On 19 January 1531, Convocation – the parliament of the English Church – met in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. They faced an unprecedented demand from Henry VIII: to acknowledge that he was the only protector and supreme head of the Church in England. They were under a great deal of pressure to agree: Henry had previously indicated that, if they didn't, he would considered them as guilty as Cardinal Wolsey, who had only escaped execution by dying first. The king had already refused a 'contribution' of £100,000 in return for pardoning the clerics.
Despite this threat, over the next two weeks they fought Henry's demand word by word. On 10 February, Thomas Cromwell, the king's tough new minister, had a private word with the archbishop of Canterbury William Warham who was presiding. The archbishop scuttled off to the court and returned the following day to announce that a face-saving compromise had been agreed: the Church would accept Henry as supreme head of the Church of England 'as far as the law of Christ allows'.
The archbishop's announcement was greeted with a stunned silence, whereupon Warham quoted the Latin tag: qui tacet consentit (who keeps silent consents). And in the echoing stillness, Henry's new title was agreed.
The weasel words 'as far as the law of Christ allows' meant whatever anybody wanted them to mean, and the next year they were dropped. Henry was now supreme head without qualification. He had also, by his actions, broken Magna Carta and the first clause of his own coronation oath by which he'd sworn that the Church in England should be free.
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 The Religious Changes under Henry VIII and Edward VI
www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/re
lg/historygeography/HistoryoftheCatholic
ChurchfromtheRenaissancetotheFrenchRevol
utionVolume2/chap2.html
Very detailed account of the events leading up to and including the meetings of the Convocation in 1531.
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