Tea at Trianon: The Downfall of Thomas Cromwell

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 13, 2020

The Downfall of Thomas Cromwell

From History Extra:

Cromwell’s relationship with his royal master. In October, opposition to the religious reforms that he had orchestrated broke out into open rebellion with the Pilgrimage of Grace, a large-scale revolt that quickly spread across the Midlands and northern counties. The rebels made it clear that the focus of their fury was not the king but “that heretic Cromwell”. Although Henry eventually put down the rebellion, his faith in Cromwell had been shaken. Increasingly, he began to distance himself from his chief minister. Things got so bad that he even took to beating up Cromwell. One shocked eyewitness described how the hapless minister was regularly “well pommelled about the head, and shaken up, as it were a dog”. He added: “the King’s Majesty hath called my Lorde Privy Seal [Cromwell] villain, knave, bobbed him about the head, and thrust him out of the privy chamber.” Although Cromwell would “laugh” at such treatment, he was acutely aware of the danger he was in. (Read more.)