In the same year in which he was beheaded thirteen Dutch Anabaptists were burnt, as he would have approved, by the English government.

Mute, inglorious Christs, they were led like sheep to the slaughter and as lambs dumb before their shearers.

They had no eloquence, no high position, to make their words ring from side to side of Europe and echo down the centuries; but their meek endurance should not go unremembered.
To take More's place as chief minister Henry appointed the most obsequious tool he could find, Thomas Cromwell.

[Sidenote: Thomas Cromwell, 1485 ?-1540] To good purpose this man had studied Machiavelli's _Prince_ as a practical manual of tyranny.

His most important service to the crown was the {296} next step in the reduction of the medieval church, the dissolution of the monasteries.