Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous – or notorious – figures in English history.
Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s.
After Wolsey’s fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King.
That decade was one of the most momentous in English history: it saw a religious break with the Pope, unprecedented use of parliament, the dissolution of all monasteries.
