could not, of course, adjudicate on the extent of his own powers; especially as he always declared himself to be ignorant of the law; and the decision of so general a question rested either with a general council, or must be determined by the consent of Christendom, obtained in some other manner. If such general consent declared against the Pope, the cause was virtually terminated. If there was some approach to a consent against him,, or even if there was general uncertainty, Henry had a legal pretext for declining his jurisdiction, and appealing to a council.
Thomas Cranmer, then a doctor of divinity at Cambridge,[1] is said to have been the person who suggested this ingenious expedient, and to have advised the King, as the simplest means of carrying it out, to consult in detail the universities and learned men throughout Europe. His notorious activity in collecting the opinions may have easily connected him. with the origination of the plan, which probably occurred to many other persons as well as to him; but whoever was the first adviser, it was immediately acted upon, and English agents were despatched into Germany, Italy, and France, carrying with them all means of persuasion, intellectual, moral, and material, which promised to be of most cogent potency with lawyers' convictions.
This matter was in full activity when the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn's father, with Cranmer, the Bishop of London, and Edward Lee, afterwards Arch-
- ↑ Cranmer was born in 1489, and was thus forty years old when he first emerged into eminence.
