really convinced that an absolute autocracy was the best form of government for any country, and that it was the duty of a good subject to do everything in his power to strengthen the hand of the King. Religion meant nothing at all to him. He conformed to the existing usages, whatever they might be, but distinctions between creeds only interested him in so far as they might be used politically. Honour, mercy, conscience, were simply the prevailing weaknesses of mankind, which might be employed for his advantage, just as he might take advantage of drunkenness or stupidity. It was not so much that he disregarded as that he never felt them. With all this moral insensibility he was a singularly efficient administrator. Instead of fearing and slighting the houses of parliament, he manipulated them for his own ends, while his spy system was unrivalled. But this was the darker side of his labours; it was also part of his policy to promote trade, to put the kingdom in a state of defence, to repress crime and violence as well as rebellion. His faults as a statesman were rapacity and a too great desire to interfere in every department of life. It was now six years since his celebrated promise “to make Henry the richest king that ever was in England”[12]; at last the treasures of the monasteries were within his grasp, and his promise seemed on the point of fulfilment. Cromwell’s low birth exposed him to the scorn of his contemporaries, and has been brought up against him even by modern historians; nevertheless if it were necessary to make a choice between his moral character and that of his high-born opponent, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, it could scarcely be denied that Norfolk was the greater scoundrel of the two. He was simply a courtier and politician, with not a tenth of Cromwell’s ability. By inclination he was conservative and favoured the Old Learning, but if he could advance himself by denying his politics or his faith he was quite ready to abandon either. Cromwell at least had a political end in view; Norfolk merely wished to aggrandise himself and had no other object. It goes without saying that the two regarded each other with the bitterest hatred. After the fall of Anne Boleyn Cromwell managed to procure Norfolk’s banishment from the court, but they were in constant correspondence with each other. Among all the records of misery, crime and brutality in the Letters and Papers of the time there is perhaps nothing more horrible than Norfolk’s letters to Cromwell; the sickly expressions of goodwill, the filthy jokes, the grimaces of thankfulness, make them vile reading. But not many letters were written in the summer of 1536, for Norfolk had just been worsted, and Cromwell was completely master of the situation. The general course of Cromwell’s systematic attack on the Church is so well known that it is necessary only to recapitulate those features which chiefly aroused popular indignation.