“To this article, for because it concerneth specially the spiritual courts of me the Archbishop of Canterbury, please it your Grace to understand that about twelve months past I reformed certain things objected here; and now within these ten weeks I reformed many other things in my said courts, as I suppose is not unknown unto your Grace’s Commons; and some of the fees of the officers of my courts I have brought down to halves, some to the third part, and some wholly taken away and extincted; and yet it is objected to me as though I had taken no manner of reformation therein.  Nevertheless I shall not cease yet; but in such things as I shall see your Commons most offended I will set redress accordingly, so as, I trust, they will be contented in that behalf.  And I, the said archbishop, beseech your Grace to consider what service the doctors in civil law, which have had their practice in my courts, have done your Grace 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;[237] 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 dwelling within the provinces; and to have authority to call before them, not only in spiritual causes devolved to them by way of appeal, but also by way of querimony and complaint; which right and privilege pertaineth not only to the persons of the said archbishops, but also to the pre-eminences of their churches.  Insomuch that when the archbishop of either of the sees dieth, the said privileges do not only remain to his successor (by which he is named Legatus natus), but also in the meantime of vacation the same privilege resteth in the churches of Canterbury and York; and is executed by the prior, dean and chapter