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Cast of Characters

The Cromwell household

Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith’s son: now Secretary to the king, Master of the Rolls, Chancellor of Cambridge University, and deputy to the king as head of the church in England.

Gregory Cromwell, his son.

Richard Cromwell, his nephew.

Rafe Sadler, his chief clerk, brought up by Cromwell as his son.

Helen, Rafe’s beautiful wife.

Thomas Avery, the household accountant.

Thurston, his master cook.

Christophe, a servant.

Dick Purser, keeper of the watchdogs.

Anthony, a jester.

The dead

Thomas Wolsey, cardinal, papal legate, Lord Chancellor: dismissed from office, arrested and died, 1530.

John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester: executed 1535.

Thomas More, Lord Chancellor after Wolsey: executed 1535.

Elizabeth, Anne and Grace Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell’s wife and daughters, died 1527–28; also Katherine Williams and Elizabeth Wellyfed, his sisters.

The king’s family

Henry VIII.

Anne Boleyn, his second wife.

Elizabeth, Anne’s infant daughter, heir to the throne.

Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the king’s illegitimate son.

The king’s other family

Katherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife, divorced and under house arrest at Kimbolton.

Mary, Henry’s daughter by Katherine and the alternative heir to the throne: also under house arrest.

Maria de Salinas, a former lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon.

Sir Edmund Bedingfield, Katherine’s keeper.

Grace, his wife.

The Howard and Boleyn families

Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, uncle to the queen: ferocious senior peer and an enemy of Cromwell.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, his young son.

Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, the queen’s father: ‘Monseigneur’.

George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, the queen’s brother.

Jane, Lady Rochford, George’s wife.

Mary Shelton, the queen’s cousin.

And offstage: Mary Boleyn, the queen’s sister, now married and living in the country, but formerly the king’s mistress.

The Seymour family of Wolf Hall

Old Sir John, notorious for having had an affair with his daughter-in-law.

Lady Margery, his wife.

Edward Seymour, his eldest son.

Thomas Seymour, a younger son.

Jane Seymour, his daughter, lady-in-waiting to both Henry’s queens.

Bess Seymour, her sister, married to Sir Anthony Oughtred, Governor of Jersey: then widowed.

The courtiers

Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk: widower of Henry VIII’s sister Mary: a peer of limited intellect.

Thomas Wyatt, a gentleman of unlimited intellect: Cromwell’s friend: widely suspected of being a lover of Anne Boleyn.

Harry Percy, Earl of Northumberland: a sick and indebted young nobleman, once betrothed to Anne Boleyn.

Francis Bryan, ‘the Vicar of Hell’, related to both the Boleyns and the Seymours.

Nicholas Carew, Master of the Horse: an enemy of the Boleyns.

William Fitzwilliam, Master Treasurer, also an enemy of the Boleyns.

Henry Norris, known as ‘Gentle Norris’, chief of the king’s privy chamber.

Francis Weston, a reckless and extravagant young gentleman.

William Brereton, a hard-nosed and quarrelsome older gentleman.

Mark Smeaton, a suspiciously well-dressed musician.

Elizabeth, Lady Worcester, a lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn.

Hans Holbein, a painter.

The clerics

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury: Cromwell’s friend.

Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester: Cromwell’s enemy.

Richard Sampson, legal adviser to the king in his matrimonial affairs.

The officers of state

Thomas Wriothesley, known as Call-Me-Risley, Clerk of the Signet.

Richard Riche, Solicitor General.

Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor.

The ambassadors

Eustache Chapuys, ambassador of Emperor Charles V.

Jean de Dinteville, a French envoy.

The reformers

Humphrey Monmouth, wealthy merchant, friend of Cromwell and evangelical sympathiser: patron of William Tyndale, the Bible translator, now in prison in the Low Countries.

Robert Packington: a merchant of similar sympathies.

Stephen Vaughan, a merchant at Antwerp, friend and agent of Cromwell.

The ‘old families’ with claims to the throne

Margaret Pole, niece of King Edward IV, supporter of Katherine of Aragon and the Princess Mary.

Henry, Lord Montague, her son.

Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter.

Gertrude, his ambitious wife.

At the Tower of London

Sir William Kingston, the constable.

Lady Kingston, his wife.

Edmund Walsingham, his deputy.

Lady Shelton, aunt of Anne Boleyn.

A French executioner.