Protestantism in England From the Times of Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

Cromwell, who had been Henry's adviser in the
assault on the supremacy and the despoiling of the
monasteries, was sent (28th July, 1540) to die on a
scaffold.[4] Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, an
ambitious and intriguing man, devoted to the old
religion, took the place of the fallen minister in the
royal councils. The powerful family of the
Howards, with whom the king was about to form
an alliance--Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves
being already both out of the way--threw their
influence on the same side, and the tyranny of the
king became henceforth more truculent, and his
victims more numerous. If Henry had quarreled
with the Pope, he would show Christendom that he
had not apostatized from the Roman Catholic faith,
that he cherished no inclination towards
Lutheranism, and that he was not less deserving
now of the proud title of "Defender of the Faith"
than he had been on the day when the conclave
voted it to him. What perhaps helped to make the
king veer round, and appear to be desirous of
buttressing the cause which he had seemed so
lately desirous only to destroy, was the fact that
Paul III had confirmed and re-fulminated against
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