Anne flattered and pleased the King, but it was hardly her mind that moved him to defy the powerful Papacy, or sustained him in his fight with his own clergy. From the first we have seen him leaning upon some adviser who would relieve him from responsibility whilst giving him all the honour for success. He desired the divorce above all things; but, as usual, he wanted to shelter himself behind other authority than his own. When in 1529 he had been seeking learned opinions to influence the Pope, chance had thrown the two ecclesiastics who were his instruments, Fox and Gardiner, into contact with a learned theologian and Reader in Divinity at Cambridge University. Thomas Cranmer had studied and lived much. He was a widower, and Fellow of Magdalene, Cambridge, of forty years of age; and although in orders and a Doctor of Divinity, his tastes were rather those of a learned country gentleman than of an ecclesiastic in monkish times. In conversation with Fox and Gardiner, this high authority on theology expressed the opinion that instead of enduring the delays of the ecclesiastical courts, the question of the legality of the King's marriage should be decided by divines from the words of the Scriptures themselves. The idea seemed a good one, and Henry jumped at it. In an interview soon afterwards he ordered Cranmer to put his arguments into a book, and placed him in the household of Anne's father, the Earl of Wiltshire, to facilitate the writing of it. The religious movement in Germany had found many echoes in England, and doubtless Cranmer conscientiously objected to Papal control. Certain it is that, fortified as he was by the encouragement of Anne and her father, his book was a persuasive one, and greatly pleased the King, who sent it to the Pope and others. Nor did Cranmer's activity stay there. He entered into disputation everywhere, with the object of gaining theological recruits for the King's side, and wrote a powerful refutation of Reginald Pole's book in favour of Katharine. The King thought so highly of Cranmer's controversial ability that he sent him with Lee, Stokesley, and other theologians to Rome, Paris, and elsewhere on the Continent, to forward the divorce, and from Rome he was commissioned as English Ambassador with the Emperor.