orders, he might do as he pleased; but that he had neither right nor
powers to sanction the spoliation of the working bishops and clergy.
Thus the feast of reconciliation having been duly celebrated, both
Houses of Parliament became again the theatre of fierce and fiery
conflict.

There were wide varieties of opinion. The lawyers went beyond the
clergy in limiting the powers of the pope; the lawyers also said the
pope had no rights over the temporalities of bishops or abbots, deans,
or rectors; but they did not any more admit the rights of the clergy.
The English clergy, regular and secular, they said, had held their
estates from immemorial time under the English crown, and it was not
for any spiritual authority, domestic or foreign, to decide whether an
English king and an English parliament might interfere to alter the
disposition of those estates.

On other questions the clerical party were in the ascendant; They had
a decided majority in the House of Commons; in the Upper House there
was a compact body of twenty bishops; and Gardiner held the proxies of
Lord Rich, Lord Oxford, Lord {p.178} Westmoreland, and Lord
Abergavenny. The queen had created four new peers; three of whom, Lord
North, Lord Chandos, and Lord Williams, were bigoted Catholics; the
fourth, Lord Howard, was absent with the fleet, and was unrepresented.
Lord North held the proxy of Lord Worcester; and the Marquis of
Winchester, Lord Montague, and Lord Stourton acted generally with the
chancellor. Lord Russell was keeping out of the way, being suspected
of heresy; Wentworth was at Calais; Grey was at Guisnes; and the
proxies of the two last noblemen, which in the late parliament were
held by Arundel and Paget, were, for some unknown reason, now held by
no one. Thus, in a house of seventy-three members only, reduced to
sixty-nine by the absence of Howard, Russell, Wentworth, and Grey,
Gardiner had thirty-one votes whom he might count upon as certain; he
knew his power, and at once made fatal use of it.

For two parliaments the liberal party had prevented him from
recovering the power of persecution. He did not attempt to pass the
Inquisitorial Act on which he was defeated in the last session. But
the act to revive the Lollard Statutes was carried through the House
of Commons in the second week in December; on the 15th it was brought
up to the Lords; and although those who had before fought the battle
of humanity, struggled again bravely in the same