A year earlier the third formulary of faith--the two preceding had been the Ten Articles and the Bishops' Book--was issued under the title of the "Erudition of a Christian Man," popularly known as the "King's Book". This was the outcome of a group of reports drawn up by bishops and divines, severally, in answer to a series of questions submitted to them. The reports showed great diversities of opinion on disputed questions; but the book which received the imprimatur of Convocation and of the King was in the main a restatement of the doctrines of the Bishops' Book with a more explicit declaration on Transubstantiation and on Celibacy in accordance with the Law as laid down in the Six Articles. Throughout the preliminary discussions, Cranmer had championed the most advanced views which had hitherto been held compatible with orthodoxy; and, becoming shortly afterwards the object of direct attack as the real disseminator of heresy, he openly avowed to the King that he retained the opinions he had held before the passing of the Six Articles Act although he obeyed the statute. Henry, to the general surprise, refused to withdraw his favour from the Archbishop, and caused much alarm to the opposing party by the manner in which he rebuked the Primate's traducers. The circumstances deserve special notice because they show that Cranmer was not the mere cringing time-server that he is sometimes represented to have been; and also as proving that the King himself was for once capable of feeling a sincere and continuous affection. [Sidenote: Henry stationary] The hopes of the reactionary party were in fact somewhat dashed by the "King's Book"; since, despite Cromwell's death, the Six Articles still marked the limit of their influence. A companion volume, known as the _Rationale_, dealing with rites and ceremonies on lines antagonistic to Cranmer, was refused the royal sanction. Henry never lapsed from his professed attitude of rigid orthodoxy. But he showed an increasing disposition to check random and malignant prosecutions for heresy and to give the accused something like fair trial; more especially after the culminating iniquity of Anne Ascue's martyrdom (in the last year of his reign) for denying the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The system of ecclesiastical spoliation was also in 1546 rounded off, by the formal transfer to the crown of chantries which had not been swept away in the dissolution of the monasteries. [Sidenote: 1546 Attainder of Surrey]