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." But, sadly enough, that is no serious charge against one in his times. It is said that Henry used to say, when a knave was dealt to him in a game of cards, "Ah, I have a Cromwell!" Francis Aidan Gasquet, a Benedictine monk, in his valuable work on "Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries," says of Cromwell: "No single minister in England ever exercised such extensive authority, none ever rose so rapidly, and no one has ever left behind him a name covered with greater infamy and disgrace." In 1535, Henry, as supreme head of the church, appointed Cromwell as his "Vicegerent, Vicar-General and Principal Commissary in causes ecclesiastical." His immediate duty was to enforce recognition of the king's supremacy. The monks and the clergy were now to be coerced into submission. A royal commission, consisting of Legh, Layton, Ap Rice, London and various subordinates, was appointed to visit the monasteries and to report on their condition.