said the king held his crown of God, and all such threatenings ought to be rejected with scorn and indignation."

To all these the chancellor made a long and flattering answer; for which he had the usual reward of a cardinal's cap. He set forth the danger the king was in, being engaged in the war of Italy; the pope threatening him with censures: for the Pragmatic Sanction was then condemned by the pope, and that censure was ratified by the council in the Lateran; upon which he would have reassumed all the old oppressions, if the king had not entered into that treaty, yielding some points to save the rest. He said, the kings of the first race nominated to bishoprics; for which he cited precedents from Gregory of Tours. So the kings of England. did name, and the popes upon that gave provisions: the kings of Scotland did also name, but not by virtue of a right, but rather by connivance. He said, elections had gone through various forms; sometimes popes did elect, sometimes princes with the people, sometimes princes took it into their own hands, sometimes the whole clergy without the people, and, of late, the canons chose without the concurrence of the clergy. That the king being in these difficulties, all those about him, and all those in France who were advised with in the matter, thought the accepting the Concordats was just and necessary. Pope Leo repented that he had granted so much; and it was not without great difficulty that he brought the cardinals to consent to it: he went very copiously, as a canonist, through the other heads, softening some abuses, and showing that others had a long practice for them, and were observed in other kingdoms.

And thus was this matter carried in the parliament of Paris, in which, as the court showed great integrity and much courage, which deserve the highest characters with which such noble patriots ought to be honoured; so, in this instance, we see how feeble the resistance, even of the worthiest judges, will prove to a prince who has possessed himself of the whole legislative authority; when he intends to break through established laws and constitutions, and to sacrifice the rights of his crown, and the interests of his people, to serve particular ends of his own. In such cases, the generous integrity of judges, or other ministers, will be resented as an attempt on the sovereign authority and such is the nature of arbitrary power, that the most modest defence of law and justice, when it crosses the designs of an insolent and corrupt minister, and an abused prince, will pass for disobedience and sedition.

If the assembly of the states in France had maintained

their share of the legislative power, and had not suffered the right they once had to be taken from them, of being liable to no taxes but by their own consent, these judges would have been better supported; and the opposition they made upon this occasion would have drawn after it all the most signal expressions of honour and esteem that a nation owes to the trustees of their laws and liberties, when they maintain them resolutely, and dispense them equally. And the corrupt chancellor would have received such punishment as all wicked ministers deserve, who, for their own ends, betray the interests of their country.

The court of parliament showed great firmness after this; and it appeared, that the protestation that they made, of judging still according to the Pragmatic, was not only a piece of form to save their credit. The archbishop of Sens died soon after; and the king sent to inhibit the chapter to proceed to an election. It was understood that he designed to give it to the bishop of Paris; so the chapter wrote to that bishop, not to give such a wound to their liberties as to take it upon the king's nomination: but seeing that he had no regard to that, they elected him, that so they might by this seem to keep up their claim. The bishop of Alby died soon after that; the king named one, and the chapter chose another; upon that Alby, being within the jurisdiction of Thoulouse, the court of parliament there judged in favour of him who was elected by the chapter, against him who had obtained bulls upon the king's nomination: at which the king was highly offended. The archbishopric of Bourges falling void soon after, the king nominated one, and the chapter elected another. The chapter pretended a special privilege to elect, so the pope judged in their favour. Some years after this (1524), the king carried on his wars in Italy, leaving his mother regent of France; so the court of parliament made a remonstrance to her, setting forth the invasions that had been made upon the rights of the Gallican church, desiring her to interpose, that the Pragmatic Sanction and the liberty of elections might again have their full force; but that had no effect.

Soon after this, the king was taken prisoner by the army of Charles the Fifth at the battle of Pavia: and upon that his mother declared, that she looked on her son's misfortunes as a judgment of God upon him, for his abolishing the Pragmatic Sanction; and though she would not take it upon her to make any alteration during her son's absence, yet she promised, that, when he should be set at liberty, she would use her utmost endeavours with him to set it up again, and

to abolish the Concordats. This was registered in the records of the court of parliament, yet it had no effect upon the king's return out of Spain: he, finding the parliament resolved to maintain all elections, ordered that matter to be taken wholly out of their cognizance; and he removed all suits of that sort from the courts of parliament to the great council, upon some disputes that were then on foot (1527) concerning a bishopric and an abbey given to Chancellor Prat, then made a cardinal in recompense of the service he had done the court of Rome: so by that an end was put to all disputes.

The parliament struggled hard against this diminution of their jurisdiction: they wrote to the dukes and peers of France to move the regent not to proceed thus to lessen their authority on the other hand she said, they were taking all things into their own hands, in prejudice of the king's prerogative. But the king confirmed that, and settled the chancellor in the possession of the see and abbey, and the proceedings of the parliament against him were annulled and ordered to be struck out of their registers. And it appearing that some chapters and abbeys had special privileges for free elections, the king obtained a bull from Clement the Seventh, suspending all those during the king's life. The court of Rome stood long upon this, and thought to have gained new advantages before it should be granted: but the pope was at that time (1532) in a secret treaty with the court of France, which was afterwards accomplished at Marseilles: so he was easier in this matter, and the bull was registered in parliament in May thereafter. And upon this the chancellor, pretending that he would see and examine those privileges, called for them all, and when they were brought to him, he threw them all into the fire.

But to lay all that I have found of this matter together, the clergy of France, in a remonstrance that they made to King Henry the Third, affirmed, that Francis at his death declared to his son, that nothing troubled his conscience more than his taking away canonical elections, and his assuming to himself the nomination to bishoprics. If this was true, his son had no regard to it, but went on as his father had done. Upon his death (1560), when the cardinal of Lorrain pressed the parliament to proceed in the vigorous prosecution of heresy, they remonstrated, that the growth of heresy flowed chiefly from the scandals that were given by bad clergymen and ill bishops and that the ill choice that had been made by the court since the Concordats were set up gave more occasion to the progress that heresy made than any other

thing whatsoever. The courts were so monstrously corrupt, during that and the two former reigns, that no other could be expected from them.

An assembly of the states was called in the beginning of Charles the Ninth's reign. In it the first estate prayed, that the Pragmatic Sanction might again take place, particularly in the point of elections; they backed this with great authorities of councils, ancient and modern: with them the two other estates agreed. The court tried to shift this off, promising to send one to Rome to treat about it: but that did not satisfy; so a decree was drawn up to this effect, that an archbishop should be chosen by the bishops of his province, by the chapter of his cathedral, and twelve persons of the chief of the laity; and a bishop by the metropolitan and the chapter. The court of parliament opposed this: they thought the laity ought to have no share in elections, so they pressed the restoring the Pragmatic Sanction without any alteration; yet, in conclusion, the decree was thus amended an archbishop was to be chosen by the bishops of the province, and the chapter of the see; but a bishop was to be chosen by the archbishop, with the bishops of the province, and the chapter, and by twenty-four of the laity to be thus nominated: all the gentry were to be summoned to meet, and to choose twelve to represent them at the election, and the city was to choose other twelve. All these were to make a list of three persons to be offered to the king, and the man named by the king was to have the see. Thus they designed to bring this matter into a form as near the customs mentioned in the Roman law as they could. But this design vanished, and was never put in practice.

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The clergy still called for restoring the elections; president Ferrier was sent to Rome to obtain it. He in a long speech showed, that neither the Gallican church, nor the courts of parliament, had ever received the Concordats; that shadow of approbation given to it by the parliament of Paris being extorted from them by force; and he laid out all the inconveniences that had happened since the Concordats were set up but that court felt the advantages they had by them too sensibly, to be ever prevailed with to give them up and thus that great affair was settled in the view of this church and nation, at the time that King Henry broke off all correspondence with it. It may be very reasonably presumed, that inferences were made from this, to let all people see what merchandize the court of Rome made of the most sacred rights of the church, when they had their own profit secured: and therefore the wise men in this church at that time might justly conclude, that their liberties were safer while they re

mained an entire body within themselves, under a legal constitution; by which, if princes carried their authority too far, some check might be given to it by those from whom the public aids were to be obtained for supporting the government, than while all was believed to belong to the popes, who would at any time make a bargain, and divide the spoils of the church with crowned heads; taking to themselves the gainful part, and leaving the rest in the hands of princes.

I hope, though this relation does not belong properly to the History of the Reformation, yet, since it is highly probable it had a great influence on people's minds, this digression will be easily forgiven me. And now I turn to such of our affairs as fall within this period.

The first thing that occurred to me in order of time, was a letter of Queen Katharine's to King Henry (Sept. 16, 1513), who, upon his crossing the sea, left the regency of the kingdom in her hands; the commission bears date the 11th of June, 1513. King James the Fourth of Scotland having invaded England with a great army, was defeated and killed by the earl of Surrey. The earl gave the queen the news in a letter to her, with one to the king; this she sent him with a letter of her own; which, being the only one of hers to the king that I ever saw, have inserted it in my Collection (No. ii). The familiarities of calling him in one place my husband, and in another my Henry, are not unpleasant. She sent with it a piece of the king of Scots' coat to be a banner: she was then going to visit, as she calls it, our lady of Walsingham.

I will next open an account of the progress of Cardinal Wolsey's fortunes, and the ascendant he had over the king. The first step he made into the church was to be rector of Lymington in the diocese of Bath and Wells; then, on the 30th of July, 1508, he had a papal dispensation to hold the vicarage of Lyde, in the diocese of Canterbury, with his rectory. There is a grant as almoner, on the 8th of November, 1509. The next preferment he had was to be a prebendary of Windsor: he was next advanced to be dean of Lincoln. A year after that, Pope Leo, having reserved the disposing the see of Lincoln to himself, gave it to Wolsey, designed in the bulls dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster. But no mention is made of the king's nomination. This is owned by the king in the writ for the restitution of the temporalities. On the 14th July, that year (1514), Cardinal de Medici, afterwards Pope Clement the Seventh, wrote to King Henry, that, upon the death of Cardinal Bembridge, he had prayed the pope not to dispose of his benefices till he knew the king's mind, which the pope, out of his