[Sidenote: January 15. Meeting of parliament.]
Amidst these uneasy symptoms at home and abroad, parliament reassembled on the 15th of January. It was a changed England since these men first came together on the fall of Wolsey. Session after session had been spent in clipping the roots of the old tree which had overshadowed them for centuries. On their present meeting they were to finish their work, and lay it prostrate for ever. Negotiations were still pending with the See of Rome, and this momentous session had closed before the final catastrophe. The measures which were passed in the course of it are not, therefore, to be looked upon as adopted hastily, in a spirit of retaliation, but as the consistent accomplishment of a course which had been deliberately adopted, to reverse the positions of the civil and spiritual authority within the realm, and to withdraw the realm itself from all dependence on a foreign power.
The Annates and Firstfruits' Bill had not yet received the royal assent; but the pope had refused to grant the bulls for bishops recently appointed, and he was no longer to receive payment for services which he refused to render. Peter's pence were still paid, and might continue to be paid, if the pope would recollect himself; but, like the Sibyl of Cuma, Henry destroyed some fresh privilege with each delay of justice, demanding the same price for the preservation of what remained. The secondary streams of tribute now only remained to the Roman See; and communion with the English church, which it was for Clement to accept or refuse.
[Sidenote: Opening business of the session.]
The circumstances under which the session opened were, however, grave and saddening. Simultaneously with the concluding legislation on the church, the succession to the throne was to be determined in terms which might, perhaps, be accepted as a declaration of war by the emperor; and the affair of the Nun of Kent had rendered necessary an inquiry into the conduct of honoured members of the two Houses, who were lying under the shadow of high treason. The conditions were for the first time to be plainly seen under which the Reformation was to fight its way. The road which lay before it was beset not merely with external obstacles, which a strong will and a strong hand could crush, but with the phantoms of dying faiths, which haunted the hearts of all living men; the superstitions, the prejudices, the hopes, the fears, the passions, which swayed stormily and fitfully through the minds of every actor in the great drama.