A fascination of Cromwell’s years in power is deciding what difference he made, after subtracting what would have been the routine aims or achievements of any half-competent minister, and after assessing what is likely to have originated from his royal master – who had a quarter-century’s experience of kingship by the time Cromwell became his chief minister, and was not a fool. Are there political initiatives attributable to his arrival at the centre of government? Straight away, the story of the later 1530s presents itself as the unfolding story of key Parliamentary decisions. We have already
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