Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was the ideal of this type, and he was accordingly the Englishman who rose highest during the convulsion of the Reformation. He was a perfect commercial adventurer, and Chapuys, the ambassador of Charles V. at London, thus described his origin to his master:-- “Cromwell is the son of a poor farrier, who lived in a little village a league and a half from here, and is buried in the parish graveyard. His uncle, father of the cousin whom he has already made rich, was cook of the late Archbishop of Canterbury. Cromwell was ill-behaved when young, and after an imprisonment was forced to leave the country. He went to Flanders, Rome, and elsewhere in Italy. When he returned he married the daughter of a shearman, and served in his house; he then became a solicitor.”[208] The trouble which drove him abroad seems to have been with his father, and he probably started on his travels about 1504. He led a dissolute and vagabond life, served as a mercenary in Italy, “was wild and youthful, ... as he himself was wont ofttimes to declare unto Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; showing what a ruffian he was in his young days ... also what a great doer he was with Geffery Chambers in publishing and setting forth the pardons of Boston everywhere in churches as he went.”[209] These “pardons” were indulgences he succeeded in obtaining from the pope for the town of Boston, which he peddled about the country as he went. He served as a clerk in the counting house of the Merchant Adventurers at Antwerp, and also appears to have filled some such position with a Venetian merchant. On his return to England in 1513, he married and set up a fulling-mill; he also became an attorney and a usurer, dwelling by Fenchurch, in London. In 1523, having been elected to Parliament, Cromwell was a most prosperous man. At this time he entered Wolsey’s service, and made himself of use in suppressing convents to supply endowments for the cardinal’s colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. When Wolsey fell, he ingratiated himself with Henry, and thenceforward rose rapidly. He became chancellor of the exchequer, master of the rolls, secretary of state, vicar general, a Knight of the Garter, and Earl of Essex. At once the head of Church and State, probably no English subject has ever been so powerful. Both he and Cranmer succeeded through flexibility and adroitness. He suggested to Henry to accomplish his ends by robbing the convents, and Mr. Brewer, an excellent authority, thought him notoriously venal from the outset. His executive and business capacity was unrivalled. He had the instinct for money, and provided he made it, he scrupled not about the means. In the _State Papers_ there is an amusing account of the treatment he put up with, when at the pinnacle of greatness:--