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"The King relied heavily on his aristocratic friends Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and Wriothesley to secure a balance of power in the Privy Chamber. So the King prepared an invasion of France, much to the nobility's approval. Wriothesley was created Baron Wriothesley of Titchfield in 1544"
The sentence as written claims that the king relied on Suffolk and Wriothesley "his aristocratic friends." This is false on its face. Wriothesely is a family surname. The man was not an aristocrat. He was a commoner at the time. The very next sentence explains that Wriothesley was LATER created a Baron. That's the very lowest level of nobility. For the entirety of his life prior he was a kind of political operative or today what we might call a "fixer" for others. Only after the execution of his master, Thomas Cromwell (another former commoner elevated late in life to nobility, also by the same king) did Wriothesley become a baron, and later, an earl; and trusted by the king. It's taking the facts out of time sequence and historical context context to say the king relied heavily on "his aristocratic friends" Suffolk and Wriothesley; it is just wrong to claim that.
Charles Brandon, later created Duke of Suffolk, now he really was a close intimate friend of Henry VIII since before he was Henry VIII. Conversely at that moment, Thomas Wriothesley hadn't even been born yet, never mind ennobled; and his father was only ever minor government functionary, like two generations of Wrythes before them. Government employees (heralds, investigators, and real-estate confiscators.) These were both very politicized and delicate functions as they involve bankrupting families or validating (as heralds formalizing genealogy and records of engagements, marriages, births and the legitimacy of children) the legitimacy or lack thereof of the HEIRS and bloodlines of some of the wealthiest people in the kingdom. Some of whom had their own private armies or assassins working for them. I mention this because it explains in part why the Wrythe/Wriothesley family was politically "flexible" and discreet; and also why over time as this man rose in influence and power, he did come to be trusted enough to resolve difficult and controversial assignments with discretion. And for a body of twenty years or more of that type of work, where any one wrong decision could get you or others thrown into the Tower or even chopped into actual pieces publicly... eventually his loyalty and success were sufficient to the Tudors to be created first a minor Baron and later the Earl of Southampton. But do not mistake that for being an aristocrat; or in any way comparable to the Duke of Suffolk (or say Norfolk) who were at times almost like brothers or cousins to the king. 2600:4040:5AEF:B400:F3C8:C728:B46C:D6DE (talk) 22:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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