Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/298

 there were discussions and differences of opinion between the Lords and Commons; a Bill on the consecration of bishops sent up from the Commons was rejected by the Lords, and a new Bill drawn by the Lords was passed by the Commons. The Submission Bill or second Statute of Appeals was presented by the Commons in a body on the 27th of March, and passed on the 30th. In convocation, on the 31st, the question that the pope has no more power than any other bishop was determined; this being probably regarded as their formal judgment on more than one of the statutes which had passed the Commons. We look in vain for any more determined or resolute action on either side. And again the session passes without a money grant. A second session was held in November mainly for this purpose; and a second meeting of convocation, in which the king was petitioned to expedite the authoritative translation of the Bible. I enumerated I think in the last lecture the important acts of these sessions.

There was no session in 1535. The Long Parliament came to an end in 1536. Of its last session we have no definite details, simply the Acts which it passed: the Journals of Convocation deal only with the question of the subsidy. Henry had, we may presume, quelled all opposition in Parliament; and, if contemporary annotators had been minded to preserve particulars, they were lost in the grand and tragic interest of public events. The dissolution of the monasteries, the death of Queen Katharine, the awful tragedy that closed the career of the Boleyns, the pilgrimage of grace, and mutterings of rebellion in north and south, fill the pages of the annalists.

For the second Parliament of 1536, that newly elected after the fall of Anne Boleyn, we have much material: it sat for six weeks, and has left full journals, as has convocation also. There is no reaction traceable in either. If the Seymours inherited the influence of the Boleyns, they were even more zealous for change and plunder than their predecessors: but the real hero of the hour is Cromwell, doing his master's work with zeal. Cromwell, as