As Henry and Norfolk represented the landed magnates, so Cromwell represented the mercantile community; and when the alliance between these two monied interests had been perfected, by the appointment of Cromwell as secretary of state, some time previous to April, 1534, events moved with precision and rapidity. They crowned Anne Boleyn on June 1, 1533; in July the breach between the king and pope became irreparable; in November, 1534, Parliament declared Henry "Supreme Head" of the Church; and in the following winter the whole administration, both civil and ecclesiastical, was concentrated in Cromwell's hands. He acted with astonishing energy.
In the autumn of 1535 he set on foot a visitation, preparatory to the dissolution of the convents, and Parliament passed the bill for suppression the next February. Cromwell also, as vicar general, presided over the convocation of Canterbury, which made the first reformation of faith. This convocation met in June, 1536, only shortly before the Pilgrimage of Grace, and, under the fear of violence, Henry and the conservatives were reduced to silence. The evangelical influence for the moment held control, and the "Ten Articles," the foundation of the "Thirty-nine Articles," together with the "Institution of a Christian Man," which were produced, were a great departure from orthodoxy.
In the fourth article, the dogma of the "Supper" was made broad enough to include Lutherans, and in the sixth, image worship was condemned. On the other hand, "Justification by Faith" began to assume the importance it must always hold in all really Protestant confessions. In one of his homilies Cranmer, at a later time, showed the comparative futility of good works:--
"A man must needs be nourished by good works; but first he must have faith. He that doeth good deeds, yet without faith, he hath no life. I can shew a man that by faith without works lived, and came to heaven: but without faith never man had life."[242]
"Never had the Jews, in their most blindness, so many pilgrimages unto images ... as hath been used in our time.... Keeping in divers places, as it were marts or markets of merits; being full of their holy relics, images, shrines, and works of overflowing abundance ready to be sold.... Holy cowls, holy girdles, holy pardons, heads, holy shoes, holy rules, and all full of holiness.... Which were so esteemed and abused to the great prejudice of God's glory and commandments, that they were made most high and most holy things, whereby to attain to the everlasting life, or remission of sin."[243]