nded than decided. Wolsey's government
followed, in which the spiritual courts extended their powers still
further, and in reality exercised an offensive control over all the
relations of private life. Even the ecclesiastics did not love his
authority: they acquiesced in it because it was ecclesiastical: the
laity endured it with the utmost impatience.

It was inevitable that at the first fresh assembly of a Parliament
these contests about jurisdiction should be mentioned. The Lower House
began its action with a detailed charge against the spiritual courts,
not merely against their abuses and the oppression that arose from
them, but against their very existence and their legislation; the
clergy made laws without the King's foreknowledge, without the
participation of any laymen, and yet the laity were bound by them. The
King was called on to reconcile his subjects of the spiritual and
temporal estate with each other by good laws, since he was their sole
head, the sovereign, lord and protector of both parties.

It was a slight phrase,[107] 'the sole head of his subjects spiritual
and temporal,' but one of the weightiest import. The very existence of
the clergy as an order had hitherto depended precisely on their claim
to a legislative power independent of the temporal supremacy as being
their original right: on its universal maintenance rested the Papacy
and its influence on the several countries. Were the clergy now to
leave it to the King, who however only represented the temporal power,
to adjust the differences between their legislation and that of the
state? Were they, like the laity, virtually to recognise him as their
Head?

It is clear that they would thus sever themselves from the great union
under one spiritual Head, from the constitution of the Latin Church.
Whoever it was that introduced the word 'Head,' no doubt had this in
view. The King and the laity took it up, they wished only to induce
the clergy themselves to come to a resolution in this sense.

The chief motive which was to serve this purpose is connected with the
lordship which the Popes possessed in England in the thirteenth
century, or rather with the reaction against it which went on
throughout the fourteenth. This is most distinctly expressed in the
statutes of 1393, which threatened with the severest penalties all
participation in any attempt, to the injury of the King's supremacy,
to obtain a church-benefice from Rome; and this too even wher