his supremacy in spiritual matters, until he found that submission to Papal supremacy interfered with his sinful inclinations.  If Pope Clement VII. had dissolved the marriage between Queen Catherine and Henry VIII. in 1528, Parliament would not have been asked to legalize the national schism in 1534.  Yet it would appear as if Henry had hesitated for a moment before he committed the final act of apostacy.  It was Cromwell who suggested the plan which he eventually followed.  With many expressions of humility he pointed out the course which might be pursued.  The approbation of the Holy See, he said, was the one thing still wanting.  It was plain now that neither bribes nor threats could procure that favour.  But was it so necessary as the King had hitherto supposed?  It might be useful to avert the resentment of the German Emperor; but if it could not be obtained, why should the King’s pleasure depend on the will of another?  Several of the German princes had thrown off their allegiance to the Holy See:  why, then, should not the English King?  The law could legalize the King’s inclination, and who dare gainsay its enactments?  Let the law declare Henry the head of the Church, and he could, as such, give himself the dispensations for which he sought.  The law which could frame articles of faith and sanction canons, could regulate morals as easily as it could enact a creed.

Such counsel was but too acceptable to a monarch resolved to gratify his passions at all hazards, temporal or spiritual.  Cromwell was at once appointed a member of the Privy Council.  He received a patent for life of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and he was authorized to frame the necessary bills, and conduct them through the two houses.[388] Parliament complied without hesitation; the clergy in convocation made a show of opposition, which just sufficed to enhance their moral turpitude, since their brief resistance intimated that they acted contrary to their consciences in giving their final assent.  The royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, was declared to be the will of God and the law of the land.

The King’s mistress was now made his wife, by the same authority which had made the King head of the Church; and it was evident that the immediate cause of the separation of the English nation from the Catholic Church was the desire of the monarch, that his profligacy should obtain some kind of sanction.  But this commencement of the Anglican Establishment, however true, is so utterly disreputable, that English historians have been fain to conceal, as far as might be, the real cause, and to justify the schism by bringing grave charges[389] against the Church.  This, after all, is a mere petitio principii.  It has been already remarked that England was demoralized socially to an extraordinary degree, as a nation always has been by a continuance of civil war.  The clergy suffered from the same causes which affected the laity, and the moral condition of the ecclesiastical body