Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex: Quotes about laws

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex was English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England. Explore interesting quotes on law.

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex: 28 quotes0 likes

“This had been no great cause more to reject the one than thother, for ye know by histories of the bible that god may by his revelation dispense with his own Law.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Letter to Fisher. (Merriman, i. p. 376.)

“My lord, you had showed yourself of much more patience—I wll not say of much more prudency—if ye had contented yourself with their lawful appeal and my lawful injunctions and rather have sought fully to instruct me in the matter than thus to desire to conquer me by shrewd words, to vanquish me by sharp threaps [assertions] of Scripture which, as I know to be true, so I trust to God—as great clerk as ye be—ye allege them out of their place.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Source: Letter to Nicholas Shaxton, quoted in G. R. Elton, England Under the Tudors (3rd edn., 1991), p. 442

“[I am] A Subject and born to obey laws…The trial of all laws only consisteth in honest and probable witness.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Source: Letter to Henry VIII (30 June 1540), quoted in Roger Bigelow Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Volume II: Letters from 1536, Notes, Index (1902), p. 273

“I have meddled in so many matters under your Highness that I am not able to answer them all…but hard it is for me or any other meddling as I have done to live under your grace and your laws but we must daily offend.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Source: Letter to Henry VIII whilst imprisoned in the Tower of London. (Merriman, ii. p. 266.)