bly reformed by
the State, and not freed from the trammels of Rome, and then left to
work out its own salvation. But such a solution occurred to few at
that time; the best and the worst of Henry's opponents opposed him on
the ground that he was divorcing the Church in England from the Church
universal. Their objection was to what was done more than to the way
in which it was done; and Sir Thomas More would have fought the
Reformation quite as strenuously had it been effected by the
Convocations of Canterbury and York. On the other side there was
equally little thought of a Reformation by clerical hands. Henry (p. 329)
and Cromwell carried on and developed the tradition of the Emperor
Frederick II. and Peter de Vinea,[929] of Philippe le Bel and
Pierre Dubois, of Lewis the Bavarian and Marsiglio of Padua[930] who
maintained the supremacy of the temporal over the spiritual power and
asserted that the clergy wielded no jurisdiction and only bore the
keys of heaven in the capacity of turnkeys.[931] It was a question of
the national State against the universal Church. The idea of a
National Church was a later development, the result and not the cause
of the Reformation.

[Footnote 929: The comparison has been drawn by
Huillard-Breholles in his _Vie et Correspondence de
Pierre de la Vigne_, Paris, 1865.]

[Footnote 930: Marsiglio's _Defensor Pacis_ was a
favourite book with Cromwell who lent a printer L20
to bring out an English edition of it in 1535 (see
the present writer in _D.N.B., s.v._ Marshall,
William). Marshall distributed twenty-four copies
among the monks of Charterhouse to show them how
the Christian commonwealth had been "unjustly
molested, vexed and troubled by the spiritual and
ecclesiastical tyrant". See also Maitland, _English
Law and the Renaissance_, pp. 14, 60, 61.]

[Footnote 931: _Defensor Pacis_, ii., 6.]

Henry's dictatorship was also temporary in character. His supremacy
over the Church was royal, and not parliamentary. It was he, and not
Parliament, who had been invested with a semi-ecclesiastical nature.
In one capacity he was head of the State, in another, head of the
Church. Parliament and Convocation were co-ordinate one with ano