But Christendom was overturned for the Boleyn marriage, to put the ginger pig in the cradle;

Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered

news comes from Rome that the Emperor's Spanish and German troops, who have not been paid for months, have run wild through the Holy City paying themselves, plundering the treasuries and stoning the...

We say, how did it happen? We ask ourselves. The duke sniffs. We ask ourselves, but by the steaming blood of Christ we have no bloody answer. The steaming blood of Christ. It's an oath worthy of...

Cromwell. I am not such a hard man that I don't see how you are left. Do you know what I say? I say I don't know one man in England who would have done what you have done, for a man disgraced and...

Henry stirs into life. Do I retain you for what is easy? Jesus pity my simplicity, I have promoted you to a place in this kingdom that no one, no one of your breeding has ever held in the whole of the...

This relentless bonhomie of yours, I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now the small silver is worn out and we see the base metal.

The child Elizabeth is wrapped tightly in layers, her fists hidden: just as well, she looks as if she would strike you. Ginger bristles poke from beneath her cap, and her eyes are vigilant; he has...

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them....

Rafe and Richard say that when my education is sufficient you mean to marry me to some old dowager with a great settlement and black teeth, and she will wear me out with lechery and rule me with her...

The living result of the queen's labors is the diminutive Mary-not really a whole princess, perhaps two-thirds of one.

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes:

Marlinspike goes down to the kitchen, to grow stout and live out his beastly nature. There is a summer ahead, though he cannot imagine its pleasures; sometimes when he's walking in the garden he sees...

He glances up again, and recognizes Gregory's design. It is a system of holy simplicity: big papers on the bottom, small ones on top.

And the more the king snips and carps, the more do his petitioners seek out the company of Cromwell, so unfailing in his amiable courtesy. At home, Jo comes to him looking perplexed. She

Audley pats his arm. He wants to console him. But who can begin to do it? He si the inconsolable Master Cromwell: the unknowable, the inconstruable, the probably indefeasible Master Cromwell.

Try always, Wolsey says, to find out what people wear under their clothes.

It is really worth and just, fair and salvation.

By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet. Creeping Christ? he thinks. What does he mean?

Anne says, It is all about me.

At Smithfield Frith is being shoveled up, his youth, his grace, his learning and his beauty: a compaction of mud, grease, charred bone.

He thinks of making his fortune. We all know that money sticks to yours hands. No, It passes through them, alas.

Told me if I did not smell of the fire then I smelled of the frying pan.

by the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus!

Masters, it is good pastime to have a wife. When they have listened

he and the cardinal agree it would be better if Luther had never been born, or better if he had been born more subtle.

Let us say, his will is convinced, but not his conscience.

I was just going over London Bridge and I saw someone had attacked the Madonna's statue. Knocked off the baby's head.''That was done a while back. It would be that devil Cranmer. You know what he is...

Hans nods emphatically, lips pressed together, eyes bright and taunting, like a dog who steals a handkerchief so you will chase

hypocrisy, fraud, idleness-their worn-out relics, their threadbare worship, and their lack of invention. When did anything good last come from a monastery? They do not invent, they only repeat, and...