ABSTRACT
The great events of the year 1535 were the executions of the Charterhouse monks and of More and Fisher in June and July, followed by the visitation of the monasteries by Thomas Cromwell’s commissioners in the autumn. In addition to the definite rumours about new taxes and changes, there was the vaguer but perhaps no less influential mass of wandering prophecies. As early as 1535 a certain hermit of Bristol, returning home after a visit to Lincolnshire, called Katherine of Arragon “the Queen of Fortune,” and declared that when the time came she would make ten men against the King’s one. From amid the prophecies, rumours and travellers’ tales which were agitating the country during the summer of 1536 one point looms up,—that great events might be expected at Michaelmas. The government was only half aware of what was going on.
