concerning treaties, truces, confederations, and leagues devised and concluded with outward princes; and that without such learned men in civil law your Grace could not have been so conveniently served as at all times you have been, which thing, perhaps, when such learned men shall fail, will appear more evident than it doth now. The decay whereof grieveth me to foresee, not so greatly for any cause concerning the pleasure or profit of myself, being a man spent, and at the point to depart this world, and having no penny of any advantage by my said courts, but principally for the good love which I bear to the honour of your Grace and of your realm. And albeit there is, by the assent of the Lords Temporal and the Commons of your Parliament, an Act passed thereupon already, the matter depending before your Majesty by way of supplication offered to your Highness by your said Commons;[1] yet, forasmuch as we your Grace's humble chaplains, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, be bounden by oath to be intercessors for the rights of our churches; and forasmuch as the spiritual prelates of the clergy, being of your Grace's Parliament, consented to the said Act for divers great causes moving their conscience, we your Grace's said chaplains show unto your Highness that it hath appertained to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for the space of four hundred years or thereabouts to have spiritual jurisdiction over all your Grace's subjects dwell-
- ↑ An Act that no person shall be cited out of the diocese in which he dwells, except in certain cases. It received the Royal assent two years later. See 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
