The full import of the Act of Supremacy was only seen in the following year. At the opening of 1535 Henry formally took the title of "on earth Supreme Head of the Church of England," and some months later Cromwell was raised to the post of Vicar-General or Vicegerent of the king in all matters ecclesiastical. His title, like his office, recalled the system of Wolsey. It was not only as Legate but in later years as Vicar-General of the Pope that Wolsey had brought all spiritual causes in England to an English court. The supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the realm passed into the hands of a minister who as Chancellor already exercised its supreme civil jurisdiction. The Papal power had therefore long seemed transferred to the Crown before the legislative measures which followed the divorce actually transferred it. It was in fact the system of Catholicism itself that trained men to look without surprise on the concentration of all spiritual and secular authority in Cromwell. Successor to Wolsey as Keeper of the Great Seal, it seemed natural enough that Cromwell should succeed him also as Vicar-General of the Church and that the union of the two powers should be restored in the hands of a minister of the king. But the mere fact that these powers were united in the hands not of a priest but of a layman showed the new drift of the royal policy. The Church was no longer to be brought indirectly under the royal power; in the policy of Cromwell it was to be openly laid prostrate at the foot of the throne. [Sidenote: Subjection of the Bishops]