Young Thomas Cromwell leaves his father’s smithy at Putney to try his fortune in Antwerp and Florence, repays a kindness from a Florentine merchant, enters Cardinal Wolsey’s service and climbs to power under Henry VIII, among dukes, bishops and a Thomas More. The play was printed in 1602 as the work of “W.S.” and is one of the Shakespeare apocrypha.
For readers curious about the plays that circled Shakespeare’s name and about how Elizabethans saw Cromwell. Download the free EPUB.