Whatever Cromwell meant in his remembrance of March about ‘A device in the Parliament for the unity in religion’, the erratic progress of discussion on six articles of religion in the House of Lords took a very different direction from any intended by him. The Duke of Norfolk introduced it, and Cromwell and Cranmer were increasingly marginalized in its formulation. Its commendations were all traditional: real presence in the eucharist, the acceptability of communicants receiving only bread without wine, compulsory clerical celibacy and perpetuity of monastic vows of celibacy, ‘private’ masses
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