Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/282

 ; so at the beginning of the reign the number of spiritual peers was 49; at the maximum in 1534 it was 52, and, after the dissolution of the monasteries, it fell to 16. The number of lay peers varied little, for there were few new creations except where an old peerage had been extinguished. The minimum number was called in 1523, being only a8, several of the peers being that year employed in military affairs abroad; the maximum was in 1536, in the parliament called to approve of the destruction of Anne Boleyn, and the number was 51. In the other parliaments it varied between 36 and 46. It will be thus observed that, until the dissolution of the monasteries, the spiritual lords were always in a numerical majority, but that the tendency was decided towards an equalisation; a tendency which is ocularly perceptible in the journals where, in the list of attendances which from 15 15 onwards are marked daily, the two bodies arranged in parallel columns. It would, however, be wrong to infer from this that there was an equality of voting bodies, for of the clerical members the attendance was throughout the reign very irregular; and the proportion, on most critical occasions, seems to have been about 20 bishops and abbots to 30 lay lords. It is true they both had the power of giving proxies, but the irregularity of attendance does not seem to be compensated by the proxies: the prelate who is attendant one day is absent the next, doubtless without proxy; and some are absent for whole sessions.

Convocation during the whole reign sits at the same time with the parliament; and generally the Friday in each week, sometimes the Tuesday also, is marked by adjournment that the prelates may attend convocation, the Wednesday in some cases being likewise surrendered for the session of the Star Chamber. No doubt the business of the Upper House of Convocation engrossed the time of most of the absent bishops and abbots, for that assembly was, before the dissolution, a very large body, nearly as large as the House of Commons; it included, as is seen in the great divisions on the divorce, between two and three hundred abbots and priors; and much of the business undertaken in it was of a far more critical