Wolf Hall: Cromwell the hero and More the villain?

After three gripping episodes of Wolf Hall, a problem has been nagging some viewers. Was Thomas Cromwell really such a sensitive ladies’ man and was Thomas More such a creepy heretic-chaser? As we saw last night, Cromwell was charming the Boleyn sisters while the Lord Chancellor grimly tortured men for wanting the Bible in English. There have been objections to Mantel's portrayal of More both in the novels and this TV adaptation. Catholic bishops have described the portrayal of the author of Utopia as “perverse” (unsurprising perhaps), but others including the historian Simon Schama on Twitter have expressed reservations.

Our view of the two men has been shaped by fictional works such as Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, where More was the principled individual standing against the power of the state. Cromwell, in that play, is a bruiser. But it hasn’t always been that way. Cromwell was regarded as a Protestant hero by John Foxe, who featured him prominently in his Book of Martyrs. Nineteenth-century historians such as James Anthony Froude defended the enlightened reformation Cromwell brought to a superstitious England. In the 20th century the great Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton described him as one of England’s great revolutionaries. “The end does not indeed justify the means, but at least it explains and to some extent excuses it,” he wrote, adding that his reforms, “proved not only important but beneficial”. Mantel, though brought up a Catholic, clearly shares Elton’s view.

Cromwell and More embody two ideas of England. Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, tried to reform England’s state infrastructure, not just its religious practices. It was a nationalist programme as well: last night we saw him say to Queen Katharine that he had found ancient precedents to justify Henry being head of the church. Against him is More, aristocratic humanist, friend of Erasmus, valuing Latin higher than English and defender of the Pope’s authority. In fact, More in his earlier years was an advocate of change within the church. But by the time we meet him in Wolf Hall (played with sour grandeur by Anton Lesser), he is terrified that Christendom will fall apart, leaving it exposed to the Turks. For him, stamping out heresy was about suppressing dissent he thought would only bring misery to Europe. If that meant burning, then they had to be “well and worthily burnt”, as he wrote. (For a modern equivalent think of the intellectuals such as Alan Dershowitz who, post-9/11, defended torture in the name of protecting Western values.)

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Cromwell was also a religious ideologue—according to the historian Diarmaid MacCulloch he steered England decisively towards Luther in the 1530s, which is what led to his eventual downfall. In Wolf Hall he was pained as a man was burned to death for declaiming the Bible in English during a church service; but we should remember the fate of the Nun of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, the supposedly inspired woman who denounced Henry’s marriage to his face. In this episode Cromwell subtly found out who was guiding the nun; in 1534 he was instrumental in getting her and five priests hanged for treason.

Wolf Hall, both the books and the television show, is undoubtedly pro-Cromwell. In part that’s because the story is being told wholly from his perspective. The close third-person of the novels allows us to see the action as Cromwell did; in the TV show he is in every single scene, a man of few words, but a penetrating presence. So when we see the recalcitrant More, the bitchy Anne Boleyn or the sentimental Henry, we are seeing these characters through his eyes; the biases are Cromwell’s as much as Mantel’s.The author said as much in an interview from 2012: "After Wolf Hall was published, I was constantly being asked ‘Was Thomas More really like that? We thought he was a really nice man!’ I could only answer, ‘I am trying to describe how he might have appeared if you were standing in the shoes of Thomas Cromwell: who, incidentally, did not dislike him.’"

Still Wolf Hall is no hagiography. It was distinctly uncomfortable to watch when Cromwell and Anne laughed as their enemy More resigned his office. And Cromwell, though he is the making of Anne, will soon enough unmake her. (There was a chilling moment at her coronation when she spread herself on the floor, anticipating the laying of her head on the block.) Meanwhile Cromwell is wooing Jane Seymour with fashion books. But is he working for himself or is he keeping her in reserve for the king if Anne does not deliver a son? Can he, at this point, even tell the difference between his own desires and Henry’s? Perhaps that's the secret of his success—so far.