A naturally skilled but unscrupulous and devious politician who changed with the times, Wriothesley served as a loyal instrument of King Henry VIII in the latter's break with the Catholic Church.

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.

"[6] 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 Pope Clement VII 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.

[7] 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.

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, whom he knew only in the febrile atmosphere of the Court.

Knighted in 1540, Wriothesley made friends with Sir Anthony Browne of the refounded Gentleman Pensioners, who acted as an armed bodyguard of the King pursuant to the Greenwich Ordinances.

On 13 November 1541, Secretary Wriothesley was sent to announce the bad news to members of the Queen's Household at Hampton Court; all her chamber were dismissed and sent home.

Wriothesley was one of the Council led by Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who ordered the imprisonment of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey for being drunk and disorderly.

He supported Gardiner's crackdown against Lutheran opinions, threatening the lives of reformers Miles Coverdale and Hugh Latimer, presaging the reign of 'Bloody' Mary.

Fortunately for Cranmer and others, the King was not prepared to turn the clock back to the 1530s, and Katherine Parr, with her experience in two previous marriages, impressed Wriothesley by offering Henry stability in his old age.

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.

But as Lord Chancellor he became notorious for torturing Anne Askew, a self-confessed Protestant, personally operating the wheel on the rack.

On 6 July 1546 the King moved to Greenwich Palace; with the conservatives holding the Secretaryship, Chancellor, and with leading privy councillors, they tried to make further arrests.

Speechless and overcome with grief, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley could do nothing to prevent Hertford from taking control in defiance of the late King's will.

[18] He was one of the few members of the council to oppose the rise of the King's maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, to the position of Lord Protector.