Thomas Starkey returned to England sometime before 13 December 1534 in order to make good his once abortive plan of entering royal service. By coincidence Starkey's career may almost serve as a barometer of the desperate struggle between Thomas Cromwell and the court conservatives. His relative prominence means a new embarrassment of evidence, or at least wildly disproportionate coverage of about two years of Starkey's life. When Starkey returned home he hoped to inspire a broadly based reform movement, just as he had in the Dialogue, and probably cared little who executed his policies. He also did not worry a great deal about what role fell to him, although his principal goal would appear to have been preaching. It seems that he looked to both Cromwell (probably because of the minister's well-known interest in intellectuals) and the conservatives, and both would disappoint him. Starkey approached Cromwell almost immediately, but only after he returned home, in contrast to Richard Morison who inundated the Secretary with requests for assistance from Italy. Starkey may already have been trying to distance himself from the nobility, probably largely because of his disappointment in Pole. In any case, he did not turn to Pole's friends for patronage, even while living in the Countess of Salisbury's London town house in Dowgate.

Starkey's credentials impressed Cromwell, who quickly recruited him.