cant of the importance of the crisis. Parliament either was
sitting at the time when the excommunication was issued, or else it was
immediately assembled; and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of
a petition to the king, a declaration of the circumstances which had
occurred. After having stated generally the English law on the
presentation to benefices, "Now of late," they added, "divers processes
be made by his Holiness the Pope, and censures of excommunication upon
certain bishops, because they have made execution of the judgments
[given in the king's courts], to the open disherison of the crown;
whereby, if remedy be not provided; the crown of England, which hath
been so free at all times, that it has been in no earthly subjection,
should be submitted to the pope; and the laws and statutes of the realm
by him be defeated and avoided at his will, in perpetual destruction of
the sovereignty of the king our lord, his crown, his regality, and all
his realm." The Commons, therefore, on their part, declared, "That the
things so attempted were clearly against the king's crown and his
regality; used and approved or in the time of all his progenitors, and
therefore they and all the liege commons of the realm would stand with
their said lord the king, and his said crown, in the cases aforesaid, to
live and die."[11] Whether they made allusion to the act of 1389 does
not appear,--a measure passed under protest from one of the estates of
the realm was possibly held unequal to meet the emergency,--at all
events they would not rely upon it. For after this peremptory assertion
of their own opinion, they desired the king, "and required him in the
way of justice," to examine severally the lords spiritual and temporal
how they thought, and how they would stand.[12] The examination was
made, and the result was satisfactory. The lay lords replied without
reservation that they would support the crown. The bishops (they were in
a difficulty for which all allowance must be made) gave a cautious, but
also a manly answer. They would not affirm, they said, that the pope had
a right to excommunicate them in such cases, and they would not say that
he had not. It was clear, however, that legal or illegal, such
excommunication was against the privileges of the English crown, and
therefore that, on the whole, they would and ought to be with the crown,
_loialment_, like loyal subjects, as they were bound by their
allegiance.[13]

In this unu