Machiavelli hoped to find in Caesar Borgia or in the later Lorenzo de' Medici a tyrant who after crushing all rival tyrannies might unite and regenerate Italy; and terrible and ruthless as his policy was, the final aim of Cromwell seems to have been that of Machiavelli, an aim of securing enlightenment and order for England by the concentration of all authority in the crown.
[Sidenote: The Headship of the Church] The first step towards such an end was the freeing the monarchy from its spiritual obedience to Rome.

What the first of the Tudors had done for the political independence of the kingdom, the second was to do for its ecclesiastical independence.

Henry the Seventh had freed England from the interference of France or the House of Burgundy; and in the question of the divorce Cromwell saw the means of bringing Henry the Eighth to free it from the interference of the Papacy.

In such an effort resistance could be looked for only from the clergy.

But their resistance was what Cromwell desired.