Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/330

 acts of parliament and explain the mind of the legislature, and by thus practising upon the statutes sometimes ground their opinion on mysterious and unintelligible reasons, and so wrest the laws contrary to the meaning and intention of parliament;' or petitioning that the judges who showed such strong bias should no longer issue prohibitions, but, when questions arose concerning the limits and jurisdiction of the rival courts, indifferent persons should be pitched upon to judge them; or the lawyers, on the other hand, striking at the root of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction. as if it were a transgression of the Statute of Prémunire ,—well, when we look at these things, we shall see that there were questions unsettled even before the Council of Trent, and hear opinions and complaints that sound like echoes beforehand of voices with which in these days our ears are too familiar.

I must, however, now proceed to the Reformation, and endeavour to determine, as strongly and as clearly as I can, the bearing of that most critical era on our subject. Henry VIII had, as early as 1515, seen a struggle between the secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions in Standish's case, in the course of which he is said to have expressed himself as determined to endure no division of sovereignty in his own realm. Whether that was really said or merely put into his mouth afterwards, I cannot say; but certainly no scheme of change in the relation between Church and State was set on foot for nearly seventeen years. Then the business of the divorce at Rome, and the discontent of the king with the half-hearted support of the clergy at home, completed his disgust, and he set out in the course of radical change. Having in 1531 compelled the clergy by the threat of præmunire to recognise him as supreme head 'quantum per Christi legem licet,' he induced the Commons in 1533 to present a petition or remonstrance against the whole theory and practice of the canon law. They attacked the power of the clergy to make canons in convocation, they protested against the exaction of fees and mortuaries, and deliberately