Informative Caption Hall
Thank you, Informative Caption.
Informative Caption Hall 2
NO. NOT A DAUGHTER! Just a dumb girl. WHO CARES.
Giant Ring Hall
Henry seems vaguely philosophical about having had a girl: "Call her Elizabeth," he instructs. "Cancel the jousts." This is what I plan to say whenever I have a life disappointment. CANCEL THE JOUSTS.
After he leaves, the Many Many Kinda Interchangeable White Dudes and Cromwell exchange glances. "He didn't ask how the Queen was," one notes. "It hardly matters now, does it?" the other says. No one points out that she can probably get pregnant again. YOU INTERCHANGEABLE DUDES ARE THE WORST. PS: This particular girl is going to turn out to be a pretty decent ruler JUST SO YOU KNOW.
Ann(i)e Hall
Cromwell pops over to check on the Queen, who is surrounded by her ladies (Jane Seymour is actually cradling a puppy, so perfect and holy is she [I like Jane, actually, but come on]) and, MAN, has she got her bitch on. Fair warning: Anne is just TERRIBLE in this episode, to everyone, and in general.
For example, Anne tells Cromwell that she wants "Spanish Mary," AKA Princess Mary, to become QE1's servant. "What else can she be?" she wonders, archly, noting that, after all, Mary is now a bastard. She then directs Cromwell to go to France and make little Princess Elizabeth a marriage contract with a French prince. Cromwell notes that he's rather that Gardiner went -- Gardiner is not much in this episode, primarily because he's in a snit about this bill Henry is introducing, which we'll get to -- and Anne is a pain about THIS as well.
"Perhaps you'd like a match with the Emperor?" she snarks. "You're very friendly with his man, aren't you? Chapuys?" Cromwell just sort of looks resigned. He looks sort of resigned for MUCH of this hour, because basically nothing goes his way, despite a LOT of very impressive Lawyering.
Puppy Hall
I wasn't kidding about the puppy. Jane "Terrible" Rochford sees Cromwell gazing at Seymour and suggests that he ask for her -- echoing Mary Boelyn's "don't ask, don't get" advice of a few episodes ago. She goes on to note that the Seymours are poor and will happily sell her to him. Cromwell claims that she mistakes his interest, and I can't remember how he feels about Wife #3 in the books AT ALL, but here, I think they're inching on a very narrow and brilliant edge where you're not sure if he loves her, or he wants to swap her for Anne. Or both.
Jane has no such doubts: "Oh, fa la la, tell your lies to the Commons, not to me. I see things. You and me, we keep our eyes open. I could keep my eyes open in places you could not go," Jane says. She then implies that Anne hasn't given up "all her nimble young men," because she is, as we all know from The Tudors, history class, and the words of Phillipa Gregory, THE WORST. Cromwell says that everything will be smoothed over with Henry once Anne is pregnant again, but Jane implies that Henry isn't UP FOR IT if you know what she means. "Careful," Cromwell warns her, and seriously. Don't walk around court implying the king -- especially this one -- is impotent. But Jane just looks sulky in silence for a moment, before launching into her next complaint, this time about That Dick of a Lute Player, who she calls a "jumped up nobody," and whose motives she finds suspicious, and here I agree with Jane. Oh god, you guys. What if I would have been friends with JANE ROCHFORD, bonded by our mutual disdain for Mark Smeaton? I really think I might have come to a bad end in Tudor England. "I'm sure you could say the same thing about me, Lady Rochford. And you do," Cromwell says, and then sweeps out.
Rafe Hall
Rafe tells Cromwell that, according to his sources, Anne thinks she has enemies everywhere. Cromwell notes that this is actually quite true. In short, now that the precedent has been set that the King can swap out one wife who displeases him for another, everyone thinks that if Anne doesn't give Henry a son pronto, their young beautiful fertile daughter might be next in line to try. AND SO SHOULD ANNE, but I don't think she ever really gets this, which is shortsighted and dumb of her.
Crackpot Hall
One of Anne's big issues, in fact, is the Crackpot Soothsayer here, Elizabeth Barton (whose Wiki is fascinating, o
HATS Hall
I really just wanted you to see the insane headgear on these women, who are all Plantagenet supporters/friends of Crackpot, and off of whom Cromwell promptly scares the hats. He talks to a variety of rich old ladies, and a variety of old religious dudes, and he just LAWYERS THEM TO THE BONE. It's GREAT.
For example, to an old dude: "My lord bishop, WHY ARE YOU SO GULLIBLE?" is his opener, after which Cromwell then tells him to ask the king for forgiveness for dealing with a treasonous crackpot and blame dementia. When this particular woman starts going on about a Prophet Amos, he actually scoffs, "Please. Don't Prophet Amos me." He gotchas one guy who's been distributing Barton's prophecies by noting, "Your printers abroad are very good. They're working for me now." This is a better legal drama than The Good Wife at this point.
More Crazy Hats Hall
We also learn that Cromwell has spies in everyone's houses, serving asparagus and cutting peaches and reporting back. He's also nonchalantly eating lunch while he tells all these people that they're reallllly lucky he hasn't turned them into the king and that they better write Henry and tell him that they're REAL DUMB and didn't mean it, which is a genius piece of business. "Tell him you're exceptionally easy to mislead," he tells this woman. "Tell him that you have the brain of a flea. Grovel."
Paneling Hall
Thus scared that the King is going to try them all for treason (which, honestly, they ought to have been), groveling commences. Henry, of course, had trusted all these people and didn't even KNOW they were chatting about any of this until they went and wrote him a letter to apologize for doing it. He can't believe these people he's known all his life would betray him. I can't believe how GLORIOUS the paneling in this room is!!!
Anyhoodle, Cromwell suggests Henry forgive all these old rich people, and therefore win their loyalty for good by not chopping off their heads. (The Duke of Suffolk thinks this is dumb, and says so with the most AMAZING swish of his cape, but no one listens to him.)
Stakes Hall
Cromwell runs into Thomas More here in the...public square (??) where they've got Barton lashed to a stake. More's hair looks TERRIBLE. "You know I'm clear," he tells Cromwell, but he also gives a non-answer about Henry's new bill, which sets the laws of succession to kick Mary out of the line, and he refuses to take an oath recognizing HVIII as the head of the church. "We want to make it clear that Rome has no legitimate voice here in England, so why don't you sign the oath? Put your loyalty beyond doubt," Cromwell suggests. More just says that he thinks Barton is enjoying the attention WHICH SHE TOTALLY IS. Cromwell invites him for dinner. "Well, I would, if you only wanted to put food into my mouth.But I think you wanted to put words there, too," More says. OH THOMAS MORE. A point to you!
CRANKY HALL.
"You mentioned my death!" Anne is pissed that the Oath of the Hour notes that if she dies, the King can put another queen in her place. She is so delusional sometimes. "I can't imagine anyone else in your place, sweetheart," Henry tells her, soothingly.
Anne also wants to know what happens if she dies and this new wife has a son -- DO GO ON -- as far as Elizabeth goes? "Well, she will still be princess of England," Henry says. LIKE MARY??? is the question that hangs in the air. "And where does it say that Spanish Mary is a bastard?!" Anne fumes, because she's not great at finishing a train of thought when she's pissed.
Cromwell, long-suffering, points out that by excluding Mary from the line of succession, that factoid is IMPLIED, but that they try not to get too personal when writing laws. HVIII tells Anne to calm down and hate Gardiner instead. Or More. (Gardiner is not into this bill.) Anne then gets up a head of steam about how she wants to add More to the Barton bill even if he's not guilty of treason. "I want him frightened. Fright can unmake a man. I've seen it happen," she announces. You need to slow your roll, lady. You haven't produced an heir yet. Henry seems to have no opinion on this. BALL UP HANK, and tell her that you like More and she is not the boss! (Anne might have had me killed in Tudor England.)
After Cromwell leaves, Anne chases after him."I won't die. I'll give the king a son. And I won't die," she tells him. Wrong on all fronts, Annie.
Norfolk Hall
So, Cranmer and Cromwell go to the Duke of Norfolk and ask him to talk Henry into pardoning More, regardless of the bee in Anne's bonnet -- noting that he has to be the one to do it because it's the work of his niece. Norfolk is predictably cranky and worked up about the entire thing but he finally agrees, after a digression about how he'd LOVE to get rid of HIS wife. "It's like placing your person inside a grizzled leather bag," he says of her. WAY HARSH NORFOLK.
Very Subtle Hall
HOLBEINING IT UP.
So everyone trucks over to see Henry. Who agrees that More doesn't need to be named as an enemy of the state, as Anne requested, but he WILL need to take the oath. (Norfolk is such a pill throughout, also. It's hilarious. He complains about his knees all the time.) Once everyone but Cromwell leaves, the king gives him an ebullient hug and crows that Anne's period is late. "This time for sure! England is ours!" he says. That's actually what I say when I get my period, coincidentally.
More Hall
More reads the oath and still won't take it. But he says he won't speak against it or try to dissuade anyone else from taking it. However, despite all the hard work Cromwell actually puts in --and it is VERY hard work -- trying to talk him into getting all oath-y with it, this is why More eventually ends up in the Tower and loses his head (and was canonized by the Catholic Church). Er, spoiler?
Chatty Hall
We pop over and check in with The Two Janes. Seymour is prophetically wishing they had some kind of magical way to look inside a pregnant lady to tell whether she's having a boy or a girl; she then wistfully sighs that she'd like to have a baby. Rochford of course reacts like a lunatic and says, "they'd BRICK YOU UP ALIVE." Um, pretty sure she meant generally. Not, "right now, out of wedlock." She's berating Jane when they come across blood on the floor. Poor Anne has miscarried.
Tower Hall
Isn't the Tower so scenic!? Cromwell pops in to try to talk More into signing the oath AGAIN SOME MORE FOR THE THIRD TIME, and also to tell him that his claim that he hasn't harmed anyone is kinda bullshit given that he tortured and burned to death a whole bunch of people last week, and since he's holding firm on the other, he's going to trial. Cromwell also tells a poignant story about how he always admired More, ever since he was a child working in the kitchens of a home where More lived, and that he once asked More what was in a book he was reading. "You said, 'words. WORDS. Just words.'" (Maybe More could work here!)
Despite that pointed anecdote, More's mind is made up. PS: Tynedale's been caught. "Your man? No, of course. Thomas More hurts no one," Cromwell notes, before sweeping out. All the robes that everyone wears on this show make for excellent sweeping in and out of rooms.
Uh-Oh Hall
You NEVER want to come home and find the king and a variety of Boleyns waiting for you like this in your sitting room. Anyway, Anne is still in a strop about More, and now she wants him dead. She is really kind of the worst. "He was my friend," Henry tells her, but Anne won't hear it. "This silence on which he relies conceals treason. SO MAKE HIM TALK," she snaps. I just want to shake Anne and tell her to KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT. Your talking Henry into going after his friend is going to breed resentment and it's going to BITE YOU IN THE ASS.
Cromwell just says, "we don't do that," like a parent, and she STORMS out. Henry blames her bad behaviour on her grief. "They burnt it before I could see if it was a boy," he adds, sadly. Cromwell kindly says it may have been too soon to tell, then tells Henry that, while he doesn't doubt that More is loyal to Rome, their case against him is legally slim. "Do I keep you for what's easy? Do you think I promoted you for the charm of your presence?" Henry says. "I keep you because you are a serpent. Do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it." And then he leaves. That's how I'm going to leave all business meetings now.
Tapestry Hall
Allow me to once more note that I enjoy that this show has a tapestry as a plot point, and also that this is a world where someone walks in to a room and is like, "oh, I know that women in your tapestry!!!" In this case, the dude who is painting Cromwell's portrait. He thinks Cromwell should go back to Antwerp and "claim her."
"She's married" Cromwell says. "I've changed." The painter rolls his eyes. "Yeah, you are rich now." HE thinks that maybe Cromwell loves another -- a gossipy supposition he makes just as Johane comes in the room.
Mrs More Hall
Mrs More comes into basically plead for her husband's life. "You always have some trick," she says. "Born tricky, can't help it," Cromwell agrees. Poor Mrs More is very touchingly worried about her husband (who won't even talk to her) and I hope she marries someone nice later in life. "Does he think it's clever to leave his wife without company, his son without advice, his daughter without protection, and all of us at the mercy of a man like yourself?" she asks, and Cromwell just looks sad.
But he does go to More again, this time to take away his "pens and papers and his books," and to talk him into signing the damn paper and GOING HOME. UGH, I would do so badly in The Tower. I also probably would have signed anything because I would have had no religious integrity and would have been a wily schemer. More refuses, even after Cromwell offers to send his own barge to send him home to his children and garden and wife, to his own bed. Cromwell argues that More should at least throw himself on Henry's mercy. "He's not an unkind man." More says. "He didn't used to be. But then he's changed the company he keeps." There's a mic drop for you. More is getting all of them this week, which is nice given that soon enough he will be DEAD.
Trial Hall
So the trial goes pretty badly for More, as you might guess if you remember from history that he gets his noggin loped off. Everyone's worried that Anne is going to go ballistic if the case is thrown out -- Norfolk uses the word "bollocks" twice in one sentence, which thrills me. More's argument is that his silence is assent, butttt: "He hasn't been entirely silent," Cromwell finally says. See, he'd sent someone in to take away said books and here comes said someone to testify that More told him that Parliament naming Henry head of the church is actually bullshit. Ergo treason. Cue the shocked gasps of the crowd.
More says, "I would NEVER have said this to the likes of Richard Rich," and this does seem like it might have been super stupid of him? But then More curses out the aforementioned Richard Rich -- there are a LOT of Richards in this thing -- calling him the "despair of [his] family, a gambler, and a wastrel." (I guess he's also Solicitor General? Sure) But the overall point seems to be, "I am pretty sure I didn't say it and if I did I totally didn't mean it...but if you think I did mean it, than I hope you all enjoy burning in hell because you are all FULL OF SHIT," Is the crux of it. Cue several disgusted extras shaking their heads, and the room bursting into conversation and yelling and pandemonium. Norfolk screams that More is a traitor -- Norfolk is really selling this, for family peace -- and Cromwell just looks nauseated. And maybe a wee bit impressed.
MORE DICK WIND INSTRUMENT PLAYERS
As More is executed -- footage of which I shall spare you -- Cromwell (the only person who looks him in the eye before he places his head on the stump) flashes back to the time when he was child, and Thomas More an impressive recorderist who would not return his tentative wave of friendship. Who is waving now?
Plague Hall
I totally thought this episode was going to end on Cromwell remembering More closing the window in his young face, and I sort of think it should have. But it doesn't; instead, Cromwell gets the plague and doesn't die (which we know, because of history), and merely hallucinates his dead wife Liz, weaving something secretive and obviously highly symbolic.
Wolf Hall Hall
And when he gets back to work, he decides to add a stop on Henry's Summer Progress. WOLF HALL, the home of the Seymours. DUM DUM DUM DUM. Hold on to your neck, Anne, because shit is about to get real.