Note k — Chapter VIII · (continued 3)

It is worthy of observation that the spiritual peers summoned to parliament were in general considerably more numerous than the temporal. Prynne, p. 114. This appears, among other causes, to have saved the church from that sweeping reformation of its wealth, and perhaps of its doctrines, which the commons were thoroughly inclined to make under Richard II. and Henry IV. Thus the reduction of the spiritual lords by the dissolution of monasteries was indispensably required to bring the ecclesiastical order into due subjection to the state.