Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/468

 The King replied that their second request was inconsistent with their first. They must wait for the answer of the Ordinaries to their complaints, and meanwhile he desired their assent to a very unpopular bill about wardships, which he had persuaded the Lords to pass. But he could not get the Commons to agree to it.

Parliament was prorogued for ten days at Easter. On Easter Day (March 31), William Peto, Provincial of the Grey Friars, preached before the King at Greenwich a sermon in which he pointed out how Kings were encouraged in evil by false counsellors. After the sermon, being called to a private interview, Peto further warned the King that he was endangering his Crown, as both small and great disapproved of his designs. The King dissembled his ill-will and licensed Peto to leave the kingdom on his duties; after which he caused Dr Richard Curwen, a chaplain of his own, to preach in the same place a sermon of an opposite tenor. In this Curwen not only contradicted what Peto had said in the pulpit, but added that he wished Peto were there to answer him; on which the Warden of the convent, Henry Elstowe, at once answered him in Peto's place. Peto was then recalled by the King, who asked him to deprive the Warden; but he refused, and both he and Elstowe were committed to prison.

When Parliament met again in April the Commons were solicited for aid in the fortification of the Scotch frontier. They objected to the expense; and two members said boldly that the Borders were secure enough, if the King would only take back his Queen and live in peace with the Emperor; for without foreign aid the Scots could do no harm. On the 30th the King sent for the Speaker and others of the Commons, and delivered to them the answer of the Ordinaries to their complaints, which he said he did not think would satisfy them, but he would leave them to consider it, and would himself be an indifferent judge between them. In such strange fashion did he declare his impartiality. On May 11 he sent for them again, and said that he had discovered that the clergy were but half his subjects, since the Bishops at their consecration took an oath at variance with the one they took to him. After some references to and fro the final result was the famous " Submission of the Clergy " agreed to on May 15, and presented to the King at Westminster on the following day. Hereby they agreed to enact no new ordinances without royal licence and to submit to a Committee of sixteen persons, one half laymen and one half clerics, the question as to what ordinances should be annulled as inconsistent with God's laws and those of the realm.

On that same day Sir Thomas More, who had done his best to prevent these innovations, surrendered his office of Chancellor, from which he had long sought in vain to be released. To fill his place in some respects, Thomas Audeley, the Speaker, was at first appointed Keeper of the Great Seal, but in the following January received the full title and office of Lord Chancellor.