This story seems to indicate that Cromwell went to Italy a second time. It fits in well with Pole’s statement that after his military experience he became first a merchant, and then a clerk to a Venetian trader. The absence of any trustworthy chronology, however, prevents us from regarding any of the accounts of these different writers as really historical; and when at last we meet with a date on which we can rely, it is most tantalizing to find that the evidence which is afforded us in connexion with it is of such a nature as to leave us almost as much in the dark as before. In a letter written in June, 1536, a certain mercer, by name George Elyot, addresses Cromwell as follows[26]: ‘Ryght onourabyll sir my dewty Consethered as to youre Masterscheppe apertayneth that hyt may plece your Masterscheppe For the love off god to Exceppe my Rewd Maneres in thes behalf of wrytyng vnto you butt hyt ys onely to schowe yowre Masterscheppe my pore mynd furste for the onour of god & secondly For the god love & trew hartt that ‹I› have howtt vnto you sensse the syngsson Martt at medelborow in anno 1512.’ This quotation does not prove that Cromwell was at the Syngsson Mart at Middelburg in 1512, nor does it shed much light on the position he occupied at that time; still the probabilities strongly favour the conclusion that he was either a merchant or a clerk to a merchant in the Low Countries in 1512: the accounts of Foxe and Chapuys agree that he was in the Netherlands in his younger days, and the letter of the mercer seems to fix the date. We have also reason to believe that he was in London soon after this practising as a solicitor. There exists in the Record Office a document dated November, 1512, and endorsed, in a hand which certainly resembles that of Cromwell’s later correspondence, ‘The tytle of the manour Whityngham for Mr. Empson[27].’ The endorsement may of course be of a very different date from that of the document itself; still the evidence which it affords is not utterly valueless, especially as another reason for supposing that Cromwell returned to England in 1512, or soon after, is afforded by the fact that his marriage must have taken place about this time: the age of his son Gregory being such that it could scarcely have occurred much later. The State Papers of 1512 give us more information concerning the early life of Thomas Cromwell than those of any other year up to 1523. The sum total of the evidence which they afford seems to indicate that he was in England and in the Netherlands, that he was occupied both as a merchant and as a solicitor, and that he was married in that year or soon afterwards.