ss chafings of waves upon a rock. The two acts on which
Elizabeth's claims were rested[424] touched, in one or other of their
clauses, the papal prerogative, and were included in the list to be
condemned. But, of these acts, "so much only" as affected the See of
Rome was repealed. The rest was studiously declared to continue in
force.

[Footnote 424: 28 Henry VIII. cap. 7; 35 Henry
VIII. cap. 1.]

Yet, with this reservation, the parliament had gone far in their
concessions, and it remained for them to secure their equivalent.

They reinstated the bishops, but, in giving back a power which had
been so much abused, they took care to protect--not, alas! the
innocent lives which were about to be sacrificed--but their own
interests. The bishops and clergy of the Province of Canterbury having
been made to state their case and their claims, in a petition to the
crown, they were then compelled formally to relinquish those claims;
and the petition and the relinquishment were embodied in the act as
the condition of the {p.183} restoration of the authority of the
church courts.[425] In continuation, the Lords and Commons desired
that, for the removal "of all occasion of contention, suspicion, and
trouble, both outwardly and inwardly, in men's conscience," the pope's
holiness, as represented by the legate, "by dispensation, toleration,
or permission, as the case required," would recognise all such
foundations of colleges, hospitals, cathedrals, churches, schools, or
bishoprics as had been established during the schism, would confirm
the validity of all ecclesiastical acts which had been performed
during the same period; and, finally, would consent that all property,
of whatever kind, taken from the church, should remain to its present
possessors--"so as all persons having sufficient conveyance of the
said lands, goods, and chattels by the common laws, or acts, or
statutes of the realm, might, without scruple of conscience, enjoy
them without impeachment or trouble, by pretence of any general
council, canon, or ecclesiastical law, and clear from all dangers of
the censures of the church." The petitions, both of clergy and
parliament, the act went on to say, had been considered by the
cardinal; and the cardinal had acquiesced. He had undertaken, in the
pope's name, that the possessors of either lands or goods should never
be molested either then or in time to come, in virtue of any papal
decr