The new pope, Paul III, struck back, though {293} with hesitation, excommunicating the king, [Sidenote: 1535-8] declaring all his children by Anne Boleyn illegitimate, and absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance.
[Sidenote: 1534] Two acts entrenched the king in his despotic pretensions.

The Act of Succession, [Sidenote: Act of Succession] notable as the first assertion by crown and Parliament of the right to legislate in this constitutional matter, vested the inheritance of the crown in the issue of Henry and Anne, and made it high treason to question the marriage.
The Act of Supremacy [Sidenote: Act of Supremacy] declared that the king's majesty "justly and rightfully is and ought to be supreme head of the church of England," pointedly omitting the qualification insisted on by Convocation,--"as far as the law of Christ allows." Exactly how far this supremacy went was at first puzzling.

That it extended not only to the governance of the temporalities of the church, but to issuing injunctions on spiritual matters and defining articles of belief was soon made apparent; on the other hand the monarch never claimed in person the power to celebrate mass.
That the abrogation of the papal authority was accepted so easily is proof of the extent to which the national feeling of the English church had already gone.

An oath to recognize the supremacy of the king was tendered to both convocations, to the universities, to the clergy and to prominent laymen, and was with few exceptions readily taken.
Doubtless many swallowed the oath from mere cowardice; others took it with mental reservations; and yet that the majority complied shows that the substitution of a royal for a papal despotism was acceptable to the conscience of the country at large.

Many believed that they were not departing from the Catholic faith; but that others welcomed the act as a step towards the Reformation cannot be doubted.