ABSTRACT
For Sir Geoffrey Elton, Thomas Cromwell was ‘one of the most remarkable
English statesmen of the sixteenth century and one of the most remarkable in
the country’s history’,2 who ‘instigated and in part accomplished a major and
enduring transformation in virtually every aspect of the nation’s public life’.3
He was ‘a statesman with real and even elevated purposes, a man of genuine
understanding and affability, a tower of strength to those who sought his help’,4
Above all, he was the architect of the Tudor Revolution in Government, ‘a
revolution in the kingdom from which the nation emerged transformed and
altered in every aspect of its life.5 In his last book, Elton continued to assert
essentially the same views of Cromwell’s work: ‘he instilled so novel a force
and concentrated purpose into government that something like a major
transformation took place in the relations between rulers and ruled’.6 In
contrast, Henry VIII, according to Elton, had ‘an unoriginal and unproductive
mind’, one ‘unable to penetrate independently to the heart of a problem’.7 It
was Cromwell who saw to the administration of the kingdom: ‘the details
of government, the day-to-day work of the executive, the control and reform
of the administrative machine, these were in his hands’.8 ‘In Cromwell’s years
of power the king rarely interfered in administrative matters and .. . Cromwell,
not Henry, was really the government’.9 By and large Elton’s interpretation
has commanded the field, owing not least to his tireless articulation of it
over forty years. R.B. Wernham, who wrote a pungent review of The Tudor
Revolution in Government, was unusual in questioning Elton’s claims about
the relationship of Henry VIII and Cromwell; but unlike Elton, he did not
reiterate his views.10 Later critics of The Tudor Revolution in Government
concentrated, in what became a famous debate, on the issues of administration
and government that Elton had raised, rather than on the specific question
of king and minister. Meanwhile Elton received powerful support from A.G.
Dickens:
