Wriothesley received his early education at St Paul 's School , London . In 1522 he was admitted to Trinity Hall , Cambridge , where he was taught law by Stephen Gardiner ; although Wriothesley did not take a degree , he and Gardiner remained lifelong friends . In 1524 , at the age of nineteen , he entered a career at court and came to the attention of Thomas Cromwell . Before 4 May 1530 he was appointed joint Clerk of the Signet under Gardiner , by then secretary to King Henry VIII , a post Wriothesley held for a decade while continuing in Cromwell 's service . One historian has described the young lawyers as " able , entreprising , tenacious and ruthless , yet unsufferably overconfident and egotistic . " A member of the royal secretariat , Wriothesley and William Brereton were charged with helping secure an annulment for the king against Katherine of Aragon , from the Pope to allow Anne Boleyn to assume her royal position ; they were sent out to get members of the nobility to sign written statements indicating assent to the annulment . Wriothesley was at Windsor with the Court when the series of protests known as the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out in reaction to the religious changes brought in by the crown and its advisors . The Clerk of the Signet admired the King but probably learnt lessons of cruelty from the treatment of Robert Aske in 1536 . " It was upon such men that the King relied at times of crisis " . Wriothesley 's services were richly rewarded at the Dissolution of the Monasteries . He was granted extensive lands between Southampton and Winchester , once belonging to the abbeys of Beaulieu and Titchfield . Even with the retrospection of later life he was able to ' forget ' the excesses of the 1530s , Wriothesley was still able to exaggerate his fidelity to his " benign and pleasant ' King , who he knew only in the febrile atmosphere of the Court
Pilgrimage of Grace
Pilgrimage of Grace
Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton