Thomas was a greasy-haired fundamentalist who went around like Lady Melisandre, burning and torturing anybody he disliked. And Dame Hilary has her adepts!

I have run into websites and pages where More is accused of roasting over a hundred heretics and being responsible of burning (alive) William Tyndale! The fact that Tyndale was executed a year after More’s execution,in Belgium, and  that he was strangled and then had his body cast to the flames, makes such assertions risible. Even in the series, Cromwell accuses More of abetting the arrest and execution of Tyndale, whom at the time enjoyed good health. This pantomime throws light on the dangers of speculative fiction, especially if the author swears she has done her homework when it comes to researching historical facts.

The Reluctant Saint

I know that most Wolf Hall’s admirers were thrilled to see Thomas More dragged out of the closet of sainthood. Being Jewish, I am not one to demand his halo to be taken back. Most saints were not very nice people. Saint Cyril abetted the torture and murder of Hypatia; Saint John Chrysostom was a total anti-Semite; Saint Olaf of Norway was a brutal Viking. Thomas More died a martyr’s death protecting the good name and interests of the Catholic Church, therefore he deserves his place on the calendar.

But my admiration for More goes beyond dogma or religion. I admire him for defending the right of the individual to follow his own conscience, for not letting a tyrant bully him, for not taking a silly oath that would declare an ambitious wench a queen while soiling the name of a fine upstanding woman.  None of this is stressed in Wolf Hall.

Good Tom’s crimes

Cromwell’s self-righteous lecture is incongruent to say the least. He did employ torture in several occasions and not only on musician Mark Smeaton. Judging by his behavior towards the Carthusian monks, or those poor souls involved in The Pilgrimage of Grace, it is obvious that Cromwell lived in a glass house. He should abstain from casting stones then! And yet the series still insists on showing him as a peace-loving citizen. The same Cromwell who turned England into a police state!

“Wolf Hall” shows Good Tom “persuading” Smeaton to confess his crime and name his accomplices by using the non-violent method of locking the musician in a dark room. However, tradition tell us that he was savagely tortured.  We have only two sources that described Mark’s torture: Eustace Chapuys’ Spanish Chronicle and the gossipy and unreliable Constantine (who was Henry Norris’ servant.) I believe in the torture tale for two reasons: being lowborn, Mark Smeaton could be tortured and he was the only one of  the accused to admit having a carnal relationship with his queen.

Before Smeaton, Cromwell had other crimes in his villain’s resume such as the undignified execution of The Holy Nun of Kent, and the hanging, drawing and quartering of six Carthusian monks. Prior to their execution, the monks were kept in horrible conditions. They were starved, chained to walls for months, unable to move, swimming in their own filth.  How dare Cromwell lecture More when his own hands were soiled?

And then, of course, are the crimes he would commit later in life, his role in the massacre of The Pilgrimage of Grace’s leaders, including the burning of Lady Margaret Bulmer and the hanging of Cromwell’s friend, Sir Francis Bigod; more disemboweled Carthusians; the killing of Blessed John Forrest, former confessor of Catherine of Aragon and the only Catholic martyr to be burned at the stake in England; and the executions (on flimsier evidence of treason) of the last Plantagenets that would lead to the butchery of an old lady, Blessed Margaret Pole.

Lately, Dame Hilary Mantel has been afflicted by the George R.R. Martin’ Syndrome. It’s taken her five years to write the last volume of her Cromwell Trilogy, and yet The Mirror and the Light is not finished. She must have a hard time trying to find guilty parties on which to place what is only Cromwell’s blame or perhaps, like she does with Anne and her “lovers,” she’ll talk about justice. In her protagonist's  morally blurred world, “justice” and “revenge” are synonyms.

In “The Tudors,” Cromwell was a man capable of ruthless and cruel acts, but he was no sadist. Perhaps it’s why I grew to like him. He was a great fixer, a Renaissance Ray Donovan. It is sad that I can’t say the same of Rylance ‘s Cromwell, and it’s no fault of Sir Mark. Dame Hilary Mantel bent history over and backwards so her protagonist would emerge as an innocent and tolerant man. In the end, she turned this whitewashed Cromwell into a vindictive man who destroys lives for the sake of petty revenge.

 I was repelled by the comfort Good Tom seems to experience when Bad Tom loses his head. Cromwell’s resentment of Thomas More, due to the latter’s slighting him when they were children, sounds totally immature. According to Wolf Hall, this incident—of which St Thomas has no recollection—is what seals his fate. This is, after all, a tale of retribution.  More must atone for his childish snobbery with his life.

In Cromwell’s eyes, Anne Boleyn is guilty because she played a part in Cardinal Wolsey’s fall. She must pay for that. What about her five assumed paramours? They have always humiliated Mr. Secretary and they were also actors in a play that ridiculed Wolsey (who never saw the play). The fact that their punishment hardly befits their crime does not bother Cromwell or his creator.  It’s time to mention that Dame Hilary carries her own load of childish grudges and neurosis.  (I recommend reading Patricia Snow’s fantastic essay “The Devil and Hilary Mantel,” where she identifies the writer’s ghosts and how they reflect on her work.)

The Willingness to Serve a Tyrant.

 It’s no accident that “Wolf Hall” does not include St. Thomas final words: “I die the king’s faithful servant but G-d’s first.” In that succinct speech, More lets out his true reasons for not taking the Oath. Why compromise his soul to serve a tyrant’s whim? With all its flaws, The Papacy was the UN of its time, the single bulwark to contain misguided power-hungry monarchs like Henry VIII. In the amateur historian community of which I’m part it's tiresome to hear comments such a “Henry VIII liberated England.” The only one to achieve independence in this affair was the king who now answered to nobody and moreover, arrogated himself the high moral ground. He became his subjects “spiritual guide,” ruling what they could or not believe. Eventually, and to Good Tom’s horror, Harry reverted to Catholic orthodoxy and began to persecute Protestants!

Saint Thomas understood that Henry was ruled by his gonads and tried to distance himself from serving such a monster, even if distance meant leaving this world. Cromwell, on the other hand, was more than willing to serve a sociopath.  Good Tom thought he could leash Henry and use him. Unfortunately for him, the king tore that leash and bit his loyal servant to death.

“Wolf Hall,” the series, is well acted, period accurate, luxurious to watch (although its extreme darkness makes the visual rather difficult), but it is so terribly biased that I must encourage all its fans to read furtherly on the subject before making any conclusion. Am I calling for more fiction to be made on Good Tom and Bad Tom? No, there is plenty on both. JeremyNortham’s and James Frain’s portrayals of the Lords Chancellors in “The Tudors,” is enough of a good start in knowing and understanding such complex and fascinating figures.

I would like, though, to see something done in fiction about “The Megs,” Margaret More Roper and her sister Margaret Giggs Clements. The latter’s life is less known than that of Saint Thomas’ eldest daughter, but equally fascinating. She was a mathematician, an expert in medical lore, and not only did she attend her adoptive father’s execution, but she was also involved in ministering to the Carthusian monks condemned to death by Good Tom Cromwell’s orders. These women should be remembered for their learning, loyalty and courage in an era when men dictated the laws and often erred in doing so.