EchoBlog

William Brereton (1487 – )

One of the foot-devils carrying Wolsey at the farce held at Hampton Court after the cardinal’s death. Cromwell notes that, like Harry Norris, Brereton is “old enough to know better.”

He comes at Christmas to order Cromwell to Greenwich to see the king. He has “ordinary ways” of showing his impatience: slapping his glove and tapping his foot. The Breretons are up in the Welsh borders, “a quarrelsome crew, great disturbers of the peace”, that Walter would have got on with.

Brereton is an expert at bilocation. “Why are you not at court?” Cromwell asks him when he has been arrested in the New Year revels. “I am. I am at Greenwich.”

Earlier in the year, he is hunting in his own country of Cheshire while simultaneously with the king down south.

He is also with Anne at Advent, one of her pets, paying her compliments. God knows where he is supposed to be on that occasion.

William Brereton is a witness at the king’s marriage to Anne. “Are you truly here?” Cromwell asks. “Or are you somewhere else?”

Brereton threatens Cromwell. He, Cromwell, calls him back, politely. That, William, was a mistake.

At Greenwich, he is dressed as an antique huntsman, naked under his leopard skin. Norris jokes that he won’t be showing Anne anything she hasn’t seen. A raised eyebrow. ‘Not William’s. The king’s,’ Norris clarifies.

Last year, Brereton said that the king beats Cromwell. ‘You’ll be knocked, he had said to himself. Something in this man makes him feel he is a boy again, a sullen, belligerent little ruffian fighting on the riverbank at Putney.’

Lady Rochford drops Brereton’s name into her story as a possible father of any Boleyn bastard.

Mark Smeaton names Brereton as one of Anne’s lovers.

In the Tower, Cromwell accuses Brereton of treating the law with contempt in his own country, killing a man called John ap Eyton. Brereton cannot understand why Thomas Wyatt is not here, but he is.

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