Yet it would be absurd to argue from single instances that the Crown could do what it pleased. Even with leisure to take precautions and with the utmost exercise of its powers, it could only affect the returns, in the great majority of the constituencies, through the Peers and landowners, and the leading citizens in the corporations. With only four weeks to act in, a Queen to try and execute, and a King to marry in the interval, no ingenuity and no industry could have sufficed to secure a House of Commons whose subserviency could be counted on, if subserviency was what the King required. It is clear only that, so far as concerned the general opinion of the country, the condemnation of Anne Boleyn had rather strengthened than impaired his popularity. As Queen she had been feared and disliked. Her punishment was regarded as a creditable act of justice, and the King was compassionated as a sufferer from abominable ingratitude.
Little is known in detail of the proceedings of this Parliament. The Acts remain: the debates are lost. The principal difficulties with which it had to deal concerned Anne's trial and the disposition of the inheritance of the Crown. On the matter of real importance, on the resolution of King and Legislature to go forward with the Reformation, all doubts were promptly dispelled. An Act was passed without opposition reasserting the extinction of the Pope's authority, and another taking away the protection of sanctuary from felonious priests. The succession was a harder problem. Day after day it had been debated in the Council. Lord Sussex had proposed that, as all the children of the King were illegitimate, the male should be preferred to the female and the crown
