the views of his royal master, and was not Henry cruel, rapacious, and overbearing? Fabulous sums were extorted from the exchequers of these establishments, and it was almost universally believed that the favourite came in for a considerable share of the booty. It was indeed evident he did not remember the injunction laid upon him by Sir Thomas More, namely, that he should advise the King what he ought to do, not only what he was able to do. In 1536 he was made Privy Seal, and the same year Baron Cromwell of Okeham, County Rutland, and (the authority of the Pope being by this time abolished in England) Henry instituted a new office, to which he appointed his favourite. This was Vicar-General, or in other words, Supreme Head of the Church, as representative of the King, in which capacity he sat in the House of Lords, and also at Convocation above the Archbishop of Canterbury. The office included that of Principal Commissary for the Administration of Justice in all ecclesiastical affairs; of the godly reformation, and the redress of all errors, heresies, and abuses of the English Reformed Church, both in Parliament and Convocation.
It was indeed strange that the man who, a very short time before, had professed infidel doctrines (and was so unsettled in his creed that when Cavendish found him at prayers, the primer in his hand should be our lady's matins) strange to say that this individual should now come forward as the principal pillar of the Reformation. Dr. Hook, in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, says, Cromwell 'was not a real Protestant, and was generally supposed to be a man who supported the party from which he could obtain most, a statesman whose religion depended on politics, and who had no knowledge of theological subjects.' Yet from the circumstances in which he was now placed all the English Protestants rallied round him, and those of Germany treated with him. In his new capacity Cromwell issued the most
