Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/158

138 pulpit the vices of the Court, and the worldliness of the faction who were misgoverning the country. Since discipline could not he restored, he, and those who felt with him the enormity of the times, established by their own authority this second form of excommunication.

Northumberland, who had witnessed the fall of the old clergy, had no intention of enduring the insolence of the new. At the end of March Cranmer produced in the House of Lords his reformed code of canon law. Northumberland rose, and, turning fiercely on the Archbishop, bade him attend to the duties of his office. The clergy were going beyond their province, presuming in their sermons to touch the doings of their superiors. 'You bishops,' he said, 'look to it at your peril. Take heed that the like happen not again, or you and your preachers shall suffer for it together.' The Archbishop ventured a mild protest. He had heard no complaints of the preachers, he said; they might have spoken of vices and abuses; he did not know. 'There were vices