I am sure you were at Hampton Court when the French king's ambassador was entertained there at those solemn banqueting-houses, not long before the king's death; namely, when, after the banquet was done the first night, the king was leaning upon the ambassador and upon me: if I should tell what communication between the king's highness and the said ambassador was had, concerning the establishing of sincere religion then, a man would hardly have believed it: nor had I myself thought the king's highness had been so forward in those matters as then appeared. I may tell you, it passed the pulling down of roods, and suppressing the ringing of bells. I take it that few in England would have believed, that the king's majesty and the French king had been at this point, not only, within half a year after, to have changed the mass in both the realms into a communion (as we now use it), but also utterly to have extirped and banished the bishop of Rome, and his usurped power, out of both their realms and dominions.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I am sure you were at Hampton Court when the French king's ambassador was entertained there at those solemn banqueting-houses, not long before the king's death; namely, when, after the banquet was done the first night, the king was leaning upon the ambassador and upon me: if I should tell what communication between the king's highness and the said ambassador was had, concerning the establishing of sincere religion then, a man would hardly have believed it: nor had I myself thought the king's highness had been so forward in those matters as then appeared. I may tell you, it passed the pulling down of roods, and suppressing the ringing of bells. I take it that few in England would have believed, that the king's majesty and the French king had been at this point, not only, within half a year after, to have changed the mass in both the realms into a communion (as we now use it), but also utterly to have extirped and banished the bishop of Rome, and his usurped power, out of both their realms and dominions." in the context of "Thomas Cranmer, quoted in John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, Vol. V (1870), pp. 563-564" to mean that wisdom is timeless.