Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/297

 marriage; and on the 1st of June Anne Boleyn was crowned; parliament having adjourned from April 12 to June 7.

The other great act of the year was the statute of Appeals, of the discussion of which we have few data. On the 14th of March, according to Chapuys, it was proposed in parliament to make a statute declaring that the pope has no authority in this kingdom; the king was set upon it and was arranging all his policy to that end. On the 30th it is mentioned in the Venetian dispatches as being then pushed in convocation. The next day the imperial envoy announces that the convocation has passed the Divorce Bill, but the House of Commons has refused to pass the Statute of Appeals, mainly on the ground that, if the pope were offended, he might injure the wool trade. But before the 10th of April he has to record that the opposition has given way before the king's threat to enforce the penalties of præmunire against the laity. A week later he reports that he has remonstrated with Henry and put him in a rage. Yet raging, still he was not without hope; he had sent to tell the pope that if, even now, he would send a dispensation for the second marriage, he would undo all that, in his wish to please his people, he had done against Rome. It is no doubt an exaggeration of Chapuys when he says that the nation would have welcomed the emperor as a deliverer, but there can be no reason to question his statements as to the sincerity of the opposition. The work of the year ended there; no business session was again attempted; the question of supplies, which had been brought forward in February, dropped and no grant was made.

The next session, that of January 1534, was a heavy one: we have the Lords' Journals, but very scanty details about convocation, which is unfortunate as the most important business was ecclesiastical. We know, however, from the Lords' Journals, that the clerical assembly sat on regular days, every Friday and sometimes on Tuesdays, the lords adjourning on those days for the convenience of the prelates, and on the Wednesdays for the session of Star Chamber. The attendance of prelates in the House of Lords was very scanty, and they were generally outnumbered two to one by the lay lords: