Cromwell introduced himself with his usual tact and skill. In a few modest and carefully selected sentences he excused himself for daring to offer an opinion on a subject of which he felt himself to be so very ignorant--but, he continued, his loyalty to the King would not permit him to be silent when there was the smallest chance of his being able to serve his sovereign at this momentous crisis. He was certain, he said, that the King’s troubles were solely due to the weakness of his advisers, who listened to the opinions of the common herd, and did not dare to act upon their own responsibility. All the wise and learned were in favour of the divorce; the only thing lacking was the Papal sanction; was the King to hesitate because this could not be obtained? It would be better to follow the example of the Lutherans, who had renounced the authority of Rome. Let the King, with the consent of Parliament, declare himself Head of the Church in England, and all his difficulties would vanish. England was at present a monster with two heads. If the King should take to himself the supreme power, religious as well as secular, every incongruity would cease; the clergy would immediately realize that they were responsible to the King and not to the Pope, and would forthwith become subservient to the royal will. Henry may have been surprised by the audacity of Cromwell’s scheme, but he was also much pleased, as it promised to satisfy all his dearest wishes. The _Satanae Nuncius_ received his hearty thanks, and was further rewarded by a seat in the Privy Council[189]. Cromwell must have realized from the first, that the adoption of his scheme to throw off the Papal authority in England would encounter the greatest opposition from the clergy, but he had already devised a plan by which every objection could be silenced and the refractory ecclesiastics overawed. His whole policy in this crisis was based on the knowledge that the position of the clergy since Wolsey’s fall was completely altered. They were no longer in any sense popular. The State Papers of the period contain many lists of the grievances of the Commons against them[190]. They had received a severe lesson from the Parliament of 1529; they were now isolated, timid and demoralized. Cromwell was the first to perceive and make use of their changed condition. At the same time he realized how completely the House of Austria had possessed itself of the Papacy; the failure of Wiltshire’s embassy to the Emperor in Bologna, in 1530[191], assured him, if he needed any assurance, that the day of compromise with the Pope was passed, and that no divorce would ever come from the Vatican; he saw that if a separation of Henry and Katherine was to be secured at all, the battle-ground on which it was to be won was not the Papal Curia at Rome, but the Houses of Convocation and Parliament.