eus monachorum, was of good English family, belonging to
the Cromwells of Lincolnshire. One of these, probably a younger brother,
moved up to London and conducted an ironfoundry, or other business of that
description, at Putney. He married a lady of respectable connections, of
whom we know only that she was sister of the wife of a gentleman in
Derbyshire, but whose name does not appear.[582] The old Cromwell dying
early, the widow was re-married to a cloth-merchant; and the child of the
first husband, who made himself so great a name in English story, met with
the reputed fortune of a stepson, and became a vagabond in the wide world.
The chart of his course wholly fails us. One day in later life he shook by
the hand an old bell-ringer at Sion House before a crowd of courtiers, and
told them that "this man's father had given him many a dinner in his
necessities." And a strange random account is given by Foxe of his having
joined a party in an expedition to Rome to obtain a renewal from the pope
of certain immunities and indulgences for the town of Boston; a story which
derives some kind of credibility from its connection with Lincolnshire, but
is full of incoherence and unlikelihood. Following still the popular
legend, we find him in the autumn of 1515 a ragged stripling at the door of
Frescobaldi's banking-house in Florence, begging for help. Frescobaldi had
an establishment in London,[583] with a large connection there; and seeing
an English face, and seemingly an honest one, he asked the boy who and what
he was. "I am, sir," quoth he, "of England, and my name is Thomas Cromwell;
my father is a poor man, and by occupation a cloth-shearer; I am strayed
from my country, and am now come into Italy with the camp of Frenchmen that
were overthrown at Garigliano, where I was page to a footman, carrying
after him his pike and burganet." Something in the boy's manner was said to
have attracted the banker's interest; he took him into his house, and after
keeping him there as long as he desired to stay, he gave him a horse and
sixteen ducats to help him home to England.[584] Foxe is the first English
authority for the story; and Foxe took it from Bandello, the novelist; but
it is confirmed by, or harmonises with, a sketch of Cromwell's early life
in a letter of Chappuys, the imperial ambassador, to Chancellor Granvelle.
"Master Cromwell," wrote Chappuys in 1535, "is the son of a poor
blacksmith, who lived in a small village four mile