Thomas Cromwell (1485 - 1540). Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king. Cromwell was one of the strongest and most powerful proponents of the English Reformation. He helped to engineer an annulment of the king's marriage to Queen Catherine so that Henry could lawfully marry Anne Boleyn. Henry failed to obtain the Pope's approval for the annulment in 1534, so Parliament endorsed the king's claim to be Supreme Head of the Church of England, giving him the authority to annul his own marriage. However, Cromwell subsequently charted an evangelical and reformist course for the Church of England from the unique posts of Vicegerent in Spirituals and vicar-general. During his rise to power, Cromwell made many enemies, including his former ally Anne Boleyn. He played a prominent role in her downfall. He later fell from power, after arranging the king's marriage to German princess Anne of Cleves. Cromwell had hoped that the marriage would breathe fresh life into the Reformation in England, but Henry found his new bride unattractive and it turned into a disaster for Cromwell, ending in an annulment six months later. Cromwell was arraigned under a bill of attainder and executed for treason and heresy on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540. The king later expressed regret at the loss of his chief minister. Thomas Cromwell was born around 1485, in Putney, Surrey, the son of Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith, fuller and cloth merchant, and owner of both a hostelry and a brewery. Walter Cromwell is considered by some to be of Irish ancestry. Thomas's mother, Katherine Maverell, was the aunt of Nicholas Glossop of Wirksworth in Derbyshire. She lived in Putney in the house of a local attorney, John Welbeck, at the time of her marriage to Walter Cromwell in 1474. Cromwell had two sisters: the elder, Katherine, married Morgan Williams, a Welsh lawyer; the younger, Elizabeth, married a farmer, William Wellyfed. Katherine and Morgan's son, Richard, was employed in his uncle's service and changed his name to Cromwell. Little is known about Cromwell's early life. It is believed that he was born at the top of Putney Hill, on the edge of Putney Heath. In 1878, his birthplace was still of note: The site of Cromwell's birthplace is still pointed out by tradition and is in some measure confirmed by the survey of Wimbledon Manor, quoted above, for it describes on that spot 'an ancient cottage called the smith's shop, lying west of the highway from Richmond to Wandsworth, being the sign of the Anchor'. The plot of ground here referred to is now covered by the Green Man public house. Cromwell declared to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer that he had been a ruffian in his young days. As a youth, he left his family in Putney, and crossed the Channel to the continent. Accounts of his activities in France, Italy and the Low Countries are sketchy and contradictory. It is alleged that he first became a mercenary, and marched with the French army to Italy, where he fought in the Battle of Garigliano on 28 December 1503. While in Italy, he entered service in the household of the Florentine banker Francesco Frescobaldi, who rescued him off the Florentine streets, where he was starving after leaving the French mercenaries. Later, he visited leading mercantile centres in the Low Countries, living among the English merchants and developing a network of contacts while learning several languages. At some point he returned to Italy. The records of the English Hospital in Rome indicate that he stayed there in June 1514, while documents in the Vatican Archives suggest that he was an agent for the Archbishop of York, Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge, and handled English ecclesiastical issues before the Roman Rota. At one point during these years, Cromwell returned to England, where around 1515 he married Elizabeth Wyckes. She was the widow of Thomas Williams, a Yeoman of the Guard, and the daughter of a Putney shearman, Henry Wykes, who had served as a gentleman usher to King Henry VII.The couple had three children: Gregory Cromwell, 1st Baron Cromwell, who was Elizabeth Seymour's second husband. Anne Cromwell. Grace Cromwell. Cromwell's wife died early in 1529 and his daughters, Anne and Grace, are believed to have died not long after their mother. Their death may have been to sweating sickness. Provisions made for Anne and Grace in Cromwell's will, dated 12 July 1529, were crossed out at some later date. Gregory outlived his father by only 11 years, succumbing to sweating sickness in 1551.