bend.

[Footnote 723: The first Parliament of the reign
met in January, 1510, the second in February, 1512.
It had a second session, November-December of the
same year (_L. and P._, i., 3502). A third
Parliament met for its first session on 23rd
January, 1514, for its second on 5th February,
1515, and for its third on 12th November, 1515
(_ibid._, i., 5616, 5725, ii., 1130). It was this
last of which Wolsey urged "the more speedy
dissolution"; then for fourteen years there was
only one Parliament, that of 1523. These dates
illustrate the antagonism between Wolsey and
Parliament and show how natural it was that Wolsey
should fall in 1529, and that his fall should
coincide with the revival of Parliament.]

No monarch, in fact, was ever a more zealous champion of parliamentary
privileges, a more scrupulous observer of parliamentary forms, or a
more original pioneer of sound constitutional doctrine. In 1543 he
first enunciated the constitutional principle that sovereignty is
vested in the "King in Parliament". "We," he declared to the Commons,
"at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of
Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and
knit together in one body politic, so as whatsoever offence or injury
during that time is offered to the meanest member of the House, is to
be judged as done against our person and the whole Court of
Parliament."[725] He was careful to observe himself the deference to
parliamentary privilege which he exacted from others. It is no (p. 259)
strange aberration from the general tenor of his rule that in 1512
by Strode's case[726] the freedom of speech of members of Parliament
was established, and their freedom from arrest by Ferrers' case in
1543. In 1515 Convocation had enviously petitioned for the same
liberty of speech as was enjoyed in Parliament, where members might
even attack the law of the land and not be called in question
therefor.[727] "I am," writes Bishop Gardiner, in 1547, apologising
for the length of a letter, "like one of the Commons' house, that,
when I am in my tale, think I should have liberty to make an
end;"[728] and again he refers to a speech he m