– Cromwell: The Most Eligible Bachelor –
by Damianista | Fan Fun with Damian Lewis | November 25, 2024
“The Rebels demand that “vile blood” be drained from the Council. It’s your blood, I imagine.” – Imperial Ambassador Eustache Chapuys
The talk of the court is suitors, marriages, pregnancies, heirs, newborns and children in this episode as an uprising erupts in the East and spreads to the North.
Cromwell is not in a good place. He may come across as a 16th century terminator, but he is a human being. He is deeply hurt by Dorothea’s false claim that he betrayed the Cardinal and her words keep haunting him in his dreams. And he wakes up only to get bad news.
A rebellion started in Louth in the East and has spread to Lincolnshire. The man who brings the news says that people believe that the King is dead, Cromwell is ruling England and that Cromwell is the Devil himself.
“They say he means to pull down the parish churches, melt all the crucifixes for cannons to fire on the poor folk. He wants the King’s daughter for himself. They want his head.”
Cromwell is smart enough to know that the poor do not rise without leaders. He is confident that landowners, who do not want to pay taxes, are behind this. And fake news being abound as well as the rich manipulating the poor to get what they want make the story incredibly relevant for our times.
While Henry is willing to grant the rebels a general pardon if they stop the fight now, William ‘Fitz’ Fitzwilliam advises against leniency. The uprising may get out of control if it spreads to Yorkshire and north to the border. When Cromwell asks whether they should send Norfolk to quiet the East, Henry’s answer is no. It seems Henry holds on to the idea, and maybe rightly so, that the marriage between his niece Meg and Norfolk’s half-brother Thomas the Lesser is nothing but a scheme by Norfolk himself. So he asks Cromwell to keep Norfolk away from him.
Henry wants to go to the East himself to prove that he is alive. The Council, in particular Fitzwilliam is against the King risking his “sacred person” because the rebels believe that Cromwell has practiced some kind of sorcery on Henry. Fitzwilliam, who we’ve always seen to be friendly with Cromwell, is now ready to single out Cromwell as the scapegoat.
Well, Cromwell’s quick mind is his sorcery. When he directly addresses Fitzwilliam that he is offended for his prince because ‘Fitz’ makes it sound like the rebels take Henry no more than as a child to be led, it’s Henry’s turn to be offended!
“If I say Cromwell is a Lord, he’s a Lord. And if I say Cromwell’s heirs will follow me and rule England and then, by God, they will do it.”
Now, I find it remarkable that Henry has promoted Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith, based on his merit. However, the words that come out of his mouth may convince The Privy Council, most of them being noble, that Cromwell has indeed practiced some sorcery on the King! And as it may come across as a joke when Fitzwilliam asks Cromwell how it feels to be proclaimed as the next king, I don’t think he is joking. Cromwell is in such an impossible position: he is perceived to be “vile blood” by the nobility because of his lowly background, and he is perceived to be “vile blood” by the rebels because they believe he practices sorcery. I agree with Cromwell’s nephew Richard that Cromwell needs escorts. He is not safe.
Since the King never does an unpleasant thing and Cromwell does it for him, it falls on Cromwell to break the news to Norfolk. The Duke is obviously frustrated and blames Cromwell for misreporting about him. And I think Cromwell pushing Norfolk further to explain why he is not providing for his wife whom he left with her family is just to provoke him so he spills the beans. Norfolk takes the bait.
“In the north parts, they use your name to terrify their children. ‘Be quiet’ they say, ‘Or Cromwell will come. He will jump down your throat and bite your liver.”
Norfolk may be one of the people responsible for the misinformation campaign against him. And Cromwell suspects another one is the Imperial Ambassador Chapuys. Cromwell sends a message to the Emperor through him: If the Emperor tries to undermine Henry’s power and authority in his own country, Cromwell will make sure the Emperor suffers for it. How about England uniting with the Princes of Germany who the Emperor thinks of as his subjects?
And then there is Mary. The rebels want Mary to be restored as the legitimate heir to the throne and she must not somehow fall into their hands. Cromwell finds the solution in bringing Mary back to the court immediately and kindly asks Queen Jane to put a good word to the king for Mary. While the queen is happy to do that she doesn’t know if the King will agree since she is not…
Cromwell and Jane cannot have a proper conversation since Lady Rochford, whose eyes seem to be everywhere, completes their sentences for them. Jane has to explicitly tell Rochford to stay away to have a moment with Cromwell. She shows Cromwell a piece of glass the King gave her and pretends to talk about it. What she really needs to share with Cromwell is that Henry is having bad dreams in which his dead brother Arthur is visiting him. This is new for Jane. But we know that Henry had his dead brother visiting him in his dreams in Wolf Hall Episode 2 Entirely Beloved as he was trying to split from Rome. And Cromwell put on his therapist hat and pulled Henry out of his desperate state.
Jane’s kind request about Mary before Henry in the sight of the court is accepted warmly by the King. But Jane does not stop there. She is concerned with the uprising, and she is not comfortable with devout customs being left off – the subjects want to have the Pope, the statues they have had all their lives, blessed candles and holy days.
Read the rest of the original article at Fan Fun with Damian Lewis