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emperor, and who, a year or two afterwards, despite the fact that he had just married Osiander's niece (his second wife), was summoned home to become Arch- bishop of Canterbury. The necessary Bulls and the pallium were obtained from Rome under threat that the law (referred to again below) for the abolition of annates and first-fruits would be matle permanent. The vacillating Clement — who probably hoped that by making every other kind of concession he might be able to maintain the position he had assumed upon the more vital question of the divorce — conceded Bulls and pallium. But to benefit by them it was necessary that Cranmer should take certain prescribed oaths of obedience to the Holy See. He took the oaths, but committed to WTiting a solemn protest that he considered the oaths in no way binding in con- science, a procedure which even so prejudiced an historian as Mr. H. A. Fisher cannot refrain from describing as a "signal dishonesty". "If", asks Dr. Lingard, "it be simony to purchase spiritual office by money, what is it to purchase the same by per- jury?" The father of the new Church of England, and future compiler of its liturgy, was not entering upon his functions under very propitious auspices. But the Church which was so soon to be brought into being probably owes even more to Thomas Crom- well than to its first archbishop. It is Cromwell who seems to have suggested to Henry as a deliberate policy that he should abolish the imperium in imperio, throw off the papal supremacy, and make himself the supreme head of his own religion. This was in fact the course which from the latter part of 1529 Henry undeviatingly fohowed, though he did not at first go to lengths from which there was no retreat. The first blow was struck at the clergy by involving them in Wolsey's pra>munire. Some anti-clerical dis- affection there had always been, partly, no doubt, the remnants of LoUardy, as was instanced in the case of Richard Hunne, 1515. This, of late years, had been a good deal aggravated by the importation into Eng- land of Tyndale's annotated New Testament and other Ijooks of heretical tendency, which, though prohiliited and burnt by authority, still made their way among the people. Henry and his ministers had, therefore, some popular support upon which they could fall back, if necessary, in their campaign to reduce the clergy to abject submission. At the be- ginning of 1531 the Convocation of Canterbury were informed that they could only purchase a pardon for the praemunire they had incurrefl by presenting the king with the enormous sum of £100,000. Further, they were bidden to recognize the king as " Protector and Supreme Head of the Church of England ". Con- vocation struggled desperately against the demand, and in the end succeeded in inserting the qualification "so far as is allowed by the law of Christ". But this was only a Ijrief respite. A year later Parliament under pressure passed an act forl)idding the payment to the Holy See of Annates (q. v.) or first-fruits, but the operation of it was for the present suspended at the sovereign's pleasure, and the king was meanwhile sohcitcd to come to an amicable understanding with "His Holiness" on the subject of the divorce. The measure amounted to a decently veiled threat to with- draw this source of income from the Holy See alto- gether if the divorce was refu.sed. Still the pope held out, and so did the queen. Only a little time before, a deputation of lords and bishops — of course by the king's order — had visited Catherine and had rudely urged her to withdraw the appeal in virtue of which the king, contrary to his dignity, had been cited to appear personally at Rome; but though deprived of all counsel, she stood firm. In the May of 1532 fur- ther pressure was brought to bear upon Convocation, and resulted in the so-called "Submission of the Clergj-", by which they practically renounced all right of legislation except in dependence upon the king.

An honest man like Sir Thomas More could no longer pretend to work with the Government, and he re- signed the chancellorship, which he hatl held since the fall of Wolsey. The situation was too strained to last, and the end came about through the death of Archbishop Warham in August, 1532. In the ap- pointment of Cranmer as his successor, the king knew that he had secured a subservient tool who desired nothing better than to see the papal authority over- thrown. Anne Boleyn was then enceinte, and the king, relj-ing, no doubt, on what Cranmer when conse- crated would be ready to do for him, went through a form of marriage with her on 25 January, 1533. On 15 April Cranmer received consecration. On 23 May, Parliament having meanwhile forbidden all appeals to Rome, Cranmer pronounced Henry's for- mer marriage invalid. On 2S May he declared the marriage with .\nne valid. On 1 June .•Vnne was crowned, and on 7 September she gave birth to a daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth. Clement, who had previously sent to Henry more than one monition upon his desertion of Catherine, issued a Bull of ex- communication on 11 July, declaring, also, his divorce and remarriage null. In England Catherine was deprived of her title of Queen, and Mary her daughter was treated as a bastard. Much sympathy was aroused among the populace, to meet which severe measures were taken against the more conspicuous of the disaffected, particularly the "Nun of Kent", who claimed to have had revelations of tiod's displeasure at the recent course of events.

In the course of the next year the lireach with Rome was completed. Parliament did all that was required of it. AJinates, Peter's-pence, antl other pajTnents to Rome were finally abolished. An .Act of Succession entailed the crown on the children of -Anne Boleyn, and an oath was drawn up to be exacted of every per- son of lawful age. It was the refusal to take tliis oath, the preamble of which declared Henry's marriage with Catherine null from the beginning, which sent More and I-'isher to the Tower, and eventually to the block. A certain number of Carthusian monks, Brigittines, and Observant Franciscans imitated their firmness and shared their fate. All these have been beatified in modern times l)y Pope Leo XIII. There were, how- ever, but a handfid who were thus true to their con- victions. Declarations were obtained from the clergy in both provinces "that the Bishop of Rome hath no greater jurisdiction conferred upon him by God in this kingdom of England than any other foreign bishop", while Parliament, in .November, declared the king "Supreme Head of the Church of England ", and shortly afterwards Cromwell, a layman, was ap- pointed vicar-general to rule the English Church in the king's name. Though the people were cowed, these measures were not carried through without much disaffection, and, to stamp out any overt ex- pression of this, Cromwell and his master now em- barked upon a veritable reign of terror. The martyrs alrea<ly referred to were most of them brought to the scaffold in the course of 1535, but fourteen Dutch Anabaptists also sufTered death liy burning in the same year. There followed a visitat ion of the monas- teries, un.scrupulous instruments like Layton, Legh, and Price being appointed for the purpose. They played, of course, into the king's hand and compiled cnmperta abounding in charges of disgraceful immo- rality, which .Abbot Gascjuet has shown, to the satis- faction of such sober authorities as Dr. Gairdner and Dr. Jessopp, to be at least grossly exaggerated. In pursuance of the same |)oliey Parliament, in February, 1.53, acting under great pressure, voted to the king the property of all religious houses with less than £200 a year of annual income, recommending that the inmates should be transferred to the larger houses where "religion happily was right well observed". The dissolution, when carried out, produced much