“The King never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.” — Queen Jane
Episode 2 Obedience opens with a refresher from the first series reminding us of Cardinal Wolsey’s fall. When Wolsey is forced to go to Yorkshire, Cromwell, Wolsey’s most trusted man, chooses to stay in London. Here is my detailed review of Wolf Hall Episode 2: Entirely Beloved focusing on Cromwell working his ass of to get under Henry’s skin. There are rumors about him that he is now serving himself, not the Cardinal; but Cromwell’s ultimate goal is to become the King’s most trusted servant and persuade him to have Wolsey reinstated as the Lord Chancellor.
Henry loves Wolsey. But he loves Anne Boleyn more. And he’s desperate to have a male heir with her. Anne and her uncle Norfolk, who is dying to have a Howard on the throne, conspire to get rid of Wolsey so they get their way. And they do. Anne is dead now, but Norfolk is very much alive and certainly aspires to have another Howard sit on the throne. Funny enough, Norfolk is nowhere to be seen in this episode but his name is written all over it.
Wolsey mentions to Cromwell that princes are not like other men.
“They have to hide from themselves so they’re not dazzled by their own light.”
Well, our prince, certainly not like any other man, hides himself behind a mask and performs a dance number in his Turkish costume! I wonder if Henry is jealous of the Turkish Sultan who can marry as many women as his heart desires. Should he have been a Turkish Sultan, as Queen Jane points out later in the episode, Henry would not have had to divorce Catherine or behead Anne. He would have married those two and Jane, and also anyone else he wanted from the Imperial Harem and had many sons. Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled the Ottoman Empire at the same time Henry ruled England, had at least eight sons five of whom grew up to be adults.
Henry is physically declining. As soon as the dance is over, he sits with his bad leg resting on an Ottoman. As Cromwell asks him about plans for Mary to return to the court, we find out that Henry is not willing to have his daughter back until the news that she pledged allegiance to her father reaches Europe. Besides, he wants to see some evidence of her obedience. So Cromwell should start making a list of suitors for Mary and also for Henry’s niece Lady Margaret ‘Meg’ Douglas who is at the party. The King’s pain shows as he stands up to go and chat with her and he has a subtle limp.
What the King does not know is that he has an obedience problem right there in the room. It turns out that Meg is involved with Norfolk’s half-brother Thomas the Lesser, a poet with the most ridiculous rhymes. The intelligence comes from Wriothesley whose eyes seem to be everywhere! When William ‘Fitz’ Fitzwilliam asks Cromwell whether he trusted Wriothesley, Gardiner’s pupil, the answer comes in the form of Cromwell returning the treasurer’s chain of office that he took from Fitzwilliam in the heated Privy Council meeting in Episode 1 Wreckage.
“We all need second chances, Fitz.”
Cromwell knows that Meg and Thomas the Lesser having the opportunity to be alone together means that they got help from somebody. And he probably remembers, because I do, what Lady Anne Shelton, Mary’s custodian, told him in Episode 1 Wreckage. Lady Shelton thought Norfolk coming to Hunsdon and threatening to give Mary a beating if she did not obey her father was all a show. She knew that Norfolk boasted about a Howard sitting on the throne when Anne Boleyn was married to Henry. And he needs to give it up if Mary becomes Henry’s heir. Meg got near the throne since Henry’s both daughters have been declared bastards. So could the Margaret Douglas – Thomas the Lesser marriage be one of Norfolk’s schemes to have a Howard sit on the throne?
Cromwell and Wriothesley interrogate Meg and her close friend Lady Richmond. While Meg is naive and arrogant about being married to Thomas the Lesser in every way, Lady Richmond is quick to understand things may quickly go south for Meg since she pledged herself to a man without the King’s permission.
Isn’t it fascinating that in 16th Century England, common people have greater freedom than those in the court when it comes to falling in love and marrying? I am not sure if we will see it in the TV drama but there is a scene in the book that Henry tells Jane about Rafe Sadler and his wife Helen’s love story. The king’s manner is easy and gracious, his eyes are lit, when he talks about Rafe as “a man who might have married to his advantage, to match with a lowly woman, only for the virtue he perceived in her.” But then he does not give a shit about true love when his own niece falls in love with a man without asking him!
It is hilarious when Margaret says that her uncle loves her like his own daughter. Has this lady been living under a rock for the last five years the King has kept Mary under some sort of house arrest at Hunsdon? And her claim that Cromwell cannot part what God has joined? He has already ended King’s two marriages for God’s sake!
Norfolk being the number one suspect in the incident, Wriothesley asserts that it is time to pull him down. However, Cromwell, who believes in second chances, does not want to have Henry get into another killing spree…
…because the King is absolutely FURIOUS. He wants this business to be kept quiet because Europe will be scandalized to hear that his niece has married without the King’s permission. This would look bad on Henry’s reputation as a formidable sovereign. As far as Henry is concerned, Thomas the Lesser did have zero interest in his niece until she got closer to the throne. So Cromwell should draw up a treason charge against Thomas the Lesser immediately and the indictment must say that he was inspired by the Devil. Henry suspects Norfolk may be the one behind this. Wriothesley is right that time is ripe for them to get rid of Norfolk.
Instead, Cromwell chooses to get into the bottom of this by talking to the ladies who served Anne Boleyn. When he breaks the news to Queen Jane that he needs to invite some of the exiled ladies back to the court, Bess Oughtred, Jane’s sister, protests that Lady Rochford should not come back because she is a traitor’s wife. As Bess expresses her surprise about the King asking such an unpleasant thing of Jane, we see the clever woman behind Jane’s quiet face:
“The king never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.”
Spot on! And Cromwell has a long list of unpleasant things to do.
He and Wriothesley start with interrogating Thomas the Lesser who is already in the Tower. I giggle when Cromwell tells Thomas the Lesser that he doesn’t have to give his answers in verse. Then he makes his case against the poet:
“You come of a great family but all of you younger Howards are kept poor. And being of a such exalted blood, you cannot soil your hands with any occupation. So you say to yourself, ‘here I am, a man of great qualities, yet I am penniless and no one regards me, except to confuse me with my elder brother. I know what I’ll do – I’ll marry the King’s niece. That’ll pay, because odds-on, I’ll be King of England one day.”
Well, if he has not been living under a rock like Meg, this is probably enough for Thomas The Lesser to fall out of love with her 🙂
Next is a visit with Lady Mary who is frustrated that she is still kept at Hunsdon and cannot return to the court. Cromwell tries to calm her down that the King will have her after the Queen’s coronation and that she will have everything that was promised. Mary suspects that the Queen’s coronation may not take place until she is pregnant. And she has heard about her father looking for a husband for her. She thinks Cromwell has Duke of Orleans or Dom Luis of Portugal in mind for her. Mary is not interested in marriage, but she understands that this is a litmus test for her obedience to Henry. She may be sickly and fragile but she is no fool. Lilit Lesser shines as Mary.
In the meantime, the Court of Augmentations is busy dissolving the monasteries – starting with the small houses. As Gregory finds it sad that the monasteries close but the poor gain nothing, I cannot love the explanation Cromwell gives his son about The English Reformation more.
“The English will discover God in daylight, not hidden in a cloud of incense. They’ll hear His word in their own language from a minister who faces them, not turning his back and muttering in some obscure foreign tongue. The poor will have good-living clergy who counsel the ignorant and help the unfortunate. Not these half-literate monks playing knucklebones for farthings, trying to look up women’s skirts. And after many generations, long after I’m gone, the memory will be blotted out. No-one will ever believe the poor once bowed and scraped to stocks of wood and prayed to lumps of plaster.”
Hilary Mantel is such a genius with words and this explanation attests to Cromwell not being in this only for his personal gain but because he believes that the future of England will be brighter with the implementation of the religious reform.
Back at the palace, Cromwell gets up close and personal with the new queen. When he answers a a summons from Jane, he finds her sitting with a book in her lap. As one of the ladies in Anne Boleyn’s private chamber, Jane remembers that Henry and Anne Boleyn read this book, Book of Hours, together and left messages in it for each other in it. Anne had hope that she would give Henry a son then and Jane seems nervous about her own hope now. Her question to Cromwell is more of a confession than a question:
“My ladies say that if a wife does not take pleasure in the act, she will not get a child. Is that true?”
Jane is obviously under huge pressure to give the King a son. And while he cannot fix her very problem, Cromwell may recommend the queen to talk to Lady Rochford who tells him earlier in the episode that Anne Boleyn told her that sex with the King felt like “being slobbered over by a mastiff pup.” Still, Anne got pregnant so should Jane, too!
Jane tells Cromwell to act surprised when he sees the King. Henry’s wearing his Turkish costume again, looking ridiculous, and is keen on astonishing everyone who sees him.
What would you call a man who badmouths his new bride as soon as he realizes she gave away his surprise? Henry is a child in adult disguise. A whiny, selfish and spoiled child.
Earlier in the episode, Cromwell commissions Holbein the Younger to paint the past Kings of England on his study walls. And when he also asks the artist to make a ring for Mary based on his own design, Holbein hesitates and advises that a pendant would work better since a ring means a promise. Cromwell does not get it even when Margaret Douglas talks about the ring Thomas the Lesser has given him as a promise in their marriage! He goes ahead and has the ring made. Then he shows the ring with “In Praise of Obedience” inscribed on it to the King and asks for his permission to give it to Mary.
Henry recommends Cromwell to give the ring to Reginald Pole! He wants Reginald Pole dead and Cromwell must do what he must. And, hey, Henry likes the ring Cromwell intends to give Mary so much that he decides to give it to his daughter himself. Cromwell can find something else to give her, can’t he?
Even Henry getting the ring out of Cromwell’s hands cannot stop rumors about Cromwell wanting to marry the King’s daughter. While Cromwell is laughing off the rumors, his men do not. This is not any different from the treason charge Cromwell himself has drawn up for Thomas the Lesser!
The Imperial Ambassador Chapuys seems to be the one spreading the rumor. And when Cromwell pays him a visit, Chapuys shrugs him off that he heard the rumor from honorable and good men and that Cromwell cannot hang him for it. Well, Cromwell has also heard from honorable and good men that ambassadors are sometimes murdered in the streets 🙂
His visit to the Court of Augmentations coupled with Lady Mary telling him that she was longing for a child of her own make Cromwell think of a child , Wolsey’s daughter Dorothea, who has been living at the Shaftesbury Abbey since her father fell out of grace. He visits her and brings gifts.
Now a young woman, Dorothea is frustrated that the true religion has not been restored after Anne Boleyn’s execution and nervous about the monasteries being broken up as well as about her future. Cromwell, knowing Dorothea made her vows at a very young age, assures her that if she wants to leave the Abbey, he is ready to provide for her, find her suitors, and that he is even happy to marry her if she wants him, and he is willing to have her even if she wants a marriage in name only.
To be honest, such a marriage may work for Cromwell to make the rumors about him marrying Mary go away. But Dorothea refuses him and not because she does not like his religion. She is confident that Cromwell betrayed her father. She believes it was Cromwell who helped Norfolk get hold of the letters her father wrote in exile to the King of France to help him. And Wolsey’s fate was sealed when Norfolk gave the letters to Henry.
Cromwell is in absolute shock. He thinks that the only person who could make Dorothea believe in Cromwell’s betrayal is Wolsey. Me thinks it could be Norfolk himself telling it to Dorothea. He is a snake.
Cromwell second-guessing himself is something we have not seen him do before. He had all of the men mocking the Cardinal charged with unimaginable crimes and sent them to their deaths, but he should have done more earlier. He should have gone to North and stayed with Wolsey. He should have been there when he died. And he slips he should not have let the king get in his way. Ugh. And he does not know how to respond but with a not to Richie Rich’s words:
“The King is not in our way. He is our way.”
As Cromwell faces his inner guilt, Wolsey disappears from his inner conversations. And Mark Rylance’s acting blows me away. Nobody does sadness like him. Cromwell does not know how to re-make his reputation with the dead. If I were him, I would let the dead go and learn from what happened to Wolsey, a man with a humble background rising to the top in the court of Henry VIII and then having a brutal fall.
Fake news that Cromwell helped Norfolk get hold of Wolsey’s letters made people, including Wolsey’s own daughter, question Cromwell’s loyalty to .the Cardinal in the past Then fake news that Cromwell wants to marry Lady Mary can make people, including the ever volatile Henry, question Cromwell’s obedience to the King. Yikes!
Episode 3: Defiance
