breach with the Pope was still distant, and he was prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even seriously contemplate a step which he so little desired. It may have been designed as a reply to the Papal censures: it may have been to give effect to his own menaces, which Clement to the last believed to be no more than words;[1] or perhaps (and this is the most likely) he desired by some emphatic act, to make his clergy understand the relation in which thenceforward they were to be placed towards the temporal authority. It is certain only that this title was not intended to imply what it implied when, four years later, it was conferred by Act of Parliament, and when virtually England was severed by it from the Roman communion.
But whatever may have been the King's motive, he was serious in requiring that the title should be granted io him. Only by acknowledging Henry as Head of the Church should the clergy receive their pardon, and the longer they hesitated, the more peremptorily he insisted on their obedience. The clergy had defied the lion, and the lion held them in his grasp; and they could but struggle helplessly, supplicate and submit. Archbishop Warham, just drawing his life to a close, presided for the last time in the miserable scene, imagining that the clouds were gathering for the storms of the latter day, and that Antichrist was coming in his power.
There had been a debate of three days, whether they should or should not consent, when, on the 9th of
- ↑ State Papers, vol. vii. 457.
