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Thomas Cromwell

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Submitted By Crewlove1
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Thomas Cromwell was born in southwest London 1485. He had a modest upbringing and left the capital for Europe when he was a teenager. Initially fighting as a soldier in the French army he somehow acquired a broad education including some knowledge of business and law. Cromwell was the second of the great ministers to Henry VIII. He became legal secretary for Cardinal Wolsey who was in service to Henry VIII. Wolsey fell out but Cromwell survived, becoming a member of parliament. In 1523, Cromwell became a member of parliament, where he greatly extended the power of the house. During this time, he also started to dissolve monasteries to help build a college and school for Wolsey.
Cromwell is thought to have been responsible for drafting the Supplication of the Commons against the Ordinaries in 1532. This parliamentary petition resurrected the protests against church courts originally made in 1529 in the attack on Wolsey; it was used to secure the submission of the clergy, which finally subjected canon law to secular review. Cromwell took charge of the drafting of the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome (1533) and the Act of Supremacy (1534).
Cromwell persuaded Henry to agree to marry Anne of Cleves, a German princess, in hope to secure support against the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, and strengthen the bonds of Protestantism. The marriage failed Unlike Wolsey and his predecessors, Cromwell was never Lord Chancellor; he can be regarded as the first chief minister of a new type, a layman basing his influence on the office of principal secretary. In 1536 he was ennobled as Baron Cromwell of Oakham, in the county of Rutland, and in 1540 he was created Earl of Essex.

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