The reports of the elections were everywhere favourable. In the Upper House, except on very critical points, which would unite the small body of the lay peers, the court was certain of a majority, being supported of course by the bishops--and the question of Pole's coming over, therefore, was once more seriously considered. The pope had been given to understand that, however inconsistent with his dignity he might consider it to appear to purchase English submission by setting aside the canons of the church, he must consent to the English terms, or there was no hope whatever that his supremacy would be recognised. If in accepting these terms he would agree to a humiliating reconciliation, only those who objected on doctrinal grounds to the papal religion were inclined to persist in refusing a return of his friendship. The dream of an independent orthodox Anglicanism which had once found favour with Gardiner was fading away. The indifferent and the orthodox alike desired to put an end to spiritual anarchy; and the excommunication, though lying lightly on the people, and despised even by the Catholic powers, had furnished, and might furnish, a pretext for inconvenient combinations. Singularity of position, where there was no especial cause for it, was always to be avoided. These influences would have been insufficient to have brought the English of themselves to seek for a reunion. They were enough to induce them to accept it with indifference when offered them on their own conditions, or to affect for a time an outward appearance of acquiescence.