He was "so vigilant to preserve your Majesty from all treasons," adds the Primate, "that few could be so secretly conceived but he detected the same from the beginning." Henry, like every Tudor, was fearless of open danger, but tremulously sensitive to the lightest breath of hidden disloyalty; and it was on this dread that Cromwell based the fabric of his power.

He was hardly secretary before spies were scattered broadcast over the land.
Secret denunciations poured into the open ear of the minister.

The air was thick with tales of plots and conspiracies, and with the detection and suppression of each Cromwell tightened his hold on the king.
As it was by terror that he mastered the king, so it was by terror that he mastered the people.

Men felt in England, to use the figure by which Erasmus paints the time, "as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every stone." The confessional had no secrets for Cromwell.

Men's talk with their closest friends found its way to his ear.