e's interest, delay further the
investigation of the complaints of the people against the church; while in
the future prosecution of his own cause, he resolved to take no steps
except with the consent of the legislature, and in a question of national
moment, to consult only the nation's wishes.

The new ministry held a middle place between the moving party in the
commons and the expelled ecclesiastics, the principal members of it being
the chief representatives of the old aristocracy, who had been Wolsey's
fiercest opponents, but who were disinclined by constitution and sympathy
from sweeping measures. An attempt was made, indeed, to conciliate the more
old-fashioned of the churchmen, by an offer of the seals to Warham,
Archbishop of Canterbury, probably because he originally opposed the
marriage between the king and his sister-in-law, and because it was hoped
that his objections remained unaltered. Warham, however, as we shall see,
had changed his mind: he declined, on the plea of age, and the office of
chancellor was given to Sir Thomas More, perhaps the person least
disaffected to the clergy who could have been found among the leading
laymen. The substance of power was vested in the Dukes of Norfolk and
Suffolk, the great soldier-nobles of the age, and Sir William Fitz-William,
lord admiral; to all of whom the ecclesiastical domination had been most
intolerable, while they had each of them brilliantly distinguished
themselves in the wars with France and Scotland. According to the French
ambassador, we must add one more minister, supreme, if we may trust him,
above them all. "The Duke of Norfolk," he writes, "is made president of the
council, the Duke of Suffolk vice-president, and above them both is
Mistress Anne;"[170] this last addition to the council being one which
boded little good to the interests of the See that had so long detained her
in expectation. So confident were the destructive party of the temper of
the approaching parliament, and of the irresistible pressure of the times,
that the general burden of conversation of the dinner-tables in the great
houses in London was an exulting expectation of a dissolution of the church
establishment, and a confiscation of ecclesiastical property; the king
himself being the only obstacle which was feared by them. "These noble
lords imagine," continues the same writer, "that the cardinal once dead of
ruined, they will incontinently plunder the church, and strip it of all