n always thought to be, and is also
at this hour sufficient and meet of itself, without the interfering of any
exterior person or persons, to declare and determine all such doubts, and
to administer all such offices and duties as to the administration of their
rooms spiritual doth appertain): and the laws temporal, for trial of
property of lands and goods, and for the conservation of the people of this
realm in unity and peace, having been and yet being administered, adjudged,
and executed by sundry judges and administers of the said body politic
called the temporalty: and seeing that both these authorities and
jurisdictions do conjoin together for the due administration of justice,
the one to help the other: and whereas the king's most noble progenitors,
and the nobility and commons of this said realm at divers and sundry
parliaments, as well in the time of King Edward I., Edward III., Richard
II., Henry IV., and other noble kings of this realm, made sundry
ordinances, laws, and provisions for the conservation of the prerogatives,
liberties, and pre-eminences of the imperial crown of this realm, and of
the jurisdiction spiritual and temporal of the same, to keep it from the
annoyance as well of the see of Rome as from the authority of other foreign
potentates attempting the diminution or violation thereof, as often as from
time to time any such annoyance or attempt might be known or espied: and
notwithstanding the said good statutes and ordinances, and since the making
thereof, divers inconveniences and dangers not provided for plainly by the
said statutes, have risen and sprung by reason of appeals sued out of this
realm to the see of Rome, in causes testamentary, causes of matrimony and
divorce, right of tithes, oblations, and obventions, not only to the great
inquietation, vexation, trouble, costs, and charges of the King's Highness,
and many of his subjects and residents in this his realm; but also to the
delay and let of the speedy determination of the said causes, for so much
as parties appealing to the said court of Rome most commonly do the same
for the delay of justice; and forasmuch as the great distance of way is so
far out of this realm, so that the necessary proofs, nor the true knowledge
of the causes, can neither there be so well known, nor the witnesses so
well examined there as within this realm, so that the parties grieved by
means of the said appeals be most times without remedy; in consideration
hereof