A further assertion of the Supremacy of the Crown in ecclesiastical affairs was necessary, before Cromwell could attempt to strengthen its already predominant position in the State. The chief object of the more important measures of the years 1533 and 1534 was to utilize the consequences of the breach with Rome for the benefit of the monarchy, and to provide that none of the power of which the Pope had been deprived should be permitted to escape the King. During the year 1532 Henry had deluded himself with hopes that his first attack on the liberties of the English clergy might frighten Clement into acquiescence in the divorce, but at last his patience came to an end, and he surrendered himself entirely to the guidance of Cromwell, who had been persuaded from the first that nothing further was to be obtained from the Pope. In January, 1533, the King was secretly married to Anne Boleyn; on the 10th of May Cranmer, who had lately been raised to the see of Canterbury, opened his archiepiscopal court at Dunstable[222]. With a promptitude which must have been highly satisfactory to Henry after the delays of the previous proceedings at Rome, the sentence of divorce was pronounced. There can be little doubt that Cromwell gave efficient aid in hastening the verdict[223]; but what is far more important, he took effective measures, even before it was rendered, to prevent its revocation. Parliament had been in session during the three months previous to the assembling of the court at Dunstable: in anticipation of the coming sentence, it had been induced to pass an Act[224] to deprive Katherine of the only hope that remained to her by forbidding appeals to Rome, and by ordaining that the decision of an archiepiscopal court should be final, except in cases where the King was concerned, when appeal might be made to the Upper House of Convocation. A notable effort was made to conceal the obvious and immediate purpose of this statute under a shroud of pious and patriotic verbiage. The life of the Act, however, was but short. Though it had dealt the death blow to the jurisdiction of the Pope in England, it had not made adequate provision for the maintenance of the Supremacy of the Crown; so in 1534 the statute of the previous year was superseded by a new one[225], which enacted that an appeal might always be made from an archbishop’s court to the King’s Court of Chancery, the decision of which was to be final. The abolition of the Annates (which will be considered in another place) occurred at the same time. The effect of these two measures was to complete the work begun in 1530, and to sever the last links of the chain which bound the Church of England to Rome.