e
taking the place of parliamentary legislation; royal benevolences were
encroaching more and more on the right of parliamentary taxation.
Justice was prostituted in the ordinary courts to the royal will, while
the boundless and arbitrary powers of the royal Council were gradually
superseding the slower processes of the Common Law. The religious
changes had thrown an almost sacred character over the "majesty" of the
king. Henry was the Head of the Church. From the primate to the meanest
deacon every minister of it derived from him his sole right to exercise
spiritual powers. The voice of its preachers was the echo of his will.
He alone could define orthodoxy or declare heresy. The forms of its
worship and belief were changed and rechanged at the royal caprice. Half
of its wealth went to swell the royal treasury, and the other half lay
at the king's mercy. It was this unprecedented concentration of all
power in the hands of a single man that overawed the imagination of
Henry's subjects. He was regarded as something high above the laws which
govern common men. The voices of statesmen and priests extolled his
wisdom and authority as more than human. The Parliament itself rose and
bowed to the vacant throne when his name was mentioned. An absolute
devotion to his person replaced the old loyalty to the law. When the
Primate of the English Church described the chief merit of Cromwell, it
was by asserting that he loved the king "no less than he loved God."

[Sidenote: Cromwell and the Parliament.]

It was indeed Cromwell who more than any man had reared this fabric of
king-worship. But he had hardly reared it when it began to give way. The
very success of his measures indeed brought about the ruin of his
policy. One of the most striking features of Cromwell's system had been
his developement of parliamentary action. The great assembly which the
Monarchy had dreaded and silenced from the days of Edward the Fourth to
the days of Wolsey had been called to the front again at the Cardinal's
fall. Proud of his popularity, and conscious of his people's sympathy
with him in his protest against a foreign jurisdiction, Henry set aside
the policy of the Crown to deal a heavier blow at the Papacy. Both the
parties represented in the ministry that followed Wolsey welcomed the
change, for the nobles represented by Norfolk and the men of the New
Learning represented by More regarded Parliament with the same favour.
More indeed in significan