Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of Essex c.1485-1540
English statesman

Born in Putney, London, the son of a blacksmith and brewer, he lived from 1504 to 1512 on the Continent, where he may have served in the French army in Italy, and gained experience as a clerk and trader. He then became a wool-stapler and scrivener, practised some law, and entered the service of Cardinal Wolsey in 1514, and parliament in 1523. In 1525 he acted as Wolsey's chief agent in the dissolution of the smaller monasteries, and as his general factotum for the endowment of his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. In 1529 he pleaded successfully in the House of Commons in favour of quashing the Bill of Attainder against Wolsey. In 1530 he entered the service of Henry VIII and quickly became his principal adviser, as Privy Councillor (1531), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1533) and Secretary of State and Master of the Rolls (1534). The guiding hand behind the Reformation acts of 1532-39 which made the king head of the English Church, as vicar-general from 1535, and as Lord Privy Seal and the king's deputy as the head of the Church (from 1536), he organized the dissolution of the monasteries (1536-39). He devoted himself single-mindedly to establishing the absolute authority of the Crown and Protestantizing the Church. Though appointed Lord Great Chamberlain in 1539 and ennobled as the Earl of Essex in 1540, he lost favour with the king after negotiating the disastrous marriage with Anne of Cleves. He was sent to the Tower, condemned by parliament under a Bill of Attainder, and executed.

Bibliography: A G Dickens, Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation (1959)