ional greatness which sprang from the policy of Henry the Eighth, the
fresh sense of national unity as the Monarchy gathered all power into its
single hand, would have itself revived the contest even without the spur
of the divorce. What the question of the divorce really did was to
stimulate the movement by bringing into clearer view the wreck of the
great Christian commonwealth of which England had till now formed a part
and the impossibility of any real exercise of a spiritual sovereignty over
it by the weakened Papacy, as well as by outraging the national pride
through the summons of the king to a foreign bar and the submission of
English interests to the will of a foreign Emperor.

[Sidenote: Act of Appeals]

With such a spur as this the movement which More dreaded moved forward as
quickly as Cromwell desired. The time had come when England was to claim
for herself the fulness of power, ecclesiastical as well as temporal,
within her bounds; and in the concentration of all authority within the
hands of the sovereign which was the political characteristic of the time
to claim this power for the nation was to claim it for the king. The
import of that headship of the Church which Henry had assumed in the
preceding year was brought fully out in one of the propositions laid
before the Convocation of 1532. "The King's Majesty," runs this memorable
clause, "hath as well the care of the souls of his subjects as their
bodies; and may by the law of God by his Parliament make laws touching and
concerning as well the one as the other." The principle embodied in these
words was carried out in a series of decisive measures. Under strong
pressure the Convocation was brought to pray that the power of independent
legislation till now exercised by the Church should come to an end, and to
promise "that from henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put
into execution any such constitutions and ordinances so by us to be made
in time coming, unless your Highness by your royal assent shall license us
to make, promulge, and execute them, and the same so made be approved by
your Highness's authority." Rome was dealt with in the same unsparing
fashion. The Parliament forbade by statute any further appeals to the
Papal Court; and on a petition from the clergy in Convocation the Houses
granted power to the king to suspend the payments of first-fruits, or the
year's revenue which each bishop paid to Rome on his election to a see.
Al