Before the prorogation of Parliament in February (1535) the two recalcitrants in the Tower, More and Fisher, were attainted High Treason for maintaining their refusal to take the prescribed oath under the Act of Succession. It was perhaps in the hope that the King might hesitate to proceed to extremities, in the face of a very marked expression of sentiment, that the new Pope, Paul III., proceeded to nominate Fisher a Cardinal. It ought to have been obvious that the very contrary effect would have been produced: the step was naturally looked upon as a challenge. More and Fisher were condemned to death and executed in the summer--martyrs assuredly to conscience. The whole of their offence consisted in the single fact that they could not and would not recant their belief in the validity of Katharine's marriage. Had they sought to make converts to that opinion, or to make it a text for preaching sedition, there might have been some colour of justice in their punishment. As it was, such danger as there might be in their holding that view lay entirely in the advertisement of it by insistence on the oath. All Europe shuddered, and half England trembled at the demonstration of ruthless power, when those two were struck down-- the aged bishop whose spotless character and saintly life had for many a year given the lie to those who included all the higher clergy in a universal condemnation; and the ex-chancellor, the friend of Erasmus, whose wide learning, kindly wit, intellectual eminence, and unswerving rectitude had won for him a European reputation greater than that of any other Englishman of his time. The Carthusians, Brigittines, and Observants who had been induced to give way on the question of the Oath reverted to the position of More and Fisher. Their heads also were put to death, and the houses broken up. The wrath of the Pope was expressed in a Bull of Deposition; which however on second thoughts he found it advisable to hold in suspense till three years later. [Sidenote: Cromwell made Vicar-General] When More and Fisher opposed themselves obstinately to the King's will, there was no doubt that the King would see to it that they paid the penalty. But we may suspect that it was not Henry's brain but Cromwell's which devised the policy of presenting them with the fatal dilemma. Before they were put to death, the minister's supremacy was already established by his appointment as Vicar-General, with full power to exercise on the King's behalf all the rights vested in the Supreme Head of the Church: rights which--however it might be asserted that they were and had been at all times inherent in the sovereign--were now to be interpreted in a novel and comprehensive spirit. But besides the development alike in extent and intensity of the attack on the clerical organisation, we now find foreign policy taking a new direction for which Cromwell was assuredly responsible. [Sidenote 1: The German Lutherans] [Sidenote 2: Overtures]