The formal position at the beginning of 1537 was that the Pilgrims had secured everything they wanted – short of the removal of Thomas Cromwell. One permanent change in Henry’s government was the definition of a small set of councillors around the King as his ‘Privy Council’. This was not a new term: it had often been used over the previous decade, either to distinguish those councillors meeting at Westminster from those named to the Council in the Marches of Wales, the Council in the North or other subsidiary conciliar bodies, or as a shorthand description for councillors attendant on the
...more
