On the 30th of March, 1531, the session being about to terminate, Sir Thomas More, the chancellor, went down to the House of Commons, and submitted to them the decision of the various universities on the king’s marriage and the power of the pope. The Commons looked at the affair essentially from a political point of view; they did not understand that, because the king had lived twenty years with the queen, he ought not to be separated from her. The documents placed before their eyes ‘made them detest the marriage’ of Henry and Catherine.[119] The chancellor desired the members to report in their respective counties and towns that the king had not asked for this divorce of his own will or pleasure, but ‘only for the discharge of his conscience and surety of the succession of his crown.’[120] ‘Enlighten the people,’ he said, ‘and preserve peace in the nation, with the sentiments of loyalty due to the monarch.’ [Sidenote: Catherine’s Reply.] The king hastened to use the powers which universities, clergy, and parliament had placed in his hands. Immediately after the prorogation certain lords went down to Greenwich and laid before the queen the decisions which condemned her marriage, and urged her to accept the arbitration of four bishops and four lay peers. Catherine replied, sadly but firmly,—‘I pray you tell the king I say I am his lawful wife, and in that point I will abide until the court of Rome determine to the contrary.’[121] The divorce which, notwithstanding Catherine’s refusal, was approaching, caused great agitation among the people; and the members of parliament had some trouble to preserve order, as Sir Thomas More had desired them. Priests proclaimed from their pulpits the downfall of the Church and the coming of Antichrist; the mendicant friars scattered discontent in every house which they entered, the most fanatical of them not fearing to insinuate that the wrath of God would soon hurl the impious prince from his throne. In towns and villages, in castles and alehouses, men talked of nothing but the divorce and the primacy claimed by the king. Women standing at their doors, men gathering round the blacksmith’s forge, spoke more or less disrespectfully of parliament, the bishops, the dangers of the Romish Church, and the prospects of the Reformation. If a few friends met at night around the hearth, they told strange tales to one another. The king, queen, pope, devil, saints, Cromwell, and the higher clergy formed the subject of their conversation. The gipsies at that time strolling through the country added to the confusion. Sometimes they would appear in the midst of these animated discussions, and prophesy lamentable events, at times calling up the dead to make them speak of the future. The terrible calamities they predicted froze their hearers with affright, and their sinister prophecies were the cause of disorders and even of crimes. Accordingly an act was passed pronouncing the penalty of banishment against them.[122]