dley. Similarly, the privy seal (p. 273)
had been held in Henry's reign by three bishops successively, Fox,
Ruthal and Tunstall: now it was entrusted to the hands of Anne
Boleyn's father, the Earl of Wiltshire. Gardiner remained secretary
for the time, but Du Bellay thought his power would have increased had
he abandoned his clerical vows,[753] and he, too, was soon superseded
by Cromwell. Even the clerkship of Parliament was now given up to a
layman. During the first half of Henry's reign clerical influence had
been supreme in Henry's councils; during the second it was almost
entirely excluded. Like his Parliament, he was now impugning the
jurisdiction of the clergy in the matter of heresy; they were doctors,
he said, of the soul, and had nothing to do with the body.[754] He was
even inclining to the very modern theory that marriage is a civil
contract, and that matrimonial suits should therefore be removed from
clerical cognisance.[755] As early as 1529 he ordered Wolsey to
release the Prior of Reading, who had been imprisoned for Lutheranism,
"unless the matter is very heinous".[756] In 1530 he was praising
Latimer's sermons;[757] and in the same year the Bishop of Norwich
complained of a general report in his diocese that Henry favoured
heretical books.[758] "They say that, wherever they go, they hear that
the King's pleasure is that the New Testament in English shall (p. 274)
go forth." There seems little reason to doubt Hall's statement that
Henry now commanded the bishops, who, however, did nothing, to prepare
an English translation of the Bible to counteract the errors of
Tyndale's version.[759] He wrote to the German princes extolling their
efforts towards the reformation of the Church;[760] and many advisers
were urging him to begin a similar movement in England. Anne Boleyn
and her father were, said Chapuys, more Lutheran than Luther himself;
they were the true apostles of the new sect in England.[761]

[Footnote 752: Thomas Beaufort, afterwards Duke of
Exeter, who was Chancellor in 1410-12, and Richard,
Earl of Salisbury, who was Chancellor in 1454-5,
are exceptions.]

[Footnote 753: _L. and P._, iv., 6019.]

[Footnote 754: _Ibid._, v., 1013.]

[Footnote 755: _Ibid._, v., 805; vii., 232. Chapuys
had told him that "all the Parliament could not