ad been sharply rebuked, and told to mind his own
business; then, softening, Cromwell had explained that there was no
question of death for the present; but that More's persistent refusal to
yield to the pressure of events was a standing peril to the King's
policy.

This policy had now shaped itself more clearly. In the autumn of '34 the
bill for the King's supremacy over the Church of England began to take
form; and Ralph had several sights of the documents as all business of
this kind now flowed through Cromwell's hands, and he was filled with
admiration and at the same time with perplexity at the adroitness of the
wording. It was very short, and affected to assume rather than to enact
its object.

"Albeit the King's Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be," it
began, "the supreme head of the Church of England, and so is recognised
by the clergy of this realm in their Convocations, yet, nevertheless,
for corroboration and confirmation thereof ... and to repress and extirp
all errors, heresies and other enormities ... be it enacted by authority
of this present Parliament that the King our sovereign lord ... shall be
taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the
Church of England, called _Anglicans Ecclesia_." The bill then proceeded
to confer on him a plenitude of authority over both temporal and
spiritual causes.

There was here considerable skill in the manner of its drawing up, which
it owed chiefly to Cromwell; for it professed only to re-state a matter
that had slipped out of notice, and appealed to the authority of
Convocation which had, truly, under Warham allowed a resolution to the
same effect, though qualified by the clause, "as far as God's law
permits," to pass in silence.

Ralph was puzzled by it: he was led to believe that it could contain no
very radical change from the old belief, since the clergy had in a sense
already submitted to it; and, on the other hand, the word "the only
supreme head in earth" seemed not only to assert the Crown's civil
authority over the temporalities of the Church, but to exclude
definitely all jurisdiction on the part of the Pope.

"It is the assertion of a principle," Cromwell said to him when he asked
one day for an explanation; "a principle that has always been held in
England; it is not intended to be precise or detailed: that will follow
later."

Ralph was no theologian, and did not greatly care what the bill did or
did not involve.