Whilst Cranmer was thus fighting the King's battle abroad, another instrument came to Henry's hand for use in England. On the disgrace of Wolsey, his secretary, Thomas Cromwell, was recommended to Henry by friends. The King disliked him, and at first refused to see him; but consented to do so when it was hinted that Cromwell was the sort of man who would serve him well in what he had at heart. The hint was a well-founded one; for Thomas Cromwell was as ambitious and unscrupulous as his master had been; strong, bold, and fortunately unhampered by ecclesiastical orders. When Henry received him in the gardens at Whitehall, Cromwell spoke as no priest, and few laymen, would have dared to do: for, apart from the divorce question, there was to be no dallying with heresy if Henry could help it, and the fires of Smithfield burning doubters were already beginning to blaze under the influence of Sir Thomas More. "Sire," said Cromwell to the King, "the Pope refuses you a divorce ... why wait for his consent? Every Englishman is master in his own house, and why should not you be so in England? Ought a foreign prelate to share your power with you? It is true the bishops make oath to your Majesty; but they make another to the Pope immediately afterwards which absolves them from it. Sire, you are but half a king, and we are but half your subjects. Your kingdom is a two-headed monster: will you bear such an anomaly any longer? Frederick and other German princes have cast off the yoke of Rome. Do likewise; become once more king, govern your kingdom in concert with your lords and commons."[83] With much more of such talk Cromwell flattered the King, who probably hardly knew whether to punish or reward such unheard-of boldness; but when Cromwell, prepared for the emergency, took from his pocket a copy of the prelates' oath to the Pope, Henry's indignation bore all before it, and Cromwell's fortune was made. He at once obtained a seat in Parliament (1529), and took the lead in the anti-clerical measures which culminated in the emancipation of the English clergy from the Papacy, and their submission to the King. Gardiner, ambitious and able as he was, was yet an ecclesiastic, and looked grimly upon such a religious policy as that into which Henry was being towed by his infatuation for Anne; but Cromwell was always ready with authorities and flattery to stiffen the King's resolve, and thenceforward, until his fall before a combination of nobles, his was the strong spirit to which Henry clung.