In reply to Chris the Tall:
> Ah yes, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the one bit of history I was taught at (Catholic) primary school and was told it was a BAD thing. But in those days no-one had any notion of cultural heritage - in the same way that the coliseum in Rome was treated like a quarry - and it was only fear of god that allowed the monasteries to prosper.
The term "cultural heritage" would not have been understood but the idea that the art, literature, buildings and treasures of the Church were central to the spiritual and secular life of the vast mass of the English population for 700 years was well understood. That is why they had to be ruthlessly destroyed in order to establish the new regime. And that is why the evidence of corruption in the Church had to be cynically exaggerated and manipulated in order to justify the destruction.
> Call it revisionism if you will, but really it's just taking a fresh look at things. Same with Richard 3rd - the worst villain in English History, or a good king unfairly vilified by the apologists for a welsh usurper with an army of foreign mercenaries ? I'm not saying Mantel is right and that the traditional assessment of him is wrong - I'm not even sure if she makes that claim - but we have to accept that what we know of him could have come from some of the many enemies he made.
Well actually, for obvious reasons, he was a bit of a national hero for several centuries after the reformation so what we are now seeing is a revision of the revision. Even Elton, who was the great revisionist, in that he cast Cromwell not merely as the King's cypher but a a visionary creator of a new constitution and administrative framework to empower that constitution, acknowledged that Cromwell was a ruthless operator.
I'm quite happy with the idea that Cromwell was not uniquely evil for his time,and less evil than many, and I am very comfortable with the idea that the evidence can be used in different ways, but the TV drama seemed to stretch the latter idea beyond its limits.
> Maybe he was a man out of time - how rare was it for someone of his origins to rise so high - meritocracy in the hayday of the aristocracy. And willing to accuse the church of hypocrisy at a time when everyone else lived in fear - a common theme of the last 30 years, but before that ?
Actually, not that rare. Wolsey was the son of a butcher. Cranmer, Fisher and many of the bishops were of lower gentry or merchant or even yeoman stock. The Church was not an uncommon route for men of low birth to reach the higher ranks and in some ways was attractive to the King because, their preferment being totally dependent on him, they offered no threat. The law was another such route.
The clash of Church and State, and therefore of criticism of the Church, had been a staple of English politics since the year dot. Think Thomas a Becket. Cromwell was able to exploit the widespread frustration with Church corruption not because he was "a man out of his time" but because it suited the King.
Post edited at 16:52