But for the all-absorbing interest of diplomacy, his vast abilities as an administrator and organiser might have achieved great things. He would at least have pruned ecclesiastical abuses; and would have forced upon the clergy as an ecclesiastic those reforms which they were always on the verge of introducing when they found themselves anticipated by the drastic action of the temporal Power. Reform was the inevitable corollary of Education, and the development of Education was of all schemes the nearest to Wolsey's heart. Yet whether, if the Divorce question had never arisen, he would have played an effective part in the Reformation is open to doubt, for at bottom the Puritan movement in these islands, the Lutheran movement, and the Counter-reformation, were all the outcome or expression of Moral ideals, not of state-craft; and for Wolsey morals were subordinate to state-craft. It is probable that in any case the assertion in England by the State of its supremacy over the Church would only have been deferred; but Wolsey might have deferred it. As it was, Henry willed otherwise. The great statesman, failing to carry out his master's demands, was hurled from power. The battle of the Reformation was to be fought under other captains. NOTE. The term "Divorce" has been employed above, because, although a misnomer, it is universally applied. Properly a divorce is the cancellation of a legally contracted marriage. What Henry sought was a _declaration of nullity_--that no valid marriage had ever taken place. CHAPTER VIII HENRY VIII (iv) 1529-33--THE BREACH WITH ROME [Sidenote: 1529 No revolt as yet] It will have been observed that when Wolsey found that the divorce was inevitable, his energies were concentrated on the single purpose of securing it under papal authority. For this he had two reasons--one, that without that authority the King's act would appear in all its arbitrariness, causing grave scandal: the other that if that authority were refused, he foresaw the cleavage between England and Rome which did eventually take place. Apart however from the divorce, there had not been up to the time of Wolsey's fall any hint of an opinion in high places that such a cleavage was _per se_ desirable or desired--although both Wolsey himself and Gardiner had given Clement fair warning that Henry was likely to reconsider the papal claims altogether unless the Pope complied with his wishes. The revocation of the cause to Rome immediately brought the execution of this threat into the sphere of practical politics.