‘was; i guess; a tedious prig’

autrenecherche:

“Instead of ruling over and against the court, [Cromwell] ruled through the court: instead of building up his own great household he packed the King’s– and at the very center in Henry’s Privy Chamber. But most striking of all is the men he [chose]: Peter Mewtis, grandson of a French immigrant who had turned his London house into a weaving shed; Ralph Sadler, son of Sir Edward Belknap’s clerk; Richard Moryson, a beggarly scholar. In more ordinary times they would have made their careers as merchants, or lawyers, or dons. Never in a thousand years would they have become courtiers if the all-powerful Cromwell had not made them so.

Only once did Henry object to these strange recruits. Richard Moryson was, I guess, a tedious prig; at any rate Henry drew the line and his appointment, though gazetted, took no effect. ‘I blush as long as I am at the court,’ Moryson complained to his patron. Stung perhaps by this insult to a good servant; more likely disturbed by the rebuff to his own power, Cromwell tried and again and this time successfully foisted Moryson on the reluctant king.”

– Wolsey and Cromwell: Continuity or Contrast? – David Starkey | Published in History Today, Volume 35, Issue 11: November 1985