those who were wise enough to read them, which might suggest that all was not as sound in the Church as it appeared to be, yet it was not until the divorce question came into agitation that they became visible to ordinary men. Not only was the divorce question the main cause of the fall of Wolsey, but it also led directly to that quarrel with the Pope which brought on the whole antipapal legislation of Henry VIII. and the destruction of the monasteries, and had no little connection with the especial and peculiar form taken by the English Reformation.
One previous occurrence, arising out of the trial of Dr. Horsey, the Bishop of London's chancellor, for the murder of a citizen named Hun, which took place in the years 1513 and 1514, seems to show something both of the strained tone of feeling which subsisted between the clergy and laity, at any rate in London, and also of the extreme sensitiveness of the King in regard to anything which appeared to touch his own prerogative.[1] The case involved the whole question of the liability of clerical felons to the jurisdiction of the ordinary criminal law; it seems to have been taken up warmly by the clergy on one side and the lawyers on the other, and argued with no little acerbity on both sides before the King in person. A certain minority of the clergy, represented on the present occasion by Dr. Standish, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and Dr. Veysey, dean of the Chapel Royal, and afterwards Bishop of Exeter, maintained the view that the clergy might be, and in England had been, amenable to the ordinary criminal courts; but it seems to have been a very small one. The King's remark at the conclusion of the arguments is given by Burnet as follows: 'By the permission and ordinance
- ↑ The story is told at length by Burnet, vol. i. pp. 38-49.
