Note 704 — INDEX.

Footnote 704: It has been alleged that the immediate object of this Parliament was to relieve the King from the necessity of repaying the loan (D.N.B., xxvi., 83); and much scorn has been poured on the notion that it had any important purpose (L. and P., iv., Introd., p. dcxlvii.). Brewer even denies its hostility to the Church on the ground that it was composed largely of lawyers, and "lawyers are not in general enemies to things established; they are not inimical to the clergy". Yet the law element was certainly stronger in the Parliaments of Charles I. than in that of 1529; were they not hostile to "things established" and "inimical to the clergy"? Contemporaries had a different opinion of the purpose of the Parliament of 1529. "It is intended," wrote Du Bellay on the 23rd of August, three months before Parliament met, "to hold a Parliament here this winter and act by their own absolute power, in default of justice being administered by the Pope in this divorce" (ibid., iv., 5862; cf. iv., 6011, 6019, 6307); "nothing else," wrote a Florentine in December, 1530, "is thought of in that island every day except of arranging affairs in such a way that they do no longer be in want of the Pope, neither for filling vacancies in the Church, nor for any other purpose" (ibid., iv., 6774).(back)