that he received as profusely as he spent. We trace in him no such ambitious splendour as he had seen in Wolsey. He was contented with the moderate maintenance of a nobleman's establishment. But power was essential to him; and a power like that which Cromwell wielded, required resources which he obtained only by exposing his reputation while alive, and his good name in history, to not unmerited blame.
Weighted as he was with faults, which his high purposes but partially excuse, he fought his battle bravely—alone—against the world. The German marriage did not pass without a struggle at the council-board. Cromwell had long recognized his strongest and most dangerous enemy in the person of Stephen Gardiner. So much he dreaded the subtle Bishop, that he had made an effort once to entangle him under the Supremacy Act;[1] but Gardiner had glided under the shadow of the
- ↑ A paper of ten interrogatories is in the Rolls House, written in Cromwell's hand, addressed to a Mr John More. More's opinion was required on the supremacy, and among the questions asked him were these:—What communication hath been between you and the Bishop of Winchester touching the primacy of the Bishop of Rome?What answers the said Bishop made unto you upon such questions as ye did put to him?Whether ye have heard the said Bishop at any time in any evil opinion contrary to the statutes of the realm, concerning the primacy of the Bishop of Rome or any other foreign potentate?—Rolls House MS. A 2, 30, fol. 67.In another collection I found a paper of Mr More's answers; but it would seem (unless the MS. is imperfect) that he replied only to the questions which affected himself. The following passage, however, is curious:—'The cause why I demanded the questions (on the primacy) of my Lord of Winchester was for that I heard it, as I am now well remembered, much spoken of in the Parliament House, and taken among many there to be a doubt as ye, Mr Secretary, well know. And for so much as I esteemed my lord's
