Church was in progress,
England looked silently on. In all the earlier ecclesiastical changes,
in the contest over the papal jurisdiction and papal exactions, in the
reform of the church courts, even in the curtailment of the legislative
independence of the clergy, the nation as a whole had gone with the
King. But from the enslavement of the priesthood, from the gagging of
the pulpits, from the suppression of the monasteries, the bulk of the
nation stood aloof. There were few voices, indeed, of protest. As the
royal policy disclosed itself, as the monarchy trampled under foot the
tradition and reverence of ages gone by, as its figure rose bare and
terrible out of the wreck of old institutions, England simply held her
breath.

It is only through the stray depositions of royal spies that we catch a
glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay seething under this silence of
the people. For the silence was a silence of terror. Before Cromwell's
rise, and after his fall from power, the reign of Henry VIII witnessed
no more than the common tyranny and bloodshed of the time. But the years
of Cromwell's administration form the one period in our history which
deserves the name that men have given to the rule of Robespierre. It was
the English "Terror." It was by terror that Cromwell mastered the King.
Cranmer could plead for him at a later time with Henry as "one whose
surety was only by your majesty, who loved your majesty, as I ever
thought, no less than God." But the attitude of Cromwell toward the King
was something more than that of absolute dependence and unquestioning
devotion.

He was "so vigilant to preserve your majesty from all treasons," adds
the primate, "that few could be so secretly conceived but he detected
the same from the beginning." Henry, like every Tudor, was fearless of
open danger, but tremulously sensitive to the lightest breath of hidden
disloyalty; and it was on this dread that Cromwell based the fabric of
his power. He was hardly secretary before spies were scattered broadcast
over the land. Secret denunciations poured into the open ear of the
minister. The air was thick with tales of plots and conspiracies; and
with the detection and suppression of each, Cromwell tightened his hold
on the King.

As it was by terror that he mastered the King, so it was by terror that
he mastered the people. Men felt in England, to use the figure by which
Erasmus paints the time, "as if a scorpion lay sleeping under ever