ll of Sir Thomas More left Thomas Cromwell the chief power under
the king, and for seven years he devoted his great administrative
abilities to making his royal patron absolute ruler in church and state.

Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was of lowly origin, but his energy and
shrewdness, together with the experience acquired by extensive travels,
commanded the attention of Cardinal Wolsey, who took him into his
service. He was successively merchant, scrivener, money-lender, lawyer,
member of parliament, master of jewels, chancellor, master of rolls,
secretary of state, vicar-general in ecclesiastical affairs, lord privy
seal, dean of Wells and high chamberlain.

Close intimacy with Wolsey enabled Cromwell to grasp the full
significance of Henry's ambition, and his desire to please his royal
master, coupled with his own love of power, prompted him to throw
himself with characteristic energy into the work of centralizing all
authority in the hands of the king and of his prime minister. In secular
affairs, this had already been accomplished. The task before him was to
subdue the church to the throne, to execute which he became the
protector of Protestantism and the foe of Rome. Green says: "He had an
absolute faith in the end he was pursuing, and he simply hews his way to
it, as a woodman hews his way through the forest, axe in hand." Froude
says: "To him ever belonged the rare privilege of genius to see what
other men could not see, and therefore he was condemned to rule a
generation which hated him, to do the will of God and to perish in his
success. He pursued an object, the excellence of which, as his mind saw
it, transcended all other considerations, the freedom of England and the
destruction of idolatry, and those who, from any motive, noble or base,
pious or impious, crossed his path, he crushed and passed on over
their bodies."

There seems to be a general agreement that Cromwell was not a
Protestant. His struggle against the temporal power of the pope fostered
the reformatory movement, but that did not make Cromwell a Protestant
any more than it did his master, Henry VIII. Foxe describes Cromwell "as
a valiant soldier and captain of Christ," but Maitland retorts "that
Foxe forgot, if he ever knew, who was the father of lies."

Without doubt Cromwell ruled with an iron hand. He was guilty of
accepting bribes, and, as some maintain, "was the great patron of
ribaldry, and the protector of the low jester and the filthy."