the acts of this Session.[1] A few details only deserve further notice. The privilege of the clergy to commit felony without punishment was at last abolished. Felonious clerks were thenceforward to suffer like secular criminals. An accident provided an illustrative example. A priest was executed in London for chipping the coin, having been first drawn through the streets in the usual way. Thirty women sued in vain for his pardon. He was hanged in his habit, without being degraded, against the protest of the Bishop—"a thing never done before since the Island was Christian."[2] The Constitutions of Clarendon were to be enforced at last. The Arches court and the Bishops' courts were reformed on similar lines, their methods and their charges being brought within reasonable limits. Priests were no longer allowed to evade the Mortmain Acts by working on death-bed terrors. The exactions for mortuaries, legacy duties, and probate duties, long a pleasant source of revenue, were abolished or cut down. The clergy in their synods had passed what laws they pleased and enforced them with spiritual terrors. The clergy were informed that they would no longer be allowed to meet in synod without royal licence, and that their laws would be revised by laymen. Chapuys wittily observed that the clergy were thus being made of less account than cordwainers, who could at least enact their own statutes.
A purpose of larger moment was announced by Henry for future execution. More's chancellorship had been distinguished by heresy-prosecutions. The stake in those three years had been more often lighted
- ↑ History of England, vol. i. p. 322, etc.
- ↑ Carlo Capello to the Signory, July 10, 1532.—Venetian Calendar, vol. iv. p. 342.
