Note y — Chapter VIII · (continued 3)
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The lower house of convocation, in 1547, terrified at the progress of reformation, petitioned that, "according to the tenor of the king's writ, and the ancient customs of the realm, they might have room and place and be associated with the commons in the nether house of this present parliament, as members of the commonwealth and the king's most humble subjects." Burnet's Hist. of Reformation, vol. ii.; Appendix, No. 17.
This assertion that the clergy had ever been associated as one body with the commons is not borne out by anything that appears on our records, and is contradicted by many passages. But it is said that the clergy were actually so united with the commons in the Irish parliament till the Reformation. Gilbert's Hist. of the Exchequer, p. 57.