It was his aim to make the King supreme both in Church and State. In order to achieve this object, the Church was first pillaged, and when he and his master were glutted with the spoils of monasteries and abbeys, he turned his attention to the State, sweeping off the heads of those nobles whom he considered sufficiently independent in their views to resist the merging of the supreme power in the sovereign. For ten years—from 1530 to 1540—there was an English “Terror.” Even Henry himself, who seemed to fear neither man nor God, feared Cromwell. It was Cromwell who was more responsible than Henry for the deaths of More and Fisher; it was Cromwell who, when the Pilgrimage of Grace took place, carried fire and sword into Yorkshire, and afterwards into Devonshire; it was Cromwell who instigated Henry to exterminate the families of de la Pole and Courtenay; it was Cromwell who threatened to destroy Cardinal Pole, although the latter had put the seas between himself and the terrible instrument of the King’s enmity. “There may be found ways enough in Italy,” he wrote to the Cardinal, “to rid a treacherous subject. When justice can take no place by process of law at home, sometimes she may be enforced to take new means abroad.” The Cardinal soon learnt what Cromwell meant by “justice at home,” when the news reached him in Italy that Cromwell and the King had butchered his aged mother upon Tower Green. Shortly before his fall—and this fact of his career is similar to that of Robespierre—Cromwell had attained what was practically the supreme power. Besides being Earl of Essex, he was also Great Chamberlain of England, Vicar-General of the Church, the head of all foreign and domestic affairs, and President of the Star Chamber—the most supreme and most redoubtable council in the land, which corresponded in its power to the Council of the Ten at Venice. Like Robespierre again, in private life Cromwell lived simply and without ostentation—a strong contrast this to his old master and patron, the magnificent Wolsey. Whether Cromwell possessed any redeeming points in his character history has not recorded, but his fall was singular, as sudden and as unexpected as had been his rise. It was brought about by a woman, although indirectly. Cromwell had arranged the marriage of Henry with Anne of Cleves, and when the King found that princess lacking in all the charms with which she had been accredited both by painters and courtiers, he not only spoke of her as “a Flanders mare,” but visited his disappointment upon the negotiator of the marriage, and, from being Henry’s most trusted adviser, Cromwell became the object of his royal master’s implacable hatred.