change took place in Spain after the union of Castile and Aragon and
the fall of the Moorish power at Granada. In England the disappearance
of the nobles in the Wars of the Roses led to the establishment of the
Tudor domination. As a result of this centralisation the Kings of
France, Spain, and England, and the sovereign princes of Germany
received a great increase of power, and resolved to make themselves
absolute masters in their own dominions.

Having abandoned the unfortunate peasants who had been led to
slaughter by his writings, Luther determined to make it clear that his
religious policy was in complete harmony with the political absolutism
aimed at by the temporal rulers. With this object in view he put
forward the principle of royal supremacy, according to which the king
or prince was to be recognised as the head of the church in his own
territories, and the source of all spiritual jurisdiction. By doing so
he achieved two very important results. He had at hand in the
machinery of civil government the nucleus of a new ecclesiastical
organisation, the shaping of which had been his greatest worry; and,
besides, he won for his new movement the sympathy and active support
of the civil rulers, to whom the thought of becoming complete masters
of ecclesiastical patronage and of the wealth of the Church opened up
the most rosy prospects. In Germany, in England, and in the northern
countries of Europe, it was the principle of royal supremacy that
turned the scales eventually in favour of the new religion, while, at
the same time, it led to the establishment of absolutism both in
theory and practice. From the recognition of the sovereign as supreme
master both in Church and State the theory of the divine rights of
kings as understood in modern times followed as a necessary corollary.
There was no longer any possibility of suggesting limitations or of
countenancing rebellion. The king, in his own territories, had