Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/199

 1922 THE GREAT STATUTE OF PRAEMUN1EE 191 liberty '- 1 The use of the singular statutum, whether the word be given its technical or its general meaning, suggests that only one measure was in debate. English documents relating to the matter refer only to one statute, 2 which one or two of them call the statute of provisors, 3 and it was merely for the repeal of that measure that Chichele pleaded when at the bidding of Martin V he put the pope's case before the commons during the parliament of 1428. 4 Now if only one statute was in question, there can be no doubt as to which it was. On the rare occasions when the pope condescends to paraphrase passages in the offensive legislation, he seems always to be using the text of the statute of 1390 (in which that of 1351 is recited), 5 and the one verbatim quotation that I have found in a papal letter is drawn from that source. 6 The archbishop of York, 7 in a letter written soon after the close of the parliament of 1428, speaks of Chichele's efforts as directed towards gaining for the pope freedom to dispose of benefices in clerical patronage, and in 1435 Eugeniue IV identified the measure to which his predecessor had objected with a statute which hindered the pope from collating to English benefices. 8 All interested parties, in fact, seem to assume that the papal claim to appoint to English benefices was the only question at issue throughout the prolonged negotiations. It is hard, in the face of this, to believe that the statute of 1393 came into the 1 e.g. ' illudabominabile statutum ' (Wilkins, iii. 479), ' pro abolitione ilHus detesta- bilis statuti contra libertatem ecclestiasticam editi ' (ibid. ), ' execrabile illud statutum contra libertatem ecclesiasticam editum ' (ibid. p. 473). 2 So, for example, in an official reply, dated October 1419, to one of the pope's demands for redress (Foedera ix. 806), and in a letter from Archbishop Chichele to William Swan at the curia, dated 27 February 1428 (MS. Cott., Cleop. C. iv, fo. 174 b). 3 e. g. a letter, dated 16 January 1428, from the bishop of Bath and Wells (John Stafford) to Swan : ' In instanti parliamento. . . archiepiscopi. . . ac singuli alii epi- scopi et prelati pro abolitione illius statuti editi contra provisores diligentissime laborarunt ' (ibid. fo. 173 b). Wilkins, iii. 484. 5 Most of Martin's allusions to details occur in his letter to Henry VI dated 1 Decem- ber 1426 (Wilkins, iii. 480 seqq.), and in that to Chichele dated 9 December 1426 (ibid. 482 seq. ; Col. of Papal Letters, vii. 24 seq.). apostolica excommunicationis processum contra aliquem de regno contra ipsius statuti dispositionem. . . ut ipsius statuti utamur verbis, poenam vitae ac membrorum incurrunt' (Wilkins, iii. 481). Cf. Statutes, ii. 74: 'Si ascun port ou envoie deinz le roialme. . . ascun somonces, sentences, ou escomengementz envers ascun persone ... a cause de la mocion. . . fesance assent ou execucion du dit estatut des provisours . . . encourge la peyne de vie et de membre.' 7 Dated 28 March 1428, and addressed to the bishop of Dax, who was apparently at Rome : ' Desideria sanctissimi domini nostri quo ad opt a tarn disponendi libertatem de beneficiis videlicet ecclesiastic-is hoc in Regno vacaturis saltim [tc] de patronatu personarum ecclesiasticarum existentibus omni cum diligencia pertractata fuere * (MS. Cott., Cleop. C. iv, fo. 169). Raynaldus, Annales (ed. Mansi, 1747-56), xxviii. 199; Cal. of Papal Letters, viii. 216 seqq.
 * This occurs in the letter to Henry VI just cited : ' Ferentes aut destinantes a sede