The divorce from Queen Catherine is the turning point in More’s worldly fortunes as well as in ecclesiastical affairs in England. Eighteen years passed from the day of Henry’s marriage to Catherine, on his accession to the throne, before the divorce was mooted. The scruple was that Catherine had been formerly betrothed to his dead brother Arthur; the moving force of Henry’s petition for divorce was the desire to marry Anne Boleyn. Unable to get the marriage annulled at Rome, or to get a favourable opinion from the universities, Henry fell back on Archbishop Cranmer to decree the divorce, and finally this was done in 1533, all appeals to Rome being henceforth forbidden. Henry had already, in 1531, called upon the clergy to acknowledge him as the supreme head of the Church of England, and the following year they were required to surrender the ancient right to meet and enact canons.[88] In these four years the chancellor had kept out of political life as far as he could, and had given his attention to his judicial work. But in May, 1532, he resigned the great seal into the king’s hands, “seeing that affairs were going badly, and likely to be worse, and that if he retained his office he would be obliged to act against his conscience, or incur the king’s displeasure as he had already begun to do, for refusing to take his part against the clergy. His excuse was that his salary was too small, and that he was not equal to the work. Everyone is concerned, for there never was a better man in the office.”[89] Nothing is known of Sir Thomas More’s work in the chancery except his integrity and his despatch. “When More took the office there were causes that had remained undecided for twenty years. He presided so dexterously and successfully that once after taking his seat and deciding a case, when the next case was called, it was found that there was no second case for trial. Such a thing is said never to have happened before or since.” (Stapleton.) For nearly two years More lived unmolested after his resignation of the chancellorship; but he had incurred the enmity of the king and the hatred of Anne Boleyn, and Henry was swiftly driving at certain changes in religion that were to bring Sir Thomas More to the Tower and the block, and many another honest Christian to the prison and the gallows of Tyburn. In June, 1533, after Cranmer had duly pronounced Henry’s marriage with Catherine void, came the coronation of Anne Boleyn, and Sir Thomas More declined an invitation from some of the bishops to be present at the celebration. He knew that his absence would be marked unfavourably by the king, and was ready to pay the penalty; but his care in avoiding the expression of any disapproval of Henry’s proceedings required an equal care that no approval should be expressed. To have been present at the coronation of Anne would have been, for More, to condone the divorce.