Er I guess my last response was a bit of a thread killer. Apologies. I've been waiting an age to find an opportunity to make the point I made, and you just happened to provide me with it!
Call me Ishmael

Well being "re-thought" is fine. There are always historical orthodoxies that may need to be challenged - I'm all for it - but revisionist views need to be based on as strong - no, even stronger - evidence than the old orthodoxies. And sometimes those revisionist views gain momentum, gain popularity, purely by the appeal of that challenge to orthodoxy. It's sexy to overturn accepted views, and sometimes that sexiness can outweigh mere dull facts.
You mention More's use of torture. No question, he didn't absolutely object to it. On the other hand, Cromwell certainly advocated it. He wrote in a letter of 1533, of the Friars Observants:
it is undoubted that they haue intended and wolde confesse sum grete matier if they might me
examyned as they ought to be that is to sey by paynes
, for I perceyue the saide High Paine to be a subtile folowe and much gyven to sedycyon.
(Roger Bigelow Merriman -
Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell
vol 1 - p360)
And in 1536, regarding the interrogation of the Vicar of Crowle:
his [ie the king's] pleasure is ye shall eftsones examyn the prest himself Vsing all the wayes ye canne possibly deuise to fishe out of him whither he hathe had any communication thereof with any other person. not spareing for the knowleage hereof
to pynche him with paynes
to the declaration of it in case good aduertisement will not serue to the same.
(Roger Bigelow Merriman -
Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell
vol 2 - p30)
Given this, I wonder why Mantell has her Cromwell explicitly reject torture as an effective procedure, expressing the "enlightened" view that it's a bad way to get at the truth, making victims say what they think the torturers want them to say, and so self-defeating.
Insofar as Cromwell did advocate torture, does anyone seriously believe that, having detained Mark Smeaton in his house, he would have shunned a little "pynching with paynes" to get him to confess? Yet in her novel, Smeaton is locked in a room with, er, Christmas decorations (Cromwell's dead daughter's Christmas dressing up wings) where he only
imagines
great horrors which make him confess to anything in the morning. Plausible historical reconstruction? Or an overly ingenious attempt to exonerate a known advocate of torture?
As to More, he resolutely denied in his "Apology" that he tortured people in his own house. Some might say: well, he was fibbing to cover over his wicked behaviour, but More didn't believe that torture was wrong, and we also know that he was nothing if not scrupulously honest, with an exceedingly strong sense of his own virtue. He didn't wheedle and fib. If he had really tortured heretics, as accused, I think it's safe to say he would have said: Yes, I certainly tortured them. And I was absolutely right to do so for such and such a reason or reasons. Instead he wrote, in
The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight
(1533):
Divers of them have said that of such as were in my house while I was Chancellor, I used to examine them with torments, causing them to be bound to a tree in my garden, and there piteously beaten.
And this tale had some of those good brethren so caused to be blown about that a right worshipful friend of mine did of late, within less than this fortnight, tell unto another near friend of mine that he had of late heard much speaking thereof.
What cannot these brethren say, that can be so shameless to say thus? For of very truth, albeit that for a great robbery, or a heinous murder, or sacrilege in a church I caused sometimes such things to be done by some officers of the Marshalsea, or of some other prisons and notwithstanding also that heretics be yet much worse than all they yet,
saving only their sure keeping, I never did else cause any such thing to be done to any of them [
here he mentions two individual exceptions
]
And of all that ever came in my hand for heresy, as help me God, saving, as I said, the sure keeping of themand yet not so sure, neither, but that George Constantine could steal away else had never any of them any stripe or stroke given them, so much as a fillip on the forehead.
(
http://thomasmorestudies.org/docs/Apology2014-etext.pdf
pp 117-118)
And I believe him. That has the ring of truth about it (including the two rather sad exceptions, which you can read about in the link). But Mantell gives no credence to that explicit defence. She dramatises Cromwell meeting and supporting a victim of More's torture.
So Mantell's More
does
torture heretics where the evidence is not really compelling that he did, and Cromwell
doesn't
torture Smeaton where his own advocacy of torture in political cases suggests it entirely plausible that he might have.
Mantell does the same with the issue of the education of daughters. Thomas More is famous for the unprecedented level of education given to his daughter Margaret. Of Cromwell's views on the subject we know nothing. Yet Mantell has More belittle his daughter, and shows Cromwell lavishing a liberal education on his (until her untimely death

My understanding is that Cromwell is being re-thought. Mantel's imagining of him, which she describes as "a proposal," is very interesting and she has apparently had the support of a number of reputable historians. As to bad character, More is a Roman Catholic and Anglican saint despite having been a rigid doctrinaire who had no problem torturing "heretics." (Mind you, this doesn't prevent my enjoying
A Man for All Seasons
.) Perceptions change over time as new facts are uncovered. E.g., I used to accept at face value that the Dutch were, en masse, courageous supporters of the Resistance against the Nazis. It now turns out that, with some exceptions, the very opposite was the case.
Some perceptions shouldn't remain static.

I dont pretend to be an authority on the Tudor Reformation, but when I was doing research for
A History of Britain
, the documents shouted to high heaven that Thomas Cromwell was, in fact, a detestably self-serving, bullying monster who perfected state terror in England, cooked the evidence, and extracted confessions by torture. He also unleashed small-minded bureaucratic visitors to humiliate, evict and dispossess thousands of monks and nuns, not all of whom had their hands up each others robes or were passing off pig bones as holy relics. On at least one occasion he had the fake relic and the custodial friar burnt side by side. Witty, that. The fact that Thomas More (who could use some help right now) was likewise not averse to burning people as well as books, if they strayed from sound doctrine, does not mean that Cromwell, in comparison, was a paragon of refreshing straightforwardness. Sure, he was a good family man. So was More. So was Himmler. (Simon Schama -
Financial Times
February 13, 2015 [
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ec5583e2-b115-11e4-9331-00144feab7de.html
])
Call me Ishmael

Lord the stupid posts here
You must have barely glanced at this
No superheroes and you left immediately right?
Do me a favor
Google Thomas Cromwell
Read a 5 minute bio and then get to the grown ups here that he was an emo
Your dad beats you mercilessly and throws you out
Your wife you adore dies young as well as several of your small children
Life was brutal yet some found rise above it by Will and intellect and faith
It's inspiring.not emo

This message has been deleted.

You're thinking of an 'emu', right? In any case, I'm still wondering what an 'emo' is ?

nope just a guy who is always looking depressed, wearing black all the time, doesn't talk much, shy & awkward persona, strange haircut, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if he's also cutting his arms and listening to Funeral for a Friend all the time, though I don't remember any specific scenes about that. He's probably keeping it a secret because of the shame and anxiety.

A large, flightless bird?