Perhaps the strongest point of Cromwell’s domestic administration was his financial policy. He never forgot the promise he had made on entering the King’s service to make Henry ‘the richest king that ever was in England,’ for he was shrewd enough to see that a full treasury was the first essential to the attainment of the larger aim of his policy, the establishment of a royal despotism. He skilfully contrived that many of the measures of the earlier years of his ministry, primarily intended to cut the bonds which held England to Rome, should also serve to increase the wealth of the Crown. The most noteworthy and successful of these measures was the abolition of the Annates. There can be little doubt that it was through Cromwell’s agency that a supplication was addressed to the King early in the year 1532[275] urging him to arrest the payment of First Fruits to the Papacy: ‘bokes of annates’ and remembrances concerning them are to be found in large numbers among the minister’s letters and papers[276], and the petition by which the measure to abolish the First Fruits was initiated was a method especially characteristic of him, reminding us in many respects of the way in which the independence of the clergy had been attacked but a short time before. But the King was very cautious in granting the request, which had thus been laid before him. He had not yet given up all hope of a peaceful solution of his difficulty with the Pope, and was not yet prepared, as Cromwell was, openly to defy the Holy See. So at first he determined to try the effect of a threat. The immediate result of Cromwell’s efforts was the passage in Parliament of an Act[277] which abolished Annates, but preserved to the Holy See certain payments on bulls obtained for the election of bishops: the ratification of this statute by the Crown, however, was expressly withheld, and the Act consequently remained inoperative, while a post was sent to Rome ‘to frighten the Pope about the Annates[278].’ But this plan failed: Clement refused to be terrorized into submission; the King became convinced that a complete break was inevitable, and, in July, 1533, the Act was ratified and declared in force by letters patent[279]. The following year saw the passage of another statute, which abolished all the payments preserved by the exceptions to the Act of 1532[280], and a little later Parliament completed the work which Cromwell had forced it to undertake by annexing the Annates to the Crown[281]. Supplementary to these statutes was the Act concerning Peter’s Pence and Dispensations[282], by which the Pope was deprived of all contributions that had not already been arrested by the Acts about Annates. The use to which the rescued funds were put is aptly described by a significant ‘remembrance’ of Cromwell’s to the effect that ‘thenhabitaunt_es_ and peple of this realme shall pay yerely vnto the kyng for ever, in lieu or stede of smoke pence, whiche they were wont to pay to the busshop of