The new queen was distinguished from the former chiefly by the difference in religion, with a corresponding difference in morality. The niece of the duke of Norfolk, Gardiner's friend, was of course an adherent of the Catholic faith; and the Catholic party hailed her as at once the symbol and the instrument of reaction. They had had plenty of Protestant queens, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and Anne of Cleves. Now that they had a Catholic queen, Catholicism--many said popery--would recover its power. Henry was so much enamored of his new spouse that, in honor of her, he once more became a fervent Catholic. He celebrated all the Saints' days, frequently received the holy sacrament, and offered publicly thanksgiving to God for this happy union which he hoped to enjoy for a long time.[374] The conversion of Henry, for the change was nothing less, brought with it a change of policy. He now abandoned France and the German Protestants in order to ally himself with the empire; and we find him ere long busily engaged in a project for the marriage of his daughter Mary to the emperor Charles V. This project, however, came to nothing.[375] Gardiner, Norfolk, and the other leaders of the Catholic party, rejoicing in the breeze which bore their vessel onward, set all sails to the wind. Just after the divorce of Anne of Cleves, and by way of a first boon to the Romish party, the penalties for impure living imposed on priests and nuns were mitigated.[376] In contempt of the authority of Holy Scripture as well as of that of parliament itself, Henry got an Act passed by virtue of which every determination concerning _faith_, worship, and ceremonies, adopted with the sanction of the king by a commission of archbishops, bishops, and other ecclesiastics nominated by him, _was to be received, believed, and observed by the whole nation_, just as if parliament had approved every one of these articles, even if this decree were contrary to former usages and ordinances.[377] This was a proclamation of infallibility in England for the benefit of the pope-king, under cover of which he might found a religion to his own taste. Cranmer had established in all cathedral churches professors entrusted with the teaching of Hebrew and Greek, in order that students might become well acquainted with sacred literature, and that the church might never want ministers capable of edifying it. But the enemies of the Reformation, who now enjoyed royal favor, fettered or abolished this institution and other similar ones, to the great damage both of religion and the country.[378] The Catholic ceremonies, on the other hand, abrogated by Cranmer and Cromwell--the consecration of bread and of water, the embers with which the priest marked the foreheads of the faithful, the palm branches blessed on Palm Sunday, the tapers carried at Candlemas, and other like customs--were re-established; and penalties were imposed on those who should neglect them.[379] A new