oaths of loyalty to the Holy See taken by all the archbishops and
bishops, the tone and form of the letters addressed to the Pope, the
assertion of papal rights against the errors and attacks of Wycliff
and Luther, the full admission of papal supremacy contained in Henry
VIII.'s /Assertio Septem Sacramentorum/, and in the formal dying
declaration of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury (1533), and the
resolute attitude of two such learned representatives of the English
clergy and laity as Bishop Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More,
are in themselves sufficient to establish the fact that in the days of
Henry VIII. England joined with the rest of the Catholic world in
recognising the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of
Rome.[13]

The controversies which had raged were not concerned with spiritual
supremacy nor were they peculiar to England. Much worse ones had
arisen to disturb the friendly relations that should exist between the
Holy See and France or Spain, and yet nobody would care to deny that
both of these nations acknowledged their subjection to Rome. Neither
were they between the English clergy or the English people and the
Pope; they were waged rather between the Crown and the Holy See. As
royal absolutism began to develop in Europe the policy of kings was to
increase their power over the ecclesiastical organisation in their
dominions by lessening the authority of the Pope. This tendency is
brought out clearly in the concessions wrung from the Pope by
Ferdinand I. of Spain and Louis XII. of France, but more especially in
the Concordat negotiated between Leo X. and Francis I. (1516),
according to which all appointments in the French Church were vested
practically in the hands of the king. Henry VIII. was a careful
observer of Continental affairs and was as anxious as Francis I. to
strengthen his own position by grasping the authority of the Church.