Diarmaid mcculloch biography of barack
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It introduces the many different personalities of these foundational years, all conscious of the 'terrifyingly unpredictable' Henry VIII. The book is also lavishly illustrated, with six maps, eighteen text illustrations, twenty-five pages each of bibliography and index, and forty-five colour plates, although the publisher’s decision to relegate the footnotes to one hundred and twenty pages of endnotes is less welcome.
In both theatres, MacCulloch deploys to good effect his formidable knowledge of Cromwell’s connections, acquaintances and friends in assessing his influence on policy, and he also displays an unenviable grasp of Tudor administrative procedures.
Even in matters of religion, so MacCulloch argues, Cromwell was eventually able to manoeuvre the King’s policies in directions which reflected his own personal preferences but of which the King disapproved.
MacCulloch's biography for the first time reveals his true place in the making of modern England and Ireland, for good and ill.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cromwell, A Life (Allen Lane, London, 2018), pp xxiv + 728. He has written extensively on Tudor England; his biography on Thomas Cranmer won the 1996 Whitbread Biography, Duff Cooper and James Tait Black Prizes.
His papers were confiscated by the crown on his arrest and finished up in the National Archives and the British Library, where they were used by modern historians to write a series of studies about different aspects of King Henry’s reign.
Research Area:
History of Christianity
Research Interests:
History of Christianity; Reformation England
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarmaid_MacCulloch
https://www.stx.ox.ac.uk/people/fellow/professor-diarmaid-macculloch
His three-part TV series for BBC2, How God made the English, aired in March 2012, and his BBC2 series, Sex and the Church, aired in early 2015. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1533 (not then a major office), but it was only in 1534 that Cromwell finally replaced Stephen Gardiner as the King’s principal secretary, his first major office, even though he had long been acting secretary.
The King left Cromwell in charge of Wolsey’s Colleges, as the man who knew them best, and also in dealing with Italians in charge of Wolsey’s tomb, but typically Henry appropriated the bronze images for himself. King Henry had in 1535 granted Cromwell the peculiar title of ‘Vice-Gerent in Spirituals’, allowing him to exercise the King’s powers as Supreme Head of the Church, and so conferring on Cromwell a title to match the all-pervasive part he had in practice been exercising in ecclesiastical administration.
It overturns many received interpretations, for example that Cromwell was a cynical, 'secular' politician without deep-felt religious commitment, or that he and Anne Boleyn were allies because of their common religious sympathies - in fact he destroyed her. Cromwell was, by contrast, close to and supportive of Princess Mary, persuading her to submit to her father: his reward for this was a peerage and the office of Lord Privy Seal.
Later, particularly in matters of less concern to the King, Cromwell had more room to shape Tudor policy.
Cromwell duly went to the block, but typically the King soon shifted the blame for his execution, telling his council that upon light pretexts and false accusations he had been ‘made to put to death the most faithful servant he ever had’ (537).
This is a very fine biography, written in a lively imaginative style, with deep insights into key events of the reign.
Later chapters move much more briskly. Despite their common interests in evangelical reform, Queen Anne and Cromwell did not get on. MacCulloch’s portrait is by no means Eltonian. Briefly in November, it looked as if the King might abandon Cromwell and Cranmer. Asked to write a biography of Cromwell, however, Elton declared that Cromwell was ‘not biographable’.
Concurrently, Cromwell’s role in forging relations with Zürich moved the course of religious reform towards a strand of the Protestant Reformation which the King undoubtedly considered heretical. His work in seeking to bring understanding of the problems, and opportunities, of religious belief was recognised by the award of the D. Leopold Lucus Prize for 2019 by the University of Tubingen: a fellow prize winner is the Dalai Lama.
King Henry later told the French ambassador that Cromwell ‘was a good manager, but not fit to meddle in the concerns of kings’ (p. Seeking to promote an alliance with the Schmalkaldic League, he manoeuvred the King into marriage to Anne of Cleves which the King was unable to consummate.