two questions, on the resolution of which the sentence which he was to pass was dependent.
The first had been already answered separately by the bench of bishops and by the universities, and had been agitated from end to end of Europe—was it lawful to marry the widow of a brother dying without issue, but having consummated his marriage; and was the Levitical prohibition of such a marriage grounded on a divine law. with which the Pope could not dispense, or on a canon law of which a dispensation was permissible?[1]
The Pope had declared himself unable to answer; but he had allowed that the general opinion was against the power of dispensing,[2] and there could be little doubt, therefore, of the reply of the English Convocation, or at least of the Upper House. Fisher attempted an opposition; but wholly without effect. The question was one in which the interests of the higher clergy were not concerned, and they were therefore left to the dominion of their ordinary understandings. Out of two hundred and sixty-three votes, nineteen only were in the Pope's favour.[3]
The Lower House was less unanimous, as might have been expected, and as had been experienced before; the opposition spirit of the English clergy being usually then, as much as now, in the ratio of their poverty. But there too the nature of the case compelled an over-
