Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Copyright © 2009
Picador (New York)
ISBN 978-1-250-07758-5


I rarely read “literary” novels, and I even less frequently read novels that are over 600 pages long.  And Wolf Hall took me probably two months to read.  It is a staggeringly good book.


For many of us, the issues surrounding the events in Wolfe Hall are framed by the magnificent movie (1966), starring Paul Scofield (as Thomas More), adapted for the screen by Robert Bolt from his play, and directed by Fred Zimmerman.  And it is a magnificent movie.  In the movie, More is a man ruled by his conscience, and his conscience prevents him from taking an oath that recognizes as valid Henry’s marriage to Ann Boleyn and proclaiming Henry as the supreme head of the church in England (which, of course, entails a break from the Catholic Church, and rejecting Papal supremacy in religious matters).  More does not publicly proclaim his opposition, but simply refuses to sign the oath, refuses to speak publicly about the marriage or about Papal supremacy, and refuses to explain himself in any way.  The trial scenes and their conclusion are striking.  In this version, Thomas Cromwell (who has risen from poverty and obscurity to become a political force in England) essentially orchestrated More’s downfall.  (The wikipedia article is quite good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons_(1966_film)


Wolf Hall presents us with a strikingly different perspective.  Let me frame the book a little.

There is a huge cast of characters, so large a cast that it is sometimes difficult to keep the actors straight.  But I can say that there are five who are more prominent than the others.  Working from the bottom (in terms of importance) up:


Ann Boleyn is presented as seeing her relationship with, and marriage to, Henry as a way to lift herself and her family to even greater prominence (and wealth).  Seen through Cromwell’s eyes (as everyone in the book is seen), she is not a sympathetic character.  Her private life is perhaps more checkered than one might wish (including broad hints that she is not a virgin whe she begins her conquest of Henry.


Cardinal Thomas Woolsey, who has basically been running the country (as Chancellor) and for whom Thomas Cromwell has served as his chief of staff, loses the support of the kink=g, because he does not manage to get the Pope to proclaim the marriage between Henry and Catherine of Aragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Aragon) invalid.  (Catherine had been married to Henry’s older brother Arthur, who died before becoming king).  Woolsey if eventually convicted of various crimes against the king, and executed.  Cromwell managed to  avoid and taint from his service to Woolsey.


Thomas More (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More), trained as a lawyer, served in a number of positions in the government, ending as Lord Chancellor of England—in effect, the head of government, answerable only to the king.  More was also a devout Catholic, believed that the new religious orders (starting with Luther, but encompassing such things as translations of the Bible into the vernacular) were heresies that needed to be stamped out.  He appears to have been perfectly willing to torture those who rejected the Catholic Church as a part of efforts to get them to confess, to identify others, and to renounce their various faiths.


Henry Tudor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England), also Henry VIII, King of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, shares center stage (with Cromwell).  The events are driven by his efforts to have his marriage to Catherine declared null, to allow him to re-marry and have a male heir to the throne.  This is not just a personal matter.  His father (Henry VII) had seized the crown, and there were a lot of people around who viewed the Tudors as illegitimate.  Failure to have a male heir might very easily have sparked a struggle over the succession when he died. 


But this is quite simply Thomas Cromwell’s story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell).  We view events through his eyes and hear them through his ears.  (In any passage in the book in which the thoughts, words, and acts of someone are referred to as “he says,” “he sees,” or “he does,” “he” is Cromwell.  It is, in some ways, a rags-to-riches story.  But, at least for me, he remains, at the end of this volume, something of an enigma.  After spending years outside of England, as a soldier, then a trader, and a merchant, he becomes Woolsey’s close assistant and confidant.  But when Woolsey falls, because of his failure to have Henry’s marriage to Catherine declared invalid, and annulled, Cromwell shifts smoothly and apparently without any difficulty, from Woolsey’s man to the king’s man.  Not that his favor in the king’s eyes lasted.


That is the setting, those are the main actors.  That this struggle transformed England is clear.

The amazing thing is that Mantel makes the motives (well, except for Cromwell’s) and actions of her large cast clear and comprehensible.  And while Cromwell is the central character, I’m less certain that she sees him as the “hero” of these events.  Because we see everything from his perspective, it is tempting to see him as the “hero.”  But I, at least, found him to be an enigma.  Brilliant, talented, ambitious, yes, all of that.  But what he actually believed, what he saw as the path to the future of England remains, for me, after 600 pages, obscure.  He seemed loyal to Woolsey, but shifted his loyalty easily, quickly, and completely, to Henry.  But I never felt that Henry’s goals were Cromwell’s goals, that he actually thought what Henry wanted was best for England.  Yes, he works to get for the king what the king wants.  But why?  We don’t—at least I don’t—know.  


As I read, I marked passages, over 100 of them.  Here’s just one example of Mantel’s ability to provide us with words that will stay with us, and it’s rather long:

At Greenwich, a friar called William Peto*, he head in England of his branch of the Franciscan order, preaches a sermon before the king, in which he takes as his text and example, the unfortunate Ahab, seventh king of Israel, who lived in a palace of ivory.  Under the influence of the wicked Jezebel he built a pagan temple and gave the priests of Baal places in his retinue.  The prophet Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only successful prophets are remembered.  The dogs of Samaria licked Ahab’s blood.  All his male heirs perished.**  They lay unburied in the streets.  Jezebel was thrown out of a window of her palace.  Wild dogs tore her body to shreds.

Ann says, “I am Jezebel,  You, Thomas Cromwell, are the priests of Baal.”  Her eyes are alight.  “As I am woman, I am the means by which sin enters this world.  I am the devil’s gateway, the cursed ingress.  I am the means by which Satan attacks the man, whom we was not bold enough to attack, except through me.  Well, that is their view of the situation.  My view is that there are too many priests with scant learning and smaller occupation.  And I wish the Pope and the Emperor and all Spaniards** *were in the sea and drowned.  And if anyone is to be thrown out a palace window…alors, Thomas, I know who I would like to throw.  Except the child Mary****, she is so fat she would bounce.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Petow
**Or, in Henry’s case, were never borne.
***Catherine of course, was Spanish.
****Mary is the daughter of Henry and Catherine.

This story is almost certainly true:
“in 1532 he denounced the King's divorce in his presence; R. W. Chambers wrote that Peyto did not fall afoul of the statutes against prophesying evil to the king when he warned Henry of possible consequences in the future (having dogs lick his blood, as they had Ahab's, after death.^[1]), because he spoke conditionally of this happening if the king were to behave like Ahab.^[2] He was imprisoned till the end of that year, when he went abroad and spent many years at Antwerp and elsewhere in the Low Countries, being active on behalf of all Catholic interests.”