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abuses by which papists were allowed to hold ecclesiastical office. "Boys," he said, were permitted by dispensations to have livings, unqualified men promoted, and some allowed to have too many benefices." The conference was appointed, and several bills for reform in the church were in consequence introduced. Only one, of no great extent, against leasing benefices, was passed into a law."* Strickland was called before the privy council, by whom he was reproved for his boldness, and commanded to abstain from attendance in the house

of commons till he should have leave. The queen soon yielded to the intimations thrown out that the house would require his presence, and he quietly resumed his seat. The ministers pretended that the restraint laid on Strickland was not on account of words spoken in the house, but for his exhibiting of a bill in the house against the prerogative of the queen, which was not to be tolerated t; meaning probably by these harsh words, that as the act of supremacy had subjected all ecclesiastical matters to the queen as head or ruler of the church, it would be unconstitutional in the commons without her previous recommendation to entertain questions of which the law had intrusted the sole determination to another constitutional authority. On occasion of the house of commons passing bills against non-residence and simony, she caused it to be intimated to them "that she approved their good endeavours, but would not suffer these things to be ordered by parliament +;" probably meaning, that she would protect her supremacy by the exercise of her negative, if they proceeded to invade her ecclesiastical prerogative, which the laws had vested exclusively in the crown. The commons were still too unrefined to resent, as a breach of privilege, the communication of her intention respecting proposed measures which she had the undisputed right to reject. Of all pretensions, that which savoured the least of an affectation of unbounded or even inherent power, was a claim derived from that royal supremacy over the church, of + D'Ewes, 175. + Id. 185.

* 13 Eliz. c. 20.

which the parliamentary origin was so fully establishea by the recent and very striking examples of its being granted to Henry VIII., continued to Edward, withdrawn under Mary, and restored to Elizabeth.

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Wentworth spoke with singular severity of sir Humphry Gilbert, the celebrated navigator, whom he described clearly, though without naming him, as disposed to flatter and favour the prince; comparing him to a cameleon, which can change itself into all colours saving white, as the speaker to whom he alluded could change himself to all fashions but honesty."* This bitterly personal speech, which did not entirely spare the flattered, though it was aimed against the flatterer, was passed over without animadversion. The house took into consideration the case of nine ancient boroughs which had returned no burgesses to the last parliament †, and resolved that "the burgesses shall remain according to the return, the right of the towns being to be elsewhere examined, if need be.” The house had exercised a similar jurisdiction in 1563, in the case of new representatives from boroughs which had not lately made any return. On other subjects affecting the rights of election they exercised judicial power over offences against a free and pure choice of members, by fining the borough of Westbury in the sum of twenty pounds, for the offence of the mayor, who had sold the seat to Walter Long for four pounds. In discussing a bill concerning the validity of the elections of burgesses not residing in or near the boroughs which chose them, the house § was led from these judicial proceedings to general

* D'Ewes, 175. Wentworth was member for Barnstaple, and Strickland for Scarborough. Browne Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria, iii.

+ East Loo, Fowey, Chichester, East Retford, Queenborough, Woodstock, Christchurch, Aldborough (in Suffolk), and Eye.-D'Ewes, 156-159. Tregony, St. Germans, St. Mawes, Minehead, Tamworth, Stockbridge. -D'Ewes, 80. "In former times," says the reporter, "it was common for poor or decayed boroughs to escape the payment of wages to burgesses, either by obtaining a licence from the sovereign not to elect, or by discontinuing that privilege themselves by degrees. But of late, since the members of the house, for the most part, bear their own charges, many of the boroughs who had discontinued their privilege resumed it, as the towns above mentioned.

By the statutes of 5 Hen. 5. c. 1. and 23 Hen. 6. c. 15., it was enacted, that citizens and burgesses should be inhabitants of the towns which they represented. These ancient laws, after several centuries of avowed disuse, were repealed by 14 Geo. 3. c. 58. The bill adverted to in the text, which did not pass, seems to have had the same object with the repealing statute of George III.

reasonings on changes in the constitution of that assembly itself, not altogether dissimilar to those which in modern times have borne the name of Parliamentary Reform. Loud complaints were made in that debate of nominations of candidates by noblemen: and it was proposed to amerce any borough which should choose according to such nomination, in the (then not inconsiderable) sum of forty pounds. "It was meant," says a speaker whose name is not preserved," that men from every quarter, and of all sorts, should come to this court, and that they should freely be chosen." Another member proposed that one of the members should be resident, but that liberty should be left in the choice of the other; in order that there might be no want "of men learned and able to utter their opinions."

The same party of zealous protestants, who endeavoured to root out all Romish abuses in the church, were prompted by an equal solicitude to provide against the overthrow of the reformation by the queen of Scots, the catholic successor, whose designs could only be defeated by the marriage of Elizabeth, which would afford some likelihood of a protestant succession. Hence the conflicts of this growing party with the queen on the subject of obtaining the chance of an heir who should be protestant. In the preceding parliament of 1566-7 the queen had expressly forbidden the house to proceed farther; and yet, two days after, she was content to withdraw her inhibition.* The lord keeper, in answer to the speaker of the house of commons, had indeed warned that house, " that they would do well to meddle with no matters of state but such as were propounded to them, and to occupy themselves in other matters concerning the commonwealth."+

It is probable that, if the lord keeper had been urged to explain these alarming words, he would have taken refuge in the distinction between advice and command; that he might have represented "matters of state" as meaning negotiations, international correspondence, and * D'Ewes, 130. † Id. 141, 142.

such other pending matters as ought to be left in that secrecy which their nature requires, and from which there is the less reason to drag them, because they cannot, in most cases, be carried into full effect without parliamentary grants, or without laws in which parliament must concur. Grave as the lord keeper was, he might have hinted that the observance of decorum towards the crown, which was a secondary principle of the constitution, almost forbade the exposure of the negotiation regarding the marriage of a female sovereign to the licence of public debate.

Throughout the transactions of these parliaments Elizabeth found herself more than once under the necessity of retiring from the exposed positions to which she had advanced; nor was it only in her abandonment of hazardous measures, but in the frequent lowering of her tone, and more especially in the unsubdued spirit of her opponents, that the progress of parliamentary power may be most clearly discovered. The greatest accession to the authority of parliament, however, arose from the policy necessarily adopted by her, as it had been by her father, of resting on that authority as the foundation of the throne. By the first act of the parliament of 1571, which was professedly founded on present danger, and to continue in force only during the queen's life, many acts were raised to the character of high treason, of which the greater part by judicial construction have since become permanently overt acts of the ancient treason of compassing (or conspiring) the death of the sovereign.

In the fourth section of that statute it was provided, "that any person who shall affirm or maintain that the queen's majesty, with and by the consent of the parliament, is not able to make laws of sufficient force to limit and bind the crown of this realm, and the descent, inheritance, and government thereof, every such person during the life of her majesty shall be adjudged a high traitor, and shall suffer and forfeit as in cases of high

treason."* By this provision the doctrine of inviolable succession was solemnly condemned, the power of altering it was affirmed, insomuch as to subject those who denied it to capital punishment, and that high power was declared to be not in the monarch alone, but in the monarch by the consent of parliament. It is wonderful, that after such a declaration of our constitutional law, a powerful party should have grown up in England on the avowed principle of an indefeasible and indeed divine right of succession.

After the deposing bull, and the audacity with which it was affixed on the bishop of London's palace, a severe measure against papal bulls was naturally to be expected; and if it had been limited within the bounds of reason, would doubtless have been justifiable. But the parliament made it "high treason to obtain or receive from the bishop of Rome any bull, writing, or instrument, containing any matter or thing whatsoever t: a persecuting enactment, which reduced catholics to the alternative of exposing themselves to death, or of foregoing many of those moral relations of life, which were in their opinion legitimatised only by the intervention of papal authority. This statute adopts a principle of cruel injustice, in order to preclude the possibility of some evasion, and outlaws the members of a great communion to avoid the risk of the introduction of a few criminal bulls, under cover of that multitude of them which were perfectly innocent. It might doubtless be said, and is indeed intimated in the preamble of this bill, that those who acknowledged the power of a pope who had issued the deposing bull lived in a permanent state of treason, and granted to the queen no more than a truce till they were better prepared for warfare. By such modes of reasoning, however, all tyranny might be justified, and peace might be for ever banished from human society. Greater discrimination in making laws, and a more assiduous vigilance in their execution, will always secure a government as much as that object can + 1 Eliz. c. ii.

13 Eliz. c. i. s. 4.