5] A few details only deserve further notice. The privilege of
the clergy to commit felony without punishment was at last abolished.
Felonious clerks were thenceforward to suffer like secular criminals. An
accident provided an illustrative example. A priest was executed in London
for chipping the coin, having been first drawn through the streets in the
usual way. Thirty women sued in vain for his pardon. He was hanged in his
habit, without being degraded, against the protest of the Bishop--"a thing
never done before since the Island was Christian."[176] The Constitutions
of Clarendon were to be enforced at last. The Arches court and the
Bishops' courts were reformed on similar lines, their methods and their
charges being brought within reasonable limits. Priests were no longer
allowed to evade the Mortmain Acts by working on death-bed terrors. The
exactions for mortuaries, legacy duties, and probate duties, long a
pleasant source of revenue, were abolished or cut down. The clergy in
their synods had passed what laws they pleased and enforced them with
spiritual terrors. The clergy were informed that they would no longer be
allowed to meet in synod without royal licence, and that their laws would
be revised by laymen. Chapuys wittily observed that the clergy were thus
being made of less account than cordwainers, who could at least enact
their own statutes.

A purpose of larger moment was announced by Henry for future execution.
More's chancellorship had been distinguished by heresy-prosecutions. The
stake in those three years had been more often lighted than under all the
administration of Wolsey. It was as if the Bishops had vented on those
poor victims their irritation at the rude treatment of their privileges.
The King said that the clergy's province was with souls, not with bodies.
They were not in future to arrest men on suspicion, imprison, examine, and
punish at their mere pleasure. There was an outcry, in which the
Chancellor joined. The King suspended his resolution for the moment, but
did not abandon it. He was specially displeased with More, from whom he
had expected better things. He intended to persist. "May God," exclaimed
the orthodox and shocked Chapuys, "send such a remedy as the intensity of
the evil requires."[177] None of Henry's misdeeds shocked Chapuys so
deeply as the tolerating heresy.

The Royal Supremacy had been accepted by Convocation. It was not yet
confirmed by Parliament. Norfolk felt the p