At length symptoms appeared of an intention on the part of the popes to maintain their claims with spiritual censures, and the nation was obliged to resolve upon the course which, in the event of their resorting to that extremity, it would follow.  The lay lords[454] and the House of Commons found no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion.  They passed a fresh penal statute with prohibitions even more emphatically stringent, and decided that “if any man brought into this realm any sentence, summons, or excommunication, contrary to the effect of the statute, he should incur pain of life and members, with forfeiture of goods; and if any prelate made execution of such sentence, his temporalities should be taken from him, and should abide in the king’s hands till redress was made."[455]

So bold a measure threatened nothing less than open rupture.  The act, however, seems to have been passed in haste, without determined consideration; and on second thoughts, it was held more prudent to attempt a milder course.  The strength of the opposition to the papacy lay with the Commons.[456] When the session of parliament was over, a great council was summoned to reconsider what should be done, and an address was drawn up, and forwarded to Rome, with a request that the then reigning pope would devise some manner by which the difficulty could be arranged.[457] Boniface IX. replied with the same want of judgment which was shown afterwards on an analogous occasion by Clement VII.  He disbelieved the danger; and daring the government to persevere, he granted a prebendal stall at Wells to an Italian cardinal, to which a presentation had been made already by the king.  Opposing suits were instantly instituted between the claimants in the courts of the two countries.  A decision was given in England in favour of the nominee of the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were excommunicated.[458] The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a struggle of force, and the government had no alternative but to surrender at discretion, or to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation.

The proceedings on this occasion seem to have been unusual, and significant of the importance of the crisis.  Parliament either was sitting at the time when the excommunication was issued, or else it was immediately assembled; and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of a petition to the king, a declaration of the circumstances which had occurred.  After having stated generally the English law on the presentation to benefices, “Now of late,” they added, “divers processes be made by his Holiness the Pope, and censures of excommunication upon certain bishops, because they have made execution of the judgments [given in the king’s courts], to the open disherison of the crown; whereby, if remedy be not provided, the crown of England, which hath been so free at all times, that it has been in no earthly subjection, should be submitted to the pope; and the laws and statutes