Thomas Cromwell is the first Earl of Essex who was also an English Lawyer and statesman. He also served as the chief minister of King Henry VIII in England.  He has been the minister since the year 1532 to 1540 and the king ordered his beheading.  Thomas Cromwell was one of the strongest and the most powerful contributors of the English Reformation.  He helped in engineering an annulment of the marriage of king to the Queen Catherine.  In the year 1534, the Act of Supremacy confirmed the status of having the supremacy over the church.  It also needed the nobility of swearing an oath that recognized Henry’s supremacy.  In the year 1536,  Rome had been seized by Henry and the Catholic assets were declared in the Church of England to be headed by himself.

 Thomas Cromwell was a great statesman of England and his power and strength changed the direction of the English history forever.  His mentor was Cardinal Wolsey and Cromwell was not at all a papist or a priest.  He was more like a lawyer who determined to impose the own character that was detached, methodical and calculating upon government.  He wanted the government to become much efficient and effective and in order to achieve this, the chaos of feudalism had to be ended along with the ill-shaped jurisdiction. Thomas Cromwell was blessed with a logical mind in a specific age which was devoid of them.  In the Tudor England, he has been the ideal statesman who was executed on the orders of Henry VIII.

 The practical effects of the reformation were more on the Englishmen making the situation more difficult. In many of the villages and towns, the parish church used to be the main community centre.  The weddings, birth and deaths were officiate over through a priest.   It made them enjoy the tax payment to Rome undoubtedly. The paradox emerged and an excommunicated nation found itself torn up between loyalty to the papacy and loyalty to the sovereign. There was opposition to the reformation too which had more to do with the loss of independence in the north of England in the year 1536.  During this time, a northern uprising came to be called the Pilgrimage of Grace that gathered over almost 40,000 men and marched through England. It destroyed itself having internal division and the lack of clear purpose. Henry was quite angry at the presumption as to how the ignorant subject rebel and tell how to handle country.  The common people might also grumble but they were more influenced by the practical matters.  The excommunication had been followed by a terrible type of harvest or the bad havest. During the region of Mary, these signs were taken to denote that God had been angry with the attempts to reinstate Catholicism.  After all, Henry and Cromwell had been recognized as the fundamental truths of the English people.