the wish of the king was to make himself {289}
"emperor and pope" in his own dominions. While Henry studied Wyclif's
program, and the people read the English Testament, the lessons they
derived from these sources were at first moral and political, not
doctrinal or philosophic.

[Sidenote: Submission of the clergy, December 1530]

The first step in the reduction of the church was taken when the
attorney-general filed in the court of King's Bench an information
against the whole body of the clergy for violating the statutes of
Provisors and Praemunire by having recognized Wolsey's legatine
authority. Of course there was no justice in this; the king himself
had recognized Wolsey's authority and anyone who had denied it would
have been punished. But the suit was sufficient to accomplish the
government's purposes, which were, first to wring money from the clergy
and then to force them to declare the king "sole protector and supreme
head of the church and clergy of England." Reluctantly the Convocation
of Canterbury accepted this demand in the form that the king was,
"their singular protector, only and supreme lord and, as far as the law
of Christ allows, even Supreme Head." Henry further proposed that the
oaths of the clergy to the pope be abolished and himself made supreme
legislator. [Sidenote: May 15, 1532] Convocation accepted this demand
also in a document known as "the submission of the clergy."

If such was the action of the spiritual estate, it was natural that the
temporal peers and the Commons in parliament should go much further.
[Sidenote: 1532] A petition of the Commons, really emanating from the
government and probably from Thomas Cromwell, complained bitterly of
the tyranny of the ordinaries in ecclesiastical jurisdiction, of
excessive fees and vexations and frivolous charges of heresy made
against unlearned laymen. [Sidenote: May 1532] Abuses of like nature
were dealt with in statutes limiting the fees exacted by priests and
regulating {290} pluralities and non-residence. Annates were abolished
with the proviso that the king might negotiate with the pope,--the
intention of the government being thus to bring pressure to bear on the
curia. No wonder the clergy were thoroughly frightened. Bishop
Fisher, their bravest champion, protested in the House of Lords: "For
God's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Boheme was, and when the
church fell down, there fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with t