The Reformation began in the diocese of Dublin in an atmosphere of crisis, provoked by the outbreak of the Kildare rebellion in the summer of 1534. Although motivated initially by secular concerns – the Fitzgeralds’ desire to force the abandonment of the political and administrative reforms of the king's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell – the revolt swiftly assumed a religious dimension. From an early stage, Silken Thomas and his supporters claimed that they were ‘of the pope's sect and band and him will they serve against the king and all his partakers’. For the Tudor regime, and for many historians subsequently, the most striking aspect of this claim was the possibility that it might secure for the Kildare cause military or financial support from the papacy and the Holy Roman emperor, thus turning what was a domestic disturbance into an international Catholic crusade against aschismatic English king. In practice its repercussions were less dramatic. Yet it still proved to be damaging to the fate of the Henrician Reformation in Ireland. In justifying their decision to play the papal card, the Fitzgeralds drew heavily upon the thinking, and sought the support, of the clerical elite of the English Pale, especially amongst the Dublin diocesan establishment based in St Patrick's Cathedral.