communion, independent of foreign control, self governed, self organised, and at the same time adhering without variation to Catholic doctrine.  This principle (if we may so abuse the word) shot rapidly into popularity:  a party formed about it strong in parliament, strong in convocation, strong out of doors among the country gentlemen and the higher clergy—­a respectable, wealthy, powerful body, trading upon a solecism, but not the less, therefore, devoted to its maintenance, and in their artificial horror of being identified with heresy, the most relentless persecutors of the Protestants.  This party, unreal as they were, and influential perhaps in virtue of their unreality, became for the moment the arbiters of the Church of England; and the bishops belonging to it, and each rising ecclesiastic who hoped to be a bishop, welcomed the resistance of the annates as an opportunity for a demonstration of their strength.  On this question, with a fair show of justice, they could at once relieve themselves of a burden which pressed upon their purses, and as they supposed, gratify the king.  The conservatives were still numerically the strongest, and for a time remained in their allegiance to the Papacy,[352] but their convictions were too feeble to resist the influence brought to bear upon them, and when Parliament re-assembled after the Easter recess, the two Houses of Convocation presented an address to the crown for the abolition of the impost, and with it of all other exactions, direct and indirect,—­the indulgences, dispensations, delegacies, and the thousand similar forms and processes by which the privileges of the Church of England were abridged for the benefit of the Church of Rome, and weighty injury of purse inflicted both on the clergy and the laity.[353]

That they contemplated a conclusive revolt from Rome as a consequence of the refusal to pay annates, appears positively in the close of their address:  “May it please your Grace,” they concluded, after detailing their occasions for complaint,—­“may it please your Grace to cause the said unjust exactions to cease, and to be foredone for ever by act of your high Court of Parliament; and in case the pope will make process against this realm for the attaining those annates, or else will retain bishops’ bulls till the annates be paid; forasmuch as the exaction of the said annates is against the law of God and the pope’s own laws, forbidding the buying or selling of spiritual gifts or promotions; and forasmuch as all good Christian men be more bound to obey God than any man; and forasmuch as St. Paul willeth us to withdraw from all such as walk inordinately; may it please your Highness to ordain in this present parliament that the obedience of your Highness and of the people be withdrawn from the See of Rome."[354]