affairs in London, Suffolk, as
President of the Privy Council, was to accompany the King in person.
The chief direction of the administration passed over to the two
leading lay lords.

Henry VIII's resolution to call the Parliament together was of almost
greater importance for the progress of events than the alteration in
the ministry.

During the fourteen years of his administration Wolsey had summoned
Parliament only once, and that was when, in order to carry on the war
in alliance with the Emperor against France, he needed an
extraordinary grant of money. But his opening discourses were received
with silence and dislike. Never, says a contemporary who was present,
was the need of money more pressingly represented to a Parliament and
never was there greater opposition; after a fortnight's consultation
the proposal only passed at a moment when the members of the King's
household and court formed the majority of those present.[105] The
Parliament and the country always murmured at Wolsey's oppressive and
lavish finance management;[106] a later attempt to raise taxes that
had not been voted doubled the outcry against him. His fall and the
convocation of a Parliament seemed a return to parliamentary
principles in general, which in themselves exactly agreed with the
view taken by the King in the present questions.

In the first years of Henry VIII the Parliament had wished to do away
with some of the most startling exemptions of the clergy from the
temporal jurisdiction, for instance in reference to the crimes of
felony and murder; the ecclesiastics had on the other hand extended
their jurisdiction yet further, even to cases that had reference
solely to questions of property. Hence the antagonism between the two
jurisdictions had revived at that time with bitter keenness. It is
noticeable that the temporal claims were upheld by a learned Minorite,
Henry Standish, who declared it to be quite lawful to limit the
ecclesiastical privileges for the sake of the public good; especially
in the case of a crime that did not properly come before any spiritual
court. Both sides then applied to the King: the ecclesiastics reminded
him that he ought to uphold the rights of Holy Church, the laymen that
he should maintain the powers of jurisdiction belonging to the crown.
The King's declaration was favourable to the laymen; he recommended
the clergy to acquiesce in some exceptions from their decretals. But
the contest was rather suspe