Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/202

 194 THE GREAT STATUTE OF PRAEMUNIRE April this was the attitude of Boniface IX. Alarmed by the statute of 1390, he had resolved to reopen the whole question of juris- diction in cases concerning patronage. Besides demanding the repeal of the statutes of provisors, the abbot of Nonantola had asked for the abolition of what he called the statutes of quare impedit and praemunire facias, and had made vague threats as to what the pope might do if his requests were denied. 1 The abolition of the two writs had been curtly refused, 2 and the pope had got little satisfaction in regard to the statutes. It was probably in retaliation that he did the things complained of by the commons in 1393. Their petition certainly suggests that he had acted on his own initiative. The conventional pretence, usually kept up hi anti-papal statutes, that English suitors at Rome were mainly to blame for all abuses and grievances, is altogether dropped. It is also to be remarked that the statute of provisors is nowhere mentioned in the petition ; and the allusion to the immemorial authority of the king's court in rela- tion to patronage and to the right of the king's lieges to sue there gives the impression that the commons had in mind, not the anti-papal statutes all fairly recent but the venerable actions at common law which were the natural weapons of lay patrons and which even churchmen often employed in cases where the authority of the pope was not directly at issue. 3 Now if the processes and sentences complained of by the commons had been the outcome of litigation initiated at Rome by an Englishman, he might have been proceeded against under the statute of 1353 ; 4 but if they were the result of a petition for papal favour and support, still more if they sprang from the pope's own initiative, there was, so far as I am aware, no statute under which any one could be punished. It was even considered doubtful whether bulls communicating such proceedings were in all cases ' prejudicial to the Crown '. Hence the careful consulta- tion of the estates in parliament. Of course the pope could not be prevented from taking such measures against English eccle- siastics ; all that could be done was to forbid any one to ask him to do so, and to try to keep the victims in ignorance of their 1 Cont. Polychr. ix. 251 ; Walsingham, ii. 251. 2 Cont. Polychr. ix. 256 seq. 3 Compare the passage quoted above, p. 178, n. 3, and a passage in the king's reply to the abbot of Nonantola : ' Ex eo namque quod per dictum nuncium petebatur statuta " Quare impedit " et " Praemunire facias ", ut praemittitur, aboleri, admira- tionis causa consurgit maxime cum ab aliis summis pontificibus nunquam fuerunt haec petita, quoniam constat ilia statuta etiam inter laicos patronos regni nostri subditos super iure patronatus eorum et aliter legem tribuere ab antiquissimis tem- poribus observatam ' (Cont. Polychr. ix. 256 seq.). 4 He would come within the scope of this act as one of those ' qui suent en autri Court a deffaire ou empescher les juggementz renduz en la Court le Hoi '. But I do not think that the English courts would at this period have construed this clause so as to bring within its meaning petitions for papal grace and favour.