“What good is my rule if I can’t save John? If he [Henry] can burn John Lambert, he can burn any of us. Any of us. I should have spoken.” – Thomas Cromwell
This episode stands out for me as the best of the four we’ve seen so far. I love it that we get to see both Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII at their most human in happiness and sadness. But then as someone who teaches politics for a living, I also love the political intrigue with everybody playing mind games to get ahead in the court by eliminating others. Cromwell has a big target on his back as the second powerful man in England and his humanity makes him vulnerable.
The painting Hans Holbein started of the King and the Queen in Episode 3 Defiance is now complete and glorious. Henry’s vanity shows as he appreciates his own magnificence on the wall and his insecurity as he examines Jane’s belly as though he wants to make sure that the baby is still there.
A bang on the door brings the good news to Cromwell: It’s a boy!
The scene where the King takes his baby son into his arms to proudly introduce him to the court reminds me of Simba’s presentation in The Lion King 🙂
Now, Norfolk and I do not often see eye- to-eye but I have to agree with him that Lady Mary looks sour than ever probably thinking she will never sit on the throne. And everybody else at the court is so full of joy about the arrival of the little prince that…
…nobody but Cromwell seems to care about the empty seat next to Henry. Jane is sick and the doctor’s face speaks volumes about her condition. The tradition dictates that the King and the Queen may not attend their child’s christening – not that Jane would be able attend otherwise, she can barely stand. But it’s heartbreaking that, in her state, the young mother is asking Cromwell to attend and tell her all about the ceremony later. This is the last time we see Jane speaking.
Next time we see her, Jane is on her deathbed with Archbishop Cranmer giving her last rites. Henry is in the room and whispers to Cromwell that he would walk to Jerusalem if he knew that would save her. This is a rare moment we see the king as a man, a husband who knows his beloved wife is dying. And Damian gives a moment of humanity to this otherwise sinister, merciless, terrifying king. Damian says in a recent interview this scene was particularly moving for him “from an acting point of view and being immersed and present.”
Henry is not the only one in the room with feelings for Jane. I have no idea about the real-life relationship between Cromwell and Jane Seymour, but Hilary Mantel gives more than a few hints about a mutual attraction there and that Cromwell might have asked for Jane’s hand in marriage if Henry had not started to flirt with her as they visited Wolf Hall in Wolf Hall Episode 5 Crows. I think Cromwell would walk to Jerusalem AND BACK, if he had known that would save Jane. Too frustrated to think straight at the moment, Cromwell speaks his mind which he obviously should not do.
“Negligence. It’s just negligence. They’ve suffered her to take cold. They’ve suffered her to eat things she shouldn’t have eaten. If she’d married me, she’d be alive. She’d be alive now. I would have managed it. I would have managed it better.”
YIKES!
Where normal people would see sadness and grief, the noble Englishmen see an opportunity. As the Privy Council is preparing to petition the king to marry again, Norfolk is keen on having Cromwell find a French bride for Henry so they could stop the flirtation between France and Spain.
Henry is dressed up all in white, the color of mourning for the Monarch, whereas the rest of the court is dressed in black. He says he’d be content to have a chaste life going forward. His voice breaks as he says he will never be able to find a pearl like Jane. But when Cromwell shares that the Privy Council will petition him to marry, Henry is ready to sacrifice himself for the good of the country 🙂 And guess what? He thinks he may be interested in Madame de Longueville, a widow that the King of Scotland wants for himself.
I obviously don’t know if Henry and Cromwell sat to play chess in their time, but this is symbolic story telling at its best. There is an on-going chess game between Henry and Cromwell where the latter tries his best to guess Henry’s next move. And look at them, Henry is in white while Cromwell is in black 🙂 It is unsettling for Cromwell when he can’t see Henry’s next move – like in the case of Bishop Gardiner returning from France! Learning it from Lady Mary is quite a shock, maybe a bigger shock than finding out he has a daughter, for Cromwell.
Cromwell is at the court to talk to Mary about her extravagant expenses varying from clothes to jewelry to, yes, gambling debts! And as Mary shrugs Cromwell off about her expenses, she shares the news about Gardiner to warn him that he may not be as powerful as he thinks in the court.
The Emperor and the King of France have signed a 10-year peace treaty which is quite threatening for England. Henry is fuming. I can’t help giggle as I think about him wanting the Emperor and the King of France to see his new painting at the beginning of the episode. Neither holds England in high regard in the treaty which offends Henry more than the treaty itself. And he talks about France and England always delivering each other’s rebels and Francois not delivering Reginald Pole is a violation of their agreement. The way he gets his walking stick from Rafe makes me feel like Henry will give someone a good beating. He is unhinged to a degree that he threatens to invade France.
The Privy Council is against invading France but they are worried. Now that he has the King of France on his side, the Emperor would think of England as easy prey – particularly because the old Plantagenet families like The Poles and The Courtenays would welcome him with open arms. They would choose a Pole for the throne, marry Mary into the family and make her the queen and their own personal puppet. Cromwell has a personal stake in this. He has worked on the Reformation for seven years and Mary getting on the throne would destroy all they’ve done. So he should deal with the situation in multiple different ways.
Firstly, He has Geoffrey Pole arrested and brought to the tower. Scared of being burnt alive, Pole attempts suicide. Cromwell is ready to give his life back as long as he gives some answers until a candle on the table goes out aka “la ventevente à la bougie.“. We don’t see what happens in Pole’s cell but Wriothesley will follow up with him.
Second, Cromwell appoints Thomas Wyatt (for those of you who don’t remember him, Wyatt is a former lover of Anne Boleyn, Cromwell saves his life by keeping him in the Tower until the dust settles) as the King’s ambassador to the Emperor. He will be Cromwell’s informant there. Wyatt, who hates Spain because the Inquisition sends spies and steals his letters, does not get it. Isn’t it Cromwell’s goal to have new allies such as the German Princes? Why doesn’t he force Henry into an alliance with them against Rome? But Cromwell can’t risk Mary getting on the throne and get rid of all the work he has done in the last seven years. They need to find a way to end the peace between France and Spain.
Third, he will pursue an alliance with the Germans through a royal marriage which he has to market to the King. Henry is on his annual hunting trip and an urgent message summons Cromwell to the king who has, in his own words, taken a tumble in Cromwell’s absence.
Henry’s leg looks gross. The doctors want him to eat and drink modestly and keep his leg up which is impossible during the hunting season. Still, Henry seems to be in good spirits and amiable to marry from Germany as long as the lady is not a Lutheran. Cromwell has done his homework: Duke Wilhelm of Cleves is not a Lutheran, and he’s willing to send Henry his sister’s picture.
If a king brought back his ambassador from France as France signs a 10-year peace treaty with Spain that he is enraged about, I would think he would punish him for not being able to stop that treaty from being signed! But it does not look like it is the case with Henry. He says “Gardiner stays” when Cromwell kindly proposes to send Gardiner back to France to protest on behalf of the king.
It seems Gardiner is back in England to protest Cromwell. He first confronts him at a public debate between Henry and John Lambert, a priest who is considered a “heretic” because he denies the presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the bread and the wine shared at the Holy Communion. It is obvious that Gardiner has convinced the king about the reputational damage the Reformation has caused for England. He is in this to make an example of Lambert and also to trap Cromwell when it’s his turn to speak at the debate. Cromwell does not take the bait, even when Gardiner says loudly that Cromwell agrees with Lambert, speaks in support of the King, and not Lambert. And it is only natural that he questions himself later.
“What good is my rule if I can’t save John? If he [Henry] can burn John Lambert, he can burn any of us. Any of us. I should have spoken.”
I’m sure John Lambert will join Dorothea, Anne Boleyn and Wolsey in haunting Cromwell’s dreams.
Cromwell had a raging fever after Thomas More’s execution, and now he has it after Lambert was burnt to death. When Cromwell survived the fever in Wolf Hall Episode 4: Devil’s Spit, the king visited him at Austin Friars to wish him well and he was very tender with Cromwell (note that you can see this scene can only on DVD because it’s a deleted scene).
Cromwell is up before the illness is completely behind him. He does not get a home visit from the King; and also he finds Gardiner with Henry when he goes to see him about his marriage contract. The king talks about Cromwell’s fever as an inconvenience. And as Cromwell waits for the king to dismiss Gardiner, he doesn’t. YIKES!
Gardiner contests every word Cromwell says about the marriage contract drawn up for Henry and Anne of Cleves. And he takes it even further that evening at Archbishop Cranmer’s dinner party at Lambeth Place. Gardiner blames Cromwell for killing the former Cardinal Bainbridge back in 1514 so Wolsey could take his place. He has no shame, he’s talking about a time Cromwell did not even know Wolsey. Cromwell tries to not hear what he says but he gets out of control and grabs Norfolk by the neck…
…which has probably been what Gardiner and Norfolk, the new BFFs of Wolf Hall, wanted to see. As much as I dislike their characters, I love the chemistry between Timothy Spall as Norfolk and Alex Jennings as Gardiner. They are brilliant actors!
I have kept the character who names the episode for the end of my recap. Jenneke is a fictional character created by Hilary Mantel, I believe, for a particular purpose in mind. Her arrival at Austin Friars lets Cromwell remember his days in Antwerp, reflect, and maybe think about an alternative life, a simpler one that he could have had there with Anselma, Jenneke and maybe other children.
Cromwell wants Jenneke to stay with him. He’s dreaming of having Launde, one of the closing abbeys, where bees make honey scented with thyme, as his retirement residence and living there with Jenneke. But this is not the life she is looking for. She wants to live independently of any constraint the king can put on their lives. Fair enough. She may even be scared when Gregory jokes with her that she will be a Princess when their father weds Lady Margaret Douglas or Lady Mary. Oh, and I have to add here that I find this kind of talk very irresponsible of Gregory because rumors that take people to their deaths start exactly like that! I appreciate that Gregory may not be aware of the dangerous duo, Duke of Norfolk and Bishop of Winchester Gardiner, plotting behind the scenes though. He has never come across as a very smart young man. Even Rafe tells Cromwell that he should show Gregory that he values him when Cromwell tells him that his own son seems to be afraid of him.
Jenneke wants her father to go to Antwerp with her. But Cromwell is so invested in the Reformation that he thinks if he has a few more years – I wonder whether he is talking about God or Henry when he says “if he’ll let me live 1 or 2 years” – he will make sure that what they’ve done cannot be undone by Henry or anybody else. He has also accumulated so much wealth and power that he has dreams for his son Gregory, his nephew Richard, and his right-hand man Rafe. There is no turning back for Thomas Cromwell regardless however his end could be.
But how long until Henry says checkmate?
Did I see Cromwell use a tissue to wipe his nose when he was talking with his daughter?
In episode 3 wasn’t it Henry’s right leg that was bound up by his servant so as not to shock his young bride? Yet it was his left leg in Episode 4 that was red and injured. Not made clear if this was because of a riding accident.