anti-sacerdotal from the (p. 234)
the very beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign. In 1512 James IV. complained
to Henry that Englishmen seized Scots merchants, ill-treated them, and
abused them as "the Pope's men".[659] At the end of the same year
Parliament deprived of their benefit of clergy all clerks under the
rank of sub-deacon who committed murder or felony.[660] This measure
at once provoked a cry of "the Church in danger". The Abbot of
Winchcombe preached that the act was contrary to the law of God and to
the liberties of the Church, and that the lords, who consented
thereto, had incurred a liability to spiritual censures. Standish,
warden of the Mendicant Friars of London, defended the action of
Parliament, while the temporal peers requested the bishops to make the
Abbot of Winchcombe recant.[661] They refused, and, at the Convocation
of 1515, Standish was summoned before it to explain his conduct. He
appealed to the King; the judges pronounced that all who had taken
part in the proceedings against Standish had incurred the penalties of
_praemunire_. They also declared that the King could hold a Parliament
without the spiritual lords, who only sat in virtue of their
temporalties. This opinion seems to have nothing to do with (p. 235)
the dispute, but it is remarkable that, in one list of the peers
attending the Parliament of 1515, there is not a single abbot.[662]

[Footnote 659: _L. and P._, i., 3320. In 1516 one
Humphrey Bonner preached a sermon ridiculing the
Holy See (_ibid._, ii., 2692).]

[Footnote 660: In this, as in many other reforms,
the English Parliament only anticipated the action
of the Church; for on 12th February, 1516, Leo X.
issued a bull prohibiting any one from being
admitted, for the next five years, into minor
orders unless he were simultaneously promoted to be
sub-deacon; as many persons, to avoid appearing
before the civil courts and to enjoy immunity,
received the tonsure and minor orders without
proceeding to the superior (_L. and P._, ii.,
1532).]

[Footnote 661: _L. and P._, ii., 1313. Brewer
impugns the authority of Keilway's report of this
incident on the