Thomas Swynnerton was on the fringes of the English Reformation, though he probably would have liked to have been more at its center. He railed against the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church in two publications in 1534, the most momentous year of the English Reformation in terms of religious legislation. Swynnerton's publications, and no doubt his mood, were in step with the times. Perhaps in an attempt to join the rather privileged circle of humanist scholars employed by the English Crown to justify and promote religious reform, Swynnerton dedicated a manuscript to the king's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. The manuscript identifies and explains many rhetorical tropes and figures. Swynnerton's approach is not particularly systematic, and his choice of terms no doubt was selected to serve the additional religious purpose of his manuscript. These characteristics make the manuscript decidedly idiosyncratic. But his work is one of the first attempts...