ut also a manly answer.
They would not affirm, they said, that the pope had a right to
excommunicate them in such cases, and they would not say that he had not.
It was clear, however, that legal or illegal, such excommunication was
against the privileges of the English crown, and therefore that, on the
whole, they would and ought to be with the crown, _loialment_, like loyal
subjects, as they were bound by their allegiance.[461]

In this unusual and emphatic manner, the three estates agreed that the pope
should be resisted; and an act passed "that all persons suing at the court
of Rome, and obtaining thence any bulls, instruments, sentences of
excommunication which touched the king, or were against him, his regality,
or his realm, and they which brought the same within the realm, or received
the same, or made thereof notification, or any other execution whatever,
within the realm or without, they, their notaries, procurators, maintainers
and abettors, fautors and counsellors, should be put out of the king's
protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, be
forfeited."

The resolute attitude of the country terminated the struggle. Boniface
prudently yielded, and for the moment; and indeed for ever under this
especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back. The temper
which had been roused in the contest, might perhaps have carried the nation
further. The liberties of the crown had been asserted successfully. The
analogous liberties of the church might have followed; and other channels,
too, might have been cut off, through which the papal exchequer fed itself
on English blood. But at this crisis the anti-Roman policy was arrested in
its course by another movement, which turned the current of suspicion, and
frightened back the nation to conservatism.

While the crown and the parliament had been engaged with the pope, the
undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the
people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against
the spiritual authorities at home. The parliament had lamented that the
duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of the
extortions of their superiors abroad. The people, who were equally
convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an interpretation of the
phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and attributed it to the
temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence generated by enormous
wealth.

This