Meanwhile Wolsey's disgrace, and the complete failure of the attempt to win a divorce from the Pope, had been leading the king into new paths. He had taken to himself two new councillors. In secular matters he gave his confidence to Thomas Cromwell, a clever, low-born adventurer, whom Wolsey had discovered and brought to court. In matters religious he was beginning to listen to his chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, a man with a curious mixture of piety and weakness, one of the few Englishmen who had as yet been touched by the doctrines of the Continental Reformers. It was not, however, as a Reformer that Cranmer commended himself to his master; indeed, he kept his Lutheran opinions very secret. But he had suggested to the king a new method of dealing with the divorce question, which Henry considered not unpromising. It might be urged that marriage with a deceased brother's wife was so strictly and definitely forbidden in the Scriptures, that the Pope had no authority to sanction it, and so the permissory bull of Julius II. might be scouted as so much waste paper. Henry eagerly swallowed the idea, and sent round the question, stated as a moot point, to all the universities of Europe. About half of them answered, as he wished, that the marriage was illegal from the first. Armed with this authority, he resolved to go further. [Sidenote: =Attack on the clergy.=] But first Henry was resolved to show the English clergy that he was determined to stand no opposition from them on this point. He opened a campaign against all manner of Church abuses, with the object of winning for himself popularity with the nation, by the cheap expedient of a pretended zeal for purity and piety. He told the Convocation of the clergy that they had all made themselves liable to the penalties of Praemunire, for recognizing Wolsey as legate without the royal leave. They only got pardon by voting the king the large fine of £118,000. He also caused Convocation to address him as "Supreme Head, as far as the law of Christ will allow, of the English Church and clergy," thus casting a slur on the Pope's universal authority. Convocation was also forced to submit to an Act of Parliament which swept away two ancient abuses, the right to claim "benefit of clergy" when accused of felony, and so to escape the king's justice, and the power of evading the Statute of Mortmain, by receiving legacies under trust instead of in full proprietorship. The Pope still proving recalcitrant in the matter of the divorce, Henry took the further step of threatening to cut off the main contribution which England sent to Rome--the _annates_ or first-fruits, paid by all benefices when they changed hands. [Sidenote: =Henry divorces Catherine.=]