for Cromwell. Men's talk with
their closest friends found its way to his ear. "Words idly spoken," the
murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as
the nobles cried passionately at his fall, "tortured into treason." The
only chance of safety lay in silence. "Friends who used to write and send
me presents," Erasmus tells us, "now send neither letter nor gifts, nor
receive any from any one, and this through fear." But even the refuge of
silence was closed by a law more infamous than any that has ever blotted
the Statute-book of England. Not only was thought made treason, but men
were forced to reveal their thoughts on pain of their very silence being
punished with the penalties of treason. All trust in the older bulwarks of
liberty was destroyed by a policy as daring as it was unscrupulous. The
noblest institutions were degraded into instruments of terror. Though
Wolsey had strained the law to the utmost he had made no open attack on
the freedom of justice. If he shrank from assembling Parliaments it was
from his sense that they were the bulwarks of liberty. But under Cromwell
the coercion of juries and the management of judges rendered the courts
mere mouthpieces of the royal will: and where even this shadow of justice
proved an obstacle to bloodshed, Parliament was brought into play to pass
bill after bill of attainder. "He shall be judged by the bloody laws he
has himself made," was the cry of the Council at the moment of his fall,
and by a singular retribution the crowning injustice which he sought to
introduce even into the practice of attainder, the condemnation of a man
without hearing his defence, was only practised on himself.

[Sidenote: Cromwell's Temper]

But ruthless as was the Terror of Cromwell it was of a nobler type than
the Terror of France. He never struck uselessly or capriciously, or
stooped to the meaner victims of the guillotine. His blows were effective
just because he chose his victims from among the noblest and the best. If
he struck at the Church, it was through the Carthusians, the holiest and
the most renowned of English Churchmen. If he struck at the baronage, it
was through Lady Salisbury, in whose veins flowed the blood of kings. If
he struck at the New Learning, it was through the murder of Sir Thomas
More. But no personal vindictiveness mingled with his crime. In temper
indeed, so far as we can judge from the few stories which lingered among
his friends, he wa