10. Cromwell’s Rule.—Cromwell and Cranmer were now Henry’s chief advisers. Cromwell was a stern man, and had been employed by Wolsey to suppress some of the smaller monasteries on account of the evil lives of their inmates. Now that he was the king’s minister he bent all his energies to make him an absolute ruler in both Church and State. Parliament was forced to pass the most infamous laws. One of these forbade people accused of treason the right to be heard in their own defence. Cromwell himself was the first to suffer under this wicked law. He also employed spies to let him know what the people were doing and saying; and by telling the king tales of plots against his life, made him cruel and unjust. None were too good, or too high in rank, to escape Cromwell’s vengeance, if he thought by taking their lives the king’s power would be increased. He had an Act passed by which any man might be called upon to take an oath that he believed the divorce was right and valid. Among those who were asked to take the oath was Sir Thomas More, the king’s Chancellor, and at one time the king’s trusted favourite. More was a great and pure-minded man, perhaps the greatest in his day, and had written a book called “Utopia” in which he advocated many reforms, for which the labouring men of England had to wait centuries. Now when asked to swear that he believed that the divorce was right and to accept the Supremacy he refused. He was sent to the Tower, and later on, with Bishop Fisher, was beheaded. He died as he had lived, bravely and cheerfully.
11. State of the People.—These were sad days for the poor of England, and for those who could not make their consciences bend to the king’s tyranny. Much land had gone out of cultivation, as landowners had found it more profitable to raise sheep than to till the soil. Landowners, too, were enclosing the common land, and thus taking away from the poor one means of making a livelihood. The retainers of the nobles were now cast adrift, and, with other men out of work, took to robbing and plundering. As the punishment for theft and robbery was death, many criminals, to escape detection, murdered their victims.
The minds of the people were unsettled by the religious changes going on in Europe. Martin Luther, a German priest, had begun to write and preach against some of the practices and doctrines of
