Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/494

474 power which had been so much abused, they took care to protect—not, alas! the innocent lives which were about to be sacrificed—but their own interests. The bishops and clergy of the Province of Canterbury having been made to state their case and their claims, in a petition to the Crown, they were then compelled formally to relinquish those claims; and the petition and the relinquishment were embodied in the Act as the condition of the restoration of the authority of the Church courts. In continuation, the Lords and Commons desired that, for the removal 'of all occasion of contention, suspicion, and trouble, both outwardly and inwardly, in men's consciences,' the Pope's Holiness, as represented by the legate, 'by dispensation, toleration, or permission, as the case required,' would recognize all such foundations of colleges, hospitals, cathedrals, churches, schools, or bishoprics as had been established during the schism, would confirm the validity of all ecclesiastical acts