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Rome. But as a matter of fact, lest their acceptance of such a measure
might be misunderstood, the English bishops offered the most strenuous
opposition to the Statute of Provisors and insisted that their
protests against it should be registered, a policy which, it might be
added, was followed by the University of Oxford. The bishops demanded
later on that it should be repealed. Their request was not granted,
but from the numerous provisions made to bishoprics in England and
from the appointments made to English benefices during the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries it is evident that the Statute was allowed to
fall into abeyance. Similarly the Statute of Praemunire (1353) by
which it was forbidden under the penalty of forfeiture and outlawry to
bring cases cognizable in the English courts before foreign courts, or
to introduce into the realm provisions, reservations, or letters
contrary to the rights of the king or his subjects, was passed to
prevent an undoubted abuse at the time, and was enforced rarely as the
frequent appeals to Rome amply prove.

These measures serve to indicate at most only the attitude of the
Crown towards the Pope, not the attitude of the English clergy and
people. The loyal submission of the latter is evidenced from the papal
appointments to bishoprics and benefices, from the First Fruits paid
willingly to the Holy See by those who were called upon to pay them,
by the constant interference of the Holy See in regard to the division
and boundaries of parishes, the visitation of monasteries, the rights
of bishops, etc., as well as by the courts held in England in virtue
of the jurisdiction of the Pope. That the Pope was above the law and
that to dispute the authority of a papal decree was to be guilty of
heresy was a principle recognised by the English ecclesiastical
authorities and accepted also in practice by English jurists. The
oaths of loyalty to the Holy See taken by all the archbishops and
bishops, the tone and form of the letters addressed to the Pope, the
assertion of papal rights against the errors and attacks of Wycliff
and Luther, the full admission of papal supremacy contained in Henry
VIII.'s /Assertio Septem Sacramentorum/, and in the formal dying
declaration of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury (1533), and the
resolute attitude of two such learned representatives of the English
clergy and laity as Bishop Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More,
are in themselves sufficient to establish the fact that in the days of
Henry VIII. England joined with the rest of the Catholic world in
recognising the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of
Rome.[13]

The controversies which had raged were not concerned with spiritual
supremacy nor were they peculiar to England. Much worse ones had
arisen to disturb the friendly relations that should exist between the
Holy See and France or Spain, and yet nobody would care to deny that
both of these nations acknowledged their subjection to Rome. Neither
were they between the English clergy or the English people and the
Pope; they were waged rather between the Crown and the Holy See. As
royal absolutism began to develop in Europe the policy of kings was to
increase their power over the ecclesiastical organisation in their
dominions by lessening the authority of the Pope. This tendency is
brought out clearly in the concessions wrung from the Pope by
Ferdinand I. of Spain and Louis XII. of France, but more especially in
the Concordat negotiated between Leo X. and Francis I. (1516),
according to which all appointments in the French Church were vested
practically in the hands of the king. Henry VIII. was a careful
observer of Continental affairs and was as anxious as Francis I. to
strengthen his own position by grasping the authority of the Church.
He secured a /de facto/ headship of the Church in England when he
succeeded in getting Cardinal Wolsey invested with permanent legatine
powers. Through Wolsey he governed ecclesiastical affairs in England
for years, and on the fall of Wolsey he took into his own hands the
control that he had exercised already through his favourite and
minister. Had Leo X. consented to a concordat similar to that
concluded with France, whereby the royal demands would have been
conceded frankly and occasions of dispute removed, or else had he
taken the strong step of refusing to delegate his authority
indefinitely to a minister of the king, he would have prevented
trouble and misunderstanding, and would have made the battle for royal
supremacy much more difficult than it proved to be in reality.
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[1] Lupton, /Life of Dean Colet/, 1887.

[2] Gasquet, /Eve of the Reformation/, 142.

[3] Chalmers, /History of the College ... of Oxford/. Mullinger, /The
University of Cambridge to 1535/.

[4] Leach, /English Schools at the Reformation/, 1896, p. 6 (a