Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/296

 friend dropped off Cromwell rose a step, and the royal determination increased. Cranmer was designated for the primacy; Audley from being Lord Keeper was raised to the Chancellorship; the parliament, which had been prorogued to November, was adjourned to January, and in January both Houses and convocation met.

For the session of 1533 we have no journals, and the reports of the Venetian ambassador do not supply the gap caused by the imperfect continuation of the Austrian dispatches. Two subjects, however, alone occupied both the secular and the ecclesiastical assemblies: the divorce and the abolition of appeals to Rome. In parliament the divorce business proceeded slowly; the king visited it more than once with a view to expediting that, and the provision of an army against the Scots; but the month of February passed over without any real business being done. At last Henry resumed the plan by which he had succeeded in 1532, putting the initiation of his own measures in the mouth of a private member of the Commons; on the 15th of March a London member was found to propose that the judges of the divorce should be appointed in England. Immediately after this Cranmer was consecrated, and he undertook to deal with convocation. In convocation the two questions on which the divorce turned were debated in the manner of University disputations; the theologians disputed as to the dispensability of a marriage with a brother's widow, the canonists on the facts of Arthur's marriage with Katharine: there were formal divisions, but the conclusion was foregone, the bishop of Rochester was the only steady opponent. In the same way the York convocation was dealt with by Archbishop Lee.

Notwithstanding the acquiescence of convocation, the Commons as late as April 10 were still reluctant. We are told that one of the members for London offered to raise £200,000 if the king would refer the question of the divorce to a general council. But in vain. The servility of Cranmer and Lee had provided a short and easy method; on the 33rd of May, at Dunstable, Cranmer, on the strength of the opinions thus obtained, pronounced in favour of the divorce and Boleyn