Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/237

1534.] of a vigorous Government placed in circumstances of extreme peril. The Romanism of the present day is a harmless opinion, no more productive of evil than any other superstition, and without tendency, or shadow of tendency, to impair the allegiance of those who profess it. But we must not confound a phantom with a substance; or gather from modern experience the temper of a time when words implied realities, when Catholics really believed that they owed no allegiance to an heretical sovereign, and that the first duty of their lives was to a foreign potentate. This perilous doctrine was waning, indeed, but it was not dead. By many it was actively professed; and among those by whom it was denied there were few except the Protestants whom it did not in some degree embarrass and perplex.

The Government, therefore, in the close of 1534, having clear evidence before them of intended treason, determined to put it down with a high hand; and with this purpose Parliament met again on the 3rd of November. The first Act of the session was to give the sanction of the legislature to the title which had been conceded by Convocation, and to declare the King supreme Head of the Church of England. As affirmed by the legislature, this designation meant something more than when it wad granted three years previously by the clergy. It then implied that the spiritual body were no longer to be an imperium in imperio within the realm, but should hold their powers subordinate to the Crown. It was now an assertion of independence of foreign jurisdiction; it was the complement of the Act