Thomas Cromwell orchestrated the reformation with Archbishop Cranmer

Cromwell appears to have been a sincere and energetic protestant reformer. He seized on the opportunity brought by Henry’s divorce to introduce radical reform. His papers show a close relationship with mainstream reformers in Switzerland as well as Lollards in England.^[1] Many aspects of the English Reformation were entirely Cromwell’s project pushed from above. After Archbishop Cranmer was appointed, the pair set out to introduce radical reform across the country. Peter Clark’s Classic study of the Reformation in Kent shows rapid change forced through by the Archbishop. Early hotbeds of evangelical Protestantism like Bristol and Gloucester are the exception, not the rule. England maintained a quasi-catholic Protestantism till quite late in the Tudor period. Cromwell and Cranmer were enacting their own project of reform with little support from the general populace or Henry himself.^[2] Cromwell would ultimately go too far in his reformation, ruthlessly dissolving the monasteries and humiliating Catholics in England. Henry was, in essence, a true Catholic and executed Cromwell for heresy in 1540. Cromwell leapt on the opportunity of the King's divorce to carry out a ruthless and sometimes unpopular Reformation that would ultimately get him killed.

[P1] Cromwell used Henry's divorce as an excuse to pass protestant reforms. [P2] There is little evidence that either Henry or the general populace wanted these reforms [C] Cromwell orchestrated the English Reformation