e
courts of the two countries. A decision was given in England in favour of
the nominee of the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were
excommunicated.[458] The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a
struggle of force, and the government had no alternative but to surrender
at discretion, or to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation.

The proceedings on this occasion seem to have been unusual, and significant
of the importance of the crisis. Parliament either was sitting at the time
when the excommunication was issued, or else it was immediately assembled;
and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of a petition to the king, a
declaration of the circumstances which had occurred. After having stated
generally the English law on the presentation to benefices, "Now of late,"
they added, "divers processes be made by his Holiness the Pope, and
censures of excommunication upon certain bishops, because they have made
execution of the judgments [given in the king's courts], to the open
disherison of the crown; whereby, if remedy be not provided, the crown of
England, which hath been so free at all times, that it has been in no
earthly subjection, should be submitted to the pope; and the laws and
statutes of the realm by him be defeated and avoided at his will, in
perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of the king our lord, his crown,
his regality, and all his realm." The Commons, therefore, on their part,
declared, "That the things so attempted were clearly against the king's
crown and his regality, used and approved of in the time of all his
progenitors, and therefore they and all the liege commons of the realm
would stand with their said lord the king, and his said crown, in the cases
aforesaid, to live and die."[459] Whether they made allusion to the act of
1389 does not appear--a measure passed under protest from one of the
estates of the realm was possibly held unequal to meet the emergency--at
all events they would not rely upon it. For after this peremptory assertion
of their own opinion, they desired the king, "and required him in the way
of justice," to examine severally the lords spiritual and temporal how they
thought, and how they would stand.[460] The examination was made, and the
result was satisfactory. The lay lords replied without reservation that
they would support the crown. The bishops (they were in a difficulty for
which all allowance must be made) gave a cautious, b