Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/291

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XII.]
Session of 1532.
279

schools and the publishing of a uniform Latin grammar, in addition to the restoration of discipline and the translation of the Scriptures, was prorogued at the same time. The same measures which passed the Canterbury Convocation were likewise adopted at York; that is the clergy remitted the loans, paid £18,840 for the pardon, and acknowledged the supremacy. Bishop Tunstall however made a protest against the form of Recognition, and proposed that for fear of misinterpretation by heretics, the words in temporalibus post Christum should be inserted; but this had only the effect of offending the king, who directed that the bishop's house at Auckland should be searched for heretical books; and also, according to Chapuys, omitted to summon him to the next session of parliament.

I go on now to that third session of the Long Parliament; it opened on the 22nd of January 1532. Its events are extremely important, and fortunately are illustrated fairly well by contemporary evidence. It was understood, says the imperial resident, to have been called for two purposes, money and the divorce. The king wanted 2,000,000 ducats; Rochford and Anne Boleyn were apparently given carte blanche as to their dealing with the clergy for the divorce; Henry, however, keeping watch, and ready to make the most of an opportunity. The clergy were now having their eyes opened; a bold attempt made by the Boleyns to 'suborn,' that is, I suppose, to bribe Archbishop Warham, at last shook the old man's faith in the stability of things. Norfolk and Rochford, who were now acting together, proposed that matrimonial causes should be declared a matter of temporal jurisdiction. Warham, as an old lawyer, protested in a formal document against all legislation which might be enacted against ecclesiastical or papal power. This protest seems to have had the effect of deterring any further procedure on the divorce itself during the archbishop's life, but to have provoked the king to more trenchant action against the constitutional arrangements which Warham and his party now saw to be assailed.

The history of the session falls into two sections, divided by a short recess at Easter for about a fortnight. The first portion