Cranmer was never popular with his clergy. “Of all sorts of men,” he complained, “I am daily informed that priests report the worst of me.” Conspiracies were even set on foot against him, but he was too useful to Henry to fear a fall, and was the one man in the realm to whom the King was ever faithful. To all complaints against the Archbishop Henry turned a deaf ear. “I would you should well understand,” said he, “that I account my lord of Canterbury as faithful a man towards me as ever was prelate in this realm, and one to whom I am many ways beholden.” The praise was certainly not exaggerated. Even in matters of purely theological moment, Cranmer was never at variance with his master, for he held no opinion or doctrine that was not at Henry’s service. Incredible as it seems, Cranmer once said to him: “This is mine opinion and sentence at this present, which nevertheless I do not temerariously define, but refer the judgment thereof wholly unto your Majesty”.[568] Speaking in Cranmer’s defence, the Archbishop’s secretary Morice unconsciously deprived him of every vestige of fidelity to principle. “Men ought to consider,” he pleaded, “with whom he had to do, specially with such a prince as would not be bridled, nor be against-said in any of his requests.”[569] In deference to the wishes of the Council, he made several alterations in the oath administered to the King at Edward’s coronation, but he said the prescribed Mass of the Holy Ghost, and also sang a Requiem for the repose of Henry’s soul. Nevertheless, the whole tendency of the new Government was in sympathy with his private feelings, and it was not long before he made up his mind to swim with the tide. He headed a commission which deprived Bonner and Gardiner, and held a visitation of his diocese, to ascertain whether the destruction of images had been fully carried out. A bill having been passed in Parliament, “to take away all positive laws made against the marriage of priests,” Cranmer sent for his wife, invested in Abbey lands the money granted to him by Henry and confirmed by Edward’s Council, invited Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer and other Calvinists to settle in England, and did all he could to promote union between the Church of England, and the reformed Churches of the Continent. He renounced the Mass, advocated the overthrow of the altars and declared transubstantiation to be heresy. The _Book of Common Prayer_ which he had compiled and put forth in 1551, under the auspices of the Government, having been criticised by the foreign Protestants, he set about its revision, aided by the Bishop of Ely. The so-called Black Rubric, which forbade the practice of kneeling at the Communion, was introduced a little later. Towards the close of 1552, the forty-two articles, afterwards reduced to thirty-nine, were published by the King’s command.