Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/587

1555.] husband; and after a debate, a minority of a hundred voted for refusing the grant. The general spirit of the Houses, however, was, on the whole, more generous. Two fifteenths were voted in addition to the subsidy, which the Queen, on her side, was able to decline with thanks. The money question was settled quietly, and the business of the session proceeded.

If her subjects were indifferent to their souls, Mary was anxious about her own. On the 11th of November, a bill was read a first time in the House of Lords, 'whereby the King's and Queen's Majesties surrendered, and gave into the hands of the Pope's Holiness, the first-fruits and tenths of all ecclesiastical benefices.' The reception of the measure can be traced in the changes of form which it experienced. The payment of annates to the See of Rome was a grievance, both among clergy and laity, of very ancient standing. The clergy, though willing to be relieved from paying first-fruits to the Crown, were not so loyal to the successors of St Peter as to desire to restore their contributions into the old channel; while the laity, who from immemorial time had objected on principle to the payment of tribute to a foreign sovereign, were now, through their possession of the abbey lands and the impropriation of benefices, immediately