a true knowledge of God’s word in scripture. Purgatory and the abuses connected with it were to be rooted out. In many ways the society envisaged by Cranmer was simpler than the one he grew up in. Of the two great powers of medieval society, church and monarchy, the former was by the end of Cranmer’s career totally subservient to the latter. Papal authority was excluded, the abbeys dissolved, and the bishops and convocations totally subservient to the king. But this was no mere