The Traitor’s Mark

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He ran up the steps – a man in a hurry. Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord Great Chamberlain, Vicegerent in Spirituals, the most powerful person in England under the king, mounted the long flight of stairs to the Whitehall Council Chamber two at a time. He was late for the meeting and, though he was not troubled by the thought of keeping his fellow councillors waiting, tardiness, in itself, was a thing he abhorred. It was a mark of disorganised, inefficient or blatantly lazy minds and Cromwell prided himself on not being prey to any of these vices.

There was good reason for his delay on this occasion. He had spent the six hours since dawn organising the carefully accumulated evidence that would strike down his enemies, led by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. For months he had been galled by the open hostility and covert intrigues of the men trying to undermine King Henry’s confidence in him. These conservative elements, these dullards, these visionless men had set themselves to stop England’s development towards a truly Christian commonwealth, independent of Rome, purged of clerical corruption and illumined by the newly Englished word of God. The need to defend himself and organise his counter-attack had taken up valuable time – time that could more profitably have been employed in continuing the legislative programme revolutionising the kingdom. But now he had all the evidence he needed. Lord Lisle, Governor of Calais, was, at last, in the Tower and revealing to his interrogators the antics of the brood of papist vipers causing havoc in the English port under his command.

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