been Archbishop of Canterbury thirty years, took credit to himself for the
reforms which, under the pressure of public opinion, he had introduced, in
the last few weeks or months; and did not know that in doing so he had
passed sentence on a life of neglect. In the opinion of the entire bench no
infamy, however notorious, could shake the testimony of a witness in a case
of heresy; no cruelty was unjust when there was suspicion of so horrible a
crime; while the appointment of minors to church benefices (not to press
more closely the edge of the accusation) they admitted while they affected
to deny it; since they were not ashamed to defend the appropriation of the
proceeds of benefices occupied by such persons, if laid out on the
education and maintenance of the minors themselves.

Yet these things were as nothing in comparison with the powers claimed for
convocation; and the prelates of the later years of Henry's reign must have
looked back with strange sensations at the language which their
predecessors had so simply addressed to him. If the canons which
convocation might think good to enact were not consistent with the laws of
the Realm, "His Majesty" was desired to produce the wished-for uniformity
by altering the laws of the Realm; and although the bishops might not
submit their laws to His Majesty's approval, they would be happy, they told
him, to consider such suggestions as he might think proper to make. The
spirit of the Plantagenets must have slumbered long before such words as
these could have been addressed to an English sovereign, and little did the
bishops dream that these light words were the spell which would burst the
charm, and bid that spirit wake again in all its power and terror.

The House of Commons in the mean time had not been idle. To them the
questions at issue were unincumbered with theoretic difficulties. Enormous
abuses had been long ripe for dissolution, and there was no occasion to
waste time in unnecessary debates. At such a time, with a House practically
unanimous, business could be rapidly transacted, the more rapidly indeed in
proportion to its importance. In six weeks, for so long only the session
lasted, the astonished church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up
before the Lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their
incomes would be dried up to flow no longer; or would flow only in shallow
rivulets along the beds of the once abundant torrents, The jurisdiction of