reward to Latimer for his noble letter. He was absolved, and returned to his parish, though snatched as a brand out of the fire.
Soon after, the tide turned, and the Reformation entered into a new phase.
Such is a brief sketch of the life of Hugh Latimer, to the time when it blended with the broad stream of English history. With respect to the other very great man whom the exigencies of the State called to power simultaneously with him, our information is far less satisfactory. Though our knowledge of Latimer's early story comes to us in fragments only, yet there are certain marks in it by which the outline can be determined with certainty. A cloud rests over the youth and early manhood of Thomas Cromwell, through which, only at intervals, we catch glimpses of authentic facts; and these few fragments of reality seem rather to belong to a romance than to the actual life of a man.
Cromwell, the malleus 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 iron-foundry, 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.[1] The old Cromwell dying early, the widow was re-married to a cloth-merchant; and the child of the first husband, who made
- ↑ Nicholas Glossop to Cromwell: Ellis, third series, vol. ii. p. 237.
