“Then the fathers of the clergy humbly besought his Grace for mercy, to whom he answered he was ever inclined to mercy.  Then for all our great offences we had but little penance; for when he might, by the rigour of his laws, have taken all our livelihoods, he was contented with one hundred thousand pounds, to be paid in five years.  And though this sum may be more than we may easily bear, yet, by the rigour of his law, we should have borne the whole burden; whereupon, my brethren, I charitably exhort you to bear your parts of your livelihood and salary towards payment of this sum granted."[338]

The ingenuity of this address deserved all praise; but the beauty of the form was insufficient to disguise the inconclusiveness of the reasoning.  It confessed an offence which the hearers knew to be none; the true provocation which had led to the penalty—­the unjust extortion of the high church officials—­was ignored.  The crowd laughed and hooted.  The clergy fiercely tightened their purse-strings, and the bishop was heard out with hardly restrained indignation.  “My lord,” it was shortly answered by one of them, “twenty nobles a year is but a bare living for a priest.  Victual and all else is now so dear that poverty enforceth us to say nay.  Besides that, my lord, we never meddled with the cardinal’s faculties.  Let the bishops and abbots which have offended pay.”  Loud clamour followed and shouts of applause.  The bishop’s officers gave the priests high words.  The priests threw back the taunts as they came; and the London citizens, delighting in the scandalous quarrel, hounded on the opposition.  From words they passed to blows; the bedell and vergers tried to keep order, but “were buffeted and stricken,"[339] and the meeting broke up in wild uproar and confusion.  For this matter five of the lay crowd and fifteen London curates were sent to the Tower by Sir Thomas More; but the undignified manoeuvre had failed, and the fruit of it was but fresh disgrace.  United, the clergy might have defied the king and the parliament; but in the race of selfishness the bishops and high dignitaries had cared only for their own advantage.  They had left the poorer members of their order with no interest in common with that of their superiors, beyond the shield which the courts consented to extend over moral delinquency; and in the hour of danger they found themselves left naked and alone to bear the storm as they were able.

This incident, and it was perhaps but one of many, is not likely to have softened the disposition of the Commons, or induced them to entertain more respectfully the bishops’ own estimate of their privileges.  The convocation and the parliament met simultaneously, on the 15th of January, and the conflict, which had been for two years in abeyance, recommenced.  The initial measure was taken by convocation, and this body showed a spirit still unsubdued, and a resolution to fight in their own feebly tyrannical manner to the last.  A gentleman in Gloucestershire had lately