when such New Testaments as the diligence of the apparitors could discover,
were solemnly burned.

From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was furnished by
the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce its due effect,
it was accompanied with the further information that the clergy of the
province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon payment of a
hundred thousand pounds--a very considerable fine, amounting to more than a
million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds was required simultaneously
from the province of York; and the whole sum was to be paid in instalments
spread over a period of five years.[293] The demand was serious, but the
clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the chances of the law;
and feeling that, with the people so unfavourably disposed towards them,
they had no chance of a more equitable construction of their position, they
consented with a tolerable grace, the Upper House of Convocation first, the
Lower following. Their debates upon the subject have not been preserved. It
was probably difficult to persuade them that they were treated with
anything but the most exquisite injustice; since Wolsey's legatine
faculties had been the object of their general dread; and if he had
remained in power, the religious orders would have been exposed to a
searching visitation in virtue of these faculties, from which they could
have promised themselves but little advantage. But their punishment, if
tyrannical in form, was equitable in substance, and we can reconcile
ourselves without difficulty to an act of judicial confiscation.

The money, however, was not the only concession which the threat of the
premunire gave opportunity to extort; and it is creditable to the clergy
that the demand which they showed most desire to resist was not that which
most touched their personal interests. In the preamble of the subsidy bill,
under which they were to levy their ransom, they were required by the
council to designate the king by the famous title which gave occasion for
such momentous consequences, of "Protector and only Supreme Head of the
Church and Clergy of England."[294] It is not very easy to see what Henry
proposed to himself by requiring this designation, at so early a stage in
the movement. The breach with the pope was still distant, and he was
prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even seriously contemplate
a step which he so little desired. It