His own death did not end the killing. Two days later a notorious event embodied the King’s idiosyncratic notion of the ‘middle way’. Six priests were executed: three evangelicals for heresy, and three papalist Catholics for treason. They suffered the respective customary punishments: in the former case burning, in the latter hanging, drawing and quartering. Robert Barnes, Thomas Garrett and William Jerome were clearly identified with Cromwell, and their clashes with Gardiner had sparked the six months of violent political turmoil. Barnes, who unlike Cromwell had no family to worry about, gave
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