A menacing device

Content warning: This post contains discussion of a stitched representation of a gallows.

In a recent post, I wrote an introduction to my Cromwell Cloke, with a view to sharing the “becoming” of a piece of my textile art. With that in mind, this series discusses some of the objects depicted on the Cloke, and the creative decisions behind each piece. It also gives me an opportunity to record sources and references both in and outside the text of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy.

The Wolsey Rooms at Hampton Court Palace.

My last update about the Cromwell Cloke made reference to George Canvendish’s mid- 1550s biography of Cromwell’s Cardinal - Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinall, his Lyffe and Deathe. I am drawing on this source again today - as indeed did Hilary Mantel when writing Wolf Hall. She described it as:

not always accurate but it is a very touching, immediate and readable account of Wolsey’s career and Thomas Cromwell’s part in it. Its influence on Shakespeare is clear. Cavendish took four years to complete his book, and died just as Elizabeth came to the throne. (Author’s note at the end of Wolf Hall.)

While the Cardinal was in Compiègne, being robbed by Fabrice-who-later-becomes-Christophe, the theft of his gold plate was not his only concern. On his return to England, he complained to Cromwell that:

‘some villain sneaked into my chamber, and carved a device by the window…’ And next morning, a shaft of early sun, creeping through mist and rain, had picked out a gallows, from which dangled a cardinal’s hat. (Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, An Occult History of Britain.

According to George Cavendish, this insult to the Cardinal was real. His book tells us that:

Some lewd person, whosoever it was, had engraved in the great chamber window where my lord lay, upon the learning stone there, a cardinal’s hat with a pair of gallows over it, in derision of my lord: with divers other unkind demeanours, the which I leave here to write, they be matters so slanderous.

Presumably, Cavendish did not wish to commit unpleasant (obscene?) graffiti to parchment.

Stitching the device

I thought long and hard before including the device on the Cromwell Cloke. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with including a gallows on there; and my original intention had been to focus on objects owned my Cromwell.

But - I had to remind myself - the story recounted in both the historical record and in Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy is bloody and brutal and violent. Death was ever present, judicial murder was a fact of life, politics and diplomacy took place against a fraught and dangerous background. Wolsey was in a precarious position - being unable to fix a divorce for the King would bring about his downfall in England, while attempting to fix said divorce would create - or embolden - enemies in Europe. The threats against Wolsey would frighten Cromwell also. And so the Cardinal section of the Cromwell Cloke has to include menacing and precarious conditions, as well as the pleasures of artichokes.

I have to admit that whenever I have read about the device carved on the window frame, I have always imagined it as a gallows above a mitre. I can almost feel the carving if I stop to think about it. But when it came to its inclusion on the Cloke, I decided to stitch Wolsey’s Galero instead. Both Cavendish and Mantel refer to the device featuring a “cardinal’s hat”; and Cavendish refers to mitres elsewhere in his text but not here, so I decided a mitre might not be right - regardless of my imagination.

This piece has been left in outline - not painted or coloured in any way - to echo the outline carved by the window of Wolsey’s chamber. But the act of carving itself poses questions. If the device was carved during the night, it must have been done quietly so as not to wake the Cardinal. Or did the carver wait until Wolsey was being entertained elsewhere, knowing that his work would not be spotted until the sunlight of the morning?

Studio Time

October means a return to Studio Time. My other work as a marriage registrar is very seasonal - I am very, very busy in the summer, and have more creative time in the autumn and winter. From June to early October I don’t get much time in the studio at all - in fact it mostly consists of a quick visit to water the plants - and I am used to packing up smaller pieces to work on at home in the early mornings. But it all balances out in the end, and my mind is currently full of the possibility of new Cromwell projects and the completion of ongoing ones.

This week I started a series of little stitched portraits on leftover fabric. The first to be finished was this Katherine of Aragon - four and a half by seven inches. There seems to be something of the playing card about her - and that has given me another idea. Watch this space….