gnored. The crowd laughed and hooted. The clergy
fiercely tightened their purse-strings, and the bishop was heard out with
hardly restrained indignation. "My lord," it was shortly answered by one of
them, "twenty nobles a year is but a bare living for a priest. Victual and
all else is now so dear that poverty enforceth us to say nay. Besides that,
my lord, we never meddled with the cardinal's faculties. Let the bishops
and abbots which have offended pay." Loud clamour followed and shouts of
applause. The bishop's officers gave the priests high words. The priests
threw back the taunts as they came; and the London citizens, delighting in
the scandalous quarrel, hounded on the opposition. From words they passed
to blows; the bedell and vergers tried to keep order, but "were buffeted
and stricken,"[339] and the meeting broke up in wild uproar and confusion.
For this matter five of the lay crowd and fifteen London curates were sent
to the Tower by Sir Thomas More; but the undignified manoeuvre had failed,
and the fruit of it was but fresh disgrace. United, the clergy might have
defied the king and the parliament; but in the race of selfishness the
bishops and high dignitaries had cared only for their own advantage. They
had left the poorer members of their order with no interest in common with
that of their superiors, beyond the shield which the courts consented to
extend over moral delinquency; and in the hour of danger they found
themselves left naked and alone to bear the storm as they were able.

This incident, and it was perhaps but one of many, is not likely to have
softened the disposition of the Commons, or induced them to entertain more
respectfully the bishops' own estimate of their privileges. The convocation
and the parliament met simultaneously, on the 15th of January, and the
conflict, which had been for two years in abeyance, recommenced. The
initial measure was taken by convocation, and this body showed a spirit
still unsubdued, and a resolution to fight in their own feebly tyrannical
manner to the last. A gentleman in Gloucestershire had lately died, by name
Tracy. In his last testament he had bequeathed his soul to God through the
mercies of Christ, declining the mediatorial offices of the saints; and
leaving no money to be expended in masses.[340] Such notorious heresy could
not be passed over with impunity, and the first step of the assembled
clergy[341] was to issue a commission to raise the body and burn i