that the spiritual judges might perhaps thenceforward be on a footing with the temporal judges and the magistrates; that under the new constitution they were to understand that they held their offices not directly under God as they had hitherto pretended, but under God through the Crown.
The answer of Henry indicated that he had perceived the Archbishop's uncertainty; and that he was desirous by the emphatic distinctness of his own language to spare him a future recurrence of it. He accepted the deferential version of the petition; but even Cranmer's anticipation of what might be required of him had not reached the reality. In running through the preamble, the King flung into the tone of it a character of still deeper humility;[1] and he conceded the desired license in the following imperial style. 'In consideration of these things,'—i.e. of the grounds urged by the Archbishop for the petition—'albeit we being your King and Sovereign, do recognize no superior on earth but only God, and not being subject to the laws of any earthly creature; yet because ye be under us, by God's calling and ours, the most principal minister of our spiritual jurisdiction within this our Realm, who we think assuredly is so in the fear of God, and love towards the observance of his laws, to the which laws, we as a Chris-
- ↑ Ye therefore duly recognizing that it becometh you not, being our subject, to enterprise any part of your said office in so weighty and great a cause pertaining to us being your prince and sovereign, without our license obtained so to do; and therefore in your most humble wise ye supplicate us to grant unto you our license to proceed.—State Papers, vol. i. p. 392.
