Note (back) — Chapter XIII

A week later, the Reformation Parliament met for its seventh and last session. It sat from 4th February to 14th April, and in those ten weeks succeeded in passing no fewer than sixty-two Acts. Some were local and some were private, but the residue contained not a few of public importance. The fact that the King obtained at last his Statute of Uses[945] may indicate that Henry's skill and success had so impressed Parliament, that it was more willing to acquiesce in his demands than it had been in its earlier sessions. But, if the drafts in the Record Office are to be taken as indicating the proposals of Government, and the Acts themselves are those proposals as modified in one or other House, Parliament must have been able to enforce views of its own to a certain extent; for those drafts differ materially from the Acts as finally passed.[946] Not a few of the bills were welcome, if unusual, concessions to the clergy. They were relieved from paying tenths in the year they paid their first-fruits. The payment of tithes, possibly rendered doubtful in the wreck of canon law, was enjoined by Act of Parliament. An attempt was made to deal with the poor, and another, if not to check enclosures, at least to extract some profit for the King from the process. It was made high treason to counterfeit the King's sign-manual, privy signet, or privy seal; and Henry was empowered by Parliament, as he had before been by Convocation, to appoint a commission to reform the canon law. But the chief acts of the session were for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries and for the erection of a Court of Augmentations in order to deal with the revenues which were thus to accrue to the King.