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 1529; and although this may be represented as only a measure of necessary reform of what was felt to be a gross and irritating abuse of the power of the clergy—and there are ample indications in contemporary literature of the actual irritation felt by the lay people in consequence of such abuses—yet, coming as it does after the minds of Henry and his ministers were fully possessed by the divorce question, it admits also of being represented as the commencement of a system of reprisals on their part to meet the delays and hesitation of the Pope in granting the relief which Henry required.

The Parliament of 1529 met on November 5, almost immediately after the disgrace of Wolsey (October 18), and it opened with a speech from Sir Thomas More, announcing that the King intended to carry out an ecclesiastical reform. This was followed immediately by the petition of the Commons against the abuses of ecclesiastical administration, which led to prompt legislation—the session lasting only six weeks. The three most important acts passed, viz. 21 Henry VIII. 5, 6, and 13, dealing with probate, mortuaries, and the trading, the pluralities, and the residence of the clergy, embodied the chief points of the petition, and were passed in the teeth of the bishops in the Lords, and not submitted to Convocation at all.

With the exception of the proclamation issued by the King in September of the following year forbidding the introduction of bulls from Rome, and which was founded upon the old Plantagenet legislation, no important step was taken till 1531. This proclamation is, however, worthy of notice, as depriving of any little rag of value which might be supposed to cling to it, an assertion which has become fashionable of late with certain writers, viz. that the first suggestion of an as-