ures will not be
regarded."[203]

It was true that Anne was ill liked in England, and the King, in choosing
her, was testing the question of his marriage in the least popular form
which it could have assumed. The Venetian Ambassador mentions that one
evening "seven or eight thousand women went out of London to seize
Boleyn's daughter," who was supping at a villa on the river, the King not
being with her. Many men were among them in women's clothes. Henry,
however, showed no sign of change of purpose. He had presented her to the
French Court as his intended Queen. And on such a matter he was not to be
moved by the personal objections of his subjects. The month allowed in the
brief went by. She was still at the court, and the continued negotiations
with the Nuncio convinced Catherine's friends that there was mischief at
work behind the scenes. Their uneasiness was increased by the selection
which was now made of a successor to Archbishop Warham.

Thomas Cranmer had been Lord Wiltshire's private chaplain, and had at one
time been his daughter's tutor. He had attended her father on his Embassy
to the Emperor, had been active in collecting opinions on the Continent
favourable to the divorce, and had been resident ambassador at the
Imperial court. He had been much in Germany. He was personally acquainted
with Luther. He had even married, and, though he could not produce his
wife openly, the connection was well known. Protestant priests in taking
wives were asserting only their natural liberty. Luther had married, and
had married a nun. An example laudable at Wittenberg could not be
censurable in London by those who held Luther excused. The German clergy
had released themselves from their vows, as an improvement on the
concubinage which had long and generally prevailed. Wolsey had a son and
was not ashamed of him, even charging his education on English benefices.
Clerical marriages were forbidden only by the Church law, which Parliament
had never been invited to sanction, and though Cranmer could not introduce
a wife into society he was at least as fit for archi-episcopal rank as the
great Cardinal. He was a man of high natural gifts, and ardent to replace
superstition and corruption by purer teaching. The English Liturgy
survives to tell us what Cranmer was. His nomination to the Primacy took
the world by surprise, for as yet he had held no higher preferment than an
archdeaconry; but the reorganisation of the Church was to be