The New Learning had made great strides in England, and was leavening all the more cultured classes, and it naturally led to the discredit of the old theology. The English advanced Reformers who had taken refuge abroad, and who now returned,--men like Ridley and Hooper,--could not fail to have had some influence on their countrymen; they had almost all become imbued with the Zwinglian type of theology, and Bullinger was their trusted adviser. It seemed as if the feelings of the populace were changing, for the mobs, instead of resenting the destruction of images, were rather inspired by too much iconoclastic zeal, and tried to destroy stained-glass windows and to harry priests. Cranmer's influence, always on the side of reform, had much more weight with the Council than was the case under Henry VIII. He had abandoned long ago his belief in transubstantiation, he had given up the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation, if he ever held it, and had now accepted a theory of a real but spiritual Presence in the communion elements which did not greatly differ from the more moderate Zwinglian view. The clergy, many of them, were making changes which went far beyond the Act of Uniformity. The removal of restrictions on printing the Bible had resulted in the publication of more than twenty editions, most of them with annotations which explained and enforced the new theology on the authority of Scripture. In these circumstances the Council enforced the Act of Uniformity in a one-sided way--against the Romanist sympathisers. Many Romanist Bishops were deprived of their sees, and their places were filled by such men as Coverdale, Ridley, Ponet, and Scovey--all advanced Reformers. John Knox himself, freed from his slavery in the French galleys by the intervention of the English Government and made one of the King's preachers, was offered the bishopric of Rochester, which he declined. It must be remembered, however, that the Lord Protector and his _entourage_ seem to have been quite as much animated by a desire to fill their own pockets as by zeal to promote the cause of the Reformation. Indeed, there came to be in England at this time something like the _tulchan_ Bishops of a later period in Scotland; great nobles got possession of the episcopal revenues and allowed the new Bishops a stipend out of them.[487]