y of
misprision of treason. After these compliances, the parliament was
prorogued; and those acts, so contemptuous towards the pope, and so
destructive of his authority, were passed at the very time that Clement
pronounced his hasty sentence against the king. Henry's resentment
against Queen Catharine, on account of her obstinacy, was the reason
why he excluded her daughter from all hopes of succeeding to the crown;
contrary to his first intentions, when he began the process of divorce,
and of dispensation for a second marriage.

The king found his ecclesiastical subjects as compliant as the laity.
The convocation ordered that the act against appeals to Rome, together
with the king's appeal from the pope to a general council should be
affixed to the doors of all the churches in the kingdom: and they voted
that the bishop of Rome had, by the law of God, no more jurisdiction in
England than any other foreign bishop; and that the authority which he
and his predecessors had there exercised, was only by usurpation, and by
the sufferance of English princes. Four persons alone opposed this vote
in the lower house, and one doubted. It passed unanimously in the upper.
The bishops went so far in their complaisance, that they took out new
commissions from the crown, in which all their spiritual and episcopal
authority was expressly affirmed to be derived ultimately from the civil
magistrate, and to be entirely dependent on his good pleasure.[*]

The oath regarding the succession was generally taken throughout the
kingdom. Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, were the only
persons of note that entertained scruples with regard to its legality.
Fisher was obnoxious on account of some practices into which his
credulity, rather than any bad intentions, seems to have betrayed him.
But More was the person of greatest reputation in the kingdom for virtue
and integrity; and as it was believed that his authority would have
influence on the sentiments of others, great pains were taken to
convince him of the lawfulness of the oath. He declared that he had no
scruple with regard to the succession, and thought that the parliament
had full power to settle it: he offered to draw an oath himself which
would insure his allegiance to the heir appointed; but he refused the
oath prescribed by law; because the preamble of that oath asserted the
legality of the king's marriage with Anne, and thereby implied that his
former marriage with Ca