[Footnote 1083: _Ibid._, XIV., i., 573, and
"although he fears my lord of Winchester has
already moved men after his own desires". He also
spoke with Lord St. John about knights of the shire
for Hampshire, and St. John "promised to do his
best". Finally he enclosed a "schedule of the best
men of the country picked out _by them_, that
Cromwell may pick whom he would have chosen".]

The principal measure passed in this Parliament was the Act of Six
Articles, and it was designed to secure that unity and concord in
opinions which had not been effected by the King's injunctions. The
Act affirmed the doctrine of Transubstantiation, declared that the
administration of the Sacrament in both kinds was not necessary, that
priests might not marry, that vows of chastity were perpetual, that
private masses were meet and necessary, and auricular confession (p. 391)
was expedient and necessary. Burning was the penalty for once denying
the first article, and a felon's death for twice denying any of the
others. This was practically the first Act of Uniformity, the earliest
definition by Parliament of the faith of the Church. It showed that
the mass of the laity were still orthodox to the core, that they could
persecute as ruthlessly as the Church itself, and that their only
desire was to do the persecution themselves. The bill was carried
through Parliament by means of a coalition of King and laity[1084]
against Cromwell and a minority of reforming bishops, who are said
only to have relinquished their opposition at Henry's personal
intervention;[1085] and the royal wishes were communicated, when the
King was not present in person, through Norfolk and not through the
royal Vicegerent.

[Footnote 1084: "We of the temporality," writes a
peer, "have been all of one mind" (_L. and P._,
XIV., i., 1040; Burnet, vi., 233; _Narratives of
the Reformation_, p. 248).]

[Footnote 1085: See the present writer's _Cranmer_,
p. 129 n. Cranmer afterwards asserted (_Works_,
ii., 168) that the Act would never have passed
unless the King had come personally into the
Parliament house, but that is highly improbable.]

It was clear that Cromwell was trem