n people").]

[Footnote 771: _L. and P._, iv., 6083.]

These reforms seem reasonable enough, but the idea of placing a bound
to the spiritual exaction of probate seemed sacrilege to Bishop
Fisher. "My lords," he cried, "you see daily what bills come hither
from the Common House, and all is to the destruction of the (p. 280)
Church. For God's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Bohemia was;
and when the Church went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now
with the Commons is nothing but 'Down with the Church!' And all this,
meseemeth, is for lack of faith only."[772] The Commons thought a
limitation of fees an insufficient ground for a charge of heresy, and
complained of Fisher to the King through the mouth of their Speaker.
The Bishop explained away the offensive phrase, but the spiritual
peers succeeded in rejecting the Commons' bills. The way out of the
deadlock was suggested by the King; he proposed a conference between
eight members of either House. The Lords' delegates were half
spiritual, half temporal, peers.[773] Henry knew well enough that the
Commons would vote solidly for the measures, and that the temporal
peers would support them. They did so; the bills were passed; and, on
17th December, Parliament was prorogued. We may call it a trick or
skilful parliamentary strategy; the same trick, played by the _Tiers
Etat_ in 1789, ensured the success of the French Revolution, and it
was equally effective in England in 1529.

[Footnote 772: Hall, _Chronicle_, p. 766.]

[Footnote 773: _Cf._ Stubbs, _Lectures_, 1887, p.
317.]

These mutterings of the storm fell on deaf ears at Rome. Clement was
deaf, not because he had not ears to hear, but because the clash of
imperial arms drowned more distant sounds. "If any one," wrote the
Bishop of Auxerre in 1531, "was ever in prison or in the power of his
enemies, the Pope is now."[774] He was as anxious as ever to escape
responsibility. "He has told me," writes the Bishop of Tarbes to
Francis I. on the 27th of March, 1530, "more than three times in (p. 281)
secret that he would be glad if the marriage (with Anne Boleyn) was
already made, either by a dispensation of the English legate or
otherwise, provided it was not by his authority, or in diminution of
his power as to dispensation and limitation of Divine law."[775] Later
in the year he made his suggestion that Henry should have t