hop. "Then are we all silent," replied a voice
from among the crowd.

[Sidenote: Catharine put away]

There is no ground for thinking that the "Headship of the Church" which
Henry claimed in this submission was more than a warning addressed to the
independent spirit of the clergy, or that it bore as yet the meaning which
was afterwards attached to it. It certainly implied no independence of
Rome, for negotiations were still being carried on with the Papal Court.
But it told Clement plainly that in any strife that might come between
himself and Henry the clergy were in the king's hand, and that he must
look for no aid from them in any struggle with the crown. The warning was
backed by an address to the Pope from the Lords and some of the Commons
who assembled after a fresh prorogation of the Houses in the spring. "The
cause of his Majesty," the Peers were made to say, "is the cause of each
of ourselves." They laid before the Pope what they represented as the
judgement of the Universities in favour of the divorce; but they faced
boldly the event of its rejection. "Our condition," they ended, "will not
be wholly irremediable. Extreme remedies are ever harsh of application;
but he that is sick will by all means be rid of his distemper." In the
summer the banishment of Catharine from the king's palace to a house at
Ampthill showed the firmness of Henry's resolve. Each of these acts was no
doubt intended to tell on the Pope's decision, for Henry still clung to
the hope of extorting from Clement a favourable answer, and at the close
of the year a fresh embassy with Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester, at
its head was despatched to the Papal court. But the embassy failed like
its predecessors, and at the opening of 1532 Cromwell was free to take
more decisive steps in the course on which he had entered.

[Sidenote: More's withdrawal]

What the nature of his policy was to be had already been detected by eyes
as keen as his own. More had seen in Wolsey's fall an opening for the
realization of those schemes of religious and even of political reform on
which the scholars of the New Learning had long been brooding. The
substitution of the Lords of the Council for the autocratic rule of the
Cardinal-minister, the break-up of the great mass of powers which had been
gathered into a single hand, the summons of a Parliament, the
ecclesiastical reforms which it at once sanctioned, were measures which
promised a more legal and consti