of the realm by him be defeated and avoided at his will, in perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of the king our lord, his crown, his regality, and all his realm.”  The Commons, therefore, on their part, declared, “That the things so attempted were clearly against the king’s crown and his regality, used and approved of in the time of all his progenitors, and therefore they and all the liege commons of the realm would stand with their said lord the king, and his said crown, in the cases aforesaid, to live and die."[459] Whether they made allusion to the act of 1389 does not appear—­a measure passed under protest from one of the estates of the realm was possibly held unequal to meet the emergency—­at all events they would not rely upon it.  For after this peremptory assertion of their own opinion, they desired the king, “and required him in the way of justice,” to examine severally the lords spiritual and temporal how they thought, and how they would stand.[460] The examination was made, and the result was satisfactory.  The lay lords replied without reservation that they would support the crown.  The bishops (they were in a difficulty for which all allowance must be made) gave a cautious, but also a manly answer.  They would not affirm, they said, that the pope had a right to excommunicate them in such cases, and they would not say that he had not.  It was clear, however, that legal or illegal, such excommunication was against the privileges of the English crown, and therefore that, on the whole, they would and ought to be with the crown, loialment, like loyal subjects, as they were bound by their allegiance.[461]

In this unusual and emphatic manner, the three estates agreed that the pope should be resisted; and an act passed “that all persons suing at the court of Rome, and obtaining thence any bulls, instruments, sentences of excommunication which touched the king, or were against him, his regality, or his realm, and they which brought the same within the realm, or received the same, or made thereof notification, or any other execution whatever, within the realm or without, they, their notaries, procurators, maintainers and abettors, fautors and counsellors, should be put out of the king’s protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, be forfeited.”

The resolute attitude of the country terminated the struggle.  Boniface prudently yielded, and for the moment; and indeed for ever under this especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back.  The temper which had been roused in the contest, might perhaps have carried the nation further.  The liberties of the crown had been asserted successfully.  The analogous liberties of the church might have followed; and other channels, too, might have been cut off, through which the papal exchequer fed itself on English blood.  But at this crisis the anti-Roman policy was arrested in its course by another movement, which turned the current of suspicion, and frightened back the nation to conservatism.