ament, were sent to the block.[919] Commissioners were sent
round, as Parliament had ordained, to enforce the oath of succession
throughout the land.[920] A general refusal would have stopped Henry's
career, but the general consent left Henry free to deal as he liked
with the exceptions. Fisher and More were sent to the Tower. They were
willing to swear to the succession, regarding that as a matter within
the competence of Parliament, but they refused to take the oath
required by the commissioners;[921] it contained, they alleged, a
repudiation of the Pope not justified by the terms of the statute. Two
cartloads of friars followed them to the Tower in June, and the Order
of Observants, in whose church at Greenwich Henry had been baptised
and married, and of whom in his earlier years he had written in terms
of warm admiration, was suppressed altogether.[922]

[Footnote 917: "The Lord Cromwell," says Bishop
Gardiner, "had once put in the King our late
sovereign lord's head, to take upon him to have his
will and pleasure regarded for a law; for that, he
said, was to be a very King," and he quoted the
_quod principi placuit_ of Roman civil law.
Gardiner replied to the King that "to make the laws
his will was more sure and quiet" and "agreeable
with the nature of your people". Henry preferred
Gardiner's advice (Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 46).]

[Footnote 918: _L. and P._, vii., 483, 647.]

[Footnote 919: _Ibid._, vii., 522.]

[Footnote 920: _Ibid._, vii., 665.]

[Footnote 921: _Ibid._, vii., 499.]

[Footnote 922: _Ibid._, vii., 841, 856. The order
had been particularly active in opposition to the
divorce (_ibid._, iv., 6156; v., 266.)]

In November Parliament[923] reinforced the Act of Succession by laying
down the precise terms of the oath, and providing that a certificate
of refusal signed by two commissioners was as effective as the
indictment of twelve jurors. Other acts empowered the King to repeal
by royal proclamation certain statutes regulating imports and exports.
The first-fruits and tenths, of which the Pope had been already (p. 325)
deprived, were now conferred on the King as a fitting ecc