Though Wolsey had strained the law to the utmost he had made no open attack on the freedom of justice.

If he shrank from assembling Parliaments it was from his sense that they were the bulwarks of liberty.

But under Cromwell the coercion of juries and the management of judges rendered the courts mere mouthpieces of the royal will: and where even this shadow of justice proved an obstacle to bloodshed, Parliament was brought into play to pass bill after bill of attainder.

"He shall be judged by the bloody laws he has himself made," was the cry of the Council at the moment of his fall, and by a singular retribution the crowning injustice which he sought to introduce even into the practice of attainder, the condemnation of a man without hearing his defence, was only practised on himself.
[Sidenote: Cromwell's Temper] But ruthless as was the Terror of Cromwell it was of a nobler type than the Terror of France.

He never struck uselessly or capriciously, or stooped to the meaner victims of the guillotine.