authority without any interposition from the crown; the exclusive jurisdiction it claimed over all ecclesiastical persons and causes; and the privilegium clericale, or benefit of clergy, which delivered all clerks from any trial or punishment except before their own tribunal. But the history and progress of ecclesiastical courts, as well as of purchases in mortmain', have already been fully discussed in the preceding volumes: and we shall have an opportunity of examining at large the nature of the privilegium clericale in the progress of the present book. And therefore I shall only observe at present, that notwithstanding this plan of pontifical power was so deeply laid, and so indefatigably pursued by the unwearied politics of the court of Rome through a long succession of ages; notwithstanding it was polished and improved by the united endeavours of a body of men, who engrossed all the learning of Europe for centuries together; notwithstanding it was firmly and resolutely executed by persons the best calculated for establishing tyranny and despotism, being fired with a bigoted enthusiasm, (which prevailed not only among the weak and simple, but even among those of the best natural and acquired endowments,) unconnected with their fellow-subjects, and totally indifferent what might befal that posterity to which they bore no endearing relation: - yet it vanished into nothing, when the eyes of the people were a [110] little enlightened, and they set themselves with vigour to oppose it. So vain and ridiculous is the attempt to live in society, without acknowledging the obligations which it lays us under; and to affect an entire independence of that civil state, which protects us in all our rights, and gives us every other liberty, that only excepted of despising the laws of the community. HAVING thus, in some degree, endeavoured to trace out the original and subsequent progress of the papal usurpations in England, let us now return to the statutes of praemunire, which were framed to encounter this overgrown yet increasing evil. King Edward I., a wise and magnanimous prince, set himself in earnest to shake off this servile yoke. He would not suffer his bishops to attend a general council, till they had • See Vol. III. pag.61. See Vol. II. pag 268. * Dav. 83., &c. sworn not to receive the papal benediction. He made light of all papal bulles and processes: attacking Scotland in defiance of one: and seizing the temporalties of his clergy, who under pretence of another refused to pay a tax imposed by parliament. (5) He strengthened the statutes of mortmain; thereby closing the great gulph, in which all the lands of the kingdom were in danger of being swallowed. And, one of his subjects having obtained a bulle of excommunication against another, he ordered him to be executed as a traitor, according to the antient law". (6) And in the thirty-fifth year of his reign was made the first statute against papal provisions, being, according to sir Edward Coke', the foundation of all the subsequent statutes of praemunire, which we rank as an offence immediately against the king, because every encouragement of the papal power is a diminution of the authority of the crown. In the weak reign of Edward the second the pope again endeavoured to encroach, but the parliament manfully withstood him; and it was one of the principal articles charged against that unhappy prince, that he had given allowance to the bulles of the see of Rome. But Edward the third was of a temper extremely different: and to remedy these inconveniences first by gentle means, he and his nobility wrote an [ 111 ] expostulation to the pope; but receiving a menacing and contemptuous answer, withal acquainting him, that the emperor, (who a few years before at the diet of Nuremberg, A. D. 1323, had established a law against provisions *,) and 14. h Bro. Abr. tit. Corone. 115. Treason, 5 Rep. p.1. fol. 12. 30 Ass. 19. i 2 Inst. 583. k Mod. Un. Hist. xxix. 293. (5) At this time the clergy taxed themselves; it was not, therefore, for refusing to pay a tax imposed by parliament, in which they would have been fully justified, but for procuring a bulle, by which the clergy of all Christian countries were forbidden to grant to laymen, the revenues of their benefices, without leave of the holy see, and under the protection of it refusing the king a fifth, that he issued a proclamation of outlawry against them, and took possession of all their lay fees, goods, and chattels. Lingard, Hist. iii. 340. (6) But because that lawe had not of long time bcene put in execution, the chancellor and treasurer kneeled before the king, and obtained grace for him, so as he was onely banished out of the realme. Davis, 95. and the placita referred to in Brooke. also the king of France, had lately submitted to the holy see; In the reign of Richard the second, it was found necessary to sharpen and strengthen these laws, and therefore it was enacted by statutes 3 Ric. II. c. 3. and 7 Ric. II. c. 12. first, that no alien should be capable of letting his benefice to farm; in order to compel such as had crept in, at least to reside on their preferments: and, afterwards, that no alien should be [112] capable to be presented to any ecclesiastical preferment, under the penalty of the statutes of provisors. By the statute 12 Ric. II. c. 15. all liegemen of the king, accepting of a living by any foreign provision, are put out of the king's protection, and the benefices made void. To which the statute 13 Ric. II. st. 2. c. 2. adds banishment and forfeiture of lands and goods: and by c. 3. of the same statute, any person bringing over any citation or excommunication from beyond sea, 1 Stat. 25 Edw. III. st.6. 27 Edw. III. st.1. c.1. 38 Edw. III. st. 1. c.4. and st. 2. c. 1, 2, 3, 4, m Seld. in Flet. 10. 4. on account of the execution of the foregoing statutes of provisors, shall be imprisoned, forfeit his goods and lands, and moreover suffer pain of life and member. In the writ for the execution of all these statutes the words praemunire facias, being (as we said) used to command a citation of the party, have denominated in common speech not only the writ, but the offence itself of maintaining the papal power, by the name of praemunire. And accordingly the next statute I shall mention, which is generally referred to by all subsequent statutes, is usually called the statute of praemunire. It is the statute 16 Ric. II. c.5. which enacts, that whoever procures at Rome, or elsewhere, any translations, processes, excommunications, bulles, instruments, or other things, which touch the king, against him, his crown, and realm, and all persons aiding and assisting therein, shall be put out of the king's protection, their lands and goods forfeited to the king's use, and they shall be attached by their bodies to answer to the king and his council: or process of praemunire facias shall be made out against them as in other cases of provisors. (7) By the statute 2 Hen. IV. c. 3. all persons who accept any provision from the pope, to be exempt from canonical obedience to their proper ordinary, are also subjected to the penalties of praemunire. And this is the last of our antient statutes touching this offence; the usurped civil power of the (7) In the parliament in which this statute was drawn up, the king upon the petition of the commons, had inquired of the estates of the realm, what they would do, if the pope were to excommunicate bishops for instituting the king's presentees, where they had obtained judgment in the king's courts against the appointees of the pope; or should attempt to translate them from their present sees to other sees out of the kingdom (a mode then in use for getting rid of an obnoxious bishop). The answer of the lords and commons was in substance that they would stand by the king, to live and die, against proceedings such as these, which would be subversive of the rights of the crown. The prelates agreed in their condemnation of such acts, and their determination to resist them, but declared that they did not intend to deny the pope's general right of excommunication and translation. Upon these answers the statute was framed; Doctor Lingard doubts whether it was ever formally passed, but it was always acted on, and has been legislatively recognised as a valid statute in many instances. Lingard's Hist. iv. 310. bishop of Rome being pretty well broken down by these statutes, as his usurped religious power was in about a century afterwards; the spirit of the nation being so much raised [ 113 ] against foreigners, that about this time, in the reign of Henry the fifth, the alien priories, or abbeys for foreign monks, were suppressed, and their lands given to the crown. And no farther attempts were afterwards made in support of these foreign jurisdictions. [114] A LEARNED writer, before referred to, is therefore greatly mistaken, when he says ", that in Henry the sixth's time the archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops offered to the king a large supply, if he would consent that all laws against provisors, and especially the statute 16 Ric. II., might be repealed; but that this motion was rejected. This account is incorrect in all it's branches. For, first, the application, which he probably means, was made not by the bishops only, but by the unanimous consent of a provincial synod, assembled in 1439, 18 Hen. VI., that very synod which at the same time refused to confirm and allow a papal bulle, which then was laid before them. Next, the purport of it was not to procure a repeal of the statutes against provisors, or that of Richard II. in particular; but to request that the penalties thereof, which by a forced construction were applied to all that sued in the spiritual, and even in many temporal, courts of this realm, might be turned against the proper objects only; those who appealed to Rome, or to any foreign jurisdiction: the tenor of the petition being, "that those penalties should "be taken to extend only to those that commenced any suits 66 “ or procured any writs or public instruments at Rome or ،، elsewhere out of England; and that no one should be pro"secuted upon that statute for any suit in the spiritual courts or lay jurisdictions of this kingdom." Lastly, the motion was so far from being rejected, that the king promised to recommend it to the next parliament, and in the mean time that no one should be molested upon this account. And the clergy were so satisfied with their success, that they granted to the king a whole tenth upon this occasion °. 66 AND indeed so far was the archbishop, who presided in this synod, from countenancing the usurped power of the |