This must reflect a conscious royal decision not to allow the conservative counter-coup to become more than a surgical excision of the Lord Privy Seal. The Privy Council was left balanced between evangelicals and traditionalists; a fortnight after his execution, on 10 August 1540, its proceedings were bureaucratized as they never had been under Cromwell himself, by instituting a minute-book of proceedings with its own clerk. That would give the King a chance to scrutinize their proceedings, if he ever felt they were trying to act beyond his control.7 Rumours that Cuthbert Tunstall would
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