The only possible explanation for this, apart from the king's acknowledged skill as a parliamentary leader, is the strength of the anti-clerical feeling.
The rebellion of the laity against the clergy, and of the patriots against the Italian yoke, needed but the example of Germany to burst all the dykes and barriers of medieval custom.

The significance of the revolution was that it was a forcible reform of the church by the state.

The wish of the people was to end ecclesiastical abuses without much regard to doctrine; the wish of the king was to make himself {289} "emperor and pope" in his own dominions.

While Henry studied Wyclif's program, and the people read the English Testament, the lessons they derived from these sources were at first moral and political, not doctrinal or philosophic.
[Sidenote: Submission of the clergy, December 1530] The first step in the reduction of the church was taken when the attorney-general filed in the court of King's Bench an information against the whole body of the clergy for violating the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire by having recognized Wolsey's legatine authority.

Of course there was no justice in this; the king himself had recognized Wolsey's authority and anyone who had denied it would have been punished.