The traditional sources of information about Thomas Cromwell’s early life are the characteristic but somewhat confusing stories of the martyrologist Foxe, founded to some extent upon a novel of the Italian author Bandello, the meagre though probably trustworthy accounts contained in Cardinal Pole’s ‘Apologia ad Carolum Quintum,’ a letter of Chapuys to Granvelle written November 21, 1535, and a few scattered statements in the chroniclers of the period. To these were added in 1880 and 1882 the results of the researches of Mr. John Phillips in the Wimbledon Manor Rolls[18]. Mr. Phillips has certainly brought to light a large number of interesting facts about the ancestry and family of Thomas Cromwell: it is the more unfortunate that he should have gone so far astray in some of his statements concerning the man himself. He is surely correct in assuming Thomas to be the son of Walter Cromwell; the evidence afforded by the State Papers leaves no doubt of this. He is also right in stating that the name Thomas Cromwell does not occur in the Court Rolls. But it is more difficult to believe the theory which Mr. Phillips has evolved from these data. As he finds no entry concerning Thomas Cromwell in the manorial records, he seeks for some mention of him under another appellation, and hits upon that of Thomas Smyth as the most likely, owing to the fact that his father was called by both surnames. He finds two entries in the Court Rolls concerning Thomas Smyth, and assumes that they refer to Thomas Cromwell. These entries occur in the records of Feb. 26, 1504, and of May 20 in the same year. The first states that ‘Richard Williams came to the court and surrendered into the hands of the lord two whole virgates of land in ‹Roe›hampton, one called Purycroft and the other called Williams, to the use of Thomas Smyth, his heirs and assigns’; the second, that ‘Richard Williams assaulted Thomas [Smyth] and beat the same Thomas against the peace of the lord the King,’ and further that ‘Thomas Smyth came to the court and surrendered into the hands of the lord two whole virgates of land in Roehampton, one called Purycroft and the other called Williams, to the use of David Doby, his heirs and assigns[19].’ Mr. Phillips has made these entries the basis for an attack on the veracity of many of the best-known stories of Bandello and Foxe concerning the early life of our subject, but his whole case hangs on the assumption that Thomas Smyth and Thomas Cromwell were one and the same man, and until he can prove this ingenious but somewhat improbable theory his arguments cannot be supported. He discusses at length the two entries in the Court Rolls, adducing them as a proof of the falsity of the accounts which assert Cromwell to have been in Italy previous to 1504, but concluding that the record that Thomas Smyth disposed of his lands in Putney in May of that year indicates that Thomas Cromwell left England at that time. To