CROMWELL, Edward (c.1557-1607)

Thomas Cromwell^†, the great-grandfather of the subject this biography, rose from being the son of a Putney blacksmith to become Henry VIII’s chief minister and the mastermind of the break with Rome and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Created Baron Cromwell in 1536, he was attainted of treason in April 1540, two months after being elevated to the earldom of Essex, whereupon all his honours and lands were forfeited to the crown. However, his son Gregory escaped disgrace, having married the sister of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, thereby making him uncle by marriage to the future Edward VI. Created Baron Cromwell in his own right in December 1540, Gregory received several grants of property, including the site of the former abbey at Launde, in Leicestershire, which became his home.19 Oxford DNB, xiv. 366; CP, iii. 555-8; HP Commons, 1508-59, i. 727-8.

Edward Cromwell, Gregory’s grandson and the subject of this entry, succeeded to the barony in 1592. The antiquarian, Sir Henry Spelman^‡, accused him of wasting his ‘whole inheritance’, and of becoming ‘the first and only peer of the realm not having any land within it’.20 H. Spelman, Hist. and Fate of Sacrilege ed. C.F.S Warren (1895), 108. This was not entirely fair, as the estate Edward inherited in 1592 was crippled by ‘intolerable charges in law’ as a result of a series protracted legal disputes. However, Cromwell himself later confessed that in his youth, when he had been ‘more forward to action than staid in wisdom’, he had incurred ‘chargeable foreign expenses’. This was because, after a short period of study at Cambridge in 1574, where his tutor was Richard Bancroft^* (later archbishop of Canterbury), he had insisted on pursuing a military career against the advice of his father, who retaliated by denying him ‘all means and maintenance’, which ‘did thereby first steep me in that stinking gulf of debt’. It is unclear where Cromwell initially served as a soldier, but in 1584 he was appointed a captain in the English forces fighting Spain in the Netherlands.21 Hatfield House, CP191/122; A. Hassell Smith, County and Ct. 27; J. Harington, Nugae Antiquae ed. T. Park (1804), ii. 27; Nichols, County of Leicester, iii. 8; CSP Dom. 1598-1601, pp. 326, 368-9. Endeavouring to ‘re-advance the estate of my now declining house’ through service to the crown, he went on to fight in the Rouen campaign in 1591, the Azores in 1597 and in Ireland in 1599, and took part in Gilbert Talbot^*, 7th earl of Shrewsbury’s 1596 embassy to present the Garter to Henri IV. He also unsuccessfully lobbied for a range of offices, including the governorship of Brill and marshal of the army in Ireland.22 Hatfield House, CP65/41; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 42, 62, 72.

Cromwell discovered that service to Elizabeth brought with it more costs than rewards and before long he was forced to start selling his lands. In 1600 he complained to the secretary of state, Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury), that while he had been in England struggling to keep his finances afloat ‘my colonelship [in Ireland] was … taken from me: my command of the town where I lay given to another: my company cashiered: my goods all either stayed or rifled’; he begged for fresh employment, but to no avail. Previously he and his father had looked primarily to the Cecils for patronage, but his military career had brought him into increasing contact with Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, his commander at Rouen and in Ireland. In 1601 he threw in his lot with Essex in the latter’s ill-fated rebellion, as a result of which he was fined £3,000, and forced to make over part of his remaining lands to government officials in trust for payment.23 CPR, 1595-6 ed. S.R. Neal and C. Leighton (L. and I. Soc. ccxvii), 72; CPR, 1597-8 ed. C. Smith, H. Watt, S.R. Neal and C. Leighton (L. and I. Soc. cccxxvi), 147, 223; Hatfield House, CP79/4; PROB 11/80, ff. 351v-2; HMC Hatfield, vi. 294; x. 139; xv. 46; APC, 1600-1, p. 487; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 485-6.

Cromwell signed the proclamation recognizing the accession of James I on 24 Mar. 1603.24 Stuart Royal Proclamations I: Jas. I ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 3. However, the following month he was forced to apply to Cecil for help. Cromwell pleaded that he was unable to sell any of his lands, partly because some of them were still pledged for the payment of his fine (none of which had been paid), and also because uncertainty arising the change of dynasty had temporarily frightened away potential purchasers from the land market. In May the new king, sympathetic to the supporters of the late earl of Essex, ordered his officials to cancel the security on Cromwell’s lands, enabling the latter to mortgage the property in July.25 HMC Hatfield, xv. 46; PSO2/22/62; C54/1756, mm. 33-4. By the end of the year the land market had recovered sufficiently to enable Cromwell to dispose of Launde.26 SO3/2, p. 159; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 57; Nichols, iii. 325.

In the aftermath of Essex’s rebellion, Cromwell had been instructed to stay away from the last Elizabethan Parliament, convened in October 1601, and to send a proxy instead.27 APC, 1601-4, p. 218-19. No such instructions were issued ahead of the first Jacobean Parliament, summoned in 1604. Nevertheless, Cromwell attended only 15 of the 71 sittings, or 21 per cent of the total. He gave his proxy to the lord chancellor, Thomas Egerton^*, Lord Ellesmere (later 1st Viscount Brackley), presumably after his last recorded attendance on 14 May. His first committee, on 29 Mar., was to consider a bill against witchcraft. This measure proved to be unsatisfactory and the same committee was instructed to consider a further bill on the same subject on 11 Apr., although Cromwell was then absent. His only other appointment was to consider the bill to prevent artillery from being exported. He made no recorded speeches.28 LJ, ii. 263b, 269a, 275a, 285a.

In April 1604 Cromwell procured a letter from the king to the judges of King’s Bench for a speedy resolution of one of the suits which entangled his estates. The following September, he successfully lobbied Cecil, by now Viscount Cranborne, for a similar letter to the judges of Common Pleas.29 CSP Dom. 1603-10, 97, 154; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 307. It is likely that Cromwell wanted to bring these disputes to an end, one of which he alleged had lasted 36 years, solely in order to sell the lands involved. James I, ‘daily troubled with the poor Lord Cromwell’s begging leave to sell the last pieces of his land’, was clearly sympathetic, as Cromwell ‘had valiantly served the state in the wars’. Nevertheless, one of the suits, with All Souls College, Oxford, was still unresolved as late as March 1606.30 Letters of King Jas. VI and I ed. G.P.V. Akrigg, 244; Hatfield House, CP107/8; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 298.

In early 1605 Cromwell was appointed to accompany his kinsman, Edward Seymour^*, 1st earl of Hertford, to the Spanish Netherlands to witness the ratification the recent peace treaty. The prospect of the expense that such service would entail undoubtedly alarmed Cromwell. On 24 Mar. he pleaded to be excused, alleging not only his impoverished estate, but also a sudden serious illness. His appeal was successful and he was replaced by Dudley North^*, 3rd Lord North.31 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 106; HMC Bath, iv. 200.

Between September 1604 and March 1605 Cromwell came to an agreement with Charles Blount^*, earl of Devonshire, lord lieutenant of Ireland, to exchange his remaining lands in England for the reversion to lands in Lecale, in county Down, Ulster, which Devonshire had acquired but which were then part of the jointure of the widow of the 10th earl of Kildare [I], who did not die until 1610.32 LR9/85, Devonshire to Dorset, 25 Mar. 1605; A.M. Wilson, Saint Patrick’s Town, 90-1; CP, vii. 239; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 585. He was still in England in mid July 1605, when he tried to arrange a meeting at Northampton with the London Goldsmith, Sir William Heyricke^‡, to borrow money.33 Cal. of the Herrick Fam. Pprs. ed. P.M. Pugh, 76. However, he subsequently moved with his family to Ireland, probably by September, when he purchased part of the county Down estate of Phelim McCartan, a Gaelic chieftain. That same month he was made military governor of Lecale.34 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 97; CPR Ire. Jas I, 71; CSP Ire. 1603-6, pp. 324-5.

The value of the lands Cromwell acquired in Ireland were later estimated by the lord deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, to be worth little more than £200. Chichester therefore supposed that Cromwell’s principal means of support was the money he received to pay the garrison of Lecale. Indeed, he supposed that the entire purpose of Cromwell’s appointment to the governorship had been ‘to give him some increase of means, being a nobleman, … according to his degree, than for any use it was thought we should make’ of the garrison. Nevertheless, there may have been another purpose behind Cromwell’s appointment, as Cromwell undertook to educate McCartan’s eldest son as a gentleman. It seems likely that his move to Ireland had been encouraged by James I and Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, as a means of promoting the Anglicization of Ulster.35 SP63/222/147; CPR Ire. Jas I, 71.

Cromwell had returned to England by early November 1605, but was not present in the Lords when the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, presumably because he was then still on his way to Westminster. By the 9th he had reached Leicester, where he and his fellow Leicestershire magistrates signed a letter concerning a servant of Sir Everard Digby, one of the plotters.36 CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 247, 249. He took his seat in the upper House when the session resumed on 21 Jan. 1606, and attended nine times between then and 18 February. On 3 Feb. he was named to attend a conference with the Commons about the laws against recusancy. This may explain why he was appointed to the committee for two bills on this subject on 29 Apr. (the membership of the committees of 3 Feb. and 29 Apr. are almost identical), although by then he was no longer attending the Lords. He doubtless absented himself because, as he informed his proxy Salisbury on 4 Apr., he had ‘fallen into an ague with an extreme cold’.37 LJ, ii. 355b, 367b, 419b; Hatfield House, CP192/86.

Cromwell left for Ireland shortly before 27 May 1606, when the session was prorogued, without resuming his seat.38 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 143. He was still in Ireland when the third session opened on 18 Nov., when he again granted his proxy to Salisbury. He returned to England during the Christmas recess but probably left for Ireland before the session resumed on 10 February. There is no evidence that he attended the upper House thereafter.39 LJ, ii. 449a; CSP Ire. 1606-8, p. 48. Nevertheless, a private act was passed which confirmed an agreement reached through arbitration resolving Cromwell’s long running legal dispute with All Souls over property in Whadborough, Leicestershire, resulting in Cromwell receiving £1,600 from the college for surrendering his interest.40 PA, HL/PO/PB/1/1606/4J1n22; C.R.L. Fletcher, ‘All Souls v. Lady Jane Stafford’, Collectanea (Oxf. Hist. Soc. v), 196-7n.

In September 1607 Cromwell wrote to Salisbury requesting reinforcements in the expectation that the recent flight of the earl of Tyrone [I], the leading Gaelic magnate in Ulster, would cause disturbances.41 CSP Ire. 1606-8, pp. 278-80. However, before any reply could be received, Cromwell died. According to Lord Deputy Chichester, whose source was the latter’s widow, Cromwell died on Friday the 25th, but Cromwell’s inquisition post mortem and his funeral monument both state that he died on the 24th.42 Ibid. 292. Cromwell was buried in the chancel of Downpatrick Cathedral. No will or grant of administration has been found.43 Smith, 35.