With these words upon his lips perished a statesman whose character will for ever remain a problem.[624] For eight years his influence had been supreme with the king--supreme in parliament--supreme in convocation; the nation, in the ferment of revolution, was absolutely controlled by him; and he has left the print of his individual genius stamped indelibly, while the metal was at white heat, into the constitution of the country. Wave after wave has rolled over his work. Romanism flowed back over it under Mary. Puritanism, under another even grander Cromwell, overwhelmed it. But Romanism ebbed again, and Puritanism is dead, and the polity of the Church of England remains as it was left by its creator. And not in the Church only, but in all departments of the public service, Cromwell was the sovereign guide. In the Foreign Office and the Home Office, in Star Chamber and at council table, in dockyard and law court, Cromwell's intellect presided--Cromwell's hand executed. His gigantic correspondence remains to witness for his varied energy. Whether it was an ambassador or a commissioner of sewers, a warden of a company or a tradesman who was injured by the guild, a bishop or a heretic, a justice of the peace, or a serf crying for emancipation, Cromwell was the universal authority to whom all officials looked for instruction, and all sufferers looked for redress. Hated by all those who had grown old in an earlier system--by the wealthy, whose interests were touched by his reforms--by the superstitious, whose prejudices he wounded--he was the defender of the weak, the defender of the poor, defender of the "fatherless and forsaken"; and for his work, the long maintenance of it has borne witness that it was good--that he did the thing which England's true interests required to be done. Of the manner in which that work was done it is less easy to speak. Fierce laws fiercely executed--an unflinching resolution which neither danger could daunt nor saintly virtue move to mercy--a long list of solemn tragedies--weigh upon his memory. He had taken upon himself a task beyond the ordinary strength of man. His difficulties could be overcome only by inflexible persistence in the course which he had marked out for himself and for the state; and he supported his weakness by a determination which imitated the unbending fixity of a law of nature. 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.