existing between Pope, Henry and Francis.]

[Footnote 835: _Ibid._, vi., 276, 311, 317, 491.]

[Footnote 836: The germ of this Act may be found in
a despatch from Henry dated 7th October, 1530; that
the system of appeals had been subject to gross
abuse is obvious from the fact that the Council of
Trent prohibited it (_Cambridge Modern Hist._, ii.,
671).]

[Footnote 837: _L. and P._, vi., 1489.]

[Footnote 838: _Ibid._, vi., 296.]

[Footnote 839: _Ibid._, XII., ii., 952.]

Henry's path was now clear. Cranmer was archbishop and _legatus natus_
with a title which none could dispute. By Act of Parliament his court
was the final resort for all ecclesiastical cases. No appeals from his
decision could be lawfully made. So, on 11th April, before he was yet
consecrated, he besought the King's gracious permission to determine
his "great cause of matrimony, because much bruit exists among the
common people on the subject".[840] No doubt there did; but that (p. 300)
was not the cause for the haste. Henry was pleased to accede to this
request of the "principal minister of our spiritual jurisdiction";
and, on the 10th of May, the Archbishop opened his Court at Dunstable.
Catherine, of course, could recognise no authority in Cranmer to try a
cause that was before the papal curia. She was declared contumacious,
and, on the 23rd, the Archbishop gave his sentence. Following the line
of Convocation, he pronounced that the Pope had no power to license
marriages such as Henry's, and that the King and Catherine had never
been husband and wife.[841] Five days later, after a secret investigation,
he declared that Henry and Anne Boleyn were lawfully married, and on
Whitsunday, the 1st of June, he crowned Anne as Queen in Westminster
Abbey.[842] Three months later, on Sunday, the 7th of September,
between three and four in the afternoon, Queen Anne gave birth to a
daughter at Greenwich.[843] The child was christened on the following
Wednesday by Stokesley, Bishop of London, and Cranmer stood godfather.
Chapuys scarcely considered the matter worth mention. The King's
_amie_ had given birth to a bastard, a detail of little importance to
any one, and least of all to a monarch like Charles V.[844] (p. 301)
Yet the "bastard" was Q