Cromwell: You don't seem to appreciate the seriousness of your position.
More: I defy anyone to live in that cell for a year and not appreciate the seriousness of his position.
Cromwell: Yet the State has harsher punishments.
More: You threaten like a dockside bully.
Cromwell: How should I threaten?
More: Like a Minister of State, with justice!
Cromwell: Oh, justice is what you're threatened with.
More: Then I'm not threatened.
--
Act IIRobert Bolt
What a theme, and what a speech, and what a speaker, and how Oliver Cromwell himself would have been thrilled to hear the parliamentary cause elevated to its rightful pre-eminence... Writing as an impenitent Leveller who still begs to differ with you (and Oliver Cromwell) in so many matters, I still cannot withhold my wonder and excitement at what I heard there today.
Enoch Powell
Cromwell: The King's a man of conscience and he wants either Sir Thomas More to bless his marriage or Sir Thomas More destroyed.
Rich: They seem odd alternatives, Secretary.
Cromwell: Do they? That's because you're not a man of conscience. If the King destroys a man, that's proof to the King that it must have been a bad man, the kind of man a man of conscience ought to destroy — and of course a bad man's blessing's not worth having. So either will do.Robert Bolt
I... had occasion to converse with Mr Cromwell’s physician, Dr Simcott, who assured me that for many years his patient was a most splenetick man and had phansies about the cross in that town; and that he had been called up to him at midnight, and such unseasonable hours very many times, upon a strong phansy, which made him belive he was then dying; and there went a story of him, that in the day-time, lying melancholy in his bed, he belived the spirit appeared to him, and told him he should be the greatest man, (not mentioning the word King) in this Kingdom. Which his uncle, Sir Thomas Steward, who left him all the little estate Cromwell had, told him was traiterous to relate.
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell had certainly this afflatus. One that I knew was at the battle of Dunbar, told me that Oliver was carried on with a Divine impulse; he did laugh so excessively as if he had been drunk; his eyes sparkled with spirits. He obtain’d a great victory; but the action was said to be contrary to human prudence. The same fit of laughter seized Oliver Cromwell just before the battle of Naseby; as a kinsman of mine, and a great favourite of his, Colonel J. P. then present, testified. Cardinal Mazerine said, that he was a lucky fool.
Oliver Cromwell
And shall I name one who hath been in our age, and wish him now to live to cure so great a canker? Would God England had a Cromwell: I will say no more.
Thomas Cromwell
Bolt, Robert
Bolt, Usain
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