ABSTRACT
Few notions about the age of Henry VIII’s break with Rome are more familiar and more solidly entrenched than that it witnessed a reign of terror. Casual words of no real significance (so runs the story) brought harmless men and women to the attention of the authorities, and once a man had been delated to Thomas Cromwell or his minions his fate was sealed. To quote the author who has perhaps done more than anyone to create this general impression: ‘The punishments in these cases were very severe: there are almost no records of the penalties inflicted on those against whom the depositions were brought, but there is reason to believe that comparatively slight misdemeanours were not seldom rewarded with death.’1 Mr Merriman offered no support for this categorical deduction from missing evidence, but this has not prevented common acceptance of his views. The truth is that he was venting his feelings, not arguing a case. As a rule it is indeed hard to discover what became of the many about whom informations were laid before magistrates or the Council, though common sense suggests that a conviction with penalty (especially an execution) is less likely to go unrecorded than the fact that nothing was done about some poor man who had talked silly in his cups. One may make allowance for the feelings of honourable men in settled times, striving in vain to understand a revolution, but it is not so easy to forgive scholarship as slipshod as this. However, what matters, of course, is not that errors should be shown up but that more should be known, and here the story of John Parkins’ quarrel in January 1537 with the abbots of Eynsham and Osney will assist.
