hath not appeared according to the certificate, the same party therefore hath been excommunicated, or, at the least, suspended from all divine service; and thereupon, before that he or she could be absolved, hath been compelled, not only to pay the fees of the court whereunto he or she was so called, amounting to the sum of two shillings, or twenty pence at the least; but also to pay to the sumner, for every mile distant from the place where he or she then dwelled unto the same court whereunto he or she was summoned to appear, twopence; to the great charge and impoverishment of the king’s subjects, and to the great occasion of misbehaviour of wives, women, and servants, and to the great impairment and diminution of their good names and honesties—­be it enacted——­” We ask what?—­looking with impatience for some large measure to follow these solemn accusations; and we find parliament contenting itself with forbidding the bishops, under heavy penalties, to cite any man out of his own diocese, except for specified causes (heresy being one of them), and with limiting the fees which were to be taken by the officers of the courts.[347] It could hardly be said that in this parliament there was any bitter spirit against the church.  This act showed only mild forbearance and complacent endurance of all tolerable evil.

Another serious matter was dealt with in the same moderate temper.  The Mortmain Act had prohibited the church corporations from further absorbing the lands; but the Mortmain Act was evaded in detail, the clergy using their influence to induce persons on their deathbeds to leave estates to provide a priest for ever “to sing for their souls.”  The arrangement was convenient possibly for both parties, or if not for both, certainly for one; but to tie up lands for ever for a special service was not to the advantage of the country; and it was held unjust to allow a man a perpetual power over the disposition of property to atone for the iniquities of his life.  But the privilege was not abolished altogether; it was submitted only to reasonable limitation.  Men might still burden their lands to find a priest for twenty years.  After twenty years the lands were to relapse for the service of the living, and sinners were expected in equity to bear the consequence in their own persons of such offences as remained after that time unexpiated.[348]

Thus, in two sessions, the most flagrant of the abuses first complained of were in a fair way of being remedied.  The exorbitant charges for mortuaries, probate duties, legacy duties, the illegal exactions for the sacraments, the worst injustices of the ecclesiastical courts, the non-residence, pluralities, neglect of cures, the secular occupations and extravagant privileges of the clergy, were either terminated or brought within bounds.  There remained yet to be disposed of the legislative power of the convocation and the tyrannical prosecutions for heresy.  The last of these was not yet ripe for settlement; the former was under reconsideration by the convocation itself, which at length was arriving at a truer conception of its position; and this question was not therefore to be dealt with by the legislature.