It is only through the stray depositions of royal spies that we catch a glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay seething under this silence of the

The restriction of the right of preaching to priests who received licenses from the Crown silenced every voice of opposition. Even to those who

By the Act of Supremacy authority in all matters ecclesiastical was vested solely in the Crown. The courts spiritual became as thoroughly the king's

The parliament forbade by statute any further appeals to the papal court; and on a petition from the clergy in convocation the houses granted power to

The time had come when England was to claim for herself the fullness of power, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, within her bounds; and, in the