Cromwell used cut-and-paste Bible images to win Henry’s favour
Henry VIII’s chief minister altered 1539 book to reflect changing attitudes towards the Church, say historians
THOMAS CROMWELL may be responsible for the first ever use of cut-and-paste as he tried to rewrite his own history in 1539, Cambridge historians have suggested.
As Henry VIII’s chief minister, Cromwell was one of the strongest proponents of the English Reformation and ordered two lavish copies of The Great Bible to be made – one for Henry and one for himself. Both were printed on parchment in France and their illustrations were coloured by hand, before being sent over to England.
But the political mood was tense at the time, and sensing that Henry was having reservations about splitting from the Catholic Church, it has now emerged that Cromwell intercepted the books and altered some of the images in an effort to distance himself from the campaign.
Cromwell’s copy has been in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge, since the 17th century, but its secrets have only now been uncovered by historian Dr Eyal Poleg and senior research scientist Dr Paola Ricciardi.
The title page of The Great Bible shows Henry handing copies of the Bible to Cromwell and to Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Cranmer and a man long assumed to be Cromwell are shown distributing the book to clergymen and lay nobility. But researchers discovered the faces of the men receiving and giving Bibles were painted on separate pieces of vellum and pasted over the original printed portraits so that Cromwell is no longer depicted distributing the book.
Instead, he is now being given the Bible by Henry, while, in the second image, his face has been pasted over with that of another of the King’s close advisers, thought to be Richard Rich.
Dr Poleg believes the change was made to shore up Cromwell’s position with Henry, who still had doubts about the move towards Protestantism.
“In the original title page, Cromwell is associating himself with the person distributing Bibles. This was a very dangerous position to be in because Henry was not fully supportive of the new Bible,” he said. “Cromwell realised this so he tweaked the images to place himself receiving a Bible from Henry. He would have employed an artist to add in a portrait of himself receiving the Bible from Henry.
“It’s been done so professionally that a microscope and a good light source are needed to see it. It’s painted on a separate piece of vellum and then glued on.”
The artistry is all the more incredible because, according to Dr Ricciardi: “We did not know that the Tudors were doing cut and stick repairs to the Bible at that time. There is a long tradition from medieval times of copying images from one book and sticking them into another, but that’s a whole image. This is to cover something up and hide it, so yes, this would be the first report of someone sticking a face on top of a body that was already there.”
This makes it the last known portrait of Cromwell before his execution.
A second dramatic change to the title page was the inclusion of Henry’s beloved wife, Jane Seymour, who had died in 1537, days after giving birth to his longed-for male heir, Edward.
Her picture was painted over the original illustration of a woman surrounded by children. Dr Poleg said: “The page was manipulated to present Henry with an image of Jane Seymour. Cromwell was using Jane to persuade the king of the value of the Bible.”
It is thought that Henry never realised the pictures had been doctored to curry favour.