It was with Italian versatility that he turned from the camp to the counting-house; he was certainly engaged as a commercial agent to one of the Venetian traders; tradition finds him as a clerk at Antwerp; and in 1512 history at last encounters him as a thriving wool merchant at Middelburg in Zealand.
[Sidenote: Cromwell and Wolsey] Returning to England, Cromwell continued to amass wealth as years went on by adding the trade of scrivener, something between that of a banker and attorney, to his other occupations, as well as by advancing money to the poorer nobles; and on the outbreak of the second war with France we find him a busy and influential member of the Commons in Parliament.

Five years later, in 1528, the aim of his ambition was declared by his entering into Wolsey's service.

The Cardinal needed a man of business for the suppression of the smaller monasteries which he had undertaken as well as for the transfer of their revenues to his foundations at Oxford and Ipswich, and he showed his usual skill in the choice of men by finding such an agent in Cromwell.

The task was an unpopular one, and it was carried out with a rough indifference to the feelings it aroused which involved Cromwell in the hate that was gathering round his master.

But his wonderful self-reliance and sense of power only broke upon the world at Wolsey's fall.