ABSTRACT
THOMAS CROMWELL'S fall marked something of aperiod in Tudor history. By depriving himself of hisoutstanding servant, Henry VIII destroyed the efficiency and the purpose of his government. For eighteen years-first under an ailing old man, then under a child, and finally under a woman-Tudor rule was tested to the utmost. That it survived at all was a tribute to the work of Henry VII, to the depth of kingworship and obedience to established authority which Henry VIII's terrifying personality had riveted upon an England anxious to avoid disorder, and also to the administrative reforms of Thomas Cromwell which up to a point made continued government possible even when the crown failed to play its part. But while Tudor rule survived, to be resuscitated by Elizabeth and her more than competent ministers, it underwent such vicissitudes in those years -was so rarely animated by a steady or intelligent purpose-that the total achievement would fill barely a page. The years served a purpose: passions played themselves out in the clashing of extremes which, having had their turn, retained the less strength to trouble the government of Elizabeth; but such an argument savours of the ancient heresy that all things work to the best of all possible ends and that success crowns the work. It also underestimates the degree to which the free play of passions, mostly religious, under Edward VI and Mary encouraged the growth of divisions which beset England in the second half of the century. It is impossible to say what would have happened but for the relaxation of good government between 1540 and 1558. The keynote of those eighteen years of somewhat purposeless turmoil is found in the development of the doctrinal changes which Henry VIII's constitutional revolution had set in motion despite his will. It is a story of the conflict of t\VO extremes in religion alternately getting the upper hand, with a complicating admixture of international troubles and diversified by a gigantic economic crisis. This last deserves, and shall have, a chapter to itself.
