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1547.] from refusing the sacrament to any one who reverently desired it. The congé d'élire was next abolished in the election of bishops. There was to be no longer any affectation or delusion as to their position. They held their commissions under the Crown; they were nominated by the Crown; the supposed choice by a dean and chapter was a hypocritical fiction, and should exist no longer, and like institutions and processes in the spiritual courts, their appointments were to run for the future in the name of the King.

Lest the validity of these changes should be questioned on account of the King's minority, the Act giving him power of repealing them on coming of age was reviewed and altered. All laws passed during a minority were declared good and valid for the time being; and although the King himself might reconsider, at a later period, the legislation which had been conducted in his name, the power was not to extend to his successor, should he die meanwhile.

While Parliament was thus employed, Convocation had assembled as usual. The clergy were disconcerted to find that, slight as had been the respect with which they had been treated in the late reign, they were treated with less in the present. Questions, not only of Church policy, but of doctrine, were discussed and disposed of by the laity without so much as the form of consulting those to whom, until these late times, they had exclusively belonged; while the submission of the clergy to