ad, "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God." In July
More followed his fellow-prisoner to the block. Just before the fatal blow
he moved his beard carefully from the reach of the doomsman's axe. "Pity
that should be cut," he was heard to mutter with a touch of the old sad
irony, "that has never committed treason."

[Sidenote: Cromwell and the Nobles]

Cromwell had at last reached his aim. England lay panic-stricken at the
feet of the "low-born knave," as the nobles called him, who represented
the omnipotence of the crown. Like Wolsey he concentrated in his hands the
whole administration of the state; he was at once foreign minister and
home minister, and vicar-general of the Church, the creator of a new
fleet, the organizer of armies, the president of the terrible Star
Chamber. His Italian indifference to the mere show of power stood out in
strong contrast with the pomp of the Cardinal. Cromwell's personal habits
were simple and unostentatious; if he clutched at money, it was to feed
the army of spies whom he maintained at his own expense, and whose work he
surveyed with a ceaseless vigilance. For his activity was boundless. More
than fifty volumes remain of the gigantic mass of his correspondence.
Thousands of letters from "poor bedesmen," from outraged wives and wronged
labourers and persecuted heretics flowed in to the all-powerful minister
whose system of personal government turned him into the universal court of
appeal. But powerful as he was, and mighty as was the work which he had
accomplished, he knew that harder blows had to be struck before his
position was secure. The new changes, above all the irritation which had
been caused by the outrages with which the dissolution of the monasteries
was accompanied, gave point to the mutinous temper that prevailed
throughout the country; for the revolution in agriculture was still going
on, and evictions furnished embittered outcasts to swell the ranks of any
rising. Nor did it seem as though revolt, if it once broke out, would want
leaders to head it. The nobles who had writhed under the rule of the
Cardinal, writhed yet more bitterly under the rule of one whom they looked
upon not only as Wolsey's tool, but as a low-born upstart. "The world will
never mend," Lord Hussey had been heard to say, "till we fight for it."
"Knaves rule about the king!" cried Lord Exeter, "I trust some day to give
them a buffet." At this moment too the hopes of political react