Richard Cromwell

Richard Cromwell, first known as Richard Williams, is Thomas Cromwell’s nephew and the son of Kat Cromwell and Morgan Williams. After his father dies, Thomas takes Richard and the child Walter into his household and becomes, in Richard’s words, their father. Richard’s story joins questions of family, name, and royal blood to the practical bargains of court: he is acknowledged as a possible Tudor cousin, welcomed into Henry VIII’s presence, and drawn into a marriage plan whose promise disappears when the king changes his own intentions.

Family and Identity

Richard enters the household in the aftermath of a year of deaths. Morgan Williams and Kat Cromwell have died, as have Thomas’s daughters; their sons Richard and Walter are added to the Austin Friars household as orphans. Thomas remembers Morgan as a hard-working and shrewd family man, while Kat had confessed that she could never understand her brother. For Richard, Thomas’s role is not simply that of an uncle: he is the living adult on whom the bereaved household now depends.

The question of what the boys should be called makes that change explicit. Richard asks whether he and Walter should take Thomas’s surname. Thomas answers with a joke that the Cromwells may soon prefer to call themselves Williams, then asks whether Morgan would have wanted his sons to give up the name. Morgan, Richard recalls, claimed descent from Welsh princes, though he sometimes turned that claim into a joke about selling his principality for a shilling. The exchange keeps inheritance from settling into a single, uncomplicated story: a name may carry a family’s pride, but it can also be chosen and remade.

Thomas explains that Richard has a possible Tudor connection through his grandmother Joan, one of the bastard daughters of Jasper Tudor, uncle of the old king. Joan married William ap Evan. Her sister Helen was the mother of Stephen Gardiner, which makes Richard and Gardiner cousins as well. Richard wonders whether this ancestry can do him any good, particularly when the cardinal’s fall leaves him and his family far from court. Thomas’s account turns descent into both a fact and a political possibility, but Richard does not treat a royal connection as a guarantee of advancement.

Grief and Belonging

Richard’s relation to his dead father remains active in the household. He tells Thomas that he lights a candle for Morgan every day, not because he knows whether it helps or whether the dead can know, but because the living need to comfort one another. Thomas answers that Richard’s practice comforts him too. Richard kisses his cheek and says good night in Welsh, using a familiar expression associated with fathers and brothers. The exchange makes their new bond concrete without erasing the one death has broken.

The conversation also gives Richard’s surname emotional weight. Thomas reflects that the dead can lose their names when no lineage or herald remains to identify them. He is sure Morgan’s bloodline will not be lost. Soon afterward he understands why he had removed Kat’s holy medal from his throat and dropped it into the sea: he did not want any living hand to take it. Richard’s attachment to his father’s name and Thomas’s memory of the medal belong to the same concern with what can survive death—through names, kin, and objects kept or surrendered.

Richard’s household role is not merely symbolic. He can interrupt Thomas’s conversation with Johane to report the price of bricks for the Tower, and he is involved in the family’s practical affairs. Later Thomas finds him at Austin Friars while another son, Gregory, is present. These everyday moments place Richard among the working relationships of the household, even as court politics begins to offer him a different identity.

At Court and in the Succession Politics

Thomas brings Richard to court at Anne Boleyn’s command, along with Gregory; Rafe Sadler is already familiar to the king. Henry studies Richard and recognizes a connection he wants to claim. He recalls Richard’s grandfather ap Evan as a great servant to his father, praises Richard’s build, and says he would like to see him in the tilt yard and carrying his colours in a joust. The welcome gives Richard direct access to the king, while making his ancestry useful in the setting of royal kinship and spectacle.

Richard is not dazzled into mistaking royal favor for certainty. Gregory is delighted by Henry’s attention, but Richard answers his excitement with practical questions about what a jousting career would cost: show-quality armour and trained horses. Gregory insists that they can afford it, saying their days as foot soldiers are behind them. The contrast registers the family’s new elevation as a possibility, not yet a settled condition; advancement brings expenses and risks as well as invitations.

That uncertainty becomes sharper when Thomas raises Anne’s suggestion that Richard marry Mary Boleyn. He stresses that the king’s approval has not been secured and says he will not force Richard. Richard replies that Thomas is practiced at persuasion, so that it can be difficult to tell the difference between being persuaded and being knocked down. He is not simply rejecting the match, but he makes clear that a proposal from his guardian carries pressure even when it is presented as choice.

Thomas makes the political advantages plain. Richard could become the king’s brother-in-law rather than an unrecognized cousin; the family might gain titles and better marriage prospects, and Thomas Boleyn would become Richard’s father-in-law. Richard sees the attractions, including the chance to provoke Norfolk, but the prospect rests on a fragile chain of royal decisions. Rafe warns Thomas that the family’s fortunes now depend on Mary, who is changeable and mortal, and that a child in the womb is not yet an heir in the cradle. Marriage here is both a personal decision and a wager on the succession.

The Marriage Plan and Its Reversal

The king ultimately blocks the proposed match, not because of Richard or his family, but because Henry wants Mary for himself. Anne is pregnant, and the king does not wish to resume celibacy while he is afraid to approach her. Thomas reports this to Richard as what Henry has left him to understand. Richard asks whether the king said so directly; Thomas acknowledges the indirectness, then says they will both have to get over it.

The reversal releases Richard from a marriage he had not yet accepted. Thomas has already begun looking for another prospect and proposes Frances, a daughter of Thomas Murfyn. He says he has asked Frances whether she likes Richard and will ensure that Richard’s fortune is more than a match for hers. Richard’s body relaxes at the news, and he says that he likes Frances. The relief makes clear that his future is not simply the fulfilment of a courtly plan: he has a preference, and Thomas’s ability to find another match gives that preference room to matter.

The episode also shows the limits of Thomas’s confidence as a family strategist. He can calculate advantages in titles, kinship, and money, but Richard’s hesitation requires him to distinguish practical persuasion from compulsion. The king’s decision then unsettles the whole arrangement from above. Richard’s proposed marriage changes because Henry’s private desire takes precedence, demonstrating how closely family futures are tied to royal choices.

Narrative Role

Richard serves as both beneficiary and critic of Thomas’s rise. His possible Tudor descent can be called upon by Henry, while his place in the household depends on an intimate bond formed through bereavement rather than court appointment. His daily candle for Morgan and his question about the family name keep the story of advancement grounded in loss: a new connection to the king cannot restore the father he remembers.

His frankness also gives Thomas a rare check on his own persuasive skill. Richard recognizes that care and pressure can sound alike when they come from the person who controls a young man’s prospects. By letting Richard name that difficulty, the narrative makes family affection more complex than patronage alone. He can accept Thomas’s protection, question Thomas’s methods, and still take part in the future Thomas is trying to build for him.