It is difficult to determine exactly where the cottage stood in which Thomas Cromwell was born, but it is well known that his father, who held a good position in Putney as a blacksmith, brewer, wool-merchant, and inn-keeper, owned a considerable amount of property under the lord of the manor of Wimbledon. Part of his land was by the Thames, and was known as the 'Homestall,' the probability being that the homestead in which the family lived, the brewery, and hostelry were three separate buildings grouped together not far from the parish church. In any case, the young Thomas must have {184} been very familiar with riverside Putney; he often helped to load his father's barges with wool, to be taken down to the ships awaiting them below London Bridge, and he attended a day-school close to his home. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to his uncle John Williams, who was then overseer of Wimbledon Manor and lived in a homestead at Mortlake, on the site of which is a house still named after him. On the death of his master in 1502, Thomas Cromwell collected the Wimbledon rents till the appointment was given to his father, under whom he worked until 1504, when he fell into disgrace and ran away from home. What his crime was is not known, but his father never forgave him, and for many years his native place knew him no more. Walter Cromwell, too, seems to have lost the good position he had long held in Putney, and he would have died in absolute want but for the generosity of his son-in-law Morgan Williams, who gave him a little cottage on Wimbledon Green, near to his own brewery and inn, called the Crooked Billet, the site of which is now occupied by a group of small houses. In this cottage the elder Cromwell died in 1516, without having seen his son again. By this time, however, Thomas had returned to England and was already in the service of Wolsey, the Crooked Billet had passed into the hands of his sister and her husband, and all connection between him and the neighbourhood seemed to be finally severed. Strange to say, however, some twenty-three years later he became lord of the manor of the very estate on which he was born, and owner of the {185} princely income it yielded which he had himself once helped to collect for another. No doubt he had sometimes in the interval landed at the steps near his old home when in attendance as secretary on Cardinal Wolsey, who often halted at Putney on his way up the river to Richmond or Hampton Court before the memorable occasion in 1529--ten years before his _protégé_ became lord of the manor of Wimbledon, when in his sad journey to Esher after the Great Seal had been taken from him, he eluded the malice of his enemies by going by land, attended only by two or three faithful servants, riding up the then gorse and heather-clad Putney Hill towards the heath, which he intended to cross in a westerly direction. The story goes that the disgraced favourite was stopped before he reached