he only true God." In July More followed his
fellow-prisoners to the block. On the eve of the fatal blow he moved his
beard carefully from the reach of the doomsman's axe. "Pity that should
be cut," he was heard to mutter with a touch of the old sad irony, "that
has never committed treason."

Cromwell had at last reached his aim. England lay panic-stricken at the
feet of the "low-born knave," as the nobles called him, who represented
the omnipotence of the crown. Like Wolsey he concentrated in his hands
the whole administration of the state; he was at once foreign minister
and home minister, and vicar-general of the Church, the creator of a new
fleet, the organizer of armies, the president of the terrible star
chamber. His Italian indifference to the mere show of power stood out in
strong contrast with the pomp of the Cardinal. Cromwell's personal
habits were simple and unostentatious; if he clutched at money, it was
to feed the army of spies whom he maintained at his own expense, and
whose work he surveyed with a ceaseless vigilance. For his activity was
boundless.

More than fifty volumes remain of the gigantic mass of his
correspondence. Thousands of letters from "poor bedesmen," from outraged
wives and wronged laborers and persecuted heretics, flowed in to the
all-powerful minister, whose system of personal government turned him
into the universal court of appeal. But powerful as he was, and mighty
as was the work which he had accomplished, he knew that harder blows had
to be struck before his position was secure.

The new changes, above all the irritation which had been caused by the
outrages with which the dissolution of the monasteries was accompanied,
gave point to the mutinous temper that prevailed throughout the country;
for the revolution in agriculture was still going on, and evictions
furnished embittered outcasts to swell the ranks of any rising. Nor did
it seem as though revolt, if it once broke out, would want leaders to
head it. The nobles, who had writhed under the rule of the Cardinal,
writhed yet more bitterly under the rule of one whom they looked upon
not only as Wolsey's tool, but as a low-born upstart. "The world will
never mend," Lord Hussey had been heard to say, "till we fight for it."

"Knaves rule about the King!" cried Lord Exeter; "I trust some day to
give them a buffet!" At this moment, too, the hopes of political
reaction were stirred by the fate of one whom the friends of the old
or