approval, they would be happy, they told him, to consider such suggestions as he might think proper to make. The spirit of the Plantagenets must have slumbered long before such words as these could have been addressed to an English sovereign, and little did the bishops dream that these light words were the spell which would burst the charm, and bid that spirit wake again in all its power and terror.
The House of Commons in the mean time had not been idle. To them the questions at issue were unencumbered with theoretic difficulties. Enormous abuses had been long ripe for solution, and there was no occasion to waste time in unnecessary debates. At such a time, with a House practically unanimous, business could be rapidly transacted, the more rapidly indeed in proportion to its importance. In six weeks, for so long only the session lasted, the astonished Church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up before the Lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their incomes would be dried up to flow no longer; or would flow only in shallow rivulets along the beds of the once abundant torrents. The jurisdiction of the spiritual courts was not immediately curtailed, and the authority which was in future to be permitted to Convocation lay over for further consideration, to be dealt with in another manner. But probate duties and legacy duties, hitherto assessed at discretion, were dwarfed into fixed proportions,[1]
- ↑ 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 5. An Act concerning fines and sums of money to be taken by the ministers of bishops and other ordinaries of holy Church for the probate of testaments.
