n earth of the
Church of England, and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the
imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and state thereof as all
the honors, jurisdictions, authorities, immunities, profits, and
commodities to the said dignity belonging, with full power to visit,
repress, redress, reform, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses,
contempts, and enormities which by any manner of spiritual authority or
jurisdiction might or may lawfully be reformed."

The full import of the Act of Supremacy was only seen in the following
year. At the opening of 1535 Henry formally took the title of "on earth
Supreme Head of the Church of England," and some months later Cromwell
was raised to the post of vicar-general, or vicegerent of the King in
all matters ecclesiastical. His title, like his office, recalled the
system of Wolsey. It was not only as legate, but in later years as
vicar-general, of the Pope, that Wolsey had brought all spiritual causes
in England to an English court. The supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction
in the realm passed into the hands of a minister who as chancellor
already exercised its supreme civil jurisdiction. The papal power had
therefore long seemed transferred to the crown before the legislative
measures which followed the divorce actually transferred it.

It was in fact the system of Catholicism itself that trained men to look
without surprise on the concentration of all spiritual and secular
authority in Cromwell. Successor to Wolsey as keeper of the great seal,
it seemed natural enough that Cromwell should succeed him also as
vicar-general of the Church, and that the union of the two powers should
be restored in the hands of a minister of the King. But the mere fact
that these powers were united in the hands, not of a priest, but of a
layman, showed the new drift of the royal policy. The Church was no
longer to be brought indirectly under the royal power; in the policy of
Cromwell it was to be openly laid prostrate at the foot of the throne.

And this policy his position enabled him to carry out with a terrible
thoroughness. One great step toward its realization had already been
taken in the statute which annihilated the free legislative powers of
the convocations of the clergy. Another followed in an act which, under
the pretext of restoring the free election of bishops, turned every
prelate into a nominee of the King. The election of bishops by the
chapters of their cath