page_title: Thomas Cromwell
section_title: Anne of Cleves
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Cromwell / King's chief minister / Anne of Cleves
context_page_description: Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, KG, PC was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1532 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king.
  Cromwell was one of the strongest and most powerful proponents of the English Reformation. He helped to engineer an annulment of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that Henry could lawfully marry Anne Boleyn. Henry failed to obtain the Pope's approval for the annulment in 1534, so Parliament endorsed the king's claim to be Supreme Head of the Church of England, giving him the authority to annul his own marriage. However, Cromwell subsequently charted an evangelical and reformist course for the Church of England from the unique posts of Vicegerent in Spirituals and vicar-general.
  During his rise to power, Cromwell made many enemies, including his former ally Anne Boleyn. He played a prominent role in her downfall. He later fell from power, after arranging the king's marriage to German princess Anne of Cleves.
context_section_description: Queen Jane had died in 1537, less than two weeks after the birth of her only child, the future Edward VI. In early October 1539, the King finally accepted Cromwell's suggestion that he should marry Anne of Cleves, the sister of Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, partly on the basis of a portrait which Hans Holbein had painted of her. On 27 December, Anne of Cleves arrived at Dover. On New Year's Day 1540, the King met her at Rochester and was immediately repelled by her physically: "I like her not!". The wedding ceremony took place on 6 January at Greenwich, but the marriage was not consummated. Henry said that he found it impossible to enjoy conjugal relations with a woman whom he found so unattractive.
caption: Anne of Cleves, by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1539
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