His patience was at last rewarded by the failure of the policy for which his own had been set aside.

At the close of 1530 the college of cardinals formally rejected the king's request for leave to decide the whole matter in his own spiritual courts; and the defeat of Norfolk's project drove Henry nearer and nearer to the bold plan from which he had shrunk at Wolsey's fall.

Cromwell was again ready with his suggestion that the king should disavow the Papal jurisdiction, declare himself Head of the Church within his realm, and obtain a divorce from his own Ecclesiastical Courts.

But he looked on the divorce as simply the prelude to a series of changes which the new minister was bent upon accomplishing.

In all his chequered life what had left its deepest stamp on him was Italy.