Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/193

1922 THE GREAT STATUTE OF PRAEMUNIRE 185 the statute of provisors and that the parliament he had in mind was really that of 1390. 1 It may be concluded that while it was remembered that the parliament of 1393 had dealt with the relations of England and the papacy, the general public, clergy and laity alike, did not ascribe to it any legislation as severe and comprehensive as the statute of praemunire was afterwards supposed to be. Even greater is the indifference of official records to the ' great statute of praemunire '. It duly appears on the statute roll of 16 Richard II. It forms the subject of a petition of the arch- bishops and bishops in 1439. 2 Between these dates I have not found in official documents any mention of the statute or, except perhaps in a record of 1434, any evidence of its existence. It is notoriously dangerous to base any conclusion on an argument from silence. Nevertheless, the absence from official documents, English or papal, of all apparent allusion to the statute for more than forty years after it was passed does seem to 1 ' Idem dominus Henricus . . . quoddam statutum nefandissimum promulgatum et renovatum in Parliamento apud Wintoniam anno Domini Regis [lacuna in text] scienter approbat, ratificat et sustinet, nee aliud remedium quam illud ordinal vel opponit : quod quidem statutum est directe contra Curiam Romanam, eius potestatem ac principatum a Domino nostro lesu Christo, Beato Petro, eiusque successoribus Romanis Pontificibus traditam et collatam ; quibus omnium beneficiorum Ecclesia- sticorum tarn superiorum quam inferiorum plena et libera dispositio, ordinatio et collatio . . . deberet ut noscitur pertinere. Quod statutum nefandum est causa efficiens multorum scelerum et peccaminum. . . . Quia plures Episcopi, Abbates, Priores, et Prelati . . . vacantia beneficia conferunt iuvenibus et illiterates et indignis personis. . . . Et vix reperitur aliquis Praelatus taliter Beneficium conferens, quin ex conven- tione ac pacto vult habere singulis annis tertiam vel dimidiam partem Beneficii sic collati. Et sic his diebus non promovent aliquos, nisi suos filios spurios et cognates, secum in peccatis enormibus laborantes, et commensales. Ita quod per istud statutum destruitur Clerus Universitatum. Quia Milites et Armigeri, Mercatores et tota regni communitas potius eligunt filios suos et cognatos apprenticios facere vel constituere in aliqua arte temporali vel saeculari, quam ad aliquam Universitatem pro Clericis fiendis mittere ' : Wharton, Anglia Sacra, ii. 366 seq. The writer evidently did not know the date of the parliament to which he alludes ; he left a blank space for it, but never filled it in. There is no record of any anti-papal statute having been ' promulgatum et renovatum ' in the parliament of 1393 ; on the other hand, if we take promulgatum in the sense of ' recited ' the phrase gives a fairly accurate impression of what happened to the statute of provisors in 1390. The original statute, that of 1351, was recited and declared to be in force, its scope being somewhat extended and new penalties being prescribed for its infringement. The effect of the statute of provisors on the universities was a frequent cause of com- plaint during the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V (cf. Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 241 seqq. ; Chron. Adae de Usk, p. 60 ; Rot. Parl. iv. 81). In 1403 the king suspended the statute in favour of graduates of the universities (Wilkins, iii. 275 seqq.), but apparently this concession was withdrawn in 1407, when it was enacted that the statutes against provisors should be strictly observed, notwithstanding any relaxation of them which the king had been authorized to make (Statutes, ii. 161). It was perhaps of this that the writer of the tract was thinking when he spoke of the king as having ' ratified ' the obnoxious statute. There is no record of Henry's having ratified or having in any way noticed the statute of 1393. Wilkins, iii. 534.