[Footnote 906: This commission was not appointed
till 1551: see the present writer's _Cranmer_, pp.
280-4.]

[Footnote 907: 25 Henry VIII., c. 19. The first
suggestion appears to have been "to give the
Archbishop of Canterbury the seal of Chancery, and
pass bulls, dispensations and other provisions
under it" (_L. and P._, vii., 14; _cf._ vii., 57);
his title was changed from _Apostolicae Sedis
legatus_ to _Metropolitanus_ (_ibid._, vii.,
1555).]

Another act provided that charges of heresy must be supported by two
lay witnesses, and that indictments for that offence could only be made
by lay authorities. This, like the rest of Henry's anti-ecclesiastical
legislation, was based on popular clamour. On the 5th of March the
whole House of Commons, with the Speaker at their head, had waited on
the King at York Place and expatiated for three hours on the
oppressiveness of clerical jurisdiction. At length it was agreed that
eight temporal peers, eight representatives of the Lower House and
sixteen bishops "should discuss the matter and the King be umpire"[908]--a
repetition of the plan of 1529 and a very exact reflection of Henry's
methods and of the Church-and-State situation during the Reformation
Parliament.

[Footnote 908: _L. and P._, vii., 304, 393, 399;
the provision about two witnesses was in 1547
extended to treason.]

The final act of the session, which ended on 30th March, was a (p. 321)
constitutional innovation of the utmost importance. From the earliest
ages the succession to the crown had in theory been determined, first
by election, and then by hereditary right. In practice it had often
been decided by the barbarous arbitrament of war. For right is vague,
it may be disputed, and there was endless variety of opinion as to the
proper claimant to the throne if Henry should die. So vague right was
to be replaced by definite law, which could not be disputed, but
which, unlike right, could easily be changed. The succession was no
longer to be regulated by an unalterable principle, but by the popular
(or royal) will expressed in Acts of Parliament.[909] The first of a
long series of Acts of Succession was now passed to vest the succession
to the crown in the heirs o