In the England of the 1520s, the best or speediest chance of reform in Church and commonwealth alike was at the hands of a cardinal of the Roman Church: the papal legate, Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey’s general concern for justice and reform was exemplified in his activity as Lord Chancellor and in his galvanizing the King’s Council to act more systematically as a court of law in Star Chamber. He spent a greater fraction of his energy than was politically sensible in prosecuting enclosures of arable land for pasture and extending existing legislation against it. It may now seem surprising that this
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