Thus it was that May 15 became one of the most significant days not only of the Tudor century but in English constitutional history. It was the day on which, in the person of Archbishop Warham, the clergy of the Southern Convocation utterly, absolutely, and forever surrendered such independence as their church possessed to King Henry VIII and his heirs. In doing so, they abandoned rights and immunities that reached back into the dimmest early years of Christianity in England, prerogatives that their predecessors had fought repeatedly and sometimes sacrificed much to maintain.
