The Preamble to the Act.

Whereas the Commons of the realm, in the present Parliament, have sued unto our redoubted Lord the King, grievously complaining, that whereas the said our Lord the King, and all his liege people, ought of right, and of old times were wont to sue in the King's Court, to recover their presentments to churches, prebends, and other benefices of holy Church to the which they had a right to present, the cognizance or plea of which presentment belongeth only to the King's Court, of the old right of his Crown, used and approved in the time of his progenitors, kings of England. But now of late divers processes be made by the Bishop of Rome, and censures of excommunication upon certain Bishops of England, because they have made execution of such commandments, to the open disherison of the said Crown, and destruction of our said Lord the King, his law, and all his realm, if remedy be not provided. And also it is said, and a common clamour is made, that the said Bishop of Rome hath ordained and purposed to translate some Prelates of the said realm out of the realm, and some from one bishopric to another within the same realm, without the King's assent and knowledge, and without the assent of the Prelates which so shall be translated; which Prelates be much profitable and necessary to our said Lord the King and to all his realm: by which translations (if they should be suffered) the statutes of the realm should be defeated and made void, and his said liege sages of his council, without his assent, and against his will, carried away and gotten out of this realm, and the substance and treasure of the realm shall be carried away, and so the realm become destitute, as well of council as of substance, to the final destruction of the same realm: and so the crown of England, which hath been so free at all times, that it hath been in no earthly subjection, but immediately subject to God, in all things touching the regality of the same crown, and to none other, should be submitted to the Pope, and the laws and statutes of the real by him defeated and avoided at his will, in perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of the King our Lord, his crown, his regality, and of all his realm, which God defend.

'And moreover it was demanded of the Lords Spiritual there being, and the procurators of others being absent, their advice and will in all these cases; which Lords, that is to say, the Archbishops and Bishops, and other Prelates, be

+ Fuller's Ch. Hist. Book iv. p. 145, 146, 147.

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ing in the said Parliament severally examined, making protestations, that it is not their mind to deny or affirm that the Bishop of Rome may not excommunicate, nor that he may make translation of Prelates, after the law of holy Church, answered and said, that if any execution of processes made in the King's Court (as before) be made by any, and censures of excommunication be made against any Bishops in England, or any other of the King's liege people, for that they have made execution of such commandments, and that if any execution of such translations be nade of any Prelates of the same realm, which Prelates be very profitable and necessary to our said Lord the King and to his said realm, or that the sage people of his council, without his assent, and against his will, be removed and carried out of the realm, so that the substance and treasure of the realm may be consumed; that the same is against the King and his crown, as is contained in the Petition before named. And likewise the same procurators, every one by himself, examined upon the said matters, have answered and said, in the name and for their lords, as the said Bishops have said and answered, and that the said Lords Spiritual will and ought to be with the King, in these cases, in lawfully maintaining of his crown, and all other cases touching his crown and his regality, as they be bound by their liegiance.'

After this preambular Remonstrance, corroborated by reciprocal engagements and protestations of both the Houses, to stand by and support the Crown, in the cases abovementioned, immediately follows

The enacting Part of the Statute.

Whereupon our said Lord the King, by the assent aforesaid, and at the request of his said Commons, hath ordained and established, that if any purchase or pursue, or cause to be purchased and pursued, in the Court of Rome, or elsewhere, any such translations, processes, and sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments, or any other things whatsoever, which touch the King, his crown, and his regality, or his realm, or them receive, or make thereof notification, or any other execution whatsoever, within the saine realm, or without, that they, their notaries, procurators, maintainers, abettors, fautors, and counsellors, shall be put out of the King's protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, forfeited to our Lord the King. And that they be attached by their bodies, if they may be found, and brought before the King and his council, there to answer to the causes aforesaid, or

that process be made against them by Præmunire facias, in manner as is ordained in other Statutes of Provisors.'

Remarks upon this Act.

This is the famous Statute of Præmunire, which, by some polemic writers, has been injudiciously represented, styled, and proclaimed a necking-blow to the Pope's Supremacy, and the original Magna Charta of the Royal Supreme Power Ecclesiastical.

But, for our part, we must confess it is beyond our skill and penetration to discover, in this Act, any thing that can be fairly construed into a formed design to demolish the Pope's Supremacy; and much less to establish a Lay-Supremacy in the place of it. On the contrary, it plainly appears to have been made with no other view or design, but only to guarantee the Temporal Privileges of the Prince and his Subjects from foreign encroachments, and to preserve the balance of power (if I may be allowed the expression) in a just equipoise, between the mitre and the crown, with regard to temporalities only. And in this sense Archbishop, Courteney undoubtedly understood it, when he protested and engaged to support his Highness [the King] in this and all other instances in which the Rights of the Crown are concerned.

It cannot therefore be pretended, that the Pope's Supremacy is utterly defeated by the above-recited Act, without imposing such a sense, and putting such a construction upon it, as it was never intended to bear. For with doctrinal matter (such as the Pope's Supremacy is) it meddles not at all, no, nor so much as mentions, and much less discards. Whence we infer, that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the rest of the Prelates might, without any difficulty, hesitation, or scruple of conscience, freely subscribe (as indeed, they did) to the truth of this proposition, That the crown of England is immediately subject to God in all things touching the Regality of the same crown. But then, their Lordships were so cautious as to put in a caveat, even against this subscription, by protesting solemnly, at the same time, that it was neither their will nor intention to infringe or prejudice the Pope's Spiritual Jurisdiction; but leave his excommunications upon civil accounts, his power of making translations of Bishops, &c. in their full force and vigour. And thus did they wisely stand up in defence of the civil rights of their Sovereign, without breaking in upon the Spiritual Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, which, in reality, they left uncontested.

As for the prohibition of appeals to Rome, on account of

presentments to churches, prebends, and other benefices, it is no argument against the Pope's Authority. Appeals to that court, in matters relating to discipline, are disallowed in other kingdoms, which nevertheless are well known to be zealous and steady in maintaining the Pope's Supremacy in all matters of doctrine.

But it is wrong to suppose that doctrinal points were the subject of the famous statute now in question. And, as a proof of this, we appeal to the following heads of complaint: First, that the Pope refused the King's and other inferior lay-presentments of churclimen (otherwise duly qualified) to church benefices or livings, without giving his reasons for such refusals. Secondly, that the Pope translated English Bishops from one Bishoprick to another within this realm, and sometimes out of the realm too, without the King's assent, and even against his will: whereby the King's liege suges, (as the Act styles such of the Bishops as were privy-counsellors) as well as the substance and treasure of the realm were carried away and exported into foreign countries. And what are all these but temporal considerations?

When therefore King Richard the Second took up a resolution to redress the grievances complained of by the Commons of England, and determined at last to exert himself in defence of the Regality of his Crown, can he be justly blamed for so doing? The means he employed and the measures he pursued were deemed, in those days, to be far from unjustifiable in themselves, and the Premunire Act was then looked upon, even by the Lords Spiritual, as an expedient prudently devised and wisely contrived, to answer the great end of rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; but without excluding the other part of the evangelical precept, which enjoins the duty of yielding to God the things that (by being consecrated to the Use of his Church) belong to God.

And did King Henry the Eighth confine his pretensions within these modest and moderate bounds? Did he contend with the great obstacle of his desires, only about some few instances in which the Rights of the Crown were concerned? Did he challenge nothing more than mere temporalities? Was his dispute with the Pope only about his Regality? And was there no such thing as Suprémacy in the case? To maintain the negative, a man should be stocked with a fund of assurance sufficient to outface the most plain and positive records, and be duly qualified to turn the most serious history into fiction and romance. For

it is notoriously known to all the world, that this Prince's ambitious views, and insatiable lust of power, instead of being confined to temporalities only, were extended so far, as to take in every particular branch of the Spiritual Authority, every individual Prerogative of the See of Rome.

By way of supplement to the Regal Supremacy, we recommend to the reader's perusal An Extract of a curious Discourse upon that subject. It is in the Appendix, No. III.

And so, for the present, we shall take leave of Old King Harry; it being our intention, in the next place, to entertain our reader with a short view of his children's re

spective supremacies. At our next interview with his Highness, (in the second part of these Memoirs) we shall be melancholy spectators of the dire effects, the dismal consequences, and the deplorable use he made of his Churchheadship.

§ 7.-King Edward VI. succeeds his Father..... His Minority is abused to the Prejudice of the Church, and his Conscience is unserviceably directed..... Dr. Heylin's Character of King Edward's Parliament..... Mr. Collier admits the Truth of it.....The Doctor dates the commencement of the Reformation of England from the Beginning of this Reign.....Mr. Fuller's whimsical Account of the Rise and Progress of Nonconformity, or Puritanism.

UPON the demise of King Henry VIII. the Crown of England devolved to his only Son, who, with all the solemnities usual upon such occasions, was proclaimed by the name, style, and title of King Edward the Sixth. Whether or no this Prince was ushered into the world by the uncommon method of a Cæsarean Operation, I shall not take upon me positively to assert or deny; though several authors of no mean credit maintain the affirmative to be matter of fact and Mr. Fuller in particular calls it A constant Tradition. But let this birth be as it will, certain it is, that + His minority was abused to many acts of spoil and rapine, even to a high degree of sacrilege. And among many other instances of the sacrilegious acts of this reign, the reader is desired to take notice of the following ones.

+ Heylin's Hist. Ref. p. 131.