Page "John Mason (diplomat)" Paragraph 4

In 1537, Mason received his first major assignment, as secretary to the new English ambassador to the emperor, Sir Thomas Wyatt.

The embassy included Edmund Bonner, at that time an anti-papalist and loyal servant of Cromwell, and almost immediately relations between Bonner and Mason were tense.

Bonner complained that Wyatt listened only to Mason, relying upon him ‘ as a God almighty ’.

Denouncing the secretary as ‘ as glorious and as malicious a harlot as any that I know ’, Bonner also accused Mason of treasonous contact with Cardinal Pole and described him as a papist.

Aware that these complaints derived from malice, Cromwell protected Mason, and throughout 1539 and 1540 the secretary remained at work in the Netherlands.

As a token of Cromwell's continued favour, in February 1540 Mason added the canonry of Timsbury, Hampshire to his growing sheaf of benefices.