In the previous sitting of Parliament in 1529, severe laws had been passed against the laxity and extortion of the English ecclesiastics, notwithstanding the violent indignation of Fisher of Rochester; but what was now demanded of them as a condition of their pardon for recognising the Bull was practically to repudiate the authority of the Pope over them, and to recognise the King of England as supreme head of the Church, in addition to paying the tremendous fine of a hundred thousand pounds. They were in utter consternation, and they struggled hard; but the alternative to submission was ruin, and the majority gave way. The die was cast: Henry was Pope and King in one, and could settle his own cause in his own way. When the English clergy had thus been brought to heel, Henry's opponents saw that they had driven him too far, and were aghast at his unexpected exhibition of strength, a strength, be it noted, not his own, as will be explained later; and somewhat moderated their tone. But the King of England snapped his fingers now at threats of excommunication, and cared nothing, he said, for any decision from Rome. The Emperor dared not go to war with England about Katharine, for the French were busily drawing towards the Pope, whose niece, Katharine de Medici, was to be betrothed to the son of Francis; and the imperial agents in Rome ceased to insist so pertinaciously upon a decision of the matrimonial suit. Katharine alone clamoured unceasingly that her "hell upon earth" should be ended by a decision in her favour from the Sovereign Pontiff. Her friends in England were many, for the old party of nobles were rallying again to her side, even Norfolk was secretly in her favour, or at least against the King's marriage with his niece Anne, and Henry's new bold step against the Papacy, taken under bureaucratic influence, had aroused much fear and jealousy amongst prelates like Fisher and jurists like More, as well as amongst the aristocratic party in the country. Desperate efforts were made to prevent the need for further action in defiance of the Papacy by the decision of the matrimonial suit by the English Parliament; and early in June 1531 Henry and his Council decided to put fresh pressure upon Katharine to get her to consent to a suspension of the proceedings in Rome, and to the relegation of the case to a tribunal in some neutral territory. Katharine at Greenwich had secret knowledge of the intention, and she can hardly have been so surprised as she pretended to be when, as she was about to retire to rest, at nine o'clock at night, to learn that the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, and some thirty other nobles and prelates, sought audience of her. Norfolk spoke first, and in the King's name complained bitterly of the slight put upon him by the Pope's citation. He urged the Queen, for the sake of England, for the memory of the political services of Henry to her kin, and his past kindness to her,