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LTHOUGH in the question of the divorce the King had interfered despotically to control the judgment of the Universities, he had made no attempt, as we have seen, to check the tongues of the clergy. Nor if he had desired to check them, is it likely that at the present stage of proceedings he could have succeeded. No law had as yet been passed which made a crime of a difference of opinion on the Pope's dispensing powers; and so long as no definitive sentence had been pronounced, every one had free liberty to think and speak as he pleased. So great, indeed, was the anxiety to disprove Catherine's assertion that England was a locus suspectus, and therefore that the cause could not be equitably tried there, that even in the distribution of patronage there was an ostentatious display of impartiality. Not only had Sir Thomas More been made chancellor, although emphatically on Catherine's side; but Cuthbert Tunstal, who had been her counsel, was promoted to the See of Durham. The Nun of Kent, if her word was to be