isdom, most honourable fame, and catholic faith
inviolably preserved; it may therefore, most benign Sovereign Lord, like
your excellent goodness for the tender and universally indifferent zeal,
benign love and favour which your Highness beareth towards both the said
parties, that the said articles (if they shall be by your most clear and
perfect judgment, thought any instrument of the said disorders and
factions), being deeply and weightily, after your accustomed ways and
manner, searched and considered; graciously to provide (all violence on
both sides utterly and clearly set apart) some such necessary and behoveful
remedies as may effectually reconcile and bring in perpetual unity, your
said subjects, spiritual and temporal; and for the establishment thereof,
to make and ordain on both sides such strait laws against transgressors and
offenders as shall be too heavy, dangerous, and weighty for them, or any of
them, to bear, suffer, and sustain.

"Whereunto your said Commons most humbly and entirely beseech your Grace,
as the only Head, Sovereign Lord and Protector of both the said parties, in
whom and by whom the only and sole redress, reformation, and remedy herein
absolutely resteth [of your goodness to consent]. By occasion whereof all
your Commons in their conscience surely account that, beside the marvellous
fervent love that your Highness shall thereby engender in their hearts
towards your Grace, ye shall do the most princely feat, and show the most
honourable and charitable precedent and mirrour that ever did sovereign
lord upon his subjects; and therewithal merit and deserve of our merciful
God eternal bliss--whose goodness grant your Grace in goodly, princely, and
honourable estate long to reign, prosper, and continue as the Sovereign
Lord over all your said most humble and obedient servants."[226]

But little comment need be added in explanation of this petition, which,
though drawn with evident haste, is no less remarkable for temper and good
feeling, than for the masterly clearness with which the evils complained of
are laid bare. Historians will be careful for the future how they swell the
charges against Wolsey with quoting the lamentations of Archbishop Warham,
when his Court of Arches was for a while superseded by the Legate's Court,
and causes lingering before his commissaries were summarily dispatched at a
higher tribunal.[227] The archbishop professed, indeed, that he derived no
personal advantage fro