The Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton has written that the Supplication was put into final form by the government behind the scenes even before the issue of clerical abuses was discussed in Parliament (similar complaints had been drawn up after debate in 1529 but they were not enacted, however Thomas Cromwell had kept them).
[3] Due to the lack of firm evidence the historian Stanford Lehmberg has suggested other possibilities such as Cromwell taking it upon himself to draft the Supplication or the issue had spontaneously been raised by MPs independently.
[4] The preamble stated that discord and division had arisen between the clergy and the laity in England in part because of heretical books but also upon the "uncharitable behaviour" of ordinaries.
Then on 18 March the Speaker of the Commons, accompanied with knights and burgesses, presented the Supplication to the King whilst in audience with him and also demanded a dissolution of Parliament.
Three days after this at the next meeting, Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, reacted strongly against the clauses of the Supplication concerning the Convocation's ability to make Church laws (canons).
Gardiner went on: And albeit we perceive and know right well, that there be as well disposed and as well conscienced men of your Grace's Commons, in no small number assembled, as ever we knew in any Parliament; yet we be not so ignorant, but that we understand that sinister information and importuante labours and persuasions of evil disposed persons, pretending themselves to be thereunto moved by the zeal of justice and reformation, may induce right wise, sad, and constant men to suppose such things to be true, as be not so indeed.