Thomas Howard (385a2726)

Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, is one of the realm’s most powerful nobles and a recurring force in its political and legal struggles. Set against Thomas Cromwell’s preference for negotiation and legislation, Norfolk represents the older aristocratic world of martial prestige and inherited authority; yet their rivalry coexists with practical cooperation under Henry VIII.

Identity and Political Position

Norfolk is already described as the realm’s premier nobleman, apart from the king’s acknowledged illegitimate son. His influence is apparent in Cromwell’s effort to secure a seat in the Commons for Rafe Sadler: the appointment depends not only on the king’s approval but also on Norfolk’s. The episode establishes Norfolk as a gatekeeper whose assent can shape political access, even without a formal office being specified.

The novel presents him as an experienced, forceful court figure who treats war as a test of national and personal standing. In conversation with Cromwell, he insists that England must fight for France even when victory is unlikely, dismissing the expense of men, horses, and ships as secondary to the obligation to fight. His impatience with negotiation marks a sharp contrast with Cromwell, who argues that avoiding war is cheaper. Norfolk’s bluntness is not simply hostility: he listens to Cromwell’s account of campaigning with the French at Garigliano, recognizes the experience behind it, and responds with amused curiosity.

Rivalry and Cooperation with Cromwell

Norfolk’s relationship with Cromwell is shaped by suspicion, competition, and mutual need. He is drawn to Cromwell partly because he believes the fallen Cardinal Wolsey has hidden treasure and suspects Cromwell knows where it is. He also approaches Cromwell as a possible recruit to his service. Cromwell, however, remains loyal to Wolsey during the cardinal’s exile at Esher, even while navigating Norfolk’s overtures and the king’s changing political demands.

The pressure surrounding Wolsey becomes institutional as well as personal. The king’s advisers prepare forty-four charges against the cardinal, including an accusation under the old statute of praemunire. Norfolk belongs to the political world in which Wolsey’s fall is being managed, while Cromwell continues to attend to the cardinal and his concerns. Later, Norfolk and Thomas Boleyn meet foreign ambassadors during the effort to secure support for Henry’s marital cause. Cromwell reads their activity as a threat to Wolsey, and the episode illustrates how court policy is advanced through overlapping networks of noble influence, diplomacy, and private information.

Their dealings do not reduce to a settled alliance or feud. Norfolk can be a rival whose intentions Cromwell must investigate, yet he is also a figure with whom Cromwell can speak directly about war and policy. Their exchanges expose a basic difference in political temperament: Norfolk prizes martial resolve and aristocratic command, while Cromwell looks for instruments—negotiation, legislation, and administration—that may achieve the king’s ends at lower cost.

The King’s Marriage and the Succession

Norfolk participates in the political process surrounding Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. When Henry’s council examines Harry Percy about his past connection with Anne, Norfolk is present as one of the senior figures around the king. Percy is required to swear before the council that he had neither an unlawful relationship nor a marriage contract with Anne. After the oath, Norfolk tells him that the matter should end, but Henry himself orders Norfolk not to trouble Percy further. The scene shows Norfolk exercising authority within the council while remaining subject to the king’s final direction.

Norfolk also takes part in the council’s debate over a bill securing the succession of Anne’s children. In that discussion, the law’s implications for Anne, her daughter, and Mary Tudor become explicit. Cromwell argues that Parliament can establish the succession and that an oath can secure public acknowledgment of it; Stephen Gardiner challenges the proposal and its practical reach. Norfolk’s presence places him among the leading political actors confronting a settlement that combines parliamentary authority, royal marriage, and dynastic inheritance, though the cited scene does not attribute a specific argument on the bill to him.

Parliament, Policy, and Authority

The book sets Norfolk’s politics against Cromwell’s legislative method. When Cromwell introduces a bill suspending payment of annates to Rome, he calls for a division in the Commons, allowing Henry to see who supports the measure and who opposes it. The old aristocracy in the Lords, including families with their own claims to the throne, are more openly attached to the pope and Katherine. The episode emphasizes the political divisions Norfolk inhabits: royal policy must contend not only with individual rivals but with aristocratic traditions and competing claims of authority.

Norfolk’s power is also practical and local. The king proposes sending him to Ireland, where rebellion has left royal control precarious, but Norfolk resists returning, saying he has already spent enough futile months there and will go only if a bridge allows him to get home without wetting his feet. His refusal reveals both his influence and the limits of royal command as it is negotiated in council. Cromwell favors a different approach, proposing that the king’s son Henry Fitzroy be sent as a visible representative of royal power, with money spent to make an impression. The disagreement places Norfolk’s reluctance beside Cromwell’s preference for political display and calculated intervention.

Trials and the Use of Political Procedure

Norfolk presides over Thomas More’s trial. Before the proceedings, Cromwell explains that some counts concerning words and an alleged conspiracy with John Fisher will be set aside, and that the prosecution will rely on Richard Riche’s evidence for a later count. He also discusses the composition of the jury, which consists of Londoners familiar with More and with the religious and commercial conflicts surrounding him. Norfolk hears Cromwell’s procedural plan and comments on the behavior of young men who fight to make a point, contrasting them with older men who have long been accustomed to their own authority.

The trial episode gives Norfolk a role in the formal machinery of the state, not merely in private factional maneuvering. As presiding nobleman, he stands at the point where the crown’s political conflict with More is translated into legal procedure. The novel does not make him the source of the prosecution’s arguments, but his position places him within the process by which the case is heard and judgment pursued.

Narrative Role

Norfolk connects the personal rivalries of court to the institutions that make royal policy effective: access to Parliament, diplomacy, the council, succession legislation, and trial procedure. His preference for fighting, his resistance to a costly Irish assignment, and his authority in More’s trial give different faces to aristocratic power. In contrast with Cromwell’s faith in words, statutes, and administrative design, Norfolk embodies a politics grounded in rank and command. Their uneasy dealings show that the transformation of the realm depends not on one method alone, but on the negotiation between inherited authority and the new legal and parliamentary instruments of the crown.