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1532–3.] other, they had been compelled—all such of them as lay within the pale of the Latin communion—to acknowledge a power superior to their own. To the popes was the ultimate appeal in all causes of which the spiritual courts had cognizance. Their jurisdiction had been extended by an unwavering pursuit of a single policy, and their constancy in the twelfth century was rewarded by absolute victory. In England, however, the field was no sooner won than it was again disputed, and the civil government gave way at last only when the danger seemed to have ceased. So long as the Papacy was feared, so long as the successors of St Peter held a sword which could inflict sensible wounds, and enforce obedience by penalties, the English kings had resisted both the theory and the application. While the Pope was dangerous he was dreaded and opposed. When age had withered his arm, and the feeble lightnings flickered in harmless insignificance, they consented to withdraw their watchfulness, and his supremacy was silently allowed as an innocent superstition. It existed as some other institutions exist at the present day, with a merely nominal authority; with a tacit understanding, that the power which it was permitted to retain should be exerted only in conformity with the national will.

Under these conditions the Tudor princes became loyal subjects to the Holy See, and so they would have willingly remained, had not Clement, in an evil hour for himself, forgotten the terms of the compact. He laid upon a legal fiction a strain which his predecessors, in their palmiest days, would have feared to attempt; and