In early 1517, a few months before Friar Luther started his fateful campaign against indulgences far away in Saxony, thus inadvertently launching the Protestant Reformation, a battle royal for control of the English indulgence market broke out between his English confrères and the Boston Gild. Boston sent its Gild clerk to Cardinal Wolsey to seek a suspension of the Austin Friars’ privileges.47 Yet even Wolsey in his legatine splendour was only a local representative of the Holy Father. More ambitiously, determined to secure reaffirmation and authorization directly from Rome, the Gild
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