1547.]
THE PROTECTORATE.
301
reign, he said the prerogative had more than once come in collision with the law, and had been worsted by it.[1]
- ↑ He mentions curious instances;—'Whether a king may command against a common law or an Act of Parliament, there is never a judge or other man in the realm ought to know more by experience of that the laws have said than I.'First, my Lord Cardinal, that obtained his legacy by our late Sovereign Lord's requirements at Rome, yet, because it was against the laws of the realm, the judges concluded the offence of Premunire, which matter I bare away, and took it for a law of the realm, because the lawyers said so, but my reason digested it not. The lawyers, for confirmation of their doings, brought in the case of Lord Tiptoft. An earl he was, and learned in the civil laws, who being chancellor, because in execution of the King's commandment he offended the laws of the realm, suffered on Tower Hill. They brought in examples of many judges that had fines set on their heads in like cases for transgression of laws by the King's commandment, and this I learned in that case.'Since that time being of the council, when many proclamations were devised against the carriers out of corn, when it came to punish the offender, the judges would answer it might not be by the law, because the Act of Parliament gave liberty, wheat being under a price. Whereupon at last followed the Act of Proclamations, in the passing whereof were many large words spoken.'After mentioning other cases, he goes on:—'I reasoned once in the Parliament House, where there was free speech without danger; and the Lord Audely, to satisfy me, because I was in some secret estimation, as he knew, 'Thou art a good fellow, Bishop,' quoth he; 'look at the Act of Supremacy, and there the King's doings be restrained to spiritual jurisdiction; and in another Act no spiritual law shall have place contrary to a common law, or an Act of Parliament. An this were not,' quoth he, 'you bishops would enter in with the King, and by means of his supremacy order the laws as ye listed. But we will provide,' quoth he, 'that the Premunire shall never go off your heads.' This I bare away then, and held my peace.'—Gardiner to the Protector: MS. Harleian, 417; Foxe, vol. vi.
self into most extreme danger in your absence, I could have stayed the matter, beside my duty to God and my Sovereign Lord, I had done you a pleasure.'—Correspondence of Gardiner with the Protector: Foxe, vol. vi. On the other hand, Paget, in the letter of remonstrance to which I have referred, speaks as if Somerset listened to no one whose views did not coincide with his own.
