ABSTRACT
Thomas Cromwell advice was apparently too overwhelming to be fully accepted at once; nevertheless the parliamentary session of 1532 made it plain that a new temper had taken hold of the government. Henry VIII had got his will, but what really mattered was the instrument of success, the great act of appeals, and Cromwell’s masterpiece in statute-making. The enactment confined itself to a practical issue; in effect, it extended the provisions of Richard II's statute of praemunire to appeals lodged at Rome. The revolution was carried out with the consent of parliament, given readily enough except when fears of papal retaliation through the cloth trade had to be reasoned away. The attack on the monasteries has usually been regarded as the most important part of the great upheavals of the 1530s; but though it was unquestionably spectacular and had some consequences of note, it does not really merit the central position commonly allocated to it.
