'Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light' Recap: Episode 1

Wolf Hall airs Sundays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Anne of Boleyn has been executed, making it possible for King Henry VIII to marry his third wife, Jane Seymour, in the hope that she can provide him with a legitimate male heir. The king enthuses to Thomas Cromwell, the advisor who engineered his marriages to both Anne and Jane, that he has gone from “hell into heaven.”

Cromwell is not sure where he is. He has many enemies, and a precarious perch, given his low birth and reliance on the king’s favor for his position.

Nevertheless, it’s an impressive one, with more roles than any man has ever undertaken before. The king has made Cromwell a lord, taking away the office of Privy Seal from Anne’s father to give it to Cromwell.

When Cromwell meets with Eustache Chapuys, the ambassador for the Holy Roman Emperor, Chapuys wonders why Cromwell is not afraid that he, too, might one day fall from grace. But Cromwell has other things to worry about: namely, Lady Mary, the king’s daughter from his first marriage, to Katherine of Aragon. With her enemy Anne Boleyn gone, Mary now wants to be restored as the king’s heir and also bring him back to the Catholic Church, from which he split in order to divorce Katherine.

The Poles, an ancient noble family with a rival claim to the throne, clandestinely support Mary in these endeavors, and thus supported Cromwell in bringing down Anne. Now they want Cromwell to hold up his end of what they saw as a bargain, but he refuses to concede to them, especially since he is a supporter of Protestant reforms to the church.

However, Mary holds him as her “chief friend in the world,” as she writes to him in a letter which he keeps secret, even from the king. Cromwell moves to make her take a required oath swearing that Henry is the head of the Church of England – an oath that Thomas More refused to take, and was therefore executed. Cromwell sends his close proteges Rafe Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley to convince Mary.

They fail; Rafe says it seems as though she is waiting for Cromwell to come and convince her. Cromwell appeals to Chapuys, a friend of Mary’s whose master is related to her. The emperor also wants England to return to the Catholic Church in Rome, but Cromwell wants the papal bull of excommunication against Henry lifted.

Mary’s position becomes dangerous when the king receives a letter from his cousin Reginald Pole in Italy. Reginald has written a book decrying the king’s split from Rome, demanding that the emperor invade England and Henry’s subjects rise up against him. Henry thinks the Poles want to marry Reginald to Mary and replace Henry as king. Thinking of any future after Henry is treason under new laws. Henry demands that Cromwell get Reginald back to England.

Cromwell pays a visit to the Poles who remain in England. He appeals to them to help keep Mary alive – who knows whether the king might execute his own daughter in a fit of rage. He threatens them with treason and urges them to encourage Mary to take the oath, with Chapuys as a go-between.

But defending Mary to Henry, as Cromwell does, is dangerous. When the king’s old friend – and Cromwell’s ally – William Fitzwilliam cautions Henry against bringing Mary to trial for treason, as the king wants to do, Henry angrily orders him to leave the council meeting. Fitzwilliam pushes his luck and returns with another warning – and Cromwell bodily removes him from the room, ripping his chain of office from him in the process. Get out while you still have your head, he growls to Fitzwilliam.

The king petulantly tells Cromwell he knows he agrees with Fitzwilliam, and demands that Cromwell bring the matter of his daughter to a “conclusion.” I think he wants you to kill her, another advisor tells Cromwell in shock after the king leaves.

Cromwell again meets with Chapuys and tells him that he will write a letter to the king on behalf of Mary accepting the oath. All she has to do is sign it – and not read it, so that she can repudiate it later, if necessary. Now is the time to give up her protest and return to her father’s graces, with Anne Boleyn gone. If she refuses, she is dead to Cromwell.

After Chapuys advocates for Cromwell’s path to Mary, Cromwell himself visits her. She is grateful for Cromwell’s support, since no one else has defended her – not even the Poles, whom she thought were allies. She signs Cromwell’s letter.

When she laments not being allowed to ride, Cromwell offers her a horse from his own stable. She breaks into tears, and he lets her cry on his shoulder.

When she is brought to meet with her father and Jane Seymour, she tells Cromwell that she is bound to him now, and notes that she renamed the horse he gave him Pomegranate – her late mother’s emblem.

She kneels before the king, but he pulls her up into a hug. Jane takes a ring from her own finger and gives it to Mary. It’s too large, but the king will resize it. Mary tells Jane that she will take her as her own mother, and hopes that she will soon have a child. The two women both defer to the other on who should enter a room first, and decide to go through together.

Henry is delighted by the whole encounter. He says that Cromwell could not have done more for him if he were his own kin – which, of course, he couldn’t be. But he will reward Cromwell and his house.

Happy and unguarded – for once – Cromwell later sits with his household and young associates in a garden, drinking in celebration. He reveals that he promised Katherine soon before she died that he would protect Mary. Everyone is shocked and unsettled by the revelation.

But as Cromwell recalls in an imagined conversation with his late mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, he’s like a guard dog – his rival, Stephen Gardiner, always insultingly called him a butcher’s dog, but Cromwell takes it as a compliment. Cromwell has been trying to write down lessons about serving Henry, reanimating the cardinal to help. And the cardinal has a warning: Cromwell has wreaked vengeance on all of the cardinal’s enemies, but some at court might say the cardinal’s greatest enemy was Henry himself.