"Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at Reading." "Item, to know the King's pleasure touching Master More." "Item, when Master Fisher shall go to his execution, and the other." It is indeed this utter absence of all passion, of all personal feeling, that makes the figure of Cromwell the most terrible in our history.

He has an absolute faith in the end he is pursuing, and he simply hews his way to it as a woodman hews his way through the forest, axe in hand.
[Sidenote: Cromwell and More] The choice of his first victim showed the ruthless precision with which Cromwell was to strike.

In the general opinion of Europe the foremost Englishman of the time was Sir Thomas More.

As the policy of the divorce ended in an open rupture with Rome he had withdrawn silently from the ministry, but his silent disapproval of the new policy was more telling than the opposition of obscurer foes.

To Cromwell there must have been something specially galling in More's attitude of reserve.