ties, from twenty shillings
to five pounds, paid eightpence in the pound; from five
pounds to ten pounds, sixteen pence; from ten pounds to
twenty pounds, two shillings; from twenty pounds and
upwards, three shillings.

The convocation gave the king six shillings in the pound, to be levied
in three years. Greater sums were always, even during the establishment
of the Catholic religion, exacted from the clergy than from the
laity; which made the emperor Charles say, when Henry dissolved the
monasteries, and sold their revenues, or bestowed them on his nobility
and courtiers, that he had killed the hen which brought him the golden
eggs.[*]

The parliament also facilitated the execution of the former law by which
the king's proclamations were made equal to statutes: they appointed
that any nine counsellors should form a legal court for punishing all
disobedience to proclamations. The total abolition of juries in criminal
causes, as well as on all parliaments, seemed, if the king had so
pleased, the necessary consequence of this enormous law. He might
issue a proclamation enjoining the execution of any penal statute, and
afterwards try the criminals, not for breach of the statute, but for
disobedience to his proclamation. It is remarkable, that Lord Mountjoy
entered a protest against this law; and it is equally remarkable that
that protest is the only one entered against any public bill during this
whole reign.[**]

It was enacted[***] this session, that any spiritual person who preached
or taught contrary to the doctrine contained in the king's book, the
Erudition of a Christian Man, or contrary to any doctrine which he
should thereafter promulgate, was to be admitted on the first conviction
to renounce his error; on the second, he was required to carry a fagot;
which if he refused to do, or fell into a third offence, he was to be
burnt. But the laity, for the third offence, were only to forfeit their
goods and chattels, and be liable to perpetual imprisonment. Indictments
must be laid within a year after the offence, and the prisoner was
allowed to bring witnesses for his exculpation. These penalties were
lighter than those which were formerly imposed on a denial of the real
presence: it was, however, subjoined in this statute, that the act of
the six articles was still in force. But in order to make the king more
entirely master of his people, it was enacted, that he might hereafter,
at his pleasu