Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/278

258 that he received as profusely as he spent. We trace in him no such ambitious splendour as he had seen in Wolsey. He was contented with the moderate maintenance of a nobleman's establishment. But power was essential to him; and a power like that which Cromwell wielded, required resources which he obtained only by exposing his reputation while alive, and his good name in history, to not unmerited blame.

Weighted as he was with faults, which his high purposes but partially excuse, he fought his battle bravely—alone—against the world. The German marriage did not pass without a struggle at the council-board. Cromwell had long recognized his strongest and most dangerous enemy in the person of Stephen Gardiner. So much he dreaded the subtle Bishop, that he had made an effort once to entangle him under the Supremacy Act; but Gardiner had glided under the shadow of the