CHAP. V - The opposing tendencies within the Schismatic State

Summary

Among the results of these transactions in England that which most directly concerned the higher interests of the nation was the abolition, by a formal decision of Parliament, on religious grounds, of the hereditary title of the King's daughter by his Spanish Queen, and the recognition of the succession of Queen Anne's issue to the throne, even in the case of her having only the one daughter who had been meanwhile born. This does not depend so much on the actual measures taken as on the fact, that now, according to Wolsey's plan, the government had broken with the political system which had prevailed hitherto, and indeed in a sense that went far beyond his views. Not merely was a French alliance avoided; the separation from the Church of Rome was to become the basis of the whole dynastic settlement of England.

At home men felt most the harshness and violence of basing a political rule on Church ideas. The statute contains threats of the sharpest punishments against all who should do or write or even say anything against it: a commission was appointed, in which we find the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, which could require every one to take an oath of conformity to it. It was to be carried out with the full weight of English adherence to the law.

It was to this very statute that Bishop Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More fell victims.