The Duke of Norfolk was a man of much greater ability than his fellow-magnate: experienced as a diplomat and military commander, with a decent record in that most intractable of Tudor territories, Ireland, and ruthlessly determined to build on his own already exalted position in the realm. His niece Anne Boleyn’s cause looked like an asset in pursuing that aim, but his own uneasy combination of religious traditionalism and brusque contempt for the Church’s power at home and abroad did not produce results for the Great Matter after the fall of Wolsey any more impressive than the Cardinal’s
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