The Story of London in 50 Novels: 6 - "The Woman in the Shadows," by Carol McGrath

In the early decades of the Sixteenth Century, London was one of the great trading cities of Europe, a major port city, and a rival to Antwerp as a hub of the international cloth trade: yet it remained, by any modern standard, a relatively small urban settlement. The estimated population in 1530 was around 50,000: comparable to modern Salisbury or Surbiton; a little smaller than today's Tamworth or Maidstone; a city that offered little in the way of anonymity, in which people were likely to have made a point of knowing each other's business. Yet it also had one of the greatest concentrations of wealth of any city in northern Europe. Rivalries, whether between individuals, families, trading houses, or livery companies, carried very high stakes.

A drapers' market, c1530 (image is in the Public Domain).

The drapers' market in Bologna (image is in the Public Domain).

A late Medieval market (image is in the Public Domain).

It was a city poised for change: by 1605, the population would swell to 225,000. New technologies were transforming the lives of people across the continent, few more so than that of printing, which revolutionised people's access to books and information. With the mass-movement of goods between England and the continent came the mass-movement of people, and, despite the best attempts of the authorities to prevent it, the spread of new ideas, many of them religious. In 1517, Martin Luther's scathing assault on the Catholic Church was published in Germany: it was soon translated into most European languages, and in widespread circulation. In 1526, the Englishman, William Tyndale, published an English translation of the New Testament. England, in the early stages of Henry VIII's reign, was still very much a Catholic country, and anyone caught in possession of such documents in London risked imprisonment, torture, and death: printers on the continent, however, churned out thousands of copies, and it was impossible to keep out the new ideas.

Bust, believed to be of William Tyndale, St Dunstan-in-the-West, London. Photo: Lonpicman (licensed under GNU).

The Gospel of St John, from Tyndale's New Testament, British Library (image is in the Public Domain).

Carol McGrath's novel, The Woman in the Shadows, tells the story of Elizabeth Cromwell, the wife of the merchant, lawyer, and statesman, Thomas Cromwell. In some ways, it reads like a prequel to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (since the Cromwell we encounter is a relatively young man, who has not yet established a role for himself at court), but it is told from Elizabeth's, rather than Thomas's point of view, and in a different narrative style (first person, mainly past tense; rather than Mantel's third person, present tense).

We know relatively little about the historical Elizabeth: she was the daughter of a cloth merchant, and was already the widow of another cloth merchant by the time she met Thomas; they had three children together, but Elizabeth died in 1529, before her husband's political career really took off. The novel opens with the death and burial of Elizabeth's first husband; depicts her taking over his business, contrary to her father's advice, and traveling to wool and cloth fairs; and shows us her romance with, and marriage to the ambitious Thomas; all set against the background of commercial life in a London that still moved to the rhythms of the liturgical year of the Catholic Church.

"Mother returned to her manor without me, and Father purchased broadcloth at the Bartholomew Cloth Fair, as well as the fabric for the monasteries. I was grateful ... Gerard Smith made all my deliveries that week, except for the cloth to Austin Friars . I told him not to visit the friars because I wanted to bring them the painted cloth myself. The Friary's beauty was well known and, since Tom had dealt with the Prior before, I hoped to see something of this famous place where scholars gathered, often traveling there from far-flung countries, the lands of oranges and figs."

"When the monasteries paid us, I paid my debt, pleased to see that there was now enough left over to keep my household fed that winter. The rent on Wood Street was due by All Hallows' Eve, and I knew that I must use the rest of Master Cromwell's silver for this ... there would not be enough over to rebuild my much-needed woolshed unless I sold the remaining mixed cloth I kept in the attic storerooms and replaced it with even better cloth."

A bishop blessing a fair. Image: Bibliotheque Nationale de France (MS Calais f 96e - image is in the Public Domain).

The Old Wool Hall, Lavenham, Suffolk. Photo: Mick Lobb (licensed under CCA).

"'Smith,' I said after I had recorded our gains in the ledgers. 'Where can I buy new draperies? You know, linen or wool and silk mixes.' He thought for a moment, then beaming broadly said, 'There is always the Northampton Cloth Fair. Those fancy new cloths are woven up in Norfolk. They will be there aplenty, Mistress. They are in high demand.'" 

Mark Patton is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.

The Wards of Old London: Broad Street - Thomas Cromwell and his Neighbours

Following the course of the northern wall of the Roman and Medieval city in an easterly direction, a visitor to London passes from Coleman Street Ward into Broad Street Ward. Throughout the Middle Ages, this quarter of London was dominated by "Austin Friars," an Augustinian priory established in the Thirteenth Century by Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, on his return from the Seventh Crusade. Like other religious orders, the Augustinians were international in focus, and the sixty friars resident here included Germans and Italians, as well as Englishmen, who took the confessions of their countrymen living in, or visiting London.

Plan of Austin Friars (Prioryman, licensed under GNU). A North Cloister; B Main Cloister; 1 Library; 2 Infirmary; 3 Kitchen; 4 Porter's Lodge; 5 Refectory; 6 Chapter House; 7 Guest Hall; 8 Dormitory; 9 Prior's House; 10 Church of Saint Peter the Poor.

Like the Franciscan priory in Farringdon Ward Within, Austin Friars was a significant centre of learning, preparing young men for study at Oxford and Cambridge, and had an important library. The priory garden produced medicinal herbs used by physicians around the city. Like many religious houses, also, Austin Friars had property to let out to secular tenants. One resident in the early Sixteenth Century was the Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, one of the first men to teach Greek in England since the collapse of Roman rule (he left without having paid his bill).

Thomas Cromwell and his young family seem to have taken up residence in one of the buildings on the site in the 1520s. The son of a Putney blacksmith, brewer and petty criminal, Cromwell had spent time as a mercenary and administrator in Italy, returning to establish a legal and political career, and with the means to set up home in a fourteen-room property with a garden. His close neighbours included Giovanni Cavalcante, a wealthy Italian merchant; and, from 1529, Eustace Chapuys, the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor in London.

Eustace Chapuys, Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire in London from 1529 to 1545. Portrait at Annecy (image is in the Public Domain).

As Cromwell grew in power and influence in the 1530s, he developed his property into one of the grandest private houses in London, with more than fifty rooms, and a much larger garden. This, he did, not at the expense of wealthy neighbours, such as Cavalcante or Chapuys, but rather at the expense of poorer ones, including a tailor, the father of the Elizabethan chronicler, John Stow.

"This house being finished," Stow writes, "and having some reasonable plot of ground left for a garden, [Cromwell] caused the pales of the gardens adjoining to the north part thereof on a sudden to be taken down; twenty-two feet to be measured forth right into the north of every man's ground; a line there to be drawn, a foundation laid, and a high brick wall to be built. My father had a garden there, and a house standing close to his south pale; this house they loosed from the ground, and bare upon rollers into my father's garden twenty-two feet, ere my father heard thereof. No warning was given him, nor other answer, when he spoke to the surveyors of that work but that their master Sir Thomas commanded them to do so; no man durst go to argue the matter, but each man lost his land, and my father paid his whole rent, which was 6s. 6d. the year, for that half which was left. Thus much of mine own knowledge have I thought good to note, that the sudden rising of some men causeth them in some matters to forget themselves."

The Augustinian priory itself was dissolved, on Cromwell's orders, in 1538. Some of the most memorable scenes in Hilary Mantel's novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, are set in Cromwell's home at Austin Friars. Whilst the scenes at court are, in many cases, based on well-attested historical accounts, the domestic setting allows free-rein to Mantel's literary imagination, showing Cromwell, the private man, grieving the loss of his wife and daughters; and exploring his uneasy relationship with his neighbour and political opponent, Chapuys.

Thomas Cromwell, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1532 or 1533, Frick Collection (image is in the Public Domain).

Austin Friars in c1550, Copperplate Map (image is in the Public Domain). Cromwell's former home is at 3.

With Cromwell's fall from grace and execution in 1540, his former mansion became the livery hall of the Worshipful Company of Drapers (it subsequently burned down in the Great Fire of 1666). Most of the Augustinian priory had already been demolished, but the nave of the priory church was granted to London's community of "Germans and other foreigners," becoming, in effect, London's first non-conformist chapel. By 1570, the Dutch were the largest group of expatriates in London (5000 out of a total population of 100,000 - around half of them Protestant refugees from the Spanish Netherlands). The "Dutch Church," as it became known, remained in use until its destruction during the Second World War (the church that stands on the site today was built in the 1950s). Apart from street-names (Austin Friars, Throgmorton Street, Old Broad Street), there is little on the ground today that Cromwell, Chapuys or Stow would recognise.

The Dutch Church in 1820, by Edward Wedlake Brayley, British Library (image is in the Public Domain).

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.