Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/196

18S THE GREAT STATUTE OF PRAEMUNIRE April It is probable that the terms of the statute in restraint of the Cistercians had been suggested by the commons. At any rate, the statute of 1390 was evidently regarded by them as an instru- ment that could be adapted to the reform of many kinds of ecclesiastical abuses. In the same parliament they asked for the imposition of the pains ordained ' against provisors in the court of Rome ' on those who accepted incompatible benefices, obtained papal dispensation for non-residence, or accepted new appropriations of churches. 1 Next year they wanted to extend the same penalties to those who put their benefices to farm and dwelt elsewhere as stipendiary chaplains, and to the principal officers of any order of friars which should accept as a recruit any one under twenty-one years of age. 2 None of the abuses of which the commons complained in these petitions had as yet been the object of legislation by Crown or parliament, and it is strange that the commons, with a free hand, should have wished to bring them under the act of 1390, if there was at their service a measure which was not only newer and less complicated but also of much wider range. In 1406 the commons presented a long petition about provisors who, having been prevented by the statute against them from securing possession of the benefices they claimed, took pro- ceedings in the curia against their successful rivals. This was an offence against more than one statute, and the petition was needlessly diffuse ; but it is of interest as showing that the commons regarded the act of 1390 as the most recent and important measure bearing on the question. 3 Again, in 1407 there was a petition against provisors resident at Rome who secured at the papal court sentences against English incumbents before these even knew that proceedings were being taken against them. The commons asked that no ordinary should admit any clerk to a benefice the previous incumbent of which had been deprived by ecclesiastical authority without being cited within the realm. Any ordinary acting to the contrary, and any presentee pursuing his claim to such a benefice, should, they suggested, incur the penalties ordained in the statute of 1390, the procedure to be followed being that prescribed in the statute of 1353. 4 The petition is of exceptional interest, and raises many points of common, statute, and canon law. The commons asserted that the abuse could only be remedied by fresh legislation ; but, even if the statutes of provisors were not sufficient, it seems to me that the statute of 1393, as afterwards interpreted, would have been an ample safeguard. The commons, however, were plainly trying to frustrate a subtle and dangerous attempt to circumvent 1 Rot. Parl. iii. 468. 2 Ibid. p. 501. Ibid. p. 595. Ibid. p. 614.