“Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.”

“He draws a line under his conclusions. Says, 'Gregory, what should I do about the great worm?' 'Send a commission against it, sir,' the boy says. 'It must be put down.' He gives his son a long look. 'You do know it's Arthur Cobbler's tales?' Gregory gives him a long look back. 'Yes, I do know.' He sounds regretful. 'But it makes people so happy when I believe them.”

“Cranmer says, ‘We will try again with More. At least, if he refuses, he should give his reasons.’He swears under his breath, turns from the window. ‘We know his reasons. All Europe knows them. He is against the divorce. He does not believe the king can be head of the church. But will he say that? Not he. I know him. Do you know what I hate? I hate to be part of this play, which is entirely devised by him. I hate the time it will take that could be better spent, I hate it that minds could be better employed, I hate to see our lives going by, because depend upon it, we will all be feeling our age before this pageant is played out. And what I hate most of all is that Master More sits in the audience and sniggers when I trip over my lines, for he has written all the parts. And written them these many years.”

“Edward Seymour says, ‘You should have been a bishop, Cromwell.’‘Edward,’ he says, ‘I should have been Pope.”

“Men like Carew, he knows, tend to blame him, Cromwell, for Anne’s rise in the world; he facilitated it, he broke the old marriage and let in the new. He does not expect them to soften to him, to include him in their companionship; he only wants them not to spit in his dinner.”

“He looks at Norris, exasperated. He seems to think that with eloquence, with sincerity, with frankness, he can change what is happening. The whole court has seen him slobbering over the queen. How could he expect to go shopping with his eyes, and finger the goods no doubt, and not have an account to settle at the end of it?”

“But my sins are my strength, he thinks; the sins I have done, that others have not even found the opportunity of committing. I hug them close; they're mine.”