'Wolf Hall' Recap: Episode 2

Wolf Hall airs Sundays at 9:00 pm on WTTW is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Thomas Cromwell will not abandon Cardinal Wolsey, even as the cardinal has fallen out of favor with King Henry VIII. Cromwell doggedly tries to get an audience with the king on behalf of the cardinal, who is finally acquiescing to pressure to retreat to the north, far from the seat of power. The cardinal’s usher, George Cavendish, is worried about Wolsey: he thinks the cardinal has begun whipping himself for his sins. The cardinal’s fall from grace is even affecting Cromwell: his son Gregory guesses that Cromwell is not hosting an Epiphany feast this year because no one would come.

But Cromwell’s persistence and usefulness eventually yield dividends. While he is waiting for an audience, Henry asks him about a legal case that the cardinal handled. Cromwell, a keen-eyed lawyer, offers to look into it, and the Duke of Suffolk recommends him to the king. Henry agrees, then calls Cromwell over and whispers that the cardinal can have a thousand pounds in order to move his household north – but Cromwell is not to tell anyone. Ask Wolsey to pray for me, Henry says. I miss him everyday.

As Wolsey prepares to head north, he advises Cromwell to gain the confidence of Anne Boleyn – she is the key to Henry, who wishes to annul his current marriage and marry Anne. (Cromwell has also heard a rumor that Anne has had a relationship with Thomas Wyatt.) Before Wolsey leaves, he blesses Cromwell and gives him a gift that he tells him to open when he’s gone. Cromwell sends his nephew Richard and ward Rafe ahead of the cardinal to prepare his northern estate for him.

To Richard and Rafe have been added Gregory and Thomas Wriothesley in the Cromwell household of young men in training. Wriothesley is clerk to Cromwell’s rival Stephen Gardiner, but has come to learn business from Cromwell. Both Cromwell and Gardiner suspect he is spying for the other.

Cromwell and Gardiner both find themselves at the household of Thomas More, the hardline theologian who has replaced Wolsey as Lord Chancellor. Cromwell recalls meeting More years ago while working under his uncle John, a cook at Lambeth Palace, where More was a student. More doesn’t remember. His company is not enjoyable, to Gardiner or Cromwell. And he wants to pursue Protestant reformers such as William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English – a cause Cromwell secretly supports.

Anne summons Cromwell. Before he goes in to see her, he is met by her sister Mary, an erstwhile mistress of Henry’s. She proposes a marriage between herself and Cromwell; he deflects. She warns him against her sister.

Anne knows that Cromwell is tapped into London gossip, and wants him to tell her if he ever hears who put a drawing in her bed. It’s of her, decapitated, next to Henry and his current wife, Katherine. Cromwell reluctantly takes it from her.  He leaves with her chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, who says that Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, is upset to hear reports that crowds are flocking to see Wolsey as he travels north.

Cavendish jubilantly shares the same reports with Cromwell. He wants Cromwell to join the cardinal, but Cromwell insists that he is needed near court to continue to press the cardinal’s case.

Indeed, Cromwell is growing closer to the king. He proves himself in archery with Henry and wins a one-on-one conversation with the king. He impresses Henry with his talk of finances, noting the corruption and money present in the country’s monasteries. Henry tells him to sit down with his lawyers to discuss taking some of that money as tax for the king, an assertion of his sovereignty over the pope in Rome. In a moment of petulant vulnerability, Henry tells Cromwell that Anne is threatening to leave him if his marriage to the queen is not dissolved soon. Cromwell advises him to wait and do everything properly.

Then one night Cromwell’s household is woken by banging on the door. Everyone gathers at the entrance, fearing arrest. The courtier William Brereton has arrived to summon Cromwell to the king; he knows not why. Cromwell arrives at the king’s bedchamber to find Henry distraught and Cranmer waiting on him.

Henry had a dream that his brother, whose widow he married and throne he assumed after his early death, came to him. Cromwell recasts the dream as a good, not bad, omen. Arthur wants Henry to be the king Arthur didn’t get to be. The time is now to assert his authority and break from the pope in Rome. Anne Boleyn would agree, he adds.

Henry becomes happy. He knew he called the right people.

Back at Austin Friars, Johane, the sister of Cromwell’s late wife, is waiting worried. She’s relieved to see Cromwell back safely. They go to bed together, though they both know it is wrong.

The next day, Cromwell is in a light mood. He tells a rare story of his earlier years to the young men of his household: he once created a fraudulent antique statue and sold it to a cardinal in Italy.

This sunniness is dispelled by the arrival of George Cavendish, who comes with the news that the cardinal has died. The nobleman Harry Percy was sent to arrest Wolsey, in an act of vengeance dreamed up by Anne – she wanted to marry Percy when she was younger, and the cardinal intervened.

Wolsey at first refused, but was eventually taken back south. He stopped eating and became ill. When the dreaded constable of the Tower of London arrived to escort him – meaning he would likely be tried for treason – he deteriorated even further. He called for Cromwell the night before he died. His body was ignominiously placed in a plain coffin and laughed at by the local leaders of the town.

A farce is quickly put together at court, depicting the humiliation of Wolsey and his descent to hell. Cromwell notes who plays each of the four demons who laughingly bedevil the fake Wolsey. He has promised Cavendish, and himself, that he will take vengeance on the cardinal’s persecutors.

But, even with the cardinal’s ultimate downfall, Cromwell’s career continues to rise. He is sworn in as a member of the king’s council by Thomas More and the aged archbishop of Canterbury, putting him inside the king’s inner circle.

He opens the gift from the cardinal and finds Wolsey’s turquoise ring. Cromwell puts it on his own finger.