Norfolk was more than ever in favor, for Henry, husband of Anne of Cleves, was at this time enamored of Norfolk's niece. He believed--and Gardiner, doubtless, did not fail to encourage the belief--that he must promptly take advantage of the extraordinary good-will which the king testified to him to overthrow the adversary of Anglican Catholicism, the powerful protector of the Bible and the Reformation. In the judgment of this party Cromwell was a heretic and a chief of heretics. This was the principal motive, and substantially the only motive, of the attack made on the earl of Essex. In a letter addressed at this time by the Council to Sir John Wallop,[334] ambassador at the court of France, a circular letter sent also to the principal officers and representatives of the king, the crime of which Cromwell was accused is distinctly set forth. 'The lord privy seal,' it was therein said, 'to whom the king's said majesty hath been so special good and gracious lord, neither remembering his duty herein to God, nor yet to his highness ... hath not only wrought clean contrary to this his grace's most godly intent, secretly and indirectly advancing the one of the extremes, and leaving the mean indifferent true and virtuous way which his majesty sought and so entirely desired; but also hath showed himself so fervently bent to the maintenance of that his outrage that he hath not spared most privily, most traitorously, to devise how to continue the same, and plainly in terms to say, as it hath been justified to his face by good witness, that if the king and all his realm would turn and vary from his opinions, he would fight in the field in his own person, with his sword in his hand, against him and all other; adding that if he lived a year or two he trusted to bring things to that frame that it should not lie in the king's power to resist or let it, if he would; binding his words with such oaths and making such gesture and demonstration with his arms, that it might well appear he had no less fixed in his heart than was uttered with his mouth. For the which apparent and most detestable treasons, and also for ... other enormities ... he is committed to the Tower of London, there to remain till it shall please his majesty to have him thereupon tried according to the order of his laws.' It was added that the king, remembering how men wanting the knowledge of the truth would speak diversely of the matter, desired them to declare and open the whole truth.