ritable fashion may be devised by your
wisdom for the calling of any of your subjects before us, that it shall not
stand in the only will and pleasure of the ordinaries at their own
imagination, without lawful accusation by honest witness, according to your
law; to this we say that a better provision cannot be devised than is
already devised by the clergy in our opinion; and if any default appear in
the execution, it shall be amended on declaration of the particulars, and
the same proved.

"Item where they say that your subjects be cited out of the diocese which
they dwell in, and many times be suspended and excommunicate for light
causes upon the only certificate devised by the proctors, and that all your
subjects find themselves grieved with the excessive fees taken in the
spiritual courts:

"To this article, for because it concerneth specially the spiritual courts
of me the Archbishop of Canterbury, please it your Grace to understand that
about twelve months past I reformed certain things objected here; and now
within these ten weeks I reformed many other things in my said courts, as I
suppose is not unknown unto your Grace's Commons; and some of the fees of
the officers of my courts I have brought down to halves, some to the third
part, and some wholly taken away and extincted; and yet it is objected to
me as though I had taken no manner of reformation therein. Nevertheless I
shall not cease yet; but in such things as I shall see your Commons most
offended I will set redress accordingly, so as, I trust, they will be
contented in that behalf. And I, the said archbishop, beseech your Grace to
consider what service the doctors in civil law, which have had their
practice in my courts, have done your Grace concerning treaties, truces,
confederations, and leagues devised and concluded with outward princes; and
that without such learned men in civil law your Grace could not have been
so conveniently served as at all times you have been, which thing, perhaps,
when such learned men shall fail, will appear more evident than it doth
now. The decay whereof grieveth me to foresee, not so greatly for any cause
concerning the pleasure or profit of myself, being a man spent, and at the
point to depart this world, and having no penny of any advantage by my said
courts, but principally for the good love which I bear to the honour of
your Grace and of your realm. And albeit there is, by the assent of the
Lords Temporal and the Commons