with, language of increasing vehemence; and although the primary object was to neutralize the supposed right of the Pope to present to English benefices, and although the office of Papal legate is not especially named in any one of the prohibitory clauses, yet so acute a canonist as Wolsey could not have been ignorant that it was comprehended under the general denunciation. The 5th of the 16th of Richard II. was in fact explicitly universal in its language, and dwelt especially on the importance of prohibiting the exercise of any species of jurisdiction which could encroach on the royal authority. He had therefore consciously violated a law on his own responsibility, which he knew to exist, but which he perhaps trusted had fallen into desuetude, and would not again be revived. It cannot be denied that in doing so, being at the time the highest law officer of the realm, he had committed a grave offence, and was justly liable to the full penalties of the broken statute. He had received the royal permission, but it was a plea which could not have availed him, and he did not attempt to urge it.[1] The contingency of a possible violation of the
- ↑ Cavendish, p. 276.Gardiner has left some noticeable remarks on this subject.'Whether,' he says, 'a king may command against a common law or an act of parliament, there is never a judge or other man in the realm ought to know more by experience of that the laws have said than I.'First, my Lord Cardinal, that obtained his legacy by our late Sovereign Lord's requirements at Rome, yet, because it was against the laws of the realm, the judges concluded the offence of premunire, which matter I bare away, and took it for a law of the realm, because the lawyers said so, but my reason digested it not. The lawyers, for confirmation of their doings, brought in the case of Lord Tiptoft. An
