He helped raise Anne Boleyn, and then to bring her and the faction around her to their doom.
Henry would later publically lament Cromwells fall, but only far too late.
Writer Peter Straughan and director Peter Kosminsky have succeeded in giving us the Cromwell of Mantels imagination.
How close that figure is to the man behind the legend is open to question.
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The question remains: does it matter?
Given that this is fiction, maybe not.
Flashbacks to childhood beatings have already told us that Cromwell senior was anything but.
Despite his concerns, Kosminsky was the ideal choice to document sixteenth-century political wrangling.
That, ultimately, isWolf Halls achievement.
We are reassured, yet almost instantly disturbed by a sudden reminder of its alien qualities.
His son would erase his Plantagenet competitors from the political scene one by one, by exile or execution.
Mantel acknowledges Thomas Mores humanist principles and intellectual prowess even as she condemns his torture of his religious opponents.
In the event, neither she nor Cromwell would survive Henry VIIIs paranoia.
Bernard Hills magnificently crude Duke of Norfolk provides Mantel and Straughan with many of their best lines.
It is the key to Norfolks great longevity.
Cromwell and many of his peers would learn the truth of it all too late.
