, rendered necessary a general pardon,
which was immediately drawn out. The government, however, while granting
absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their
lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to
conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had
been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of
despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. The
overthrow of the last ecclesiastical minister was an opportunity to teach
them that the privileges which they had abused were at an end; and as the
lesson was so difficult for them to learn, the letter of the law which they
had broken was put in force to quicken their perceptions. They were to be
punished indirectly for their other evil doings, and forced to surrender
some portion of the unnumbered exactions which they had extorted from the
helplessness of their flocks.

In pursuance of this resolution, therefore, official notice was issued in
December, 1530, that the clergy lay all under a premunire, and that the
crown intended to prosecute. Convocation was to meet in the middle of
January, and this comforting fact was communicated to the bishops in order
to divert their attention to subjects which might profitably occupy their
deliberations. The church legislature had sate in the preceding years
contemporaneously with the sitting of parliament, at the time when their
privileges were being discussed, and when their conduct had been so angrily
challenged: but these matters had not disturbed their placid equanimity:
and while the bishops were composing their answer to the House of Commons,
Convocation had been engaged in debating the most promising means of
persecuting heretics and preventing the circulation of the Bible.[291] The
session had continued into the spring of 1529-30, when the king had been
prevailed upon to grant an order in council prohibiting Tyndale's
Testament, in the preface of which the clergy were spoken of
disrespectfully.[292] His consent had been obtained with great difficulty,
on the representation of the bishops that the translation was faulty, and
on their undertaking themselves to supply the place of it with a corrected
version. But in obtaining the order, they supposed themselves to have
gained a victory; and their triumph was celebrated in St. Paul's churchyard
with an auto da fe, over which the Bishop of London consented to preside;