cause, this time
their numbers were too small; they failed, and the lives of the
Protestants were in their enemies' hands.[403] Simultaneously Gardiner
obtained for the bishops' courts their long-coveted privilege of
arbitrary arrest and discretionary punishment, and the clergy
obtained, as they desired, the restoration of their legislative
powers. The property question alone disintegrated the phalanx of
orthodoxy, and left an opening for the principles of liberty to assert
themselves. The faithful and the faithless among the laity were alike
participators in church plunder, and were alike nervously sensitive
when the current of the reaction ran in the direction of a demand for
restitution.

[Footnote 403: "La chambre haulte y faict
difficulte pour ce que l'auctorite et jurisdiction
des evesques est autorizee et renouvellee, et que
le peine semble trop griefve. Mais l'on tient
qu'ilz s'accorderont par la pluralite."--Renard to
the Emperor, December 21: _Granvelle Papers_, vol.
iv.]

Here, therefore, Paget and his friends chose their ground to maintain
the fight.

It has been seen that Pole especially dreaded the appearance of any
sort of composition between the country and the papacy. The submission
had, in fact, been purchased, but the purchase ought to be disguised.
As soon, therefore, as the parliament {p.179} set themselves to the
fulfilment of their promise to undo the acts by which England had
separated itself from Rome, the legate required a simple statute of
repeal. The pope had granted a dispensation; it was enough, and it
should be accepted gratefully: the penitence of sinners ought not to
be mixed with questions of worldly interest; the returning prodigal,
when asking pardon at his father's feet, had made no conditions; the
English nation must not disfigure their obedience by alluding, in the
terms of it, to the pope's benevolence to them.

The holders of the property, on the other hand, thinking more of the
reality than the form, were determined that the Act of Repeal should
contain, as nearly as possible, a true statement of their case. They
_had_ made conditions, and those conditions had been reluctantly
complied with; and, to prevent future errors, the nature of the
compact ought to be explained with the utmost distinctness. They had
replaced the bishops in authority,