[81] It was not strange that the King did not wish to meet them: for he had determined to adopt a policy which he knew to be, in the highest degree, odious to them.

From his predecessors he had inherited two prerogatives, of which the limits had never been defined with strict accuracy, and which, if exerted without any limit, would of themselves have sufficed to overturn the whole polity of the State and of the Church.

These were the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical supremacy.

By means of the dispensing power the King purposed to admit Roman Catholics, not merely to civil and military, but to spiritual, offices.

By means of the ecclesiastical supremacy he hoped to make the Anglican clergy his instruments for the destruction of their own religion.
This scheme developed itself by degrees.