The anti-sacerdotal movement under Henry VIII. culminated in 1536 and 1537, when the country rebelled, and the land-owners were in need of help from the towns. As long as the latter felt uncertain of their grip on Church lands, the radical mercantile interest was permitted to mould doctrine; but when Norfolk had triumphed in the north, and Aske and Darcy had been executed, a reaction set in. In November, 1538, Lambert was burned for denying transubstantiation, and in 1539 the chapter in the statute book[244] which followed that providing for the suppression of the mitred abbeys, re-established auricular confession, communion in one kind, private masses, and, in a word, strict orthodoxy, saving in the single tenet of the royal supremacy. To have conceded that would have endangered property. Twelve months later the landed magnates felt strong enough to discard the tradesmen; the alliance which had carried through the Reformation was dissolved, and Cromwell was beheaded. Never did pope enforce the worship of the miracle more savagely than did Henry. By the act of the “Six Articles,” the denial of the miracle of the mass was punished by burning and forfeiture of goods, without the privilege of abjuration. Purity of faith could not have been the ideal of reformers. Until quite recently, Protestants have accepted the tradition that the convents of England were suppressed by the revolt of a people, outraged by the disclosure of abominations perpetrated under the shelter of monasticism. Within a few years, the publication of the British archives has thrown a new and sombre light upon the Reformation. They seem to prove, beyond a doubt, that as Philip dealt with the Templars, so did Henry deal with all the religious orders of his realm. In 1533 Henry’s position was desperate. He confronted not only the pope and the emperor, but all that remained of the old feudal society, and all that survived of the decaying imaginative age. Nothing could resist this combination save the rising power of centralized capital, and Henry therefore had to become the mouthpiece of the men who gave expression to this force. He needed money, and money in abundance, and Cromwell rose to a practical dictatorship because he was fittest to provide it. On all that relates to Essex, Foxe is an undoubted authority, and Foxe did not hesitate to attribute to Cromwell Henry’s policy at this crisis:-- “For so it pleased Almighty God, by means of the said Lord Cromwell, to induce the king to suppress first the chantries, then the friars’ houses and small monasteries, till, at length, all the abbeys in England, both great and less, were utterly overthrown and plucked up by the roots....