truggled hard. But their appeals to Henry and Cromwell
met only with demands for instant obedience. A compromise was at last
arrived at by the insertion of a qualifying phrase, "So far as the law
of Christ will allow"; and with this addition the words were again
submitted by Warham to the convocation. There was a general silence.
"Whoever is silent seems to consent," said the Archbishop. "Then are we
all silent," replied a voice from among the crowd.

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 afterward 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 judgment of the universities in favor 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 Catherine 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 favorable
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.

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.