y.[792] They were horrified at his appearance, and besought
him to depart in haste, fearing lest this fresh constitutional breach
should be visited on their heads. Warham frightened them with the
terrors of royal displeasure; and the clerics had to content their
conscience with an Irish bull and a subterfuge. "Silence gives
consent," said the Archbishop when putting the question; "Then are we
all silent," cried the clergy. To their recognition of Henry as
Supreme Head of the Church, they added the salvo "so far as the law of
Christ allows". It was an empty phrase, thought Chapuys, for no one
would venture to dispute with the King the point where his supremacy
ended and that of Christ began;[793] there was in fact "a new Papacy
made here".[794] The clergy repented of the concession as soon as it
was granted; they were "more conscious every day," wrote Chapuys, (p. 287)
"of the great error they committed in acknowledging the King as
sovereign of the Church"; and they made a vain, and not very creditable,
effort to get rejected by spiritual votes in the House of Lords the
measures to which they had given their assent in Convocation.[795] The
Church had surrendered with scarcely a show of fight; henceforth Henry
might feel sure that, whatever opposition he might encounter in other
quarters, the Church in England would offer no real resistance.

[Footnote 791: _Cf. ibid._, vi., 1381 [3], "that if
the Pope attempts war, the King shall have a moiety
of the temporal lands of the Church for his
defence".]

[Footnote 792: _L. and P._, v., 62. Dr. Stubbs
(_Lectures_, 1887, p. 318) represents the nuncio as
being pressed into the King's service, and the
clergy as resisting him as the Commons had done
Wolsey in 1523. But this independence is imaginary;
"it was agreed," writes Chapuys, "between the
nuncio and me that he should go to the said
ecclesiastics in their congregation and recommend
them to support the immunity of the Church.... They
were all utterly astonished and scandalised, and
without allowing him to open his mouth they begged
him to leave them in peace, for they had not the
King's leave to speak with h