Thomas Cromwell was born around 1485, in…

Thomas Cromwell was born around 1485, in Putney, Surrey, as the son of Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith, fuller and cloth merchant, and owner of both a hostelry and a brewery.

Thomas's mother, Katherine, was the aunt of Nicholas Glossop of Wirksworth in Derbyshire.

She lived in Putney in the house of a local attorney, John Welbeck, in 1474 at the time of her marriage to Walter Cromwell.

Cromwell has two sisters: the elder, Katherine, who had married Morgan Williams, a Welsh lawyer; the younger, Elizabeth, had married a farmer, William Wellyfed.

Katherine and Morgan's son Richard will be employed in his uncle's service and change his name to Cromwell.

Richard's great-grandson is Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector following the English Civil War.

Little is known about Thomas Cromwell's early life.

It is believed that he was born at the top of Putney Hill, on the edge of Putney Heath, a noted haunt of highwaymen; only a few brave souls venture across it at night.

A successful merchant and lawyer, Thomas Cromwell is a self-made man of relatively humble beginnings whose intelligence and abilities enable him to rise to become the most powerful man in England next to the king.

His own father, Walter Cromwell, had been a jack of all trades—a blacksmith, fuller, and brewer—who had, from time to time, come to the attention of the authorities.

Thomas Cromwell had been sent to school as a boy, where he learned to read and write and was taught a little Latin.

Cromwell will later declare to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer that he had been a "ruffian … in his young days".

As a youth, he left his family in Putney and crossed the Channel to the continent.

Accounts of his activities in France, Italy and the Low Countries are sketchy and contradictory.

It is alleged that he first became a mercenary and marched with the French army to Italy, where on December 28, 1503, he fought in the battle of Garigliano.

While in Italy, he entered service in the household of the Florentine banker Francesco Frescobaldi.

He later visited leading mercantile centers in the Low Countries, living among the English merchants and developing a network of contacts while learning several languages.

He returned at some point to Italy.

The records of the English Hospital in Rome indicate that he stayed there in June 1514, while documents in the Vatican Archives suggest that he was an agent for the Archbishop of York, Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge, and handled English ecclesiastical issues before the Roman Rota.

Cromwell at some time during these years had returned to England, where around 1515 he had married Elizabeth Wyckes, the widow of Thomas Williams, a Yeoman of the Guard, and the daughter of a Putney shearman, Henry Wykes, who had served as a Gentleman Usher to King Henry VII.

The couple have three children: Gregory, Anne Cromwell, and Grace Cromwell.

Cromwell had led an embassy to Rome in 1517, and again in 1518, to obtain from Pope Leo X a Papal Bull of Indulgence for the town of Boston, Lincolnshire.

Cromwell was firmly established by 1520 in London mercantile and legal circles.

He obtained a seat in the House of Commons in 1523, though the constituency he represented at that time has not been identified.

He was elected in 1524 as a member of Gray's Inn.

Cromwell's wife is believed to have died, most likely in the summer of 1528, during the epidemic of sweating sickness sweeping across England.

Cromwell's daughters, Anne and Grace, are believed to have died not long after their mother.