CROMWELL, THOMAS, earl of Essex, was the son of a blacksmith at Putney, and born in 1498. Without a liberal education, but endowed with a strong natural genius, he considered travelling as the proper means of improving his understanding; and to this early token of his sound judgment he stood indebted for the high rank and distinguished honours he afterwards enjoyed. He became by degrees the confidential favourite and prime minister of Henry VIII.; and from the moment he acquired any authority in the cabinet, he employed it in promoting the reformation, to his zeal for which he became a victim; for, the more firmly to secure the Protestant cause, he contrived to marry the king to Ann of Cleves, whose friends were all Lutherans. Unfortunately Henry took a disgust at this lady, which brought on Cromwell's ruin; the king, with his usual cruelty and caprice, taking this opportunity to sacrifice this minister to the Roman Catholic party, to whom he seemed desirous of reconciling himself as soon as he had Catherine Howard in view. Cromwell was a great politician, and a good man; but, like most statesmen, was guilty of great errors. In his zeal for the new religion, he had introduced the unjustifiable mode of attainer in cases of treason and heresy; and his enemies, who were numerous (consisting of two classes, the ancient nobility and gentry, who were enraged to see the highest honours bestowed on a man of mean extraction, and the Roman Catholics, who detested him), having preferred many complaints against him, availed themselves of his own law. He was attainted of treason and heresy, convicted unheard, and beheaded in 1540. He was the chief instrument of the suppression of the abbeys and monasteries, and of the destruction of images and relics; to him also we are indebted for the institution of parish-registers of births, marriages, and burials.