Complements Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, which is due to begin in November on BBC One
As downfalls go, it was spectacular – and brutally swift. On 10 June 1540, Thomas Cromwell – Henry VIII’s immensely gifted chief minister and among the most powerful men in England – arrived at court for what should have been a routine meeting of the Privy Council. As this son of Putney was soon to discover, the meeting was anything but routine.
On entering the council, Cromwell, dressed in his formal splendid attire as Knight of the Garter, was arrested and humiliated by his old enemy the Duke of Norfolk. The duke ripped the collar of St George from Cromwell’s neck, while the Earl of Southampton, not to be outdone in malice, untied the garter from his knee. Cromwell was then bundled off to the Tower of London down the Thames by barge from Westminster.