1984, 400 years early

So I've gotten to the Reformation in Duffy, and the dissolution of the monasteries has started.

Traditional outrage at such sacrilege [the confiscation of saints' relics] was muted. The Treasons Act was a formidable instrument, and complaint against the King's proceedings liable to backfire on the complainer. As early as March 1534 Cromwell had made a memorandum "to have substantial persons in every good town to discover all who speak or preach" against the Henrician religious revolution, and his postbag bears eloquent testimony to the network of denunciation and reprisal which resulted.
(p. 385)

Orwell would find this horribly familiar, and I think it's a useful corrective to the attitudes discussed (not demonstrated, mind, discussed) in the comments to this post of papersky's, that pre-industrial societies were somehow simpler and more benevolent, as if corruption and technology went hand in hand. Technology may make corruption easier, but it doesn't cause it. That's left to the infinite ingenuity of the human mind.

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WORKS CITED
Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Neighbour Richardson

My 1984 analogy in the previous post was even more horrifyingly accurate than I realized.

An anecdote, also from Duffy:

In May 1535, ... the vicar of St Clement's, Cambridge, having had a few beers in the Pump tavern, called the King a despoiler of the Church. Sensing his companion's disapproval, the priest said, "Neighbour Richardson, there be no one here but you and I," but neighbour Richardson denounced him to the mayor all the same, and his words were duly reported to Cromwell.
(p. 385-6)

Now I'm wondering what the Henrician equivalent of Room 101 was.

(Oh, and in case anybody's confused, the Cromwell in question is Thomas, not Oliver. Oliver is one hundred years later and no relation. Thomas Cromwell was the Earl of Essex and secretary to both Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII (not concurrently). His downfall's coming, if you're hating him with a virulent green passion in 1534-5; he'll be executed in 1540, for botching the marriage with Anne of Cleves and generally being an asshole. Tudor politics are some scary shit, man.)

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WORKS CITED
Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

"Cromwell, Thomas." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 1932. 5th Ed. Ed. Margaret Drabble. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1985