prorogued, but the Lords, shortly after the separation, united with such of the Commons as remained in London, to give a proof of their feeling by a voluntary address to the Pope. The meaning of this movement was not to be mistaken. On one side, the Nun of Kent was threatening Clement, speaking, perhaps, the feelings of the clergy and of all the women in England; on the other side, the Parliament thought well to threaten him, speaking for the great body of English men, for all persons of substance and property, who desired above all things peace and order and a secured succession.
The language of this remarkable document[1] was as follows:—
July 13.'To the Most Holy Lord our Lord and Father in Christ, Clement, by Divine Providence, the seventh of that name, we desire perpetual happiness in our Lord Jesus Christ.
'Most blessed Father, albeit the cause concerning the- ↑ Rymer, vol. vi. p. 160. We are left to collateral evidence to fix the place of this petition, the official transcriber having contented himself with the substance, and omitted the date. The original, as appears from the Pope's reply (Lord Herbert, p. 145), bore the date of July 13; and unless a mistake was made in transcribing the papal brief, this was July, 1530. I have ventured to assume a mistake, and to place the petition in the following year, because the judgment of the universities, to which it refers, was not completed till the winter of 1530, they were not read in parliament till March 30, 1531; and it seems unlikely that a petition of so great moment would have been presented on an incomplete case, or before the additional support of the House of Commons had been secured. I am far from satisfied, however, that I am right in making the change. The petition must have been drawn up (though it need not have been presented) in 1530; since it bear.ithe signature of Wolsey, who died in the November of that year.
