Quotes About Authority

When have I, when have I ever forced anyone to do anything, he starts to say: but Richard cuts in, "No, you don't, I agree, it's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on." -Richard (?) nee Cromwell to Thomas Cromwell,358

Edward Seymour says, 'You should have been a bishop, Cromwell.' 'Edward,' he says, 'I should have been Pope.

The king believes that even if he were not king, he would still be a great man. This is because God likes him. He needs to be liked and he needs to be right. But above all he needs to be listened to, with very close attention. Never enter a contest of wills with the king. Do not flatter him. Instead, give him something he can take credit for. Ask him questions to which you know the answers. Do not ask him the other sort of question.

The king never does an upleasent thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.

Henry stirs into life. 'Do I retain you for what is easy? Do you think it is for your personal beauty? The charm of your presence? I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents. But do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.' pg. 585

No son wishes to see his son less powerful than himself.

Rafe shrugs. 'He is frightened of you, sir. You have outgrown him. You have gone beyond what any servant or subject should be.' It is the cardinal over again, he thinks. Wolsey was broken not for his failures, but for his successes; not for any error, but for grievances stored up, about how great he had become.

When no one else could see, he could see: and that is what it means to be a king.

If kings do not see you, they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.

For hundreds of years the monks have held the pen, and what they have written is what we take to be our history, but I do not believe it really is. I believe they have suppressed the history they don't like, and written one that is favourable to Rome.' Henry

Cardinal Campeggio has implored Katherine to bow to the king's will, accept that her marriage is invalid and retire to a convent. Certainly, she says sweetly, she will become a nun: if the king will become a monk.

every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.

The king is good to those who think him good.

Suppose she denied him then but favored him some other time? Women are weak and easily conquered by flattery. Especially when men write verses to them, and there are some who sat that Wyatt writes better verses than me, though I am the King.

The king has great power, but he has no power to know me, except through what I say and what I do.

Movements are restricted. Even a duke must manage with only six men to guard and serve him. Strangers are barred. Delivery men must quit the precincts as soon as they have dropped off their loads, and the royal nursery be scrubbed out twice a day.

Gradually, you see, our people are coming into the power they have always thought is their due.

the lawyers' saying 'Le mort saisit le vif'? The dead grip the living. The prince dies but his power passes at the moment of his death, there is no lapse, no interregnum

Thomas More still has some credit with the king. And he has written him a letter, saying," he manages to smile, "that I am Wycliffe, Luther and Zwingli rolled together and tied up in string—one reformer stuffed inside another, as for a feast you might parcel a pheasant inside a chicken inside a goose.

Statements, indictments, bills are circulated, shuffled between judges, prosecutors, the Attorney General, the Lord Chancellor's office; each step in the process clear, logical, and designed to create corpses by due process of law.

I wonder," he says, "how it can be that, though all these people think they know the king's pleasure, the king finds himself at every turn impeded." At every turn, thwarted: maddened and baffled.

I am no one's agent. I am the agent of the law. All the conspiracies pass through my hands. The Committee, you know, draws its present unity from being conspired against. I do not know what would happen if the policy of believing in conspiracies were changed.

As for the future, the king's desires move swiftly and the law must run to keep up.

it's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on.