sumption of independence of the Pope was made by the clergy in their petition against annates in the year 1532.
The year 1531 is one of considerable moment in our history. The only important Acts of Parliament are the 22 Henry VIII. c. 15 and 16, which relieved the clergy and laity from the penalties of Præmunire"; but the preliminary step which constituted the condition on which alone this relief was granted, was one of the most momentous in the whole history of the Reformation, being nothing less than the famous submission of the clergy, wherein they acknowledged the King as Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ … supremum caput, albeit with the qualification appended quantum per legem Christi licet—of which we shall hear more by-and-by.
The legislation of the next year, 1532, was in itself very important. Acts were passed—23 Hen. VIII. c. 1, 9, 11, and 20—all of which altered materially the relations of the Church to the lay people and the State, by (1) limiting the range of 'benefit of clergy' by means of which hitherto clerical or quasi-clerical criminals had been able to evade punishment; (2) limiting the power by which persons could be cited to ecclesiastical courts to the diocese in which the cited person dwelt; (3) bringing within the law convict clergy who escaped from prison; and (4) restraining the payments of annates to the See of Rome.[1]
Over and above these legislative Acts there were in this year also three petitions more or less closely connected with them, and of a highly important character. There was the petition of the Convocation against the payment of annates, which some writers[2] will have, as
- ↑ This refers to the first Annates Act.
- ↑ Blunt's Hist. of the Ref. in Eng. Ch. vol. ii. p. 584.
