A LOYAL OPPOSITION

After the coup against Thomas Cromwell in 1540 failed to become a full-scale purge, most of the leaders of English evangelicalism did not take the paths of exile or of outright rejection of the regime. Instead, they waited for the world to turn and the fortunes of officially sponsored reform to rise again. In the meantime, they continued working to spread the evangelical message, to build up the evangelical community and to call the nation as a whole to repentance. It was a mission which they shared with their exiled brethren, but which they pursued in a very different way. The ambiguities of late Henrician religious politics and the moderation of their own beliefs led these evangelical preachers and authors to engage constructively with their opponents in a way that more radical reformers could not or would not. The result was the emergence of a new and highly distinctive strain of evangelicalism.

Over the winter of 1540–1, the new limits within which evangelicals were going to have to operate became plain. Edward Crome's confrontation with Nicholas Wilson over Masses for the dead was the most public drama of these months, but two other incidents which excited less public comment were of more long-term importance. In the wake of Cromwell's fall, an anonymous ballad appeared, reviling him as traitor and heretic.