t had been prevailed
on to confess, on his knees, before the council, all the articles
of charge against him; and he imputed these misdemeanors to his
own rashness, folly, and indiscretion, not to any malignity of
intention.[**] He even subscribed this confession; and the paper was
given in to parliament, who, after sending a committee to examine him,
and hear him acknowledge it to be genuine, passed a vote, by which they
deprived him of all his offices, and fined him two thousand pounds a
year in land. Lord St. John was created treasurer in his place, and
Warwick earl marshal. The prosecution against him was carried no
further. His fine was remitted by the king: he recovered his liberty:
and Warwick, thinking that he was now sufficiently humbled, and that
his authority was much lessened by his late tame and abject behavior,
readmitted him into the council, and even agreed to an alliance between
their families, by the marriage of his own son, Lord Dudley, with the
Lady Jane Seymour, daughter of Somerset.[***]

* Heylin, p. 85. Rymer, tom. xv. p. 226.

** Heylin, p. 84. Hayward, p. 309. Stowe, p. 603.

*** Hayward, p. 309 * 3 and 4 Edward VI. c. 5.

During this session, a severe law was passed against riots.[*] It was
enacted, that if any, to the number of twelve persons, should meet
together for any matter of state, and being required by a lawful
magistrate, should not disperse, it should be treason; and if any broke
hedges, or violently pulled up pales about enclosures, without lawful
authority, it should be felony: any attempt to kill a privy counsellor
was subjected to the same penalty. The bishops had made an application,
complaining that they were deprived of all their power by the
encroachments of the civil courts, and the present suspension of the
canon law; that they could summon no offender before them, punish no
vice, or exert the discipline of the church; from which diminution of
their authority, they pretended, immorality had every where received
great encouragement and increase. The design of some was to revive the
penitentiary rules of the primitive church; but others thought, that
such an authority committed to the bishops would prove more oppressive
than confession, penance, and all the clerical inventions of the Romish
superstition. The parliament, for the present, contented themselves with
empowering the king to appoint thirty-two commissioners to compile a
body of canon laws, which